Chapter 6
Bran knew Marin didn't want him to look through the accounts.
It was evident in the snap of her hem at her ankles as she strode onward in an angry march.
As much as he knew he had to see the accounts to ensure the castle continued to run without issue, going through the earl's personal effects left him discomfited.
She pushed through the door and led him to the desk. Ella lay curled on the window seat, her head bent over yet another book. This one had a blue cover with gold paint scrolling up along its spine. She didn't bother to look up as they entered.
Marin swept a bit of hair from Ella's eye, the way a mother might do to a child. “Is the light sufficient?”
“Mmm…” Ella murmured. Then her head snapped up and her blue eyes went wide. “Marin.” She leapt to her feet with her finger carefully pinched in the book’s pages and threw her arms around her sister. “You've been freed?”
“Depends,” Bran said.
They both turned toward him, smiles fading.
He braced his hand over the polished top of the desk. “I need compliance.”
Marin touched her sister's shoulder. “Please leave us, Ella.”
“Mayhap I—”
Marin nudged her toward the door and Ella cast a regretful look back at him before leaving the room. The door clicked closed.
“I know ye dinna want to do this,” he said.
Marin shot him a sharp glare. “Do you?”
He hardened his resolve against her ire. “The accounts.”
“It's there.” She pointed to the second drawer. The one where he'd found the book Ella had deemed he’d mistreated and taken from the solar.
“Ella has it,” he countered. “She took it the other day.”
Marin frowned. “That's ridiculous. It never leaves this drawer.” She pulled the drawer and bent over it, her fingers graceful as they gently sifted through the parchments and vellum within. Her delicate lavender scent rose around him, teasing and alluring.
She wore a modest veil over her fair hair.
While it looked lovely on her, he much preferred her hair uncovered, the unbound strands flowing and free for him to stroke.
Though their time alone had been brief, he remembered too well the softness of her skin, the silky coolness of her hair.
He could all too easily see himself laying abed with her, playing his fingers over those golden locks in a moment of post-coital reverence.
Oblivious to his thoughts, she rose and looked at the desk's barren surface. “You're correct. It appears to be missing.” She put a hand to her hip. “Why would Ella have taken it?”
He wanted to pull the veil off her head and let the little circlet fall to the ground. He needed her in his arms, making those lusty moans she had the night before, her slender body arching in helpless abandon against him. “She said I wasna treating a book properly.”
Marin smiled secretly to herself. “Aye, that sounds like Ella.”
Bran found his gaze drifting to Marin's pink mouth and he imagined his thumb between her lips, the shy, curious way she’d suckled the digit. “We can reclaim it and speak to the steward,” he suggested.
Though it was not truly what he’d wanted to suggest. He didn’t like this hard Marin, the one who treated him with contempt and ire. Nay, he wanted the woman last night, the seductress who was surprised at her own enjoyment of their light play.
Her sweet mouth thinned with agitation. “Why is it you wish to speak to the steward, to discover everything you’ve gained in your capture of Werrick Castle?”
“That isna it.”
“What is it then?” She lifted her head defiantly and the gold circlet around her head winked in the light shining in through the leaded glass window.
If he told her he was securing the castle for the Kerr warden, she would no doubt fight him even more than she did now. Nay, this lass did not have cause to know the true plan. He merely required her assistance, which she already had promised.
His gut twisted with unease. He hated this using of women, forcing them into compliance. More than anything, he hated being at the beck and call of a privileged noble. His life, and that of Ena’s, was expendable and exploitable.
“I need yer support,” he answered finally.
The skin around Marin’s eyes tightened, giving her a shrewd appearance. Even shrewd, she was still bonny.
“More than simply speaking to Nan and the other servants,” she surmised.
He nodded. “It will keep everyone safe. Yer people and mine.”
“And give you exactly what you want without the risk of having us revolt.” She gave a knowing smirk. “Aye, I know that is why you seek my permission. You know your men are fickle in their loyalty, and you know eventually my people might rise up if your numbers lessen.”
Damn but the woman was too clever for her own good. “People will die on both sides.”
“And you may lose all you have purloined.”
He stared at Marin, who was as stubborn as she was lovely. “It will keep us all from loss.”
She folded her arms over her chest.
“Will ye help me?”
“Nay.” Her brows drew together, and her face went pink. “I will not let you stand there and gloat about how in one day you have managed to acquire what one man took a lifetime to garner.”
Her words plucked at a nerve Bran had not realized he had. If her people did revolt, if they took back Werrick, Ena would die. A band of tension worked its way around his chest. “Ye will help me,” he said in a low, threatening tone.
“Or what?” Her chin angled toward him with defiance. “Will you hit me? After all your reassurances we would be left unharmed. Will you be a liar as well as a thief?” She tensed. “And I warn you, I will hit back.”
Anger lashed through Bran. He fell prey to her goading and it only served to increase the ferocity of his rage.
“I dinna hit women.”
She scoffed. “Due to your noble character, I presume.”
He stared down at her. His blood boiled to scalding in his veins, and his breath came hard and fast. “Ye're the most stubborn and maddening woman I've ever met,” he growled.
A wicked grin curled her sensual mouth. “Such knowledge brings me great delight.”
The emotions snapping through him were too overwhelming; her face too alight with the passion of their argument for him to ignore. He wouldn't hit Marin, but he certainly could kiss her.
Marin had won their little battle. It was as evident in Bran's glare as it was in the pounding of her heart.
His eyes were bright with something unsaid and his stare was so intense, it reminded her of when she'd gone to him.
His kiss, his touch, both played out in her mind more often than they ought to, and they were doing so again now.
“Will you hit me?” she asked. Her voice came out with a throaty quality, a note of sensuality she had not intended.
“Nay.” He slid his hands to her face. “No' when I'd rather kiss ye.”
His mouth came down on hers and Marin's world blossomed to life in a wave of undeniable anticipation.
His lips were softer than she remembered, the rasp of his beard over her sensitive skin rougher.
His hands, the delight at his touch far more thrilling.
She ran her hands over his shirt where his chest was firm with muscle beneath.
It was all too easy to recall the lines of his body, the strength shadowed by the light from the hearth. She opened her mouth to him, and his ready tongue swept against hers. A whimper slipped from her throat.
He growled at the sound she made, and it sent lovely shivers running through her.
His hands slid from her face, delicately brushing down the naked skin of her neck and collarbones before skimming down the length of her body to her waist. He pulled her to him, against the wonderful solid wall of his body. And she melted.
She leaned into his strength with a sigh shared between their kisses, her hands moving over his powerful back.
The desire humming through her drew her hips toward him in a slow, eager rhythm he all too easily matched.
She ought to push him away, she knew, to be firm in her defiance.
But these kisses were heaven, and they awakened in her something she had thought never to experience: desire.
His palm swept up to brush the side of her breast and gently cup it.
Marin arched her chest toward him before she knew what she was doing, her entire being transformed by the power of need.
He sucked at her bottom lip while his thumb played over the swollen bud of her nipple.
She cried out with pleasure, but he muted the sound with a hungry sweep of his tongue.
He kissed her mouth, her chin, her neck, his mouth suckling, his teeth ever so gently nipping. Tingles of bliss danced up and down her spine. Her breath came in panting gasps.
Bran cupped her bottom with his free hand and drew her hips flush with his, where the hardness that had been there the night before now strained between them again.
Marin was not so ignorant of the ways between a man and a woman that she did not know what the column was. A trill of power shot through her. She had caused that. His want of her. His yearning.
His leg nudged against hers and she found herself parting her knees for him.
His thigh pressed into the wild thrum of lust at her cleft.
He straightened to kiss her once more, gliding his hand up her lower back to catch the back of her head in his large palm.
Somewhere in the distance came the ring of thin metal hitting the ground.
She paid it little mind, her mouth impatiently tasting his with greedy abandon.
“I want ye,” he moaned into her mouth.
It would be so easy to give in to this lust, to let it ignite her body and soul. The voice in the back of her mind ticked off reasons she ought to cease, with one glaring reason that was louder than curiosity and excitement combined–responsibility.