Chapter Eight
AS SOON AS WE ENTERED Wilkie’s rooms, he set me down gently on his bed. His temper had been calmed by the walk and the closeness of our bodies as he held me against him.
Wilkie lit the fire, saying nothing. He took his time, feeding the flame with small, then larger, pieces of wood, until his chambers were infused with the dancing yellow glow, which reflected off his hair, his face and his clothing.
I felt a fluttery moth of joy in my heart at the very sight of him, an inexplicable happiness that we were here together and that we had emerged from our small argument as—almost—equals.
I’d succeeded in keeping him with me. To be separated now from him would cause me physical pain.
I had never felt an attachment to anyone this strongly—not even to my mother, as a child, since I had once known life without her.
I couldn’t remember even a single recollection of my life before I’d been delivered at the Ogilvie keep, but I had always, perhaps because of my mysterious early years, had a strong sense of independence.
So it seemed strange now that I would yearn like this.
And burn like this. The sight of Wilkie, with the curves of his muscular shoulders straining against the fabric of his tunic and illuminated by the firelight, it lit a different kind of fire. In me.
“Warrior,” I said, and my voice sounded softly husked. “Come here.”
He stopped his movement, catching a note in my tone that grabbed his attention. He walked to the bed, his gaze direct and darkened.
“Warrior,” I said, reaching for his hand.
“Please forgive me. I’ll wait here for you, if it pleases you.
I will do anything for you, anything. I will heed your every command, as I promised I would.
I acted that way only because I wanted so desperately to have you and to give everything of myself to you, now and always.
I told you once that I wasn’t good at following orders, and ’tis true.
I’ve had every need, in the past, to defy.
It was how I protected myself and kept true to myself.
Sometimes I forget myself, with you. I forget that I don’t need to do that with you.
I’ll try harder, I promise. I’ll devote myself to pleasing you.
’Tis all I want to do. I don’t want to defy you, Wilkie. Please forgive me.”
He sat next to me on the bed, stretching out his legs over the furs, putting his arm around my shoulders so I could lean against him.
“I don’t want your blind obedience, lass.
” He carefully unwound my braids, stroking and smoothing the long strands with his hand.
“’Tis me who should be apologizing. I have no idea what’s come over me.
You drive me daft with your golden beauty. To have you seen and looked at—”
I paused and leaned closer to him. I kissed the corner of his mouth.
“I will allow you to work with Effie,” he said.
“But you will not venture out-of-doors. At all. Unless I’m with you.
I’m being as open-minded as I can, Roses, but ’tis not safe for you to be overly visible.
Ogilvie’s men are looking for you. For now, we need to keep your presence here quiet.
Already there’s a risk that you were seen, when you first arrived.
It could endanger your safety if word gets to him. ”
I thought about this. It could endanger many people’s safety, if Ogilvie ordered his army to invade Kinloch to get me back.
Was his pride so very offended by the small uprising of a servant?
I certainly didn’t want to aggravate a battle, and in fact, the thought horrified me for many reasons.
I wouldn’t be allowed out-of-doors, to watch Wilkie train. Or to visit the open gardens.
“I am your willing captive,” I said.
I meant it to tease him, almost, and to apologize for my earlier refusals, but his eyes turned stormy at the comment, and I regretted my words. “Don’t be angry. I want to be with you, warrior. The thought of you leaving me, while you train, at all, it makes my words unruly.”
He frowned. “I’m no better than Ogilvie, keeping you captive, here in my bed. ’Tis a strangely powerful urge I have, to keep you close to me. It clouds all my judgment. It burns in me like I’ve never burned, Roses.” He was troubled by this.
Wanting to ease away his distress, I sat up to face him, thinking about what I could do to distract his frown.
In fact, I felt quite lively, as if the effects of my injury and the stress of past days had lifted almost entirely.
I was here with him against all odds, and was invigorated by the discovery that my warrior could pleasure me in confoundingly powerful ways.
My energy seemed to hum from within me, as though the spark of the argument had livened me, now that it was over.
I felt playful, and it was a feeling I hadn’t felt for some time.
I climbed onto him, carefully, straddling him.
“Warrior. If I can assure you of one thing, let it be this—you are nothing like Laird Ogilvie.” I kissed his lips, but he remained still and impassive, still frowning at me.
“I want to be here, with you.” I let my fingers glide across his shoulders, down his arms, across his stomach, tickling him.
He squirmed a little. “I like your touches. And I want to heed your commands, every one.” My fingers traced across his chest. And I leaned closer to him, so my breasts pressed against him.
I took care not to hurt him. I licked his lips open, very gently, with my tongue. “Give me a command, warrior. Anything.”
He watched me, and there was wariness in his eyes but also hunger.
His chest rose and fell with his heavy breath.
Straddling his hips as I was, I could feel a hard pressure underneath me, the part of him I was curious about.
Still kissing him lightly, licking into his mouth, I moved my body on his, rubbing myself against his hardness ever so slightly.
My fingers continued to glide across his skin.
“I want to soothe my warrior,” I whispered to him. “To ease away his frown with my kisses. I want to do everything he tells me to do.” He was kissing me back now, and I drew his tongue into my mouth and played it, gently suckling.
Wilkie gave a small sound of agonized surrender. Then, in a sudden movement, he adjusted us, and laid me back against the pillows. He might have aggravated his injury again, because a fleeting grimace crossed his face.
“Be careful, warrior. You’ll hurt yourself.”
“I’m almost healed, lass. All the more quickly from your soothing attentions.”
Wilkie sat at my feet. He removed my boots and my stockings. And he removed his own. Then he clasped his hands around my bare ankles, like manacles. “’Tis my turn to explore with my careful touch.”
He inched my legs slowly apart, at the same time pushing my ankles back toward my body, so my knees were bent.
I felt my heartbeat in unusual places.
He leaned down to kiss my toes and the tops of my feet.
Then he released his grip and began to draw feathery lines with his fingers on my skin, as I had done to him.
His mouth began a wandering path up to my ankles, to my calves, and he was murmuring soft words to me.
“Everything of you makes me daft with longing. Your skin, so glowing and golden. Your lips. I feel so much, Roses, more than I can bear. I want to see you.” His hands, so large and warm, smoothed ever higher, the roughened surface of his fingertips scratching slightly against my skin.
The gathered fabric of my gown pushed up to my knees.
My question was barely audible. “Warrior?”
“I want to feast my eyes upon your womanly softness.”
I couldn’t speak. I felt frozen and bathed in warmth all at once.
Measuredly, so very slowly, so I became aware of the anticipation, the fear, the scandal and the desire all at once, Wilkie lifted the hem of my dress to my waist.
* * *
I MOVED MY HAND TO COVER myself. It was too intimate, being exposed to him like that, as vulnerable as I could possibly be.
“Don’t cover yourself, lass. I want to kiss you. Let me.”
Wilkie gently pried my hands away and placed them at my sides. Then he began to kiss the insides of my knees, which he eased apart with his hands as his mouth continued its tickling, kissing pathway ever higher.
I wriggled up the bed, farther away from him, overwhelmed by the blossoming sensation and by the thought of what he was doing and what he was going to do.
I had never imagined such a thing. He waited until I quieted, sensing my stirred unease.
Then he grasped his hands at my hips and slowly dragged me back.
Closer to him, in fact, than where I’d been.
So close that I could feel the humid strikes of his breath on my most intimate flesh.
“Warrior—” I breathed. I rose slightly, to look at his face.
“Aye,” he whispered, his dark eyes challenging me, inviting me.
“Are you going to—?” My question couldn’t quite find itself.
“Nay, lass. Not until we’re wed. I’m only going to kiss you.”
Already overcome with Wilkie’s intentions, my mind had trouble grasping the words he had spoken. “Wed? What do you mean?”
“I mean I want you. All of you. As mine. How can I let you out of my life if I can’t bear to let you out of my bed?” He was kissing me again, on the skin of my inner thigh. “But first, I have to taste you.”
“Warrior,” I gasped. “You can’t wed me. Your brother would never allow it. I’m a kitchen servant.”
He was undeterred, and the combined effect of his hot breath and the scrape of his whiskers on the sensitive skin of my inner thigh was almost more than I could bear. “No longer.”
I was very distracted by what he was doing with his mouth but shocked enough by his pronouncement that I continued to question him. “But what of the legion of heiresses who vie for your hand?”
“You heard that, did you?” he asked with a light sigh. “I have found none that inspires even a spark of the roaring flame of you, Roses. I might very well die if I don’t have you soon.”
I might have brought up an obvious point: that Wilkie could, in fact, have me.
All of me. Soon. Now. I was more vulnerable—and willing—than I had ever been.
I wanted this man more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.
In any capacity he was prepared to give.
Everything about his presence fed me a sense of unbridled hope.
But I was quite literally speechless from the wet, adamant exploration of his mouth. His mouth. So close—
“Wilkie. Are you—”
“Aye, lass. I’m going to kiss you. Now lie back and let me.”
Wilkie pushed my thighs farther apart. I was about to protest, to try to escape him once again, when I felt his tongue glide across the closed seam of my entrance.
The pleasure delivered by that one wet, sweet fire stroke was so acute that I squirmed and grabbed fistfuls of his hair.
I wasn’t sure if I was trying to push him away or pull him closer, but his strength and his dominating hold made the uncertainty irrelevant.
He breathed on me again, in warm, tangible puffs.
Then his tongue licked me in a long, hot sweep that began low and trailed greedily upward, and again, until his mouth closed over the small nub.
In an alternating rhythm, his tongue pushed gently into me, then he was sucking again, then pushing into me.
The tender suction of his mouth and the rocking undulations of his touch were a revelation.
Subtle, soft, cyclical pulls and licks gathered pleasure and warmth where his mouth was centered.
His hungry feasting was relentless. The pleasure grew and bloomed to such unbearable heights that I feared I might not survive it, that I might cry or faint or die from the overload.
But then, at its ecstatic peak, the searing pleasure fragmented, settling into lush, rippling waves that clenched through my inner muscles so forcefully that I sobbed from the sheer plenitude of feeling, repeating his name, clutching his hair in grasping handfuls.
Wilkie continued to lap at me until the ripples calmed. Then he climbed up to lie next to me and gathered me into his arms, cocooning me in his warmth, tucking my head into the hollow of his neck. He wiped away the tears at the corners of my eyes with his fingers.
“Roses likes my kisses,” he said, sounding pleased with himself. “You are mine to protect. You will visit Effie to help her when I allow it. You will wait for me when I ask you to. And you will let me kiss you whenever and wherever it pleases me.”
Still recovering from the lingering effects of his miraculous kisses, I couldn’t quite manage to whisper my agreement.
“Roses?” he said, with mock sternness, enjoying my stupor, kissing my lips.
“Aye.”
Aye. Whenever and wherever it pleases him. That was one command I could most certainly agree to.