Sins of the Highlander (A Highland Erotic Romance) (20 page)

“You needed to salvage your honor, to make the right decision, to respect the oath of fealty you’d made to my brother,” she said, her voice muffled against his broad chest.

“I left you to the wolves.” His voice was gruff with remorse.

“You did what you felt was right. That is what’s important.” It was odd that she was trying to convince him that he’d done the right thing when for so long she’d been angry at him for choosing his honesty and loyalty over her. And yet…it was his honesty and loyalty that made him the man that he was. A good man. The man that she loved. He
had
done the right thing in keeping his oath to her brother. He hadn’t known Gilbert Dunbar. He hadn’t known she was with child.

“I put you in danger.”

She cupped his jaw in her palms. “You didn’t know.”

He pulled back. “How can it be that you do not turn away from me? He hurt you. You could have died—” His voice broke, and he placed his hand flat against her belly. “The babe could have…”

Now Aileen tensed. She’d assumed he hadn’t been told of her pregnancy—but that was silly. If he’d known enough to follow her here, surely someone had told him of the child she carried. Did he know it was his? Did he know how she’d lied to the laird in that last vain attempt to free herself from the betrothal to Gilbert?

“But we are both safe,” she said soothingly. “He tried to hurt me, but he didn’t. He didn’t, Niall.”

“Are you sure?” He gazed at her, his face twisted with pain and regret. “He married you. There was…a wedding night. He…raped you.”

She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her cheek to his chest to find a deep shudder resonating through his body. “No, Niall. No. He tried to hurt me, but he didn’t succeed. I am well. The babe is well.”

He pulled back again, searching her face with tortured eyes. “You are not telling me this simply to soothe me, are you? Please, Aileen. Promise me you’re speaking the truth.”

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” she murmured. “I promise,
mo chridhe
. I promise.”

“Thank God,” he whispered on a low groan. “Thank God.” He touched his forehead to hers and pressed his hand against her abdomen again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know until a few days after you left.”

“My child,” he whispered, speaking the words with reverence.

He knew it was his, then. A smile twitched at the corners of her lips. “Aye.”

His blue eyes widened in awe. “I never believed it would be possible. All this time everyone thought you were barren.”

“Apparently it was Walter who was incapable of planting his seed in me.”

“Aileen, Aileen…” The regret and fear in his eyes had given way to joy. “All my dreams, all my desires are right here, standing right in front of me.”

“As are mine,” she murmured, still reeling with the shock of him being here.

He buried his face in her hair. “I almost destroyed everything. I left you, first all those years ago with Walter Munro and then with Gilbert Dunbar. I have sinned against you. Twice.”

“But you are here now.”

His lips brushed over the shell of her ear. “I thought it would be honorable to submit to my promise to your brother, that leaving you would be an act of self-sacrifice. For my laird and my honor. But I was selfish, Aileen. I sacrificed you as well.”

Something panged within her. This was the reason she had felt so bitter toward him for so long. Because in sacrificing his own happiness for honor, he’d sacrificed hers as well. Yet her grandmother’s wise words had already nudged her a long way down the path to forgiveness.

“Let us not think of the past. Think of the here and now.”

“My love for you never faltered. I never made it to Edinburgh. I encountered cutthroats on the road—death. I realized that I’d made a mistake, that I must give up everything and fight for you.”

“Oh, Niall,” she whispered. “I tried to let you go. I tried to be angry with you, but my love never diminished either. Not when I was kidnapped, nor when I married Gilbert, nor when I escaped from him. Never.”

Niall’s mouth descended on hers. When he nudged his tongue between her lips, she was not tentative as she’d been that first time at Dornoch. Instead, she opened to him, letting flow all the longing and desire for him that she had tried to squelch in the past weeks.

He pulled away. “Inside?” he asked breathlessly.

Unable to wipe the smile from her face, she tugged him inside, then shut and locked the door.

He took in the entire cottage in one sweeping look. “Your grandmother’s house.”

She nodded.

“Ah—” He shifted his stance, clearly uncomfortable. “Where is she?”

“Gone. She’ll be gone for a week.” She smiled. “You know they say my grandmother is a witch. I think something in her blood told her that you were coming and that it might be for the best that she wasn’t here when you arrived.”

“Do you think so?”

“Aye, I do.”

Reaching out, he pulled her against his body. “Does she approve of me as the father of your babe?”

She tilted her head to look up into his face. “Aye. She remembers you, and she approves.”

They stared at each other. In that long gaze, something shifted. Aileen wanted—no,
needed
—him to touch her intimately. Not only touch, but see, feel and taste. She could see in the swirling blue depths of his eyes and in the heightened color on his cheeks that he wanted it too, just as suddenly and intently as she did.

She untied her belt and allowed her dress to slip from her shoulders. Naked, she bent on one knee, feeling nerves flutter down her spine just as they had that day she’d knelt to remove his boots for his bath. But this time, she wasn’t confused about what she wanted from him. She knew.

She bowed her head. “I cannot marry you. But will you take me as your mistress?”

He sank to his knees and took her hands in his own. “Nothing could stop us from being together now. Not the laird, not—”

“I am married,” she interrupted him, her voice flat. “Gilbert Dunbar—”

The crush of his lips against hers stopped her short. He kissed her brutally then pulled away just as abruptly, his lips glistening. “Gilbert Dunbar is dead, Aileen.”

She blinked at him. “How do you—?”

“When your brother told me he’d taken you to Ellandonan, I left that day in pursuit. I went to Castle Aird.”

Aileen’s hands dropped to her sides like lead weights. She bowed her head. “You killed him?”

“Aye.”

Silence stretched, thin and taut. Gilbert had deserved to die, for what he’d planned to do to her babe, if nothing else. And she knew, from Iain and from the child she’d seen sentenced to death for stealing bread, that she wasn’t the only one he’d brutalized.

He’d deserved to die.

Still, a tear crested over her bottom eyelid and fell. She didn’t know why she was crying, couldn’t break down the complex reasons behind her tears. All she knew was that she wanted Niall. And now she was free to have him.

She looked up, biting her lip shyly, the tear still carving a trail down her cheek. “Will you marry me, Niall?”

She could scarcely breathe. The enormity of what she asked did not escape her. She asked him to betray his laird, to sacrifice everything he had spent his life working to achieve.

“Aye, Aileen, I will marry you.”

She blinked in surprise. “It won’t be easy,” she whispered. “My brother—”

“Nay,” he interrupted. “The laird has already given his blessing.”

She gasped as yet another surprise barreled into her like a punch to the stomach. “He…has? How could that be?”

Niall smiled wryly. “That is a long story. For another time. Let’s just say that I think the Mackenzie loves his family more than even he realizes. But for now…” His voice trailed off, and his gaze swiped meaningfully over her body. His long fingers reached out to touch hers.

A warm breeze came in from the window, lifting her hair and caressing her skin. Aileen looked down at herself. The wounds Gilbert and his men had inflicted upon her were nearly healed, and her nipples tightened into sensitive pebbles, their color a dark wine red, stark against the paleness of her skin.

“I want to taste you,” Niall murmured. “Every inch of your sweet skin, from top to bottom.”

A deep shudder resonated through her body in response.

She let her fingertips play against his. It was the only place they touched, and it was electric—she was surprised she could not see the joyful dance of the spark between them.

“I want to see your cock again,” she said. “I want to feel it growing beneath my lips, under my fingertips.”

“You will.” His voice was low and edged with roughness. The barest hint of danger that sent a thrill shooting through her. “You will see it again and again.”

“And taste it,” she murmured. “Taste your seed.”

The bond sparked and hummed between them.

“And take it deep within you.”

Thick and heavy, need mingled with their connection. Aileen’s emotions floated, but her body was grounded, aching to feel her warrior’s body, his hands, his cock.

In one flowing motion, he gathered her into his arms and gently laid her on the bed. Rolling to her side, she watched him remove his boots. Then he rose and pulled off his shirt and plaid, revealing a white bandage wrapped around his torso.

Aileen gasped “You’re injured.”

He shrugged. “It is naught to worry over. A scratch on the belly and a stab to the side that didn’t even pierce the muscle.”

Hatred and bitterness flooded through her. She knew who was responsible for this. “Gilbert.”

“Aye. But the wounds are healing.” He must have seen the anger on her face, for he bent down to give her a gentle kiss. “Forget him. It is over.”

“But what if he had killed you?”

“He didn’t.”

But if he had… A hundred images flooded through her mind, not of the pain she would have endured had Niall been killed, but of all the ways she would have made Gilbert suffer for it.

But the images faded as Niall straightened to reveal his magnificent body. He stepped toward the bed until his cock was within licking distance, and she remembered all those wicked things she had just promised to do to it. Leaning forward, she swiped her tongue from base to head, then smiled up at him.

“Are you ready?”

“Aye,
mo chridhe
.”

She nuzzled the smooth head of his cock, then opened her mouth to taste his silken, hard shaft.

“Aileen.” He gazed down on her with ocean-deep eyes. He brushed his lips over hers in a soft kiss. “My beautiful, fair Aileen.
Mo chridhe
. My wife. My love.”

And after she had sucked, licked, stroked and learned every bit of the rigid, pulsing surface of his cock, he pulled away to fulfill his own promise.

He tasted her, from soft tickles of her toes and thighs, to her slit, already slick and glistening with her juices. There, he explored her, inside and out, sucking with his mouth, thrusting and stroking with his fingers, making her shake, squirm and then finally moan with the most gratifying release she’d ever known.

“You are so sweet,” he murmured. “I could come from just tasting you.”

Then he continued upward, exploring her skin with reverence.

He teased her sensitive nipples until she was gasping and squirming again, and when his cock nuzzled the folds of her entrance, she was ready.

He stared down at her, his blue eyes open and clear. “I’ll never leave you again,” he promised her. “This is my oath to you. I swear, there will be nothing more to my world beyond you and our babe. I will care for you for as long as I live, and I’ll protect you both with my life. I love you,
mo chridhe
.”

“I love you too, Niall.”

And she believed him, because to Niall, honor was everything.

Slowly, his cock tunneled into her welcoming body. Aileen gasped from the overwhelming pleasure of it.

He slid into her with gliding thrusts, and she came again in long, sweet waves, quivering with bliss. After a few moments, Niall followed, shouting his joy until the rafters shook with it.

Finally, Aileen had achieved what she’d always longed for but never dared to hope for. Untarnished happiness. Oneness with the man she loved so intently, it was as if the world didn’t exist beyond what they shared together.

Also by Dawn Halliday

Highland Obsession

Highland Surrender

Winter Heat
in A Highlander Christmas

Honeymoon Castaways

Twice the Night

10 Days in Paradise

Jewels of the Nile IV

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dawn Halliday writes historical and contemporary erotic romance in Southern California, where she lives with her husband, three children, and an assortment of other creatures. You can learn more about Dawn at
www.DawnHalliday.com
.