Highland Heat 2 - All The King's Men (3 page)

“No.”

“A friend of the family?”

“No, why do you ask?”

“Because I want to know if you’ve any reason for allowing her to treat you like a pile of manure she’s accidentally stepped into.”

“I might do the same were I in her position.”

“Well, I should hope not. I would be so very disappointed in you.” He crossed his very long legs, which gave me an excellent view of his black riding boots, polished to a perfect sheen. He was a dashing man. It was in his posture, at once languid and ready for action. “I don’t believe you in any case, Sorcha. I had occasion to watch you at your father’s tavern for months. You were never discourteous to anyone. Well, except to me. Sneaking about in my chambers, and so on and so forth…”

I had done that. And though it ought to have been the biggest regret of my life, it no longer seemed quite the tragedy it once did. Still, I was changed. Utterly transformed into a soiled and ruined lass. There was no hiding that. “I’m not a respectable woman. She has every right to treat me poorly.”

He opened his mouth as if to deny it, but the shopkeeper interrupted us, returning with a few little pendants to show. My eyes went straight away to pewter one with a wildcat at its center, engraved around the edge.
 

“What does that say?” the major asked, having noted my interest.

“
Touch not the cat without a glove
,” I translated from the Gaelic. “It’s the motto of Clan MacPherson. It means—”

“It means that no matter how tame the kitty may appear, beware the claws. Well, that’s a sentiment that certainly suits you, Sorcha, but I prefer this one.” He drew up from the red velvet display pillow a golden heart, studded with pearls, with metalwork so delicate it might have been lace.
 

I had never seen anything so beautiful before. I dared not even
wish
for such a thing, so I was almost relieved when the shopkeeper snorted, muttering, “A heart for a
whooore
?”

She said it softly, and in the Scottish way, she stretched the last word out so that it rhymed with
sewer
. But the major heard it, and snapped his head around to face her. “Do you have some opinion about the jewelry that might best grace the neck of my lady?”

Perhaps
feeling
the frost in his voice, she gave a little shiver and shook her head. “I’m sure I don’t.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you something Mistress Cleary,” replied the major, still clasping the locket in his hand. “It’s come to my attention that there’s a notorious rebel in league with the Jacobites by the name of Cleary. Francis Cleary, to be precise. A fugitive from the king’s justice. I was wondering if there was any relation…”

The woman paled so quickly I feared she’d swoon away. Her hands went to the counter as if to steady herself, and she took in a gulp of air. “No,” she said, though her voice was thin and reedy. “Can’t say as I know the man.”

She was a terrible liar.

My lover knew it. “
Really
? Because from what I’ve been able to gather, he might very well be your sister’s boy. And if that were the case, I’d be remiss in my duty if I didn’t bring in your husband for questioning. The whole family, really…”

She knew she’d been caught out, and whimpered in surrender. “What do you want?”

“Why nothing at all,” the major said. “What could I want from you? If you say you don’t know the man, then I’m happy to take you at your word. But as for the matter of this locket…before I buy it for my lady, I would like to see it on her in private circumstances.”

Nearly quaking, the shopkeeper said, “Private circumstances?”

“I’d like to make love to her, here, on your countertop. Would you be so good as to close your store for the rest of the day?”

I gasped, both with embarrassment and shock. And the shopkeeper stammered, “Y-you want to…you want me to—”

“Draw the curtains, stand watch at the door. Keep everyone away until all the screaming stops. That sort of thing. You can do that, can’t you?”

She nodded, slowly, miserable at the prospect of losing a day’s business. Perhaps even more miserable at the prospect of what the major intended in the way of debauchment, and in her store. But she didn’t dare glare at me now. She didn’t even dare to look at me!

Wrapping his arm around my waist, and bringing soft lips to my nape, the major made a little flicking motion with his fingers at the shopkeeper. “Begone with you. Out you go.”

The terrified and offended woman scurried away, yanking curtains shut as she went. And I stared in amazement. “You threatened her. And now you’re antagonizing her. You’re making her aid and abet our sin.”

“
Precisely
,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because she’s a black-hearted busy-body who called you a whore.”

“It’s a word you have, yourself, used in the throes of passion.”

“Does it trouble you to hear it in the throes of passion?” he asked, as if quite sincerely interested.

I started to say that of course it
did
trouble me. But then I realized there had never been a time when I’d heard the word fall from the major’s lips that didn’t sound like praise. “And you would let her go without interrogating her about a known fugitive…all for the sake of defending—and destroying—my honor in the same breath?”

“It’s a very romantic gesture, isn’t it?” he asked, quite pleased with himself. “Though I suppose it would be more
romantic
if I didn’t know the whereabouts of the fugitive already…”
 

I swallowed, wanting to know what he’d learned. Apprehensive about what the English might do next to the Scotsmen aligning against them throughout the country. “How do you know?”

“Because Clearly is one of mine, you see.”

“
What?
”

“Frank Cleary. He works for me. So there’s no real harm if Mistress Clearly goes running to warn her family. And because Cleary is so terribly inept, I wouldn’t be terribly sorry to lose him if
you
should do something so reckless as to warn the rebels there’s a traitor in their midsts.”

I gaped at him, even as he reached forward to fasten the locket around my neck. “Yes. Very pretty. Let’s try it out…”

“Try what?” I yelped as he grasped me by the hips and lifted me onto the countertop beside the little pile of gifts he intended to make me. “You’re not really going to—”

He silenced me with a kiss. And then his hands began working up under my skirts, raising them over my hips. The brazenness of it was startling, and, I admit, a little arousing too. It would be so shamefully wrong to give myself over to a man, in a shop, in the middle of the day. But Major Anderson had taught me to like shamefully wrong things. And given the way he had taken me the first time, this seemed almost tame by comparison.

I spread my knees for him, which he liked. “That’s a good lass.”

The word
lass
didn’t sound the same coming from him as it did from a Highlander. His crisp English accent made it sound a bit more condescending. Which only made my blood run hotter. But instead of unfastening his breeches and stepping between my legs to enter me where I was already aching for him, he actually knelt before me like a suppliant.

Then he shocked me by kissing the tender flesh of my inner thigh. I cried out in surprise, and shivered a bit too, having no earthly idea what he was up to. But when he flipped my skirts up higher, so that they nearly drowned me, all while exposing my sex to the cool air, and began nibbling up my leg to where his fingers slowly plunged into my sex, I felt the most peculiar sensation that I must take flight.
 

Grasping at his shoulders, I said, “What can you be thinking?”

“I’m thinking that when I asked you to be my mistress I promised to part your legs and lick at the little pearl hidden between your folds until your thighs tremble, your slit is dripping wet, and you’re smothering your own screams of ecstasy for fear someone will hear you…”

He had not
promised
it so much as said that he wanted to do it. And it had all sounded like enticing gibberish to me at the time. But now…no, he couldn’t want to do that could—
Jesus, Joseph and Mary!
The feel of his soft mouth as it fastened upon my nether lips was as sharp as touching a hot stove but as pleasurable as the sweetest confection. My knees tightened on his arms, and my nails dug into his shoulder as I let out a moan. Then that moan deepened to an erotic groan as he pressed the flat of his tongue to me, alternately lapping at my cunt and swirling his tongue through its wetness.
 

And I thought I was going to die.

Soon his fingers worked in tandem with his wicked tongue, pressing upon a little place inside, in the upper wall of my channel, that forced me to squirm against him. I was behaving shamelessly. Squirming like a wanton whore on a countertop in a shop. I didn’t know what to hold onto. Where to put my hands. What to do except let him pleasure me. And yet, it was too much pleasure. Far too much. If I could have made my shaking thighs obey me, I would have squirmed away and
run
.

But my English lover was relentless. An intense pleasure was blossoming inside me under his ministration and I began gasping, helpless against the onslaught of his clever lips and tongue. He licked, and swirled, and nibbled at my clitoris until soon my gasps became a howl.
 

I could only imagine what Mistress Cleary must think, standing outside the door, and I clasped my hand over my own mouth to stifle my cries. But by then, I was too lost in the carnal act, and could scarcely care what anyone thought of me. They would think I was Major Anderson’s whore, and so I was.
 

Which meant that I enjoyed sensations like this, that seemed scarcely possible.
 

This was my last thought before my cries became a scream and the blood rushed to my head in an orgasm that made the whole shop seem to burst into bright white like the sun.

Just what I said—or screamed—in that moment I don’t know. But my hands had somehow gone to his hair and made a fist of it in each hand, my hips gyrating shamelessly against his ravishing mouth until I’d taken the last bit of pleasure from him. And then, finally, I released him and collapsed back upon the counter, glad for the skirts covering my face from the embarrassment.

“Mmmm,” the major said, planting one or two more kisses on my sex before standing again. “That was quite tasty…”

Flushed, languid, and a wee bit too giddy considering the circumstances, I reached for him, as my breathing eased off of it’s pace. “I—I—by God, I have never felt anything like that before.”

The major grinned. “I was quite remiss in not making you feel it before now. It was an oversight that needed rectification. And now…”

“Now you would like me to return the favor?”
 

I was willing. More than willing. If only my limbs weren’t still all atremble.

“Tempting,” he said, flipping my skirts back down and bringing me up into his arms. He was rock hard. I could feel his cock rigid against my belly. But he didn’t try to take his pleasure from me. Instead, he said, “But there’s a different favor I would like you to do for me…and you’ve made it more possible, of course, by getting with child. My thanks, again, for
that
. It now allows for some delicious possibilities.”

“Yes, anything, just show me,” I said, eager for whatever sexual trick he would teach me next. My erotic education had cost me a great deal, so I might as well take full advantage of it. Besides, I was still amazed by what he had just done to me, and wanting to do anything that might make it happen again.
 

“Oh, I like you eager,” he said, with genuine approval. “But what I have in mind is not fit for the shopkeeper’s curious ears. You do realize she’ll have pressed herself as close to the door as possible to listen.”

I blushed, but could scarcely find the energy to be ashamed. That would have to come later. In the meantime, the major called the shopkeeper back and had her package up all his gifts to me. Then he gave over to her a rather large amount of money, and held some more in his hand. “A little extra, Mistress Cleary, for the use of your shop for sating my pleasure with the woman you called my whore.”

The shopkeeper soured, but took the coins.
 

And when she did, the major smiled. “Of course, if she is my whore, and you just took coins for giving her a berth in which to service her clientele, then what does that make you, Madam? I think we both know. So I would not get too much above yourself in moral matters in the future.”

With that, he escorted me out of the shop.

On the cobblestone street, I sputtered, half in outrage, half in secret delight. “How can you say such things to people?”

“I know what I can say to whom and get away with it,” he said, smugly. “And now I have some things to say to you, my dear. Do you remember I spoke to you about a sweet spot, about finding the place in which our interests are precisely the same?”

I was, for all my growing fondness for him, still wary. “What interests are those?”

“I’m so very glad you asked. There’s an officer at Fort William who has been abusing his power and authority in Scotland. I believe he’s been extorting the lairds, authorizing the rape of their tenants, and otherwise antagonizing loyal subjects and driving them into the arms of the Jacobites.”

 
That sounded like every English officer I’d ever heard of. Every one of them but Major Anderson, and I wasn’t too sure about him either. “Which officer?”

“I’m not
entirely
sure. He goes by a codename when the locals are paying his extortion fees. The lairds might not even know which officer they’re dealing with. But I have my suspicions. Suspicions that I can only confirm by searching the berths of the officers most likely to be guilty. To that end, I would like your help.”

“My help?” I asked, wondering if he’d worked me to a sexual state of mindless pleasure precisely so that I would be so muddy-headed when he asked me this favor. “Why should I—”