The Laird’s French Bride #5
And as quickly as he said the words, he found himself with a hellcat in his arms. With a strangled sound of fury, she pummelled at his chest, kicking her feet and flaying about so violently that he almost dropped her.
Startled, at the last second she clutched hold of his leine, trying to keep herself from falling, but tearing his shirt open at the chest in the process.
Taking advantage of her momentary stillness, he repositioned her in his arms, grinning wickedly down into her upturned face.
“Have a care, lass,” he said. “I’m eager, too, but not so wealthy that I can afford to have one of my best shirts ripped.”
He waited for her to start struggling again but instead she simply stared at him, her exotic eyes widening and then, before he understood what was happening, her arms wrapped tight around his neck and she was drawing herself fully against him, the soft roundness of her breasts crushed to his naked chest.
“Take me, then. Take me now!” she whispered huskily a second before her mouth found his.
“What?”
If she wasn’t so furious at him, she would have laughed at the dumbstruck expression on Rob’s face.
Rob Macalduie’s face. But she was furious, whether at him for leading her on or at herself for being so roused by his kisses that, for a moment there, before she’d tumbled to his true identity, she had actually decided to let him have a few more kisses.
Because she’d never been kissed like that before, never had the tingling in her lips stretch in a taut wire of need to the very pit of her belly. And deeper.
Not that she would have ever sanctioned anything more and she would never have let him kiss her in the first place had she known what he’d been about, but once he had, oh, aye! It was amazing, stirring, and as potent as the brandy from the king’s own cellar.
Even as she’d been anticipating another kiss, she’d been promising herself that she would not betray her husband once the marriage vows were spoken.
She had also been telling herself that there was no betrayal in sharing a simple kiss with a would-be suitor before she’d even properly met her intended groom.
It was a mere kiss. A simple thing to remember when she closed her eyes three nights hence on her wedding night and accept the laird’s attentions.
She wondered briefly who he was, the man she’d mistaken for her future husband.
“I said,’’ she repeated patiently, “take me now.”
“But …”
Clearly, this wasn’t going the way Rob had anticipated. Somehow, she managed to keep from laughing and feigned a confused expression.
“Don’t you want me? Have you changed your mind?” she asked sweetly, arching her back, just a little, so that her bosom swelled against his hot flesh.
“God, no!” he whispered hoarsely.
She almost took pity on him. After all, she’d begun this game and she supposed she deserved his goading.
How far would he go, she wondered? He assumed she didn’t know who he was yet.
Was he using this encounter as a test of her virtue?
She thought not, mostly because he’d no more control of the desire raking his body than she.
His great chest rose and fell in a heavy rhythm, his breathing harsh and ragged. A strand of hair curled against his damp throat and his eyes were dark with hunger.
“Then …” Her fingertips played in the crisp dark hair covering his chest and he shuddered, “are you going to take me up to the hayloft?”
Her gaze flashed to the ladder and his arms tightened about her. “Lady, perhaps you are right,” he said, sounding desperate, “perhaps we should consider the ramifications of our acts.”
She pouted, plucking the glass token hanging on his chest and giving it a rough tug. It was the token that had given him away, a small glass vial containing a glint of red-gold, a strand of her own hair that she’d sent to him last year. He’d obviously forgotten he wore it.
Of course, she now realized he knew who she was, too, and had been playing with her, punishing her for her deception by pretending to seduce her.
Only now it had become real. She knew this because she knew he would never try to seduce one of Jeanne Forbe’s own companions on the virtual eve of his marriage.
Not because she mistook him for a saint.
No, the reason she knew he must realize her identity was because he had politicked and manoeuvred and argued for their marriage and he wouldn’t risk that for a tumble in the hay even had she been the Medici witch, Helen of Troy and Cleopatra all rolled into one.
If she knew nothing else about Rob Macalduie it was this: he wasn’t stupid.
“If you’ve suddenly lost your … will, so be it,” she said. “But in that case there’s no need for us to stand about hoping it returns. I should like next to see the chap—”
“I have not lost my will!” he thundered. “I have will aplenty, lady, and am half a mind to—”
“What I want takes no mind at all,” she cut in, reaching up and pushing the dark hair from his handsome face. “Simply … will.”
He threw back his head, groaning. She smiled. He was too honourable to take her under these circumstances. The question was, was she?
She turned in his arms, letting imagination lead where experience failed her.
She pressed her lips against the heavy plane of his chest and then, quite deliberately, touched the tip of her tongue to the salty skin and trailed a long, searing line to the base of his throat.
He drew in a long, shaking breath in response and she laced her fingers around the back of his wide neck, pulling his face down to hers.
Their mouth met in a heated kiss, open and hungering, locked into a fever of yearning, their tongues dancing together.
The fervour of their actions caused her gown to pucker and pull, her breast escaping above the décolletage and rubbing erotically against him. Its touch galvanized him.
With a low sound of anger, he dipped down, setting her on her feet.
She swayed, suddenly being ripped from his embrace, dizzy, suffused with unfulfilled longing.
She put a hand up to steady herself and he backed away from her.
His chest was working like a bellows; his gaze was predatory and keen, frantic and raw.
“Mother of Mercy, how to tell you who I am?” he breathed in a low voice not meant for her ears. “How do I right this?”
But she did hear and was pleased beyond measure by his words, his honour, his self-restraint.
Rob Macalduie was a man she could love. May already be in love with, truth be told, and had been falling in love with at the arrival of each new letter, circumspect, reasoned, but flavoured with hints of wry humour and self-deprecation.
“I know who you are,” she said breathlessly. “You are Rob.”
“Aye, but—”
“Rob Macalduie, Laird of Barras, betrothed to Jeanne Forbes who you well know is … me.”
For a moment he simply stared at him and for an instance, Jeanne feared she might have read into his character things that were not there, and hoped she was not wrong, but then his handsome face lit with a huge grin. “You knew!”
“Aye, but for a far shorter time than you did.”
“Faith, lass, we’ll make a fearsome pair, I warrant,” he said, still smiling, handsome great devil of a Highlander that he was.
“I warrant,” she agreed, suddenly shy beneath the hungry, roving, possessive glint in his eyes.
“So, now that we’ve been revealed to one another, what next?” he asked, still looking greatly amused, oddly proud and decidedly boyish.
She thought of all the things her uncle and the king had told her to explore, all the questions a prudent woman would ask a prospective groom, all the things she ought to insist she see, the people she must ask to interview.
But then her gaze caught on a piece of hay drifting lazily down from above.
“I’ve always wanted a proper tour of a hayloft,” she said.
And soon enough, she had one.