Only For A Knight (35 page)

 

His heart now firmly laid bare, he swirled his tongue over the puckered flesh of her aureole, pulled the nipple deep into his mouth, suckling deeply and strongly until he felt her go pliant against him, her body shuddering.

 

Satisfied he’d banished yet more of her tenseness, and determined to win her love and trust, he released her nipple but continued to lick its hardened tip until sweet, soft little sighs began escaping her lips.

 

“But . . .” She attempted one last protest—a blessedly unfinished one.

 

“You will see, my precious,” he murmured, the words a warm-breathed
hush
across the satiny skin of her lush breasts, “there will be a sound explanation for the aid my father gave to your mother. And whate’er his reasons—it will have naught to do with us.”

 

She bit her lip and nodded, her thighs opening to accommodate his stroking fingers, for he’d slid his hand downward again, took much delight in toying with the wealth of damp, red-gold curls springing betwixt her thighs.

 

“Open your legs wider, lass,” he urged her, his fingers seeking, then gently circling the tight, little bud swelling at the top of her sweetness.

 

“How wide?” she asked, the two words slipping past her lips on the breathiest of sighs, her arousal now reaching the point of abandon, the deliciously hot, urgent tingling at the very core of her plunging her beyond all reason.

 

“As wide as you are comfortable with . . . for it undoes me to look upon you there, between your thighs,” he reminded her, near bursting when she opened her legs so far apart he could plainly see every damp-glistening curl and pink-fleshed fold of her.

 

He fastened his gaze on her, a groan rising from his throat, the unhindered view delighting and seducing him, just having her most intimate loveliness so freely exposed to his delectation, driving him to ever greater burning need.

 

“I cannot wait much longer, lass—tell me . . . you are certain you want this?” he asked one last time, not sure what he’d do if she naysayed him. “Now, this very night?”

 

“Aye, now more than ever! Make me yours, I beg you—let us have this night and claim it for our own, for I vow I am more than ready!” she cried, spreading her legs even wider, boldly giving him total, uninhibited access to her pulsing, quivering heat.

 

“Please.”
She lifted her hips, ground her softness against his hard-muscled thigh, instinctively seeking a more urgent, steelier hardness.

 

“Och, aye, but I want you . . .” she breathed, her body arcing into his, begging without further need of words. “Please,” she urged him again, all allure and sweet temptation.

 

“Then so be it,” he fair growled, the hard, thick length of him stretching to an even greater, more demanding fullness on her acquiescence.

 

Wholly lost, he touched his lips to her honey-moist heat at last, swirling his tongue over her damp, tangy slickness to get the taste of her, then sending her sweeter, slower kisses back and forth across her tenderest flesh. Soft, barely there flutterings, just light flickings up and down the very seam of her with only the tip of his tongue. Tasting, dipping, and probing, but then giving in to his own ravening need and licking her with long, broad-tongued strokes.

 

Laving her repeatedly from the bottom of her sweetness to the top and back again. And with each lascivious sweep, he savored the taste of her, intoxicating himself on her rich, womanly scent until his tongue reached the center of all her delight and he took the hard little bud carefully between his teeth, licking and suckling its pebbled roundness until she writhed and moaned beneath him.

 

“Aye . . .” she cried, thrashing as he released the bud and began probing her hot, moist folds again, teasing her with careful licks, even sucking on her most tender flesh until, her delirium fast approaching, she dug her fingers deep into his hair and pressed his face hard against her, her firm grip keeping him there where she needed him as she ground and circled her aching, pulsing flesh against his oh-so skilled mouth in an unspoken plea for more.

 

Deeper kisses he burned to give her as he lifted his mouth from her dampness and began simply caressing her body again. But the
whole
of her body, his lips and tongue savoring her as he explored her every dip, curve, and hollow.

 

Looking up at her, he held her gaze with his and murmured words of love and adoration as he smoothed his hands all over her, skimming first the outer swells of her breasts, then hushing his fingers down her sides, over her sweetly rounded hips, worshiping with gentle, loving touches every sweet, ripe inch of her, admiring the smooth sleek feel of her fine, well-shaped thighs.

 

He let his hand glide upward, relished the slight roll of pleasantly rounded flesh at the top of her belly, creamy and oh-so soft. Then he caressed downward again, his fingers toying with the lush tangle of her red-gold curls, fragrant and damp.

 

Only when the rocking of her hips grew frenzied and her breathing began to come in faster, short gasps did he stretch out flush beside her again, this time covering her body with his own and taking her mouth in a deep, slaking kiss, all breath, tongues, and sighs.

 

She shifted beneath him and he drew back, looked at her. “Do not be afraid, my heart, I shall not hurt you,” he said, reaching down between them to slide his hardness beneath her thighs, letting the length of his shaft simply rest against the hot slick moistness of her.

 

He kept his hand on her, caressing her damp softness with gentle, circular strokes, then rubbing just the tip of his phallus back and forth against her. She moaned her pleasure, clutching his shoulders, her increased wetness and the sharpening of her scent revealing her readiness.

 

Lifting up, Robbie caught her gaze, holding it as if he could look straight into her soul, see the deepest corners of her heart. Unable to wait another moment, he kissed her again, slanting his mouth over hers in a deep, claiming kiss as he eased into her, inch by sweet slow inch, pausing only at the resistance of her virtue, then drawing back slightly before plunging through to fill her.

 

He began building a rhythm of sweet long glides, in and out of her, deepening his kiss to match the strokes of their joining until she clenched and melted around him, their spiraling need finally bursting, shattering into a thousand bright-shining pieces as, at last, he fully claimed her.

 

Branding her his own for this moment and always.

 

Determined to keep her no matter what obstacles might rise up before them.

 

As he’d slayed one dragon for her this night, so would they face down and conquer all the rest.

 

Together, there could be no fiend dark enough to cross them.

 

Or so he hoped.

 

 

Many leagues away, across the silent waters of Loch Duich and in a high and lonely glen, another MacKenzie faced his own demons as he camped for the night in the ancient ruins of Dun Telve, one of several hollow-walled brochs hidden deep in the woods of his beloved Glenelg.

 

A thin smirr of chill rain blew across the bracken and heather pressing so thickly against the broch’s thick, circular walls, but neither the damp nor the cold disturbed him. He lay rolled in his plaid on the hard, unforgiving earth, and even mourning as he did, he would not deny the heart-wrenching sweetness of being home again.

 

Even if he’d thought to be spending his nights in his
true
home . . . his onetime haven in all weathers and seasons, the little cot-house of stone and turf now standing in bereft solitude at the other end of the narrow, empty glen.

 

In the half dark of the rainy night, Kenneth shifted on the stony ground, drew his MacKenzie plaid closer about his grief-numbed body, and stared through a break in the walling at the moon-glinting burn rushing past so close to the ruined broch.

 

Precious fresh water for the broch-dwellers of old, but a sad reminder to Kenneth that he’d used water from the burn to slake his supper oats and quench his thirst—and not the icy-sweet water e’er gurgling up from the natural spring a mere few paces from the great outcropping of rock near his sainted mother’s door.

 

A door whose threshold he could not bear to cross again for a goodly while.

 

Not until the lead weight of guilt left the pit of his stomach and the deep-biting sorrow lancing his heart began to lessen and heal. Too many memories lingered in the deserted little cot-house that still smelled of smoored peat and cook smoke.

 

A mother’s love and . . . home.

 

Laughter-filled days, forever silenced.

 

And now, since he’d braved heavy seas and ridden night and day through the wildest, most desolate headlands to return, the place he held so dear also smelled of death.

 

Finality and emptiness, for he’d arrived only hours before his mother’s passing, yet weeks since his sister’s surprising and unfortunate departure to Eilean Creag.

 

Or so he’d learned from the glen good-wife who’d lovingly cared for Marjory Mackay through her last days and hours.

 

The pain in his heart nigh unmanning him, Kenneth curled his hands into the damp folds of his plaid and listened to the sound of the hurrying waters of the nearby burn.

 

Your fault,
the fast-moving rapids seemed to call to him, the taunt reaching his ears despite the ceaseless keening of the night wind and the soft patter of rain.

 

His blame indeed, for his mother was dead, his sister gone, and he’d come home too late to do aught about it.

 

Kenneth’s fists clenched and he tried to swallow past the dry ache in his throat—and couldn’t.

 

The saints knew, he’d seen the egg-sized chinks in the walling of the cot-house. And he’d noted as well the soiled and matted condition of the roof thatch. The shockingly small height of the oh-so-crucial peat stack.

 

Minor faults, to be sure, and easily addressed, but sad and unnecessary neglect that had surely hastened his mother’s demise.

 

A deep frown spreading across his brow, Kenneth ignored his weariness, the hot grittiness burning his eyes, and stared hard at the rough-hewn stones he’d carefully removed, then replaced from Dun Telve’s curved inner wall.

 

A meet hiding place for his hard-earned money pouches since hardly a Highlander lived and breathed who’d disturb the hoary stones of such an old and revered ruin.

 

That
he’d
committed such a transgression was a lapse he excused with the need to secure his coin—and the flood of prayers he’d sent the long-dead broch-dwellers, begging their benevolence and understanding.

 

Even so, his actions pinched his conscience and only added to his foul humor.

 

For one unsettling moment, he imagined he heard them. That ancient folk who’d walked and breathed and toiled here, but were now all but passed from human memory. The earth and stone might remember—might still see the litter and squalor of their days, or yet ring silently with the bustle of their work, the cries of children and the barking of dogs.

 

Kenneth shivered, burrowed deeper into the sparse comfort of his rain-dampened plaid.

 

In truth, all lay quiet around him.

 

And nothing but the hard thudding of his heart and the dark, undulating hills and moors had borne witness to his shame.

 

But on the morrow, so soon as the first gray light topped the mist-hung peaks, he’d begin remedying some of the crushing pain bearing so heavily on his soul.

 

It stood beyond his power and will to reverse the loss of his mother’s life.

 

But his sister still lived and, as he knew her, she’d be livid and bristling o’er the inexplicable task their mother had lain upon her shoulders.

 

Repaying Duncan MacKenzie!

 

And with good coin Kenneth had spent years struggling to amass.

 

He scowled, gulped down the hot bile gathering in his throat. Truth was, he could do little more for his mother than beg God to have mercy on her soul and be kind to her, to grant her more grace and comfort in death than she’d known in life.

 

But he could ride to Eilean Creag and fetch his sister.

 

Rescue her.

 

Aye, that much he could do.

 

And tomorrow, without a glance thitherward, he would.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Fifteen

 

 

 

A FEW DAYS LATER on a morning of chill wind and gusty rain, Robbie hastened across the outer bailey, all thought of dark and bedeviling fiends far from his mind. But his own sentiments came whirling back to haunt him when, pausing to dash the rain from his brow, a great hulk of a black-cloaked man stepped out of the darker loom of the high curtain wall to confront him.

 

“Ho, good sir! A word with you . . .” the giant called, coming forward, his towering bulk outlined against the drifting mists.

 

A fiend indeed . . . or at least a poor soul unfortunate enough to resemble one, even if he did speak with the softly pleasing voice of the Highland West.

 

But as the man neared, he threw back the hood of his cloak and Robbie recognized him as one of Lady Euphemia’s guardsmen.

 

The one known as Big Red.

 

Big Red MacAlister. A quiet man if huge, he was square-faced and bull-necked, with a shock of fiery red hair and a thick-bristling beard to match.

 

“A word with you, Sir Robert,” the man repeated, drawing up before Robbie and inclining his shaggy-maned head. “But a discreet word, if you will?” he added, his gaze darting about as if he expected some wraith might rise up from the thick-curling sheets of mist swirling round them.

 

Robbie stared at him. “Discreet you say?”

 

The man nodded—vigorously.

 

Forgetting the rain, Robbie crossed his arms, his curiosity piqued.

 

“I am not a woman to wag my tongue,” he said, measuring the other even though he took care to keep his tone friendly. “But I was heading out to train my father’s squires, so I’d just as soon hear what is on your mind and be on my way.”