Torn Between Two Highlanders (8 page)

“You mustn’t be afraid,” Malcolm said.

Davy insisted, “We wouldn’t hurt you, lass. Only give you pleasure.”

“Even the first time?” Arabella asked. “I’m told—I’ve heard…”

Davy, who had claimed never to have had a virgin girl, shrugged helplessly. It was Malcolm, who had been a husband, who nodded. “
Och
, aye. There is pain the first time. But it fades quickly and turns to sweetness.”

She wasn’t afraid of the pain of breaking her maidenhead. Given the way the men made her feel, she didn’t doubt Malcolm in the slightest when he said it would fade quickly to sweetness. She wanted that sweetness, truly she did. But she was sure
he
was already in pain, and that it was not sweet at all.

“I’d like some time to muster my courage,” she said. “If—if that would not enrage you both too much.”

Davy laughed. “Aye, right. It’s
rage
I feel swelling in my balls. Lass, any man who wouldn’t wait for you to muster your courage is a man without any of his own.”

She felt something for him then. Something well beyond the heat of lust. And then felt it again when Malcolm nodded solemnly, rolling onto to his back. She hated to let them withdraw from her, but it was the right decision.

Malcolm said, “Put my claymore in the bed. Down the middle, to keep us separate and guard her virtue.”

The virtue she wanted so badly to surrender? No, she thought. It’s
his
virtue he wants to guard. For no matter how warmly she felt for Malcolm, she knew one thing for a certain. He might want her. He might kiss her. He might finger her most intimate places and plot to couple with her in carnal bliss.

But he didn’t want to hold her; not as a man holds a woman he loves.

And he clearly feared that he might.

~~~

She slept so long the next morning, she didn’t hear the rooster crow. Or perhaps it was that she
couldn’t
hear the rooster crow, considering the world was quiet and blanketed with snow.

Malcolm rose gingerly from his pillow, testing his leg. Though he hissed to put pressure upon it, the pain no longer put him flat on his back when he tried. He cursed, then cursed again, more colorfully. But he was no longer a pale and desiccated husk of himself. He was strong. He would recover. And because he hadn’t yet seen the snowfall at the door, he said, “Let’s be up and on the trail. If you can get me into a saddle, I can ride. Tie me onto the creature if need be, but we can’t stay here another minute.”

Davy snorted. “Have you taken a peek outside?”

The storm had continued all night, melting a bit then freezing again to treacherous ice, a hardened drift blocking the door to the cottage almost to the height of Davy’s belly. “Even if we dug our way out, the horses will never be able to manage it. Especially not carrying a giant like you and that dagger of yours.”

He meant the claymore, which Malcolm touched with almost as much affection as he might touch a woman. “But I’m better now,” Malcolm insisted. “Fit as a fiddle.”

That might be overstating it; he wasn’t fully healed. Which made Arabella glad that she had not let him exert himself the night before.

Still, he complained, “Are we to sit about and do nothing while the castle might be under siege?”

“They wouldn’t lay siege in a snow storm,” Davy said, then shook his head. “Likely, the enemy is as trapped as we are.” Then he shot Arabella a wicked, toothy smile. “So in the meanwhile, how are we to entertain ourselves?”

“By making breakfast,” she said, suppressing a grin.

“I’ll do it,” Davy said, swiftly. “After all, I make a passable porridge, whereas you…”

He was teasing her, she knew. But her stomach was growling, and she wanted breakfast more than she wanted to argue about who might best tend the cook fire. He told battle stories as he cooked the porridge for breakfast. It was porridge again in the afternoon, when he told tales about the laird and his kinsman, Ian Macrae, who was as much the laird’s foe as his friend.

It was porridge again in the evening, and by then, it seemed to her as if Davy might never run out of tales to tell.

At least, until he asked, “Have you no tales of your own, Arabella?”

“I’m just a crofter’s daughter,” she replied, wrapped tightly in the plaid they’d stolen off a dead man, days before. “And not a very good one.”

“There’s a fire in you,” Davy said, stuffing porridge into his mouth. “No doubt that tart tongue of yours brought about a thrashing at your Papa’s knee.”

“More than once,” she confessed. “Papa once said I was more like a boy than a girl in that I could never seem to follow the rules. Liked my own company too much. Loved nature and my own experiments. Went out into the wilds to collect herbs and draw them. Lost track of time. But I always went alone, so I’m afraid I have no tales to tell.”

“You draw?” Malcolm asked, suitably impressed. “That’s a rare talent.”

Arabella bit her lip. “But a dull one.”

Davy snorted. “Come now, surely something exciting has happened to you.”

Arabella thought hard on it, and a memory came to her. “I suppose there was the time that the laird tried to hang my Papa from a tree for failing to pay what he owed.”

Davy stopped chewing. Malcolm’s eyes dropped.

And then she knew, they’d both been with the laird that day.

Perhaps if they hadn’t both looked so guilty, she wouldn’t have realized it. They hadn’t known her, and she hadn’t known them when it happened. The episode had been fraught with such fear that she couldn’t remember large chunks of what happened, which meant she wasn’t sure which one of them put the noose on her father’s neck.

But she felt certain it was one of the two of them.

“The laird spared your father, though,” Davy offered weakly.

Arabella’s heart hardened. “Only when my sister begged for Papa’s life, upon her knees, promising the laird her body in exchange.”

Neither man said a word. And she regretted having brought it up. They were the laird’s men and bound in obedience to him, just as she was. Just as Heather was. It had been the laird’s idea to string up their father—no one else’s. It hadn’t been Davy or Malcolm’s idea to make her sister into a harlot either. And it seemed as if that day had happened in another lifetime. Arabella forced her blood to thaw a bit. Given what these men had done for her, risked for her, it wouldn’t be fair to hold it against them, she supposed.

Davy was the first to speak. “If it helps to know, your sister and the laird…well, things may have started badly, but the time I saw them last, they seemed sweet upon one another.”

Arabella glanced at him askance, trying desperately to imagine their stern laird as being
sweet
upon anyone. “Why do you say that?”

“John Macrae is harsh and stingy as a miser,” Davy explained. “But he spared no expense with your sister. Bought her pretty new dresses. And when she wanted to learn her letters, he arranged for a tutor, too.”

Arabella was intrigued. “Heather is learning her letters from a tutor?”

“Who is to stop her? So long as she pleases the laird, her days are her own.”

Arabella considered seriously. Her father hadn’t approved of book learning for his daughters, and when Heather had gone off with the laird, he’d cursed her name. But was it possible that Arabella’s sister was now freer as the laird’s harlot than she’d been as a virtuous crofter’s daughter?

“I would like to learn my letters,” Arabella decided. “Numbers, too. It would help to be able to draw the names of the plants I sketch, and the healing herbs.”

A husband might not allow it, but as a fallen woman Arabella wouldn’t have to answer to a husband. She was beginning to see many advantages to being ruined. Advantages that made her welcome it even more than her lustful body already did.

“It’s Ian Macrae that’s the scholar amongst us,” Davy said, shifting closer to her. “But I could teach you a letter or two.”

“But he can
only
teach you one or two,” Malcolm taunted. “Whereas I can show you them all.”

There weren’t any books in Conall’s cottage, but there were bills of sale, signed with his mark on the line. Both men went over them with her, helping her to trace the letters with her fingers and say them aloud such that they made words. Arabella felt gloriously accomplished. Rebellious, too. “My Papa loses sight of me for a few days and look what mischief I get up to.”

She meant the way she found herself wedged between the two men’s bodies at the table. The way an insistent pulse between her legs pounded with more urgency the further down the candle burned, the later into the night it went. But Davy replied, “Can’t say a kind thing about your father. T’would be disloyal to the laird. But you must be missing home. And we’ll get word to your mother of your safety as soon as we can. She must be worried for you.”

“She died long ago,” Arabella explained. “Childbirth, it was.”

Davy’s smile faded away. “Dangerous business, that. Taking up a sword and battling an enemy takes courage. But to bring forth a squalling infant into the world…” Davy shook his head as if it sounded terrifying.

And Malcolm readily agreed. “I’d have liked a bairn. A whole houseful of them. But when I think about it now, it’s of some consolation to me that Lorna and I weren’t married long enough for me to put her through such a thing.”

“Which is why
I
should take your maidenhead,” Davy said, to Arabella, smirking. “If you should still want to give it, that is. Less of a risk with me than with him.”

“More chance that he’ll bungle it, though,” Malcolm said, stonily. “Davy can be a clumsy clod, whereas I’m the best swordsman in the clan.”

And she knew he was not talking about swords.

While Arabella burned with embarrassment—would she ever be inured to it?—she worried that the resentment and competition between the two of them was already starting. They hadn’t even done the deed they were musing about. “Gentlemen, I can scarcely give my consent if you’re to bicker about it.”

“Look what you’ve done now,” Malcolm scolded Davy.

To which Davy’s eyes bulged. “It’s not bickering lass. It’s all in good fun.”

“I’m not so sure,” Arabella said, finding her voice though she couldn’t meet their eyes. “I know how men are. They want the pride of taking a woman’s maidenhead so they can possess her, own her, control her and always know that they were first. That’s how the laird was with my sister. That’s what he wanted from her. So even if I were to give myself to you both and be shared, I’d still have to give myself to one of you first.”

Malcolm crossed his arms.

Davy stroked his chin.

Then, at almost the same moment, they both said, “Not necessarily.”

“Do you need us to draw it for you?” Davy asked, while Arabella stared, dumbfounded at what the men described to her.

And while she sputtered, Malcolm’s hungry gaze fell upon her, and he confidently declared, “It will be a tight fit, but can be done.”

“No,” Arabella said, a denial, rather than a refusal.

Davy moved closer to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, his breath warm on her cheek. “Think of it, lass,” he said, peering at her intently. “We’d make you ready, very ready for it. Stroke you until you were wet and pleading. Malcolm behind you. Me in front of you. Then on your go, we’d both thrust up inside you. Together.”

Arabella’s heart skipped a beat at this kind of talk.

Her belly flip-flopped.

Her blood turned to warm syrup.

“But won’t it hurt very much?” she whispered, more of a whimper, really.

“Breaching your maidenhead will hurt anyway,” Malcolm said, matter-of-factly, putting a hand at the nape of her neck. “This will hurt much more. But we’ll make it worth it.”

She suddenly had very little doubt about that. With each of these men on either side of her, she could only remember the pleasure of the night before, laying in bed between them. And she wanted that again. She wanted it so badly. And exhilarated by the possibility, she began to see every surface in the cottage as somewhere she might like to sprawl beneath them. The table, the floor, the bed in the room beyond. She was dizzied by the possibilities.

She was so aroused, she thought she might be going a bit mad.

“Take me to bed,” she whispered, then delighted at the men’s reactions.

Davy nearly purred against her ear. And Malcolm’s hand tightened on the nape of her neck. They had her consent to it, to everything.

She didn’t quite remember how they actually got to the bed. Surely, Malcolm hobbled there, wounded as he was. And she would have remembered if Davy carried her there. And yet, it felt as if she floated to the bedroom where the two men waited for her with hungry eyes.

Reaching for her with deft fingers, they had her naked in moments, their heated gazes traveling the length of her curves, making her appreciate her own body in a way she never had before. Malcolm bent forward to kiss the small of her back while Davy stroked a hand down her belly, with a low whistle. And before she could object, he grasped her sex in the big palm of his hand—a thing so surprising that her knees nearly buckled. “Oh!”

“Easy, Davy, or you’ll send her sprawling,” Malcolm said, pulling his own shirt off and throwing it to the floor. Then his plaid went off too, as he made himself entirely naked to her. At the sight of him—his rippling muscles, the dark thatch of hair upon his chest…and that same proud spire she’d seen before, only this time throbbing and sticky with dew—her knees nearly buckled again.

Oh, Lord
, but he was a beautiful creature, and she wanted him, whatever that entailed. And what it entailed was a bit of caution, so as not to re-open his wound. Using his arms and his good leg, he positioned himself on the bed. Arabella and Davy followed, and she found herself between the two men as before. But this time, they were more insistent.

Malcolm reached between her legs and said, “Open up for us, lass.”

She began to spread her knees, but Davy said, “Wider.”

She opened them as wide as she could, until it ached. Arabella felt the rush of air upon her most private parts, and then the questing fingers of Malcolm, exploring her folds, and the little spot between them that made her yelp. She felt a rush of wetness between her legs, which prompted Davy to say, “That’s it, lass, we’re going to make you nice and slippery now. I want to kiss your pretty pink nether lips.”