Her Master's Servant (Lord and Master Book 2) (11 page)

But when her face still didn’t lighten, he said, ‘Come,
flicka
, tell me what’s bothering you.’

‘You’re making all these changes, sacrifices, and you haven’t asked anything of me.’

‘I’m the one who needs to do the most changing.’

‘But I—’ It would be too much to say that Luna felt unworthy of Stefan’s efforts, but listening to him talk about all the different directions he’d been pulled in prior to their break-up, and looking at him now, dark shadows under his eyes, she felt… chastened. She wanted him to know that she could be different too. ‘There have to be things you’d like
me
to change.’

‘Three things,’ he said, quickly enough that Luna’s lips twitched again; clearly he’d already given the matter some thought.

‘First, I understand why you felt you had to leave me in January, after we’d stood there in that garden and I was too pig-headed to listen to you. But from now on, I promise that if you tell me I’m doing something wrong I will try my best to fix it. Or we will work it through together. Please don’t just leave again. I don’t think my heart could take it.’

He laughed a little at this, but it was a pained laugh and Luna’s own heart compressed as she nodded.

‘Second thing,’ he said. ‘I hesitate to bring this up because it is one of the things I love most about you, the fact that you would sooner gnaw off your own arm than to ask for help. But I
want
to help you, Luna. And I swear to you, no matter how much I trusted Augusta, if you had said one word to me about what you were going through with Florian, I’d have been on a plane back from Berlin
so fast.
’

She nodded again, and Stefan paused, as if considering the wisdom of sharing his third thing.

Bright blue eyes meeting hers, he concluded, ‘Everything you accused me of in that garden, I was guilty of. Except for one. You said, “You love me like a child loves a toy.”’

Luna remembered it. It was the only thing she regretted later; the one thing she’d said purely to wound him.

‘I don’t love you like a toy, Luna,’ he said solemnly. ‘You are not a game I have been playing in my spare time. And I know, I
know
that what you said wasn’t true. But I need you to take it back. Something about the way you said it…’ He pressed a knuckle to his brow, looking almost bewildered. ‘I can’t seem to get it out of my
head.
’

His voice broke a little on this last word and Luna felt her heart pumping.

‘So I need you to—’ he began.

‘I take it back!’ she cried, half-rising from her chair and throwing her arms around his neck. ‘I didn’t mean it, I take it back.’ She slid to her knees on the floor in front of his chair, clasping her hands around his waist. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I take it back.’

He gathered her to him, kissing her hair, and Luna pressed her cheek against his chest, hearing his heart pounding in answer to hers.

They tidied the kitchen after that, Stefan washing the dishes and Luna drying them. When the last dish was put away, he turned to her over the sink and said, ‘What would you like to do today,
flicka
? I clearly need to take you shopping for food first.’

Luna finished drying her hands on a dishcloth and turned to him.

‘And then maybe you can take me on a tour of the local area?’ he suggested.

Luna stepped closer to him.

‘Show me some of these magical sheep of my father’s?’ he grinned.

Luna drew so close to him that their chests met.

Taking her point, Stefan sighed and buried his hands in her hair. ‘But not yet,’ he said.

‘Not yet,’ Luna echoed, closing her eyes and pressing her nose into his neck.

Luna was lying in front of the wood burner, her naked body bathed in firelight. Sitting cross-legged next to her, and also naked, Stefan was applying steroid cream to the scratches on her chest.

‘So I bought some cream at the chemist,’ she was saying, ‘but that turned out to have lanolin in it, and then I started breaking out in boils.’ Stefan’s fingers delved into a particularly sensitive scratch and she shuddered, arching her back slightly at the pleasure of being tended to.

‘You never considered just… not wearing wool?’ Stefan asked, eyes dancing. Luna drew her gaze away from the light blond hair on his forearms and frowned up at him speculatively. ‘No,’ he answered on her behalf. ‘No, you did not. You said, “I will wear this jumper even if it kills me, because I need to prove my deep and abiding love for Shetland wool.”’

Luna’s frown deepened and she replied, ‘Well, when you put it that way…’ Beginning to see the humour in his portrayal of her, she screwed up her mouth and pressed the back of her palm to it, stretching her other arm over her head and wriggling slightly on the braided rug.

‘When I put it that way you sound a little… overzealous?’ Stefan suggested, dabbing a bit of cream onto Kayla’s love bite on her neck, just for good measure.

‘Committed,’ she corrected him.

‘Crazy?’ he countered.

‘Devoted to my work,’ she concluded. And began to laugh, amazed to hear the sound of it, here in the house where no one laughed.

It was the end of a pleasurably unproductive Sunday. Stefan had insisted on taking her shopping, buying more food than, Luna protested, she could possibly eat. On their way home she took him on a short detour, directing him to the hill overlooking the rocky shore where she’d driven her motorbike the previous week.

The weather was calmer today, overcast but comparatively warm, so they sat on the bonnet of his rented car, Luna telling him about her first, vomit-inducing ferry crossing from Aberdeen to Lerwick, then pointing out the various sheep in the adjoining fields.

‘That’s a smirslet,’ she said, nodding toward a sheep with a black face and white muzzle, before pointing to a dark sheep with white spots. ‘And that one’s a sponget.’ To which Stefan had nodded seriously.

When they arrived home, Liv emerged from the bungalow with a basket of washing. Something about her manner, the keenness of her expression, made Luna wonder if she and her laundry had been waiting for this opportunity.

She pegged out her washing on the line as they began unloading groceries from the car. Smiling at Stefan, Liv said, ‘I see you have convinced Luna to buy food,’ adding teasingly, ‘You may have a long wait for her to cook it for you.’

Stefan, bless him, chose to respond seriously. ‘No, I am cooking for
Luna
tonight.’

‘And you are visiting for long?’ Liv enquired, fishing now.

‘Till Tuesday.’

Luna lifted her head from the boot, where she was retrieving the last bag, and looked at Stefan quizzically. She had assumed he would have to fly back on Monday morning.

‘I’ve moved a few meetings,’ he explained simply, for her benefit. She tilted her head at him, and for a moment, Liv, the washing line and the entire outside world faded away, with her eyes on him and his on her. After some seconds he remembered himself, saying to Liv, ‘And I will be visiting regularly from now on, to fatten Miss Gregory up.’ He smiled his very best smile, his honeyed one, and Luna wondered fleetingly if it made Liv’s stomach flip the way it did hers.

Despite her best intentions at that juncture – to ask Liv where Malcolm was, to take Stefan along and make introductions, show him Malcolm’s flock – she found herself instead following him into the cottage, drawn to the broad line of his shoulders by an invisible thread connected to the hollow in her chest. Under the lintel and into the hallway, where they simultaneously dropped their bags and Stefan turned around, drawing her swiftly to him with one arm and shutting the door on the outside world, and the washing line and Liv’s startled face with the other.

It happened again while he was cooking later. ‘Spaghetti bolognaise, in honour of your neighbour,’ he joked as he browned beef on the Rayburn. Luna, meanwhile, was struggling to open a bottle of Valpolicella with the lone corkscrew in the cottage, which she’d never had occasion to use before, Dagmar not being much of a drinker and Luna having confined herself to the occasional drink at the Fisherman’s Rest.

Eventually she gave in, holding the corkscrew and bottle out to Stefan, who opened it within three seconds. Somewhere between him opening it and handing it back to Luna, however, their eyes met and locked. Stefan placed the bottle on the work surface and they came together in a rush, chests heaving against one another with unspoken emotions. Luna’s hands trembling as she reached for his nape.

She reached for his hair again now, as she stretched out beneath him in front of the fire.

‘I like this,’ she said, referring to its new length. ‘When did you decide to grow it?’

‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘No time. No time for anything, the way things have been at Arborage.’

Luna hesitated. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

He sighed. ‘Do you want to
hear
about it? I wouldn’t if I were you.’

‘No, it’s fine,’ she said, worrying even as she said the words that maybe it wasn’t. She had tried hard over the past two months to think about Arborage as little as possible.

‘Things haven’t been great,’ Stefan said, lifting his eyebrows like this was a massive understatement. ‘After you left I was, quite frankly, in no fit state to focus on work, or Arborage, or anything. So I told Augusta that we should postpone implementing Project Mercury. Suffice it to say that she did not agree.’

Project Mercury was the plan Stefan had been working on over the past few years to modernise Arborage, reorganising its management structure and winding down unprofitable areas in the estate’s portfolio. Luna could well imagine that the Marchioness wanted no further delays in implementing it, having only waited as long as she did in order to eliminate her brother-in-law Florian from the equation.

‘I came back from a weekend trip to Stockholm,’ Stefan was saying, ‘to find that she had sacked Laurie from the farm shop and Elaine from Events, and told Nigel that we would be expecting him to become a private contractor or his services would no longer be required.’

Luna raised her eyebrows in surprise and Stefan said, ‘Yes, exactly the way it
shouldn’t
have been done. And then John’s condition deteriorated so I was left to clear up her mess. Three days of convincing Nigel not to quit on the spot and walking him through how to set up his own gardening business, not to mention hiring a new farm shop manager and cobbling together a contingency in Events.’

She refrained from telling him that, based on the evidence she saw at Jem’s party, that contingency wasn’t working very well; it was clearly the last thing he needed to hear.

‘And now it’s becoming a power struggle between me and her. She doesn’t want to loosen her grip on the reins, but she’s distracted. I make a decision while she’s with John in hospital, only to find it countermanded when she returns. I swear there have been times when I’ve seriously considered just walking away, leaving her in the bed she’s made, because more than anything I’m angry with her. I sit in the office with her and she gives me that irritable look of hers and I want nothing more than to wring her neck.’

Luna sat up and retrieved the metal prong for the wood burner, opening its doors and throwing two more bricks of peat on the fire. Behind her, Stefan continued, ‘But then I see her standing beside John’s hospital bed, and I think of James and all she has lost. And is about to lose.’

Again, Luna stopped herself from giving voice to the bitter thoughts running through her head: that Augusta banked on this response from those she intended to use, exploiting their sympathy to get what she wanted. Instead, she knelt on the rug next to Stefan and placed her hand on his.

‘So no,’ he concluded, ‘no time for personal grooming.’

Reaching her other hand up into the curl behind his ear, Luna reiterated, ‘I like it.’ She slid her fingers to his cheek, studying the shadows under his eyes. ‘But I don’t like to see you so tired.’ She smiled and attempted a jest: ‘Twice in two days I’ve been awake before you. Who
are
you and where have you put Stefan Lundgren?’

He laughed at that and pressed her back down to the rug. ‘I am feeling less tired all the time, Miss Gregory,’ he said, lowering his face to her chest and nudging his nose against her nipple. ‘Ah, your breasts,’ he said reverently. ‘Third on the list of Luna body parts I have missed.’ He licked the nipple, watching it tighten, then covered it with his mouth.

Luna closed her eyes, feeling his tongue moving on her, and her clitoris, as ever, stirring in response. His hand moved to her other breast and gently squeezed its nipple, then traced the aureole.

‘There’s… aahh,’ she sighed. ‘There’s a list, is there?’

He lifted his mouth off her and replied briefly, ‘Oh yes,’ before shifting his body on top of hers and latching onto her other breast.

Luna placed her hands behind his head, drawing him to her. ‘And number one is?’ she gasped as he inverted her nipple with the tip of his tongue.

Stefan removed his mouth from her and crawled his way, military style, up her body till they were face to face. ‘Your eyes,’ he said simply.

It wasn’t the answer Luna had been expecting, and she found herself smiling up at him. ‘Especially when they are like this,’ he added, stroking the hair away from her forehead.

‘Not Hallviken,’ she ventured.

‘Not Hallviken, please God,’ he chuckled. But then almost immediately sobered. She watched his eyes travelling down her face. She didn’t need to ask what number two was; she knew the answer as surely as his lips came down on hers, their tongues twining together. How, she asked herself, how had she lived for the past two months without this? Without the hard line of his mouth meeting the softness of hers, the taste of him, even the way his mouth, like the rest of him, was slightly warmer than hers.

Feeling his cock hard as steel against the hollow of her stomach, she disengaged her lips from his with a slight and thoroughly arousing hint of suction. ‘I want this to be slow,’ she said, stroking his back, running her fingertips along his spine.

‘Then I’ll make it slow,’ he promised, returning his lips to hers. She lifted her knees and he settled in between them, the head of his penis coming to rest directly on her clitoris. She felt him move his hips slightly, felt the pressure of his member upon her. Resting her hands on his hips, she wondered at their grace, the way they seemed to rise and fall and press and flex all of their own accord.

The head of his penis was at the mouth of her vagina now, just inside it, and Luna had to stop herself from wrapping her legs around him and pulling him in.

‘Tell me,’ she whispered, as he withdrew it, then pushed it back into her. ‘Tell me how I feel.’ They had played this game before, and she never tired of it, hearing what it was like for him, being inside her.

He inched further into her, then withdrew again. ‘It feels like…’ Again he pressed the very tip of himself against her and Luna felt herself practically gushing, flowing in welcome. Slowly, slowly he entered, then filled her. ‘There’s no other place I could be right now that could be better than this. It feels like this is where I belong.’

He pulled out again, then re-entered her. Luna lifted her knees further and he hooked his arms under them, pushing down on her thighs till he was deep, deep inside her. ‘Did you mean what you said,’ he asked, grazing his teeth against her jaw, ‘about making this last? Because I could do this for a very long time.’

He was as good as his word, and time slipped away as he silently, devotedly fucked her. It was only when Luna drew her fingernails along his buttocks, then placed her palms on them and urged them into her that his pace began to quicken. Eyes widening, he lowered his forehead to hers and pumped his hips against hers. She swore she felt it when he reached the point of no return, forcibly slowing himself so he could relish his final strokes.

He came with his head pressed into her hair, crying out her name as he arched into her one last time.

Later in bed they lay side by side, staring at each other, Luna’s hand resting on his chest.

‘Luna,’ he said after some time. ‘I didn’t crawl into Isabelle’s bed after you left. You believe that, don’t you?’

Her response was succinct: ‘You wouldn’t be here in mine if I didn’t.’ Rolling onto her back, she gingerly ran her fingernails across the scratches on her chest. When Stefan said nothing more, she added smilingly, ‘I note that you haven’t asked me whether
I’ve
been crawling into anyone’s bed.’

She felt him shrug slightly next to her. ‘I don’t think you have.’

He said this with such certainty the Luna let out a quick bark of laughter. ‘I’m not sure why, but I think I’m slightly offended.’

He was quick to clarify. ‘Something my father said, when he was forbidding me to ever darken your doorstep again. He said, “Luna is a serious girl. The kind who doesn’t love lightly.” I hoped, I
believed
he was right, that you loved me enough that you wouldn’t find it easy to move on.’

She’d been prepared to say something tart and humorous, but his tone was so… fervent, she couldn’t find it in herself to toy with him. Keeping her eyes fixed on the skylight she shook her head and said, ‘No, there hasn’t been anyone else.’

‘Would you be even more offended if I told you I’m very happy to hear that?’ he replied, and then they both laughed.

Yawning, Luna rolled back toward Stefan and motioned toward the bedside table. ‘Do me a favour? There are some gloves in the top drawer. Can you get them for me?’

Stefan retrieved them, but instead of passing them to her he studied them curiously in the moonlight, turning them over in his hands. They were white and thin, made of soft cotton. ‘What…?’ he began.

‘I scratch myself in my sleep if I don’t wear them,’ Luna admitted with some embarrassment.