Until the Knight Comes (19 page)

But she only took her lip between her teeth and tilted her head, continuing her perusal of him.

Not that he minded.

Though nowise of young Jamie’s extraordinary endowment, he could stand beside the best of men and be proud, even cast many in shadow. A sentiment his lady apparently agreed with, for her eyes were widening with flattering awe—and there could be no mistaking where she’d fixed her gaze!

Indeed, she couldn’t look away.

Taller than most men, his shoulders spanned a great width as well. Silky dark hair, raven black and glistening, brushed those shoulders, a shimmering skein, riffled by the night breeze pouring in through the windows.

Her gaze drifted lower, to the slabbed muscles of his chest, beautiful masculine skin agleam in the glow of the hearth fire, the light dusting of crisp black hairs arrowing downward, exciting her. Heating her blood until deep, trickling desire stirred between her legs again.

Aye, there could be no question. Full naked and magnificent, the Keeper of Cuidrach took her breath away.

Her whole body quivered just looking at him. Ne’er had she seen a more beautiful man.

“Will I suit?” His voice came low, husky. Almost amused. “To spend you
solace
and comfort? Of course, only for the—”

“Time we have,” she finished for him, a sharp pang lancing her at the thought of parting.

The strictures of their borrowed bliss.

And they hadn’t even yet
comforted
each other.

Not truly.

Her breath quickening with something that felt too much like annoyance, Mariota tore her gaze from the part of him she was certain might be difficult to fit inside her, and looked instead at his handsome face.

A scarred but wonderful face. One she knew she could gaze upon forever and ne’er see enough.

Especially when he looked at her with such a shamelessly seductive smile.

A smile she wanted for keeps—as she wanted the man!

Biting her lip, she pushed up on her elbows, fast-beating little bits of resentment pricking the haze of her arousal.

“Before we begin our true
solacing,
tell me again that you will not press me to marry against my will,” she said softly, watching him.

His brows arched. “You would speak of this . . . now? When I am standing naked before you?”

“Especially when you are naked in front of me,” she returned, her gaze sweeping him. “See you, this Strongbow or whoe’er you might have in mind, might not appreciate the
comfort
we are about to share. Mutually pleasing to us, or nay.”

“Och, no one will mind,” Kenneth said, perhaps a mite too quickly. “Truth tell, I suspect Duncan Strongbow, at least, would be pleased to know I saw to your . . .
needs.
”

Needs he meant to address now, before risking another disaster.

A distinct possibility considering how long it’d been since he’d taken his ease with a woman, and how very much he burned for this one.

His loins heavy and aching, he stretched out beside her and drew her close, savoring her warm, rounded loveliness. “Nay, lass, dinna even think of any other man this night,” he urged her, smoothing his hand over the soft fullness of her breasts, letting his thumb circle and rub her tightened nipples.

“Think only of us—our need for each other,” he added, gliding his hand lower, slipping his fingers between her thighs to toy with her damp curls and gently stroke the tender flesh of her cleft.

She opened her mouth as if to protest, but closed it as quickly. Trembling instead, she spread her legs wider, giving him greater access as she lifted her hips, rocked against his circling fingers, sweet little breathless gasps assuring him of her pleasure, sealing his own.

Saints, she was his undoing.

Sleek and slippery as liquid silk, hot as molten honey, lithe, warm, and pliant in his arms. She welcomed his stroking, writhing against him when he slid first one finger, then a second inside her, slowly easing them in and out of her.

And driving himself ever closer to the edge, each dip of his fingers into her soft, wet heat turning him to granite.

“Have done,” she cried, arching against his hand, her movements urgent, insistent.
“Please,”
she begged, and opened her legs wider, spreading them. “I have waited so long.”

It was all Kenneth needed to hear.

And see.

Thrusting all else from his mind, he rolled on top of her, nearly losing control again at the feel of her warm body beneath his. “Look at me, lass,” he murmured, pausing at her entrance, “see my pleasure in you—now, as I join us.”

“O-o-oh,” she gasped, lifting her hips, her body urging him inside her.

“Can you see my need—my joy in you? Can you feel me coming in you now?” he breathed, easing into her, filling her one sweet, slow inch at time, sliding deep.

“Aye, I feel you, all of you . . . oh, sweet bliss . . .” She shuddered beneath him then, clamping her legs around him, clutching him to her, forcing him deeper. “Dinna stop . . . so good, so good,” she cried, digging her fingers into his hair as he glided in and out of her in a beautiful joining, a coupling more exquisite than anything Kenneth had ever known.

Long, slow strokes at first; smooth, deep, and rhythmic. So wondrous, he wanted to make it last forever, her sweet whimpers of pleasure helping him to hold back even as his own blood flamed. His need spiraling, he claimed her lips in a hot, savage kiss, plunged deeper.

His restraint broke and he rode her faster, thrusting hard and deep, their mutual craving hurtling them to a crashing, cataclysmic release.

And afterward, as they both drifted, the world itself seeming distant and a wondrous peace buoying him, somewhere in the darkness of his mind, he remembered a long ago night in Eilean Creag’s great hall and how he’d scoffed at the suggestion he needed a wife.

Turned a deaf ear to insistent urgings that only a woman could bring light and warmth to Cuidrach’s empty walls, make his own life . . . complete.

Now, at last, he understood his kinsmen.

And vowed to tell them they were right.

Chapter Eleven

“C
an you not forget Duncan Strongbow, my lady?”

Wishing she would, Kenneth folded his arms across his chest and kept his gaze on the towering cloud masses drifting across Loch Hourn’s night-blackened waters.

“I’ve promised not to press an unwanted suitor on you and I can swear to you that Sir Duncan, of all men, would ne’er consider a lady who didn’t want him,” he said, wondering how he could spin such a yarn at this ungodly hour, and with the lassitude of their lovemaking still deep in his bones.

He drew a breath and hoped she hadn’t detected the tinge of desperation he was sure he’d heard in his voice. “If you will return to bed, lass, I shall answer whate’er else you would know on the morrow.”

But Mariota Macnicol had other plans.

That much he could tell . . . even without directly looking at her.

Wrapped in an exquisite furred bed-robe no one save his long-nosed garrison captain could have slipped into her hands, she ignored his every hint to return to sleep and only settled deeper into the cushioned comforts of her most favored window seat.

Without doubt, she was well prepared to remain in the cozy bench-lined embrasure until he revealed more about a puissant Highland paragon he wasn’t about to admit didn’t exist!

Leastways not in the form of one single man.

He frowned, stepping deeper into the window embrasure so the chill night air could cool his heated flesh if not banish the impending sense of doom closing in on him with ever stealthier leaps and bounds.

Already, he regretted his fool idea to use the combined names of his far-famed uncle and that one’s chivalrous Sassunach friend, Sir Marmaduke Strongbow, to purchase much-needed thinking time.

Wife-and-aging-warrior-laird-winning time.

A respite he sorely needed.

Especially now that his demons rode him again, the whole ring-tailed lot of them returning with a vengeance to banish the bliss that lulled him into such a sound slumber after tasting his lady’s sweetness.

His lady.

He stiffened, the muscle beneath his left eye twitching again. Like it or no, his sudden inability to think of her as anything but his, proved one of the most pressing reasons he needed time.

Not just to think, but to marshal his wits and fight his demons.

His demons, and the emotions
she’d
wakened inside him. Stirrings that went deeper than the physical pleasure he’d found in slaking his burning need for her. Things he hadn’t felt or experienced in so very long.

Truth be told, mayhap never.

Wonders he hadn’t even believed in.

Leastways, no longer.

Struggling to conceal how deeply she’d affected him, he swallowed hard, the ramifications of allowing himself to care, to
love
her, pounding through his head.

And, wise or no, he was certain he loved her.

Why else would just the thought of losing her strike him as more loathsome than spending the rest of his days in the dank confines of a dungeon?

A rat-infested dungeon with naught but moldy bread and soured water to live on.

His mouth setting in a taut line, he stepped closer to the embrasure’s high, arched-topped window. At once, the silence of the night closed down about him and he drew a hand over his brow, knew himself lost.

Defeated, and on a warring field of his own choosing.

Scowling now, he gripped the window ledge and looked out at the dim shining water, the great thrusting mass of the Bastard Stone.

Etched black against the gray and silver of the moonlit night, the massive rock formation seemed to glower back at him. In especial, the tall door-like opening gouged through the blackness of the cliff face.

Kenneth shuddered, drawing his plaid more closely around his naked body. Saints, a more fanciful man might even imagine he saw someone struggling to balance atop the precarious natural-made arch.

Someone Kenneth now recognized, and knew would soon plunge headlong into the yawning darkness below, the starry-eyed young man’s hopes and dreams forever dashed on the jagged, waiting rocks.

Not wanting to see the fall, Kenneth closed his eyes and dragged a hand back through his hair. Drew a deep breath of the damp night air.

Aye, he needed all his wits, and time.

And like it or no, Duncan Strongbow would help him gain both.

If need be, with assistance from a similarly named friend or two.

Magnus MacLean
came to mind.

A suitor he could claim proved to be a great flat-footed oaf—so long as Magnus MacKinnon and Donall MacLean, two of the finest younger chieftains in the Western Isles, ne’er got wind of the deception.

The possibilities were as endless as his need to keep his lady by his side.

There, where she stood just now if the prickling awareness spreading through him was any indication.

And it was.

A light touch to his arm proved it. “Did a woman do that to you?”

“A woman?” Kenneth turned to her, his mind still half-bound to the Bastard Stone, young Cormac’s tragic fate.

She flushed, the stain clearly visible in the moon glow—as was just the hint of a certain vee of lush red curls, peeping at him through the slight gap in her bed-robe.

Kenneth lifted his gaze. “Did a woman do what?”

“The scars.” Her own gaze pierced him, probed deep. “If you will not speak of Duncan Strongbow, perhaps you will tell me who marked your handsome face?”

His handsome face?

Kenneth blinked, his heart dipping. It’d been a long while since a woman had called him handsome.

But she was staring at him, her green eyes all soft and aglow as she lifted a hand, traced the three vertical scars seaming his left cheek, her questing fingers brushing against his own. “They look—”

“I ken how they look, my lady.” He lowered his hand at once, clutched the cold stone of the window ledge.

Saints, he hadn’t realized he’d been fingering the scars. Pale slashes, needle-thin, and often mistaken for scratches left on his face by a furious woman’s raking talons.

In truth, the marks of a past he could ne’er outrun.

A legacy tied to a woman, aye.

But caused by his own clumsiness.

No one else’s.

And just the sliver of the memory sent chills down his spine, filled him with the horrors of that day. Wincing, his fingers tightened on the window ledge, the smell of the cold northern sea, streaming wet rock, and his own blood suddenly heavy on the damp night air.

Thick and cloying. And so real-seeming, he could almost taste the bitterness on his tongue. Clenching his jaw, he glanced at his lady, hoped she wouldn’t notice his discomfiture, the chills sliding up and down his spine.

The inherited torments he doubted he could e’er cast off his shoulders.