CHAPTER 11 #4
With a savage groan he heaved her up, too overcome to be gentle as he hauled her over the parapet. Holding her tight against him, he sank to his knees, fighting the splintering pain tangling like a web through his skull.
She is all right, he told himself fiercely.
She is not going to die. The stinging rain thrashed against them as he cradled her in his arms, soaking their hair and skin and clothes, and he leaned over her, vainly trying to protect her from the rain, the cold, the night, from every dark force that might seek to harm her or steal her from him.
He did not know how long he remained huddled over her. When Brodick’s voice finally penetrated the aching fog in his brain, the wall head was all but deserted.
“Let’s take her inside, Alex,” Cameron was saying, resting his hand upon Alex’s shoulder. “Come.”
“The battle,” Alex murmured stupidly.
“The battle is over,” Brodick said. “Everyone is safe and accounted for, including Garrick’s dog.
I have posted men to watch from the towers for any further disturbances, although there is little Robert can do as long as this storm rages.
Just to be certain, the entire clan will be spending the night within the confines of the castle.
There is nothing more to be done tonight, Alex. Come.”
Dizzy and disoriented, Alex rose to his feet, still holding his precious burden tightly against him. Gwendolyn’s eyes were closed and her body was limp. “She is not dead,” he said dully, staring down at her.
“I believe she has fainted,” Brodick told him. “You’ve been holding her out here a long while.”
“He has,” Gwendolyn agreed, the chalky line of her lips barely moving. “But I’m awfully cold, MacDunn.” Her gray eyes opened and she regarded him with a steady clarity that had been completely absent when she regarded him just before she fell. “Could we go inside now?”
He drew her closer to his chest as he carried her along the battlements, down the stairs, into the corridor.
Neither Cameron nor Brodick spoke as they made their way along the torchlit hallway, the only sound being the spatter of their sodden garments as they dripped streams of water onto the stone floor.
Alex did not pause at Flora’s old sickroom, but continued to his own chamber.
He carried Gwendolyn inside and closed the door on Cameron’s and Brodick’s confused expressions.
He didn’t give a damn what they thought of his taking Gwendolyn to his chamber.
He didn’t give a damn what anyone thought.
She was his, and she belonged here, with him.
He placed her in a chair before the hearth, then quickly heaped a mound of twigs and dry logs in the fireplace.
He lit it with one of the candles flickering in the room, watching impatiently as the amber flames began to billow and snap.
When the fire was blazing, he added several more lengths of wood to the pyre, ensuring its heat would last for several hours. Then he turned to her.
“We must remove that wet gown before you catch your death from a chill.”
Gwendolyn obediently stood and began to remove her gown. Alex went to his bed and stripped off the plaid covering, then quickly wrapped her in it as her black gown and chemise dropped to her bare feet.
“There, now.” He rubbed her through the softness of the plaid, trying to restore blood and heat to her chilled flesh. “Feel better?”
She stared up at him in numb silence. The lines of his handsome face were deeply etched in the flickering firelight, making him look far older than his years.
His pale blond hair spilled like shimmering wet satin over his shoulders, and he seemed heedless of the fact that his shirt and plaid were lying cold and wet against his own skin.
His touch was achingly gentle as he warmed her with his hands, the steady, sure stroke of a man who was well accustomed to tending someone weak.
The thought of Flora filled her mind—Flora lying trapped in a dark, stifling room, but in a bed that had been carefully embroidered with flowers and sunshine and waterfalls.
A bed that Alex had insisted on sharing with her as she lay dying, so she would not be alone.
A bed that he had ordered burned after she died, so he would never have to endure the agony of looking upon it and remembering her in it.
Pity lanced Gwendolyn’s heart. MacDunn had risked everything for her this evening, she realized, bewildered by the incredible selflessness of his actions.
He had been willing to sacrifice his people, his castle, even himself, all for the sake of her safety.
And she had been equally ready to die, so that he and his clan might be spared Robert’s brutality.
In that moment on the battlements, as she stood trembling over the dark embrace of death, she had suddenly understood the depth of her feelings for this mad, tormented laird.
And she had been terrified.
With a little cry she wrapped her arms around him, clinging to him desperately as she pressed her trembling lips to his.
She wanted to be enveloped by him, to lose herself to his extraordinary strength and courage, to banish all thought of David and Clarinda, Cameron and Brodick and Ned, and even silly, spoiled Isabella, who had so courageously leaned out of a window and shouted at the top of her lungs that Gwendolyn was not evil.
She wanted to wash all of them from her mind, and the cruel, irrefutable fact that by staying here, she endangered each and every one of them.
And so she pressed herself against Alex’s hard, rain-soaked length, kissing him deeply as the plaid he had wrapped around her slipped to the floor in a rumpled pool of wool.
Alex groaned and drove his tongue deep into the sweetness of Gwendolyn’s mouth as he swept her up into his arms. He had not planned this, he assured himself as he crossed the chamber and lowered her onto the bed, but he could no more douse the passion blazing within him than he could have stopped the storm still raging outside.
He wanted her with a voracity that was staggering.
For weeks now he had feared her, not because of her unearthly powers, which he could not begin to comprehend, but because of her physical fragility, which made her seem like a tender blossom that would wither in the sun, or be swept away by the faintest gust of wind.
The agony of Flora’s suffering was still raw in his mind, and he had been wary of Gwendolyn from the moment he saw her lashed to the stake, thinking such a feeble wisp of a girl could never endure even the simplest hardships of life.
But he had been wrong. She had withstood the rancor of his own people with a stubborn resolution that would have tested his most seasoned warrior.
She had endured fire and loathing, injury and humiliation, and the bitter knowledge that everyone she encountered either despised or feared her.
Yet she had remained, tending to his son with tenderness and compassion, ignoring everything else in her bid to make a dying lad well.
And then, when her mission was nearly completed, she had climbed upon the parapet and offered herself in exchange for the lives of those who had conspired to be rid of her.
The nobility beating within her tiny breast was staggering.
He shed his wet garments and stretched himself over her, covering her with his warmth and strength.
He wanted to possess her, to hold her tight against him and lose himself inside her, to chain her to him with his body and mind and soul, so that she would never leave him, never know the touch of another man, and most of all so that she would never barter with her precious life as she had tonight.
She was his, and she had to understand that, not with words, but with the heavy press of his thighs against hers, with the rough stroke of his tongue upon her taut nipple, the sun-bronzed splay of his hand grasping her creamy hip, and the harsh moan that escaped his throat as he buried himself deep within her velvet wet heat.
A startled gasp escaped her lips, and he felt the bite of her nails as she clutched the muscles in his back, pulling him even closer against her small, silky body.
He ravaged her mouth as he drove himself into her, tasting her deeply, thoroughly, feeling her cries of pleasure vibrate against his lips and teeth.
Again and again he plunged into her as he drank in her beauty and strength and courage, feeling more a part of her with each aching penetration, stretching and filling her with his desperate need, until finally he did not know where he ended and she began.
His mind began to spin as he lost himself to her, touching and kissing and gripping and thrusting, acutely aware of her slippery hot tightness as she held him safe inside her, the rapid flutter of her heart as it beat against his chest, the tangle of her slender legs as she twined them around his thighs, and the painful ache as he moved in and out of her, desperately trying to bind her to him, and feeling instead like he was being chained forever to her.
He could not breathe, could not think, could not stop, could not do anything except lunge into her again and again, faster, harder, his body straining for release from this sublime torture.
And suddenly he was soaring through the night, and he cried out her name in despair.
He never wanted it to end, but his body could bear no more and so he rammed himself as far into her as he could, filling her with every fragment of his flesh and his soul before collapsing helplessly against her.