Chapter 8 #4
Meg knew that hidden in the shadows they could not be seen unless someone was almost on top of them.
The voices drew nearer. She broke their stare and lifted up on her toes, attempting to look over his shoulder.
As if he knew what she planned, he lowered his mouth to hers again, preventing her from doing anything other than reveling in the exquisite feelings wrought by his mouth moving over hers in a slow, sensual dance.
She would have forgotten all about the sounds, but a voice called out, “Who’s there?”
Alex’s body tensed. She might not have noticed if she hadn’t been practically molded to him.
“Giggle,” he ordered with his mouth still pressed against hers.
Appalled, she pulled back her head. “What!”
“Do you want them to see you? Just do it.”
Meg did her best imitation of a simpering maid and tried to laugh. Apparently, it wasn’t good enough, because Alex rolled his eyes and slid his fingers under her arm. Meg gasped with shock, only to giggle in earnest when he began to tickle her.
It worked. Meg heard a man say “find a chamber” and “tryst.” The sound of voices retreated, punctuated by the firm slam of a door only moments later.
Meg’s cheeks burned when she realized what those men had thought and could have seen.
But something wasn’t right. Questions began to form.
With the masque going on tonight, this part of the palace should be deserted.
Who were those men? One of the voices had sounded familiar.
She turned to study Alex, realizing that he was watching her with a strange expression on his face.
He never had explained what he was doing lurking in the shadows.
She opened her mouth to question him, but, sensing her transient thoughts, Alex pulled her closer, driving all lucidity from her mind as his mouth came down on hers again.
Meg gasped at the unexpected invasion of his tongue.
She heard his groan as he plundered the soft recesses of her mouth with the warm, seductive stroke.
For a moment she stilled, not sure what to do.
This couldn’t be proper. Nothing that felt this wantonly delicious could be.
But the intense sensations shooting through her body soon brought her past the point of caring.
Her body felt liquid, dissolved in the dark heat of his mouth and tongue. He stroked deeper and deeper, until anticipation filled every part of her body. His mouth moved over her jaw and down her neck as he ravaged her with heated kisses that sent her skin aflame.
A soft moan of pleasure escaped her lips.
Meg couldn’t believe the throaty sound had possibly come from her.
His mouth moved across her chest, achingly close to the edge of her bodice.
Her body softened in response, melting deeper into his hold.
She could feel the hard chisel of his muscles crushing her body to his.
All that warmth. It was going to her head, she felt so dreamy.
She’d never felt like this before. Helpless. Mindless. At the utter mercy of a force much stronger than rationality. What had she done, unleashing something she could not control? All she could do was respond, melting against him, giving herself over to the heat that flamed between them.
Slowly, tentatively, she reached up and grabbed his shoulders to steady herself, but perhaps also because for some strange reason she yearned to feel his strength under her fingertips.
To test his impossible hardness, to see whether he burned as hot as she.
He did. His shoulders were as hard as rock.
Her hands spread across their wide breadth and slid down the steely muscles of his arms. Instinctively the muscles flexed, and Meg felt the strange urge to pull off his doublet.
To see the bare layers of hard muscle under her fingertips. God he was magnificent.
Touching him only made her want more. Drunk with wanton urges, she couldn’t get close enough.
Stretching up against him, she pressed her breasts to him and her nipples strained against the granite wall of his chest. For a moment, she even wondered how it would feel to rub herself up and down against the hard naked planes of his chest. Skin to skin.
As if he could read her thoughts, his kiss grew more demanding, deeper, harder, wetter—as if he sought to devour her.
The rough stubble on his chin tore the soft skin around her mouth.
His hips circled against her, pressing her back even harder against the wall.
His hand came up to cup her breast, and Meg moaned again, delirious with pleasure.
The massive evidence of his arousal pressed into her stomach, demanding.
An odd wave of heat gushed below her abdomen.
Heavy with desire, she felt a strange urge to move against him, to rub her tingling flesh against the rigid column pressed so firmly against her, to ease the restlessness quivering uncontrollably in her body.
The world had seemingly spun out of control, and Meg fought to hang on.
Meg was innocent, but not ignorant. Inquisitive by nature, she understood what happened between a man and a woman—privacy was not a Highland way of life.
She’d also sought to further her education by studying the mating habits of animals.
She’d never dreamed that her body would compel her to the deed.
But she wanted him deep within her, filling her with his heat.
Surely she was wicked, and that she craved him between her legs would assuredly send her to eternal damnation. But, oh, what a way to fall.
Through the haze of pleasure, her mind sounded caution. He was not the man for her. But her heart urged him on, knowing that nothing could be more right than kissing him, making love to him.
This was how it felt to lose control.
The bubble burst. One lucid thought brought her back to reality. What was she doing? It was too much: his fervor, her inexperience. The intensity of her own response.
This was passion at its most terrifying extreme.
This was passion unlike anything she’d experienced before, the type that could make her lose her head.
The strength of her desire for Alex was nothing like what had come before.
Her heart hammered with sudden panic, with a sudden fear of the loss of control.
Ewen’s handsome, smiling face swam before her eyes.
Only once before had she allowed emotions to cloud her judgment, but it had been a lesson well learned. The mistake with Ewen had nearly cost her everything. She couldn’t let it happen again.
The reversal of emotion that came over her was startling in its intensity. It was as if all of the hot waves of passion surging through her veins had suddenly turned to shards of ice.
She couldn’t do this.
Without thought but to escape, in one swift movement she brought her knee up hard against his crotch, as her father had taught her to do if she ever found herself in such a circumstance.
She was free. Alex hunched over and uttered what was surely the most vile expletive she’d ever heard. His face contorted. Meg bit her lip, feeling a wave of remorse. Her father had not mentioned this amount of pain.
She moved cautiously back out of his reach, sucking in air, trying to retrieve her breath. Surely she must look ravaged, with her mussed hair and bruised lips. But she didn’t care. She had to get out of here.
“What the hell was that for?” he moaned, his voice hoarse.
“I wanted you to stop.”
“You might have said something first.”
“I …” Mortified, she put her hand over her mouth, realizing she hadn’t even tried to push him away. She’d simply reacted. Overreacted. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, tears building behind her eyes, threatening to break.
Shaking, whether with panic or still blistering desire she did not know, Meg turned and fled toward the sanctuary of her chamber.
The urge to spill the contents of his stomach passed.
Eyes burning, Alex watched Meg race down the corridor.
What the hell had just happened? One minute she’d been responding as if she couldn’t get enough of him, the next his bollocks had been smashed up to his rib cage.
All of his training with the MacGregors had not adequately prepared him for that particular move.
But it was not one he’d likely forget. Ever.
Slowly, the pain ebbed. Had he frightened her? He must have. She was innocent. He shouldn’t have rushed her. But one taste had nearly driven him over the edge.
He never would have imagined that such passion lay dormant under that innocent exterior. It amazed him that such a serious young woman could inspire such wickedly carnal feelings.
Her response had driven him half-mad with lust. Although inexperienced, she’d returned his kiss with eagerness and enough instinctive skill to make him forget she was so innocent.
Her erotic little groans of pleasure had urged him on.
But the tentative touch of her hands on his shoulders and the slight rubbing of her unmistakably hard nipples against his chest had been a potent aphrodisiac that proved impossible to resist.
At that point, he’d completely forgotten that it was merely a kiss of convenience to cover up his presence in the corridor.
No, he was lying to himself.
He’d forgotten about that the moment their lips touched.
He’d wanted her since the first moment he’d laid eyes on her.
And seeing her with Dougal had simply pushed him beyond endurance.
He’d wanted to brand her with his kiss, to drive all thoughts of other men from her consciousness. To possess her in the most basic way.
But he’d never intended to take it so far.
A few more minutes and he would have been doing a hell of a lot more than kissing her.
He grew hard even at the memory. The honey sweet taste of her mouth and tongue, the pressure of her full breasts on his chest, the torture of her hips pressed against his rock-hard erection.
He’d sensed her reaction when he’d moved against her.
She’d liked it. She was ripe and so sweetly passionate.
The urge to make her come had nearly overwhelmed him.
Just the thought of rubbing her sensitive mound up and down his thick column over and over until she shattered …
He groaned. He couldn’t even think about it. His was so hard, he could explode.
How had one small kiss progressed to such a passionate conflagration so quickly?
A conflagration that had scared Meg enough to cause her to nearly make him a eunuch.
He should have anticipated her fear. The force of their passion had surprised him.
Somewhere between the moan and the knee he had lost himself in the heat, in the lust, and hadn’t even realized that she might be frightened.
Hell, it even scared him.
Kissing Meg Mackinnon had been every bit as dangerous as Alex had expected.
Meg made him think of things he’d never thought about before.
Of a family. A home. Of a future that was not for him.
One wee lass could wield the power to undo him.
To make him lose focus—and if he wasn’t careful, to destroy all that he’d worked for.
His duty right now was to his brother and his clan, and to a certain extent to his dead cousins.
A duty that was at cross-purposes to the type of man Meg needed to ensure the stability of her clan.
He might not approve her methods, but he should be thanking Meg for putting a stop to it. Indeed, it would be better if he avoided Meg Mackinnon altogether.
Like the black death.
Indeed, she’d already caused him enough trouble, including alerting the men he’d been spying on to his presence in the corridor.
At least their kiss had prevented him from being discovered.
And Meg’s giggling had prevented further investigation, turning the men back to their meeting—albeit this time with the door shut.
Of course, he would apologize to her. But not right now.
He still needed to learn when the ships would be leaving.
He could only hope the king’s minions were still discussing their plans.
He was just about to slip back down the corridor when he heard more footsteps coming toward him from the direction of the hall.
From the shadows, he watched as a man crept slowly past the corridor and peered down the hall in his direction.
Alex held perfectly still. It was dark, but he could see that the large, heavyset man was not a guest at the masque.
He wore the breeches and jerkin of a guardsman.
Seeing no one, the man continued on, heading in the direction where Meg had disappeared, not back toward the hall.
He felt a flicker of unease. There was something devious about the man’s movements.
Like Alex, he did not want to be seen. But there was more.
Something niggled at the back of his memory.
The man looked familiar. The realization hit him: He could be one of the men from the tavern.
But he couldn’t be sure; he’d never seen his face and had only a quick glance at the rest of him.
Alex looked back down the hall to the chamber where Lord Chancellor Seton and Secretary Balmerino were still meeting.
An opportunity like this might not come again.
He might never learn when they planned to leave, vital information if he and his kin were going to have any kind of chance of repelling the incursion.
This was his sole purpose for being at court.
Not to chase after some tiny stubborn woman and protect her from a phantom threat.
He knew what he should do. His head urged him back down the corridor toward the meeting. But another part of him, a deeper part of him, wouldn’t let him go. Meg could be in danger. He just couldn’t ignore the possibility that the two men were one and the same.
It might be ridiculous, but if something happened to her, Alex would never forgive himself. Cursing the mess he’d managed to embroil himself in, he started down the passageway after Meg’s would-be assailant.
But this was the last time he would put her before his mission.