Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Cameron’s world stopped the second he stepped inside Margo’s chambers.
The blue dress followed every graceful line of her figure. Embroidery along the neckline seemed to make Margo’s collarbones look even more enticing. Her hair spilled in soft curls around her shoulders, the candlelight catching golden highlights that he had somehow never noticed before.
“Cameron?” Margo asked softly, her voice forcing him violently into the present moment.
He nearly stopped breathing. Hearing her call his name in that sweet tone was almost enough to undo him. Without thought, he took another step into the room, letting the door close behind him.
“Margo,” he responded, her name escaping his lips like a prayer.
The air in the room seemed unnaturally warm. It made the space feel sacred. Cameron was not sure someone like him was meant to experience such warmth. This was for Margo; this atmosphere of softness was the kind she deserved to live in.
She stayed where she was, her hands twitching at her sides as if she were trying to keep from wrapping her arms around her body. She moved so quietly he had to strain to hear her; she asked, “If my father had offered no lands… if you had no debts…”
His eyes tracked the subtle shake of her fingertips. It was taking all of her strength to ask this, and it would take all of his to give her the answer she deserved. Margo swallowed hard, the noise coming actross as too loud in the quiet space around them.
“If you had not made that deal, the… stipulations in the contract, would you still be here?” She tore her eyes away from him then, staring at a point on the floor. “Not before. Not when you made the deal. But now, would you?”
How do I tell ye the truth?
“Ye’re talkin’ about the condition he gave me, aye?” Cameron asked, resisting the urge to cup her cheek, to bring her gaze back to him. “Thirty days to give me an heir. It was one of yer father’s tricks. I agreed because of the debt.”
“My father’s clause?” she asked, taking half a step back, one hand coming up to rest on her chest. “I read the letter. He thanked you for the suggestion.”
“Aye, I think that he was tryin’ to absolve himself from some sort of guilt,” Cameron said, moving closer to her, making the distance between them disappear inch by inch.
He could see her pulling away, a flimsy attempt to shut him out.
“But ye care more about me answer to yer first question, daenae ye?”
That seemed to give her pause. Her shoulders stiffened, her back straightening even further. Every single one of her senses was attuned to him. His own were a mirror, reflecting Margo’s desperate need for his words.
“Ye asked if I would still be here if there was nae a deal, not before, but now,” Cameron said, taking another step toward her. The air between them seemed to crackle with unresolved tension. Her lips parted as her breath stuttered. “Now, I would burn every page of that agreement meself.”
“Cameron…” she whispered.
It was almost enough to break him. The space between them was practically gone now. He smelled the rosewater that had been dabbed behind her ears. He felt the way the air shifted around her with each breath she took.
“Do ye ken what has tormented me since the day ye arrived?” he rasped, the force of his truth seeming to shake the walls harder than any storm ever could.
If she had even a shadow of a doubt about who had demanded the heir, he had to tell her everything.
“I cannae let meself disrespect ye by forcin’ ye into anythin’. ”
When he stopped to swallow around the tangle of repressed emotion in his throat, Margo nodded. Her eyes were wide. She seemed to sense that if she said anything, he would not be able to continue.
“I saw the way me mother suffered in her marriage with me father. It was arranged, she had no choice in the matter, and eventually it killed her. She was a good wife, a dutiful wife. But she had nothin’ to show for herself at the end,” he said, his entire body feeling like an open wound.
“And me sister… Fiona saw what our mother went through. She chose to walk into the sea rather than be damned to a life of duty with a man she dinnae choose.”
For a long moment, there was no sound in the chambers aside from Cameron’s heavy breathing and the soft crackle of the fire burning low in the hearth.
Margo stayed firmly in place, not frozen by the admission, but processing what everything meant.
As soon as he saw pity in her gaze, his anger attempted to flare.
“This isnae about what I have gone through,” he warned, because it wasn’t. “I have made peace with the pain of me losses. It is nothin’ like the pain me mother and me sister experienced. And I refuse to make another person, another woman, feel that kind of pain.”
“Cameron,” she said, reaching out to him.
He stopped her, taking hold of her wrist just before her fingertips brushed against his chest. Her cheeks were flushed, and he knew that he would not be able to control himself around her much longer.
Cameron’s touch burned around her wrist, but it did not feel like a shackle. Even with the swiftness he had snatched her hands; his grip was never confining. Though he had taken her from her home and agreed to her father’s terms, she had never felt trapped.
I was foolish to think he proposed the stipulation.
“Cameron.” It seemed as though his name was the only thing that she could say. Nothing else encapsulated every emotion, every thought that was running through her mind.
Her voice, her prayer, her pleading, seemed to break something in him. With an almost bruising force, he surged forward and captured her mouth with his. His hold on her shifted. He dropped her wrist, and his large palm found its new home on her waist.
Margo gasped into his mouth, her mind stilling as she registered what was happening. Half a second later her brain understood that Cameron was kissing her like a starving man; her lips moved against his. Her head tilted to the side, her arms wrapped around his neck.
Margo’s entire body buzzed with the sensation. All of her doubts, all of the tiptoeing around her true feelings, fizzled away. This was right. This was where she belonged.
When Cameron broke away a few seconds later, her arms tightened around his neck. She was panting, pressing herself against him in a way that felt shameful in its bluntness. Though his fingers twitched on her hips, he didn’t let go of her.
“Tell me to stop,” he said, his voice ragged between his uneven breaths, “and I will. If ye tell me to leave, I will leave.”
“I am not telling you to stop,” she said, her stomach swooping with the thrill of the admission. Her desire for him, now that she had let it be truly felt, seemed to only grow, spreading like a fire through a dry forest.
“Ye should,” he growled before kissing her again.
This time, she was prepared when his lips met hers. Keeping up with him was a hopeless endeavor, but she was ready to receive him, to let him give her everything that he had to offer. She wanted all of it, even if she could not quite articulate what “all of it” meant.
She tasted the faint, woody hint of whisky that did nothing to mask the overwhelming sensation that was him. Even his kisses felt like strength and restraint all wrapped together. The contradiction was infuriating. It made her feel delirious with pure craving.
One of her hands threaded through the fine hairs at the nape of his neck, anchoring herself to him.
She felt as if she might float away, her chest swelling with affection, a fondness toward Cameron that she rarely let herself acknowledge and could no longer be ignored.
She was sure he could tell just how deep her feelings ran.
Just as the heat between them grew into something absolutely unbearable, Margo was spun around. Cameron never broke the kiss, continuing to devour her as he walked her backward to the bed. It wasn’t until her calves hit the mattress that he stopped.
His hands began to roam, then. As his mouth worked against hers, he dragged his hand up her side, his fingertips burning through the fabric of her gown. It felt as though her entire body was lighting up from the inside out.
“Tell me ye want to be mine,” Cameron rasped, his voice so much deeper than before. “Tell me ye want me to claim every inch of ye.”
“I want you to,” she said, meaning it in every sense of the phrase. “I am yours.”
A strangled, hungry sound rumbled deep in his chest. He laid her down, fast, firm and decisive.
As he pushed her skirt up, his callused palm slid against her soft, untouched skin.
His free hand found the swell of her breast, squeezing the supple flesh and intensifying the subtle pressure that was building between her legs.
“I daenae think I will ever get enough of ye,” he said against her mouth, the hand fondling her chest slipping inside the top of her bodice. As he pinched her pebbled, sensitive nipple, she cried out. “Every sound ye make drives me mad. Ye have nae idea what ye do to me, Margo.”
“Please, Cameron,” she whimpered.
The way his fingers twisted around the nub made her entire body twitch as if she were being struck by lightning.
The sensation was so sharp, so foreign, that she could do nothing but feel each minute twinge of his fingertips.
She could not stop the sounds that spilled from her mouth, and her grip on him adjusted, a hand on his shoulder and one tightening around his ribs.
Cameron’s muscles rippled beneath her touch as he got closer to her aching core.
It was obvious that he was still holding himself back, still trying to keep himself from breaking her.
If she could say anything other than his name, Margo would tell him that she was strong. He couldn’t break her, not like this.
When his fingers finally reached her core, her vision whited out. Her nails dug into the fabric of his doublet. As he swiped a single digit through her wet folds.
“Cameron,” Margo moaned, pulling him back against her mouth, a desperate part of her needing to kiss him.
He split his attention seamlessly, kissing the breath out of her lungs as he continued his exploration. She had never felt more in tune with her body than she did right now. When he pressed against her entrance with a single, probing fingertip, stars flashed before her eyes.
“That’s it, aye?” he asked, a second finger joining the first. Then, his thumb found a bundle of nerves a bit higher.
The slow, circular motion felt like a touch directly to her soul, and she couldn’t stop the ragged, broken noise from escaping her lips.
“Every sound ye make is for me. Ye are all mine, arenae ye?”
“Yes,” she breathed, her hips twitching against the assault on her senses.
She was full, stretched in a way she would have never imagined. A wild part of her brain wanted more. Cameron quieted it by beginning to piston his fingers in and out, his tongue licking into her mouth and muffling the desperate whimpers that escaped her.
The heat in her belly turned into a raging fire. It spread down her inner thighs, burning the soles of her feet. Her heart hammered faster than it ever had, and it felt as if her entire body was coiled and poised to launch.
“I’m—” she started, the rest of her warning swallowed by a tremendous groan that seemed to be pulled from the depths of her soul.
“Let it out,” Cameron commanded, his ministrations only getting more intense.
He seemed to be conducting her pleasure; every move he made was calculated. There was nothing she could do to hold off the storm of her climax. The tension inside her reached its breaking point.
Like waves against the shore, like the fearsome winds that battered the cliffs, her orgasm crested and waned. She forgot everything that wasn’t Cameron, that wasn’t the man still working her over. His lips were hot against her cheek, her jaw, her neck.
“Ach, so bonnie,” he whispered in her ear, sending another swell of tingling sensation down her spine.
He pulled back just enough to take in all of her features. As he removed one hand from between her legs, the other slid out of her bodice, mapping its way up to her cheek. His thumb stroked the supple swell of her cheek, his hand cooler than the fire of her flush.
Just as she became aware of his arousal, a persistent hardness pressed against her thigh, a knock came at the door. Her eyes widened, and a panicked part of her tried to squirm away. Cameron gave a sharp shake of his head, wordlessly telling her to stay where she was.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice still rough.
“I have just come to inform ye that the guests are ready for ye when ye are ready to join the ceilidh,” a servant said, her voice carefully professional.
“We will make our way downstairs shortly,” he replied, clipped.
He was still so close to Margo, his hand still on her cheek, his body still between her legs.
Though her breathing had evened out, she hadn’t yet come back into herself.
It was not until Cameron finally stepped away, letting his arm drop to his side, did her senses start to make their way back to her.
Pulling her skirt back down and returning her modesty, he said, “Take a few moments to put yerself back together. I will ensure nae one comes to bother ye while ye do.”
Then, nodding in a way that felt far too formal for what he had just done to her, he turned and left the room. She watched, stunned, as he slipped out of the door, quietly closing it behind him. Once she was sure she was alone, she laughed incredulously.
He’s still as confusing as ever.