Chapter 28
There was a long, taut silence after Alaina left the room. Megan let out a long, ragged sigh and folded her arms, meeting Ryder’s stare head-on. The hours that had gone by since they last met had steeled her, or so she hoped.
I’ve cried me tears, she told herself firmly. I’ve got me thoughts in order. I ken that he doesnae care for me, and I ken that I cannae stay. I’m at peace.
Well, more or less.
“What exactly is it that ye want?” Megan asked heavily. “I’m ready to go. I’m packed and poised. I just need to wait for dawn.”
A muscle jumped in Ryder’s cheek. He watched her closely, like a wolf watching a hare. It was hard not to feel like a prey animal under his stare.
“Ye cannae leave,” he said at last. He said the three words simply, as if they were obvious.
Megan narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me?”
He shrugged. “Our bargain was that ye would stay for three months.”
“Or until we caught the culprit,” she countered. “The culprit has been caught. Alaina is safe, and so is Clan MacCulloch. That was our deal.”
“Then I want to change our deal.”
She gave a bark of laughter. “What for? I daenae understand ye one bit, Ryder. I have given plenty of meself to ye, but none of it is enough. Ye daenae want a bride, ye said so. That’s yer prerogative, of course, but I cannae stay here as a… as a playthin’!”
“Ye are nae a playthin’ to me or to anyone, Megan. I’d nae allow it.”
Megan groaned aloud, pressing her hands against her face.
“I simply cannae understand what ye want of me.”
“I didnae understand it either. I still daenae.”
She glanced up at him at that, frowning. “But what do ye want, then?”
“Ye,” he answered simply. “Forever.”
There was a long silence. She wasn’t sure how long it stretched on for. A minute? Two? It felt like an eternity, but at the same time, no time at all.
“I daenae understand,” Megan repeated. She’d lost count of how often she’d said those sad little words in the past five minutes.
But I daenae understand. None of this makes sense. Is this another game?
Ryder breathed in, glancing over at the fire.
“I remember the day me stepmaither came to the Keep. It was an arranged marriage, of course, but me faither was lookin’ forward to meetin’ her.
She insisted on riding her horse, not travelin’ in the carriage as a lady ought to do.
Me faither took me up to the Keep walls and held me up so that I could see her approach.
I remember him sucking in a breath, as if he were surprised.
She was beautiful, to be sure, but there was somethin’ else about her that drew him, I think.
She glanced up as he looked down, and their eyes met for the first time.
I remember her liftin’ her hand and wavin’.
I waved back. I was just excited to have a maither.
I think that spot on the Keep wall is where she jumped, all those years later.
The very spot she first saw me faither.”
Megan bit her lip, watching the firelight play over Ryder’s face.
“I ken she was like a maither to ye, too,” she murmured at last.
Ryder nodded. “She loved me faither, and he loved her. The pain she went through when he was lost was… it was unbearable to watch. And before that, my birth maither’s fate.
Murdered because she was Lady MacCulloch.
I remember me faither’s pain at losing her, too.
I have been drawn to ye, lass, from the moment I saw ye.
The power shocked me. For a long time, I have been convinced that love is too painful to risk.
I’ve seen things that made me question that, of course.
I see how happy Ewan and Flora are together.
Seeing Alaina and her infatuation with that guardsman… ”
“If it is infatuation,” Megan interrupted.
He chuckled, shaking his head. “Indeed, lass, indeed. Me point is, since ye have come into me life, I have begun to doubt everythin’. I sent ye away from me because it felt safer, I suppose.”
“What are ye tellin’ me, Ryder?”
He met her eyes squarely. “I am tellin’ ye that I love ye, lass. I love ye, and I want ye to stay. Love is a risk, but now I think that it’s a risk I want to take for ye. With ye.”
He stepped forward, hands outstretched, but Megan darted warily away.
“I cannae trust ye, Ryder!” she cried. “Ye tell me I mean so much to ye. We share our intimate thoughts, we share our bodies—although of course ye have not shared yers—and then ye turn around and send me away in the next breath. I cannae keep doin’ that.
I cannae bear it, and it’s nae fair for ye to ask me to. ”
Ryder let out a slow breath, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.
“Nay, lass,” he whispered hoarsely. “I cannae bear to lose ye. I am… I am…” He stuttered, groping for a word.
Megan watched in amazement. Since the day she’d met him, Ryder had been a tower of strength. Cool, amused, sharp, and always in charge, he had never stuttered. He had never seemed to falter, not even for a moment.
He was faltering now.
“I am afraid,” he said at last, dropping his hands woodenly to his sides. “What an awful word, eh? Afraid. Lairds daenae get afraid.”
“Perhaps nae. But people do,” Megan managed.
He met her eyes with a tired smile. “It’s an exhaustin’ thing, bein’ in love. I thought if I didnae name it, I could avoid the fear of losin’ it. I think I was wrong about that. Daenae go, Megan. Daenae go.”
She bit her lip hard until she tasted copper. Her feet moved even before she’d decided to move them, it seemed. She took a wary step forward, reaching out, fingers questing until their tips brushed the firm muscle of his shoulder. A shiver ran through her.
“I think that ye have been so wrapped in fearin’ the fates of yer maither and stepmaither that ye have only thought of their ends,” Megan whispered. “I think that ye have forgotten about who they were in between. Ye have forgotten them.”
He closed his eyes. “What a sin.”
“If forgettin’ somethin’ important were a sin, we’d all be damned.”
He gave a huff of laughter at that, opening his eyes and fixing them on her.
“I thought that if I kept meself locked away, I could protect me heart,” he said at last, shaking his head.
“What a fool I was. I lost me heart when I was nae lookin’, and now I cannae take it back.
I… I am nae sure I want it back. If ye leave me, Megan, I’ll nae be able to live with meself, to ken that I drove ye away.
To ken that it was me fault. I… I was so set on torturin’ meself with the memories of what happened to me maither and stepmaither that I forgot about all the life they had before.
” He gave a short, breathless laugh, shaking his head.
On impulse, he reached forward, taking her hand and twining their fingers together.
“I love ye, Megan,” he said simply, holding her gaze. “If ye choose to leave, I cannae stop ye. But I love ye more than any man alive can, and if ye stay, I’ll prove it to ye.”
Megan stared up at him, her vision blurring. She wasn’t sure whether she was about to cry or laugh, her emotions tumbling over each other and piling up.
“Well,” she said at last, swallowing. “I suppose ye will just have to convince me. Perhaps this time I should punish ye.”
He blinked, surprise and relief crossing his face. Then a hunger came, enough to make Megan’s stomach quiver.
“Oh, nay, lassie,” he breathed. “That’s nae how it works.”
She bit back a smile. “And are ye finally goin’ to show me how it works?”
By way of answer, he lunged forward, wrapping her up in his arms and pulling her against him so tightly she lost her breath.
He kissed her ravenously, teeth clicking together, his stubble scraping her cheek.
Megan didn’t care. She barely felt the discomfort over the pounding of her heart, a shiver of desire streaking across her skin.
She freed her arms, tightening them around his shoulders, and pressed herself against him.
She hardly noticed when Ryder lifted her off the ground, walking them both over to the bed. He deposited her carefully onto the bed and leaned over her.
“I think ye are the most beautiful woman in the world, ye ken that?” he breathed.
Megan hid a smile. “There are lots of women in the world. Surely I cannae be the most beautiful. I’d accept ‘most beautiful woman in the Highlands’, though.”
He crawled onto the bed, knees resting on either side of her hips. He carefully supported himself above her, leaning down to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.
“I didnae say that ye were the most beautiful woman in the world,” he pointed out. “I said that I thought ye were the most beautiful.”
Megan laughed aloud, giddy with happiness. She wanted to laugh, cry, sing, dance, all of it at once, but at the same time, she was sure that if she moved away from Ryder, even an inch, she would implode.
“Very clever,” she laughed, reaching up to trail her fingers down the side of his face.
His gaze softened, and he leaned down to kiss her.
The kiss lasted only a moment. He pulled back, hands sliding across the front of her belly to the laces on the front of her gown.
He began carefully undoing them, gently inching the fastenings open.
“Do I need to close me eyes this time?” Megan asked, tilting her head. Desire pulsed through her, but this time there was a faint flutter of anxiety, too. This time, she sensed, would be different.
“Nay,” he answered at once, leaning down to press his lips against the swell of her breast. “Nay, I want yer eyes on me this time.”
She lay still, watching him kiss and caress each of her breasts in turn, fingertips leaving invisible, red-hot trails over her skin. It was maddening and thrilling all at once.
He glanced up at her, meeting her eye, and grinned. It was a mischievous, wolfish grin, one that went straight to the join of her legs and pulsed insistently there.
Sitting back on his heels, Ryder unceremoniously pulled off his shirt, revealing a thick, toned torso fuzzed with hair. Megan reached up, placing her palm over the place where his heart would be. She imagined it there, beating beneath his warm skin. He rested his hand over hers, just for a moment.
Then he turned his attention to his kilt, unfastening the front so that it swung open, the material falling away to crumple on the ground.
Megan barely noticed. His manhood was there, a lot larger than she’d imagined in her head.
There was something intriguing about it, and she found herself wondering whether it felt as velvety as it looked.
There was no time for that. Ryder leaned forward to kiss her once more, a lazy, thoughtful kiss that melted her insides.
His hand danced up the inside of her thigh, sliding against her.
Her folds were still slick and soft after their intimacy before, and almost at once she felt the peak of pleasure start to beckon.
“Ye must let me ken if ye want to stop,” he breathed against her ear. She wrapped her arms tight around him, hooking one knee over his hip.
“I daenae,” she whispered.
Something much larger than his finger slipped inside her, a breathless intrusion that took a moment to adapt to.
Megan shifted her hips tentatively, and he started to move, pressing against her.
Something inside her was touched, a spark of sharp, exciting pleasure that made her gasp and tighten her grip around his shoulders.
Ryder chuckled against her neck. Had he done that deliberately? Most likely.
Megan kept her eyes open, as he’d requested, and almost felt as if she were flying above them, watching them move as one on the bed.
Ryder’s thrusts sped up, sending that thrilling pleasure through her with every movement.
He kissed the front of her throat, and she wondered if he could feel her pulse thrumming against his lips.
His hands slipped down her body to cup her bare hips, his fingers warm and sure on her skin. His palms were hot, delightfully so. He shifted his own hips, settling deeper inside her, and she let out a stuttered gasp of pleasure.
“There ye are, lass,” he breathed, voice cracking. “We fit perfectly together. I think perhaps ye were made for me.”
“Or perhaps ye were made for me,” she countered, faintly amazed that she could come up with witty retorts at such a time.
He chuckled again, and sped up his thrusts.
The sound of skin slapping together, rich and deliciously lewd, filled the space.
Megan tightened her grip on his shoulders, closing her eyes and letting him move her as he liked, pressing her down, fingers digging into her hips and pulling her back onto him.
She felt the familiar twinges of climax approaching and bit her lip, almost helpless.
When she reached her peak, she gave a startled gasp at how different it was from before.
Better, certainly. She was still spiraling lazily down from her high when Ryder gave a low growl, a rumble in his chest, and pressed against her.
There was a warm rush, a final tingle of desire, and he rested his weight against her.
They lay like that for a while, arms and legs tangled together, Megan’s gown wrapped around them both.
“I love ye, Megan Blackwood,” Ryder whispered, his breath warm against her ear. “And if ye will consider it, I would like ye to be me bride. For real this time.”
She smiled, closing her eyes, and wound her fingers through his hair.
“I will consider it, since I am fairly sure that I love ye too. It is lucky that I do love ye, because ye are the most infuriatin’ man I have ever met.”
He chuckled again. “It’s nae goin’ to get better, love. I can promise ye that. Ewan tells me that I drive everybody around me insane.”
“If it’s all the same,” she sighed, “I’d rather nae talk about Ewan right now.”
“And what do ye want to talk about, lassie?”
“How much ye love me, for one.”