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Authors: Welfonder Sue-Ellen

Only For A Knight (34 page)

BOOK: Only For A Knight
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But it didn’t.

 

He knew naught of the Mackays save that they were a race of the far, distant north. Of Strathnaver. The wildest, most remote region in all the Scottish realm.

 

“The name Mackay means nothing to me, sweetness,” he said, his own heart beginning to lift again—if indeed she’d fashed over the possibility his clan might hold some long-standing blood feud with the Mackays.

 

Truth be told, he doubted anyone in Kintail or even all the Isles had e’er
seen
a Mackay much less drawn a sword against one.

 

“Sweet,” he soothed, assuming a calm tone he hoped would settle her. “You have no reason to—”

 

“’Tis not my name that upsets me,” she cried, snatching up the coiled braid. She waved it at him, then shook the frayed and ancient plaid at him as well.

 

“Nay, the good name Mackay has naught to do with my sorry plight. ’Tis the name of the man who sent aid to my mother that chills my blood.”

 

She threw the braid and the plaid to the floor, turned her back on them as if she could not bear the sight.

 

“Oh, Robbie, do you not see? That man was your father,” she revealed, her voice anguished. “Duncan MacKenzie, the Black Stag of Kintail!”

 

 

 

 

Chapter Fourteen

 

 

 

“M
Y FATHER?”

 

Robbie’s jaw dropped, a startling sense of bewilderment spilling through him. Her eyes widened in shocked surprise as he stared at her, noted her turmoil. So this was the heart of what troubled her. Still, it needn’t be a path to disaster. Truth be told, such a turn of events needn’t be fraught with significance at all.

 

He shook his head, refused to acknowledge the doubts and fear clouding her lovely face, the ill ease thickening his own throat. Like as not, his father had sufficient good reason for whate’er he’d done.

 

Had the Black Stag indeed been Marjory Mackay’s benefactor.

 

By all the saints, no hint of any such relationship had e’er been evident, so he tilted his head to the side, strove for a calm tone. “You are certain you have the rights of this, lass?”

 

His beauty nodded, her magnificent eyes bright with the shimmer of unshed tears.

 

“For good or ill, I remember . . . most everything,” she said, wrapping her arms around her middle again. “’Twas here, to this keep that I was bound when you found me. My mother’s last wish was to pay recompense to the Black Stag . . . to clear her debt to him.”

 

Robbie blinked, his head still too full to think clearly.

 

“I have ne’er heard of him sending monies or goods to a Mackay woman,” he said, grasping to piece together what she was telling him.

 

Also why suchlike would even upset her.

 

She was Highland, ought know that all great chiefs looked after their own . . . kept a beneficent eye on even the humblest folk in the emptiest glens and corners of their territories.

 

“If my father aided your mother, he would ne’er have expected or wanted repayment, sweetness.” He tried to reassure her, determined not to let contrary winds unsettle her.

 

In especial, contrary winds that needn’t be the great coil she seemed to fear. Saints, he could almost hear the hard beating of her heart, nigh taste the cold chills winding through her.

 

“Nor would such a connection be cause for your distress,” he emphasized, touching her face, smoothing his knuckles down her cheek. Willing her to believe him. “All lairds, even the smallest landed knight—”

 

“You do not understand.” She jerked her head toward the plaid and the braid. “’Tis not the coin or my mother’s wish to repay your father that is ripping my soul. ’Tis knowing how much she revered yon relics of her past.”

 

Robbie eyed the two objects he now wished he’d ne’er pulled from her travel bag, folded his arms. “So?”

 

“So?”
She swiped a quick hand beneath her eyes, a trace of her bold good looks and flashing-eyed vigor showing through her discomfiture.

 

“They were her heart’s treasures. The black-haired part of the braid came from her lover’s hair. That I now know to be true,” she minded him, something about her tone making his breath seize. “And because she cherished the braid and the plaid so deeply, and now knowing it was your father who aided her all these years, I must ask myself if my father truly died, see you?”

 

He didn’t.

 

Not at all.

 

But she raised a silencing hand before he could put his bewilderment into words.

 

Looking as if she were about to spiral out of control, she gave a deep, shuddering sigh. “Saints save us, Sir Robert,” she cried, the title strange sounding, distant, on her tongue. “See you, I suspect my father could have been your own,” she declared then, panicked anguish flickering in her eyes, her voice breaking on a sob. “The Black Stag hisself . . . which would make us brother and sister!”

 

Robbie’s eyes flew wide, his stomach clenching on her words, his very guts twisting, but then, almost as quickly, his heart soared. Relief broke over him, washing through him like a tidal flood.

 

The lass was sore mistaken.

 

A more groundless fear had ne’er passed a woman’s lips.

 

He almost whooped with joy.

 

Instead, he caught her to him and rained a welter of kisses across her face.

 

“A greater folly has ne’er entered your mind, lass, that I promise you,” he vowed, scooping her into his arms and lowering her to the mound of cushions before the hearth fire, his heart aching to soothe her, his body burning to take possession of her.

 

“On my soul, I swear to you. My father may be many things, but your father he is not,” he vowed, willing nothing to e’er destroy the closeness fair pulsing between them.

 

But she only shook her head, clearly not ready to believe him. “How can you know?”

 

“The same way you would—and shall—once you get to know him,” Robbie declared, shrugging off his plaid before stretching out beside her on the cushions, inordinately pleased when, despite her distress, she let him lay close, even draw her tight against him.

 

Her ill ease was beginning to slide off of her and seeing it slip away emboldened him, filled him with elation. Enough to let him smooth her hair away from her breasts, freeing them to his view again.

 

“My father is a hard man, ’tis true, but he is also a fair one,” he said, taking a great chance by allowing his fingers to caress and linger over the exposed swells of her breasts. He tested their plump weight, teased her nipples until they swelled and tightened for him—until his tender ministrations began making her entire body grow taut, tremble.

 

A sweet distraction he hoped would soon consume her, just as he prayed his low-voiced words would banish her cares and settle her troubled heart.

 

“I grant you, minx, just as my father is e’er ready to help those in Kintail who may need a bit of lairdly looking after, so, too, has he e’er insisted that any man of this clan to sire a bairn outside his marriage bed not only support the wee one and its mother, but also acknowledge the bond.”

 

Encouraged by the relief slowly spreading across her face, and the languorous heat beginning to reappear in her eyes, he smoothed his hand back and forth along the pleasantly lush curve of her hip, letting his fingers glide ever closer to the hot, wet core of her.

 

Already, the scent of her arousal wafted up between them, pungent and enticing. “Juliana.” Her breathed her name, his senses drenched with the headiness of her female musk, the smoldering regard of her gaze. “Ne’er fret,” he murmured, sitting up to yank off his tunic and toss it aside before he stretched out beside her again.

 

“There is naught but good between us . . . in
this,
” he vowed, gently slipping his hand between her thighs to let his circling fingers stroke and toy with the softness of her damp, fragrant flesh.

 

“Trust me,” he whispered, dipping a careful finger into her sleek, velvety folds, rubbing slowly and appreciatively, “I have seen my father sort the heads of more than one clansmen who proved reluctant to own up to a child he’d sired at the wrong hearthside.”

 

At her tremulous sigh, he lifted his fingers to his mouth, savoring her essence, making sure she saw how much he relished the taste and scent of her. He used his tongue to wet his fingertips even more, then touched them to her nipples, smoothing the dampness onto their puckering flesh, circling round and round, caressing and playing with the beautifully hardening peaks.

 

“I say you, lass, ne’er under the bluest of Highland heavens would my father have allowed himself to sire not one but two children and then deny them,” he said, his voice husky with his own burning need as he lowered his head to her breast, replaced his fingers with his mouth.

 

“That, I promise you with surety,” he murmured against her skin. “There stands no reason we cannot be as one.” The words spoken, he flicked his tongue over her nipple, then lifted up to brush a light kiss across her lips. “Nothing can keep us apart, my minx. We can have each other now, even this night, if you so wish it?”

 

And she did.

 

Of that he was certain, for she bloomed under his gaze, his caresses. She even began rocking her hips in unmistakable invitation when he stood to unbuckle his sword belt. Entranced, he let the belt drop to the rushes, then bent to remove his brogues from his feet.

 

His heart pounded, every inch of him drawn so tight he wondered he did not burst. Sakes, he was so close to spilling himself now, just from the overwhelmingly lascivious rush of filling his nostrils with the heady-sharp tang of her arousal and looking down on her lying so open amongst the pillows, her bright-golden ripeness full naked and spread so sweetly before him.

 

Well aware that he trembled with his own need, he latched his gaze on hers and rolled down his hose and braies, kicking them aside until he’d made himself as gloriously naked as she was.

 

Juliana looked at him, her heart welling at the tenderness, the want, in his eyes, love and desire streaming through her. His male scent excited her, drew her gaze to the granite-hard swell at his loins, his shaft run full-stretch, throbbing for her—drenching her with anticipation and need.

 

Yet still, he waited, watching her with a silent question until, in sweetest response, she opened her arms to him—her arms, and her legs.

 

And it was there, on the bright-gleaming curls at her very center that he turned his fullest attention, his heated regard making her tingle as he settled himself between her spread thighs and began once again rubbing and exploring her most private heat with the same deliberate touches he’d used before.

 

“Do you truly desire this, my Juliana?” He looked up to catch and hold her gaze as he lowered his head, nuzzled her intimate curls, drinking in the scent of her. “Again, my heart, you must tell me,” he added, planting soft, wet kisses across her belly. “Putting your need into words will heighten your pleasure . . . trust me.”

 

“You want me to speak of these things? This madness of pleasure you are spending me?” She stared at him, her eyes welling with tears again, but joyous tears, a great shuddering tremor rippling through her until the whole precious length of her trembled. “Put voice to the flames licking at me? Driving me from all reason?”

 

Robbie inclined his head, seeing her answer in the heat of her gaze, hearing it in the hitch in her voice, the undeniable quickening of her pulse, but he wanted the words.

 

And he needed her reassurances.

 

He would not take her unless she truly trusted and desired him with the same burning urgency that consumed him.

 

Had consumed him since the first moment he’d laid eyes upon her.

 

Saints, he could scarce breathe for wanting her, and his need to bury himself deep inside her made him throb so urgently he wondered if a thousand joinings would even be enough to slake his desire for her.

 

“Tell me true, lass, and if you wish, we shall wait,” he said, some frightfully annoying sliver of honor forcing the ludicrous offer from his tongue.

 

He kissed her again, on the lips this time, quick, hard, and furious . . . slaking and deep enough to taste her fully and, hopefully, to rouse her beyond all ability to resist the feverishly hot desire snapping between then.

 

“But . . .” he finished, releasing her lips to settle back between her thighs, “whether we wait or nay, I shall still kiss you where you burn the hottest and where your fragrance gathers the sweetest. Thereafter, I shall leave you be—if you so wish it—not touching you at all until you are well and truly mine . . . and not as my leman, but as my lady wife.”

 

“Your lady wife?” She blinked, the wondering pleasure in her eyes more answer than the three softly whispered words. “You are certain?”

 

“Nothing is surer,” he said, reaching to caress her breasts again, rubbing and plucking lightly at her hard-swollen nipples before slipping his fingers beneath the soft fullness of her breasts’ round lower swells, savoring the satiny warmth there.

 

“I will wait the sennight I mentioned to you, and then, if need be, I shall take other measures to make the lady Euphemia see reason. And I shall speak with my father at the soonest,” he said, still playing at her breasts, lowering his head to capture one nipple to suckle.

 

Juliana looked down, a sweet sigh of pleasure slipping past her lips. “You are seducing me, Sir, . . .
Robbie
,” she breathed, silently willing him not to stop. “Aye, you are bespelling me. I would hear why?”

 

“Because I love you, lass—only you, and have for long,” he vowed, knowing he did indeed love her, and beyond all distraction.

 

She gasped, her eyes widening with disbelief, so he silenced any possible denials with a swift, soul-searing kiss to her lips.

 

“Ne’er you worry, minx, I will damn the world if I must to make you mine,” he told her, returning his head to the welcoming fullness of her breasts, snuggling his face against her smooth, warm skin. “I would face down the devil himself, and at the very gates to eternity, if only I could forge a blade that would not melt beneath the flames of hell.”
BOOK: Only For A Knight
12.84Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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