Only For A Knight (15 page)

 

She sniffed. “All ken it is not meet for any Highlander to turn a guest from his door, welcome or otherwise,” she said, sitting up straighter, the brisk movement sending the night shift dipping even lower.

 

Leveling a piercing look at him, she made no attempt to cover her now fully bared breasts. “Ach, see you, we both ken that so long as the wind blows and water runs, the old ways will flourish—as well they should,” she said, a wistful smile playing about her lips. “Even so, I warrant your father’s displeasure in me runs deeper than mere concern to uphold the etiquette of these hills.”

 

Suspecting she had the rights of it, Robbie tamped down his own doubts about his father’s overblown reaction and reached to skim the backs of his knuckles lightly down her cheek.

 

“You do not know him,” he told her, inordinately pleased when she did not pull back from his caress. “He has his reasons for seeming to live in a foul wind. He has rebuilt his life—the unity of this clan—upon the ashes of much strife and ill doings.”

 

She caught her lip at that, something indefinable flaring in her eyes. “I have faint . . . memories of strife connected with this house. Impressions of sorrow and anger. Grief. I am also quite certain I ought not be here, yet . . .” She let the words tail off, swept a coppery spill of flame-bright hair behind her ear.

 

“Can it be . . . see you, in my dream I saw him. . . .” She faltered, stumbling over the words. “Is it possible that your father lives in . . .
pain
?”

 

Robbie all but snorted. “Ach, ’tis long past and best forgotten.”

 

Still, he slid a glance at the hearth fire, then the carefully bolted door. His nerves tightened at giving voice to something his father would surely view as a weakness.

 

The Black Stag’s little-glimpsed vulnerability.

 

An elusive quality Robbie himself was none too sure of most days.

 

“Whate’er pain he has known is long by with,” he said, wishing her full, firm breasts weren’t so glaringly apparent. “I am told he is the happier to while by his hearthside these days, his greatest foe the threads of peat smoke e’er drifting through the hall and a-stinging his eyes—”

 

“But he still bears the scars,” his beauty persisted. “To this day.”

 

Robbie shrugged, waiting until a low rumble of distant thunder faded away before he spoke.

 

“Aye, that is the way of it, true enough. He fashes o’er the slightest menace from without—anything he perceives as a threat to the good of his people,” he explained, stepping closer to stroke her face with his fingertips. “But you needn’t seek the shadows in his presence. He only gives himself quarrelsome—that I vow! Inside, he is soft as wee Mungo’s belly. You must trust me on this . . . will you?”

 

Not looking at all convinced, she flicked a glance at the tall windows across the room where one shutter in particular rattled in the gusty wind.

 

Black-glowering fragments from her interrupted sleep rose and blew about as well, but she steeled herself against them even as they pressed close, pushing and prodding her ever nearer the unseen edge of a treacherous drop.

 

Her heart beginning a slow hard beat, she struggled to forget the Black Stag’s dark blue eyes boring into hers from the depths of her nightmare. Strove to
un
-see how he’d looked at her in a way that shredded her soul, his silent regard filled with both regret and dread, branding her.

 

’Twas a susceptibility she had ne’er expected or desired to find—a threat insidious enough to slip through her resistance and spear her most tender parts . . . her own welling empathy upon witnessing suffering of any kind.

 

“Well, my lady?” her knight prodded, his voice full of persuasion, its husky-rich depths softening her. “Will you believe me—or do you mean to heed the prattlings of loose-tongued rabble?”

 

“I do not fear your father. That much I can swear to you. But neither ought I stay here. Not now . . . after my dream,” Juliana said, glancing down the bed to where wee Mungo tumbled about on his short legs before burrowing beneath the mussed bedcovers.

 

His brows drawing together, Robbie snatched him and lowered the wriggling pup to the floor, settling him on a pillow that’d fallen off the bed.

 

But having none of his displacement, the little bugger showed needle-sharp teeth. Full of bristling ingratitude, he even tried to sink them into Robbie’s fingers before he could withdraw his hand.

 

“Have a care, mite.” Robbie fixed him with a look of mock sternness. “Or next time I shall be tempted to drop you onto the prickly rushes and not a fine, plump pillow,” he added, tousling the pup’s floppy ears before he turned back to his beauty.

 

“As for
you
, I promise, my father only blusters,” he said, tracing the smooth line of her jaw. “Some, like my good-uncle, swear he is made of naught but bellywind and scowls.”

 

Robbie watched her as he stroked the side of her face. He’d hoped his jesting would win a smile, if only a wee one. But she only shook her head again, the subtle straightening of her back and shoulders screaming her refusal to be cajoled.

 

“He is not the sole reason I cannot stay here.” She looked up at him from beneath a sooty fringe of thick, curling lashes. “You do not understand.”

 

“Then make me.” Robbie let his fingers glide down the slope of her neck, bit back a smile when the soft gentling touches wrested a tremble from her. “I want to help you.”

 

“Help me?”
Her brows shot upward. “Is that what you call this?” She captured his hand, removing his fingers from her nape, her firm grip deftly halting any further exploratory caresses. “Some would say it . . . otherwise.”

 

Robbie choked back the denial rising in his throat.

 

He would not lie to her.

 

For she had the rights of it—touching even a wee fingertip to her proved . . .
otherwise.

 

He blew out a slow breath, his entire body tightening with increased awareness. Saints cherish him, even wet and bedraggled as she’d been when he’d found her, garbed in scruffy shoes and rough-spun clothes, her high coloring and shapely, vigorous femininity had transported him.

 

Now, full naked but for the scant covering of torn night rail, she disarmed him completely.

 

Sakes, his hand trembled in hers—his fingers tingling to return to the silken skein of her unbound hair. Or, better yet, cup and caress the soft, plump weight of her breasts. Even more vexing, his
problem
jerked against the fool pillow with such vehemence she’d have to be blind not to notice.

 

“So you would . . . help me.” Her smoky-rich voice cut through his lust-driven haze and made his heart thump.

 

“Aye, to be sure,” he got out, the words strangled-sounding to his own ears. “Help you, help myself . . . us both.”

 

“How?”

 

“I think you know,” he said, his gaze meeting hers, probing.

 

All man again save his annoying inability to keep a steady grip on a ridiculously plump square of goose down.

 

For one moment of scowling frustration, he almost tossed aside the wretched pillow and yanked her to him. Truth be told, the urge to slant his mouth over hers and
feast
on her nigh overwhelmed him.

 

His desire to see her all beaming smiles and joy, with nary a tinge of darkness in her heart, raged equally compelling.

 

He grimaced. Behaving like a Highland stirk with his spring-juices rising would get him nowhere.

 

Nevertheless, the warm vitality of her, her vehement womanliness, made him burn for more of her—all of her. His senses in a whirl, he slipped his hand from her grasp and began deliberately caressing the sensitive skin beneath her ear.

 

If the fates were kind, the careful caress would summon another shiver, pour the same sweet, molten warmth through her as engulfed him just being this close to her, breathing in the same air.

 

But she only stiffened and frowned.

 

“Do not touch me . . . please,” she murmured, the soft quiver in her voice and the pink bloom on her cheeks standing in stark contrast to her protest.

 

And giving Robbie hope.

 

“Och, sweetness, I am thinking you need to be touched,” he said, his voice a shade deeper than usual. “Your body is telling me so.”

 

Indeed, she trembled beneath his circling fingers. Denials or nay, she wanted to be gentled and touched. Undisguised need darkened the green of her eyes, and seeing it, a little thrill of conquest flipped Robbie’s heart.

 

She wanted him.

 

There was nothing surer.

 

Even so, he wavered, the weight of honor and propriety crashing down all around him, the shattering of his scruples loud and accusatory in his ears.

 

But then she gave a soft little sigh, and leaned toward him, her body yielding a heartbeat before stubborn acceptance shuddered the length of her.

 

Seeing her capitulation near sent him over the edge. Lavender-scented heat rose and shimmered between them, beguiling his senses, while her warm curves and creamy expanse of smooth, bared skin stole his ability to think.

 

He dragged in a ragged breath, his need verging on desperation when she touched questing fingers to his own naked chest, her soft, heated nearness, so sweet-smelling and acquiescent, banishing even the staunchest of his knightly virtues.

 

The boundary overstepped, he tossed aside the pillow and slid his arms around her, drawing her warmly pliant curves flush against him.

 

“Lass,” he whispered as another shivery tremble rippled through her. “Sweet precious lass.”

 

His own body tensed, grew hotter, as he lowered his head and brushed his lips back and forth over hers in the sweetest, most tender of kisses.

 

Once more, she stiffened, withdrawing, but then she gasped, the sound more like a
purr
this time, as she parted her mouth beneath his, instinctively seeking a deeper, more intimate joining.

 

Letting the ruined nightshirt slip to the floor, she slid her hands up between them, exploring his well-muscled chest and rubbing her flattened palms back and forth against the dark, glistening hairs sprinkled there. Robbie’s loins tightened, the seductive friction of her hands moving across his chest hair unleashing a welter of lust and want of indescribable proportion.

 

He took her face between his hands, used his thumbs to caress her soft, creamy skin, the fine sweep of her cheekbones. “If you could but tell me your name, sweet minx, I swear to you I would carve it across the heavens . . . write each letter in stars,” he vowed, whispering the words against her mouth, drinking in the warm sweetness of her breath, headier than wine. “I would—”

 

“My name is Juliana,” she murmured suddenly, breaking the kiss, her voice less than steady, as if she needed to test the name’s cadence on her tongue. “I remember . . . from my dream. Naught else, though, only the name.”

 

Juliana.

 

Robbie’s breathing stopped. Exhilaration pumped through him, the beauty of her name wrapping round his heart and sending flickering excitement skimming along his nerve endings.

 

“For truth”—a slow smile spread across his face, deepening his dimples—“I have ne’er heard a lovelier name. We shall soon discover the rest, I promise you.”

 

“Aye,” she agreed, some fleeting emotion in her expression reminding him that perhaps merely Juliana, a name without a past, might be best.

 

A deeper knowing might bring an insurmountable burden to lie upon them—and, at the moment, with his heart full to overflowing, he could think of naught but lying upon her . . . with her.

 

“To be sure, and we will,” he agreed, meaning anything but delving into the mysteries of her past.

 

He wanted the unwritten days stretching before them.

 

Days he meant to shape and claim.

 

Somewhere thunder rumbled, nearer now and loud enough to rattle the shutters and jangle the chain of a hanging cresset lamp, long guttered. A burst of sudden lashing rain buffeted the walls, the fierce pounding almost deafening, but he took scant heed.

 

The wild fury of his own passion consumed him, pushing him past reason and dulling his senses—all save his sharp awareness of her.

 

Nigh drink-taken by feverish desire, he tunneled his fingers into the heavy silk of her hair, holding her close as he slanted his lips over hers in a slaking, soul-claiming kiss. A heated melding of soft breath and teasing, hot-gliding tongues.

 

Like one drowning, Juliana melted against him, angling her head to deepen the kiss, some half-coherent part of her wondering when and how he’d pulled her to her feet, for they now stood.

 

Toe to toe, skin to nigh-naked skin, intimately entwined.

 

And, saints preserve her, but she relished the contact, ached for every hot-pressing inch of their closeness, even opened her lips wider to allow his addictively stroking tongue greater access!

 

Molten heat streamed through her and her heart thundered, the whole of her quivering, savoring the hot, wet glide of his lips down her throat, across her collarbone and lower. Sweet kisses to the top swells of her breasts, each warm, moist touch of his lips and tongue scorching her and intensifying the slow, heavy pulsing low by her thighs until all resistance spun away on a rushing tide of need so demanding she could sooner have kept the sun or the moon from shining.

 

Sighing, she leaned into him, pressing closer still.

 

She did not want him to stop, could not bear it if the bliss-spending warmth spooling through her should come to an end. Willing its tantalizing heat to ne’er extinguish, she lowered her head to his chest, nuzzled the smoothness of her cheek against the warm, hair-roughened skin of his broad, hard-planed chest.

 

She craved the soothing of him, every sweet golden shimmer.

 

But dark wisps from her dream yet swirled around her, deep blue ripples of uneasiness caught on the eddies of the rain-damp air blowing in through the shuttering . . . a ceaseless distraction, its menace condemning and tormenting, making her . . . needy.