It was no more than he deserved. He’d told her as much, but he’d lied then and sure as hell didn’t want that now. Well, at least not like this. “No, damn it—”
He froze when she dropped to her knees before him and furiously started to untie his braies. “Jesus, Bella, stop! Don’t do that!”
But his protest was weakened by what she was doing to him. Her hand was on him, stroking him, milking him with a boldness she’d never displayed before.
Wrong. The knowledge blared like a flickering candle in his head. He should push her away. This is wrong.
But God, it felt good. He couldn’t stop the groan as heat rushed to his groin. Swelling. Pulsing. Throbbing in her intimate grip.
Wrong. He grabbed the hand that gripped him, putting a harsh end to the sensual motion. “Damn it, Bella, stop!”
She looked up at him, her golden hair a blazing, tousled halo in the firelight. He jerked hard in her hand. Every muscle clenched against the temptation she presented. Those slanted, wide-set eyes, the plump, sensual mouth only inches …
Her eyes narrowed. He knew what she was going to do. Anticipation coursed through him in a hot rush, pulsing at the tip. He’d dreamed of this moment. It might be wrong, but he had.
She licked him. Dear God, she flicked out her tiny pink tongue and licked him. His knees buckled against the wave of pure pleasure, and he had to grab a wooden post to steady himself. The rush of heated sensation was unlike anything he’d ever imagined.
He must have made a sound because her lips curved in a slow, sensual smile. “I thought so.”
She held his gaze, her tiny hand circled around him. His heart stopped, his breath caught, and his muscles tensed in anticipation as her mouth moved slowly over him. Tell her no. Oh God …
She took him in her mouth. Deep in her warm mouth. Her soft pink lips wrapped tightly around him. It was the most erotic thing he’d ever seen; his darkest fantasies come to life.
He knew he should push her away. If he were half the man she wanted him to be, he would. But any further protest was lost in the mindless state of sensual oblivion.
She took him mercilessly, ruthlessly, every movement calculated to bring him to his knees. The warm suction of her lips drew him deeper and deeper into the hot cavern of her mouth, the loving circle of her tongue swirling around his head, the soft hand at his base gently pumping …
It was unbelievable. Mind-blowing. She knew exactly how to taste him, how to suck him, how to drive him wild with pleasure. How had she learned …?
Oh hell. He knew how.
He stiffened, pulling back. He might have found the strength to stop her, but she moved her hands around to grip his flanks, taking him even deeper. She sucked him harder. Faster. Milking him with her lips and tongue. Giving him no quarter.
Pressure gathered at the base of his spine. The sensations were too intense. He couldn’t hold back. It was right there. Pleasure so intense nothing could have made him stop.
He gripped the back of her head, holding her to him as he came deep in her throat with a fierce roar of pleasure. Jesus. God. Yes. Wave after wave pulsed through him.
She kept her mouth around him until she’d wrung every drop from him.
But then it was over. Passion fled as quickly as it had arrived, leaving him as cold and empty as the room suddenly felt.
Her hands dropped from his backside. The icy shock of air hit him as she let him slide from the warm, wet embrace of her mouth. The enormity of what he’d done pounded through him unrelentingly. He felt ill. So ashamed he didn’t even want to look at her. Honor? He had none.
He’d let her play the whore for him, giving proof to every bad thought she’d ever had about him.
He’d driven the only woman who’d ever tried to care for him to her knees, making her believe that was all he wanted from her. Any chance they might have had by his coming back was gone.
But the truth was far more bitter than that. Knowledge sank like a stone in his gut. It wasn’t until he’d sunk to the lowest depths of depravity that Lachlan acknowledged the truth: I love her.
The sentiment he’d always denied, that he’d belittled others for succumbing to, crystallized in sharp awareness from the mass of confusing emotions that had been tormenting him from the first.
This hunger. This craving. This fierce intensity of emotion. This need to protect her. This overwhelming desire to make her happy.
This misery.
It wasn’t just lust; it never had been. He loved her and had been fighting it from the start because it scared him to hell that she would never be able to love him back.
Now, he’d guaranteed it.
He looked down into her eyes, seeing the horror that mirrored his own. And worse, he saw the stark hurt and hollow disappointment.
He held her gaze, his heart burning a hole in his chest. He’d never hated anything as much as he did himself at that moment, seeing what he’d done to her. “I’ll do it,” he said stonily.
Even knowing it would cost him everything, he could not refuse her. He owed her that much.
My God, what had she done? Shame flooded Bella’s cheeks.
She’d known that she was losing him. That he wouldn’t change his mind. So panicked and desperate, she’d resorted to the one weapon she’d vowed never to use. She’d used her body, the skills forged at the hand of her husband’s cruelty, to bend him to her will. She’d taken something that could have been beautiful and turned it into something shameful. She’d used his desire for her to get what she wanted.
She’d acted the whore.
Worse, he hadn’t stopped her. How could he have let her do that? She’d thought …
She’d thought what they had was special. But it wasn’t different at all. He was just like every other man. Lust was all he wanted from her. All she’d done was prove it.
He wouldn’t even look at her. She didn’t blame him. His agreement was cold comfort. She’d done what she needed to do for her daughter, but had sullied what was between them in the process.
The stoniness of his expression matched his tone. “Gather your things and meet me here in an hour.”
“But—” Her hands twisted in knots. She should say something. But what? There was nothing she could say that would take away what had just happened.
He stood there stiffly, either not sensing or ignoring her distress. “You’ll have to hurry if we are to leave before the gate is closed for the night. Find an excuse for your absence if you can. Anything to delay them.” He looked at the ships crowding the room, seeming to speak his thoughts aloud. “We’ll have to ride. Alone, I won’t be able to sail fast enough to outrun my cousin.”
Her eyes shot to his. “You think the king will send someone after us?”
He shrugged. “He might. He will guess where we are headed and won’t be happy with either of us for disobeying him.”
She bit her lip. Not for the first time, her conscience warred with her motherly instincts. She had to ensure her daughter was safe, but she knew what this was costing him. “Lachlan, I’m sorry. I wish there was another way—”
“Go,” he cut her off; the time for apologies had passed. She’d forced him into this rogue mission and would have to bear the consequences. “There isn’t much time.”
She’d hated having to lie to Lady Anna, Sir Arthur’s sweet-tempered young bride who’d been nothing but a friend to her, but her claim that she was ill and would prefer not to be disturbed except by her mother bought them some time. Her mother had reluctantly gone along with her plan, recognizing the danger Joan was in.
They rode for nearly two days straight, stopping only to change horses where they could and tend to their most basic needs. With each mile, the pain and emptiness in her chest seemed to grow, as did the distance between them. She wanted to reach out but didn’t know how. He seemed so remote. So aloof. His expression painfully blank when he looked at her.
She’d never seen him like this. Part of her wished he would lash out at her
again in anger. At least that she understood—that she could defend against. But this stony silence was so unlike him, she didn’t know how to react. It threw her off balance and gave proof to her fear that whatever had been between them had been irretrievably broken.
If the silence hurt, the strained attempts at conversation were even worse. It seemed the only thing he could think to do to break the silence was to point out every route marker on the road and make her repeat over and over the directions to a safe house in Berwick in case anything happened to him.
It was almost as if he were preparing her for something.
Though they were alone, they’d never felt more apart. It was clear that he would rather be anyplace but here with her. He took every opportunity to hunt, bringing her back more grouse, pheasant, and partridge than they could possibly ever eat. Was he avoiding her, or was there another purpose?
Finally, the strained awkwardness became so unbearable Bella couldn’t take it anymore. When Lachlan ordered her to stop on the third night, telling her that they had to sleep if only for a few hours, she knew she had to try to break through this oppressive silence. She had to tell him that she hated what had happened just as much as he did. That she was wrong to have done what she did. That even after what had happened, she didn’t want him to go. That she cared for him.
He might not return her feelings, but she had to at least tell him what they were.
She thought she had time. When she’d left to go wash by the icy river, he’d been collecting armfuls of heather—for what purpose she didn’t know. But when she returned from tending her needs and washing as best she could, the heather had been dumped in a pile and he was gone.
It was nearly dark by the time Lachlan approached the small clearing by the river where they would camp for the night. They’d been fortunate not to have rain or snow the first two nights, but he could feel the dampness in the air and knew that a storm was on the way. A cold storm.
A miserable journey was about to get more miserable.
Though Bella hadn’t raised a word of complaint, he wasn’t going to put her through a night of riding in sleet and snow. They would have to stop to rest sometime, and tonight was as good as any. He hoped the storm would also slow down any pursuers. But if his fellow guardsmen—Bruce wouldn’t send anyone else—had gone by ship, he knew they might well be ahead of them.
At least he and Bella had made it through the hills before the weather changed. Though the most difficult terrain of their journey was now behind them, leaving the highlands meant they were entering the most dangerous. English garrisons held all the major castles from here to Berwick. To have a chance at reaching the convent in time, they had to take the main road, increasing the danger.
Not wanting to test their luck by risking a night at an inn, Lachlan had decided to stop at the site of an ancient fortification known as Doune, just north of Stirling. The fort was in ruins, but there were walls enough to provide shelter for the night. Situated on a small rise, it would give him a good view of anyone who tried to approach.
He quickly scanned the area around the ruined stone-and-timber fort. It was bleak. Desolate. The russet heather-covered hillside was fronted by the dark, brownish-gray waters of the river. The landscape was as cold, dank, and forbidding as the skies. But it would serve their purpose, and he hoped be unlikely to attract unwanted company.
He’d been hunting longer than he intended. The animals sensed the storm as well, but he’d managed to trap a small hare. Maybe she’d like that better than the birds? He’d also collected enough wood to cook it and keep them warm for the night.
Bella had been washing when he left, and he’d taken care not to disturb her. Hell, he could still barely look at her without feeling the knife of shame twist through his gut. He had to at least try to apologize, even if he knew she’d never be able to forgive him. The tension between them had become unbearable.
He didn’t know how to talk to her. All it seemed he could do was blather on about the roads. His attempts to show her how sorry he was had fared no better. She’d looked at him as if he was half-mad when he’d handed her the string of birds that he’d hunted for her. Then the heather he’d collected earlier to give her something soft to sleep on—women liked that, didn’t they?—had been crawling with beetles.
He whistled the signal to let her know he approached, stilling when instead of a reply, he heard a soft sob.
His pulse spiked, senses flaring with alarm. Bella!
Heart in his throat, the hare and wood fell to the ground as he raced the last few feet up the hill into the small stone enclosure.
The cold, damp air hit him the moment he ducked his head under the low doorway. It was so dark that at first he didn’t see her. He followed the sound to the back corner of the small room, loose pieces of stone crunching under his footsteps. She was curled up in a ball against the wall, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs and her face buried in her knees.
He rushed forward and knelt beside her. “Jesus, Bella, what happened?”
She lifted her head, blinking up at him as if she’d just realized he was there.
His eyes raked her face. Thank God, she appeared unharmed.
“Came … b-back … you … g-gone,” she managed in between big, gulping sobs.
Lachlan felt some of the pressure in his chest begin to release. He reached out and cupped her chin, tilting her face to his. “Foolish lass, you couldn’t have thought I would leave you?”
She looked so miserable his chest squeezed. He ached to pull her into his arms, but he didn’t want to make it worse.
“Yes. No.” She blinked up at him, the glare of accusation in her eye. “You did.”
She wasn’t referring to today, but to a month ago. I tried. “It mattered to you?”
A fresh flood of tears poured down her cheeks, but she glared at him with a mixture of exasperation and outrage. “Of course it mattered to me,” she choked, before adding something that sounded like “you mutton-headed arse” under her breath.
He smiled. Even collapsed in a ball of tears, she still had spirit. To hell with it. He was done trying to fight this. If there was a chance in hell that something could be between them, he was going to take it. For the first time in days, he could see things clearly.
He took her gently into his arms, more than half-expecting her to push him away. When she didn’t, a spark of hope fired inside him. “I won’t leave you again. Ever.”
He stroked her head as she sobbed against his chest. Then, seeming to realize what he’d said, she looked up. “Y-you won’t?”
She looked so stunned he couldn’t stop a smile from curving his mouth. He shook his head. “Not if you don’t want me to.” He cradled her against him, trying to find the words to convince her. He’d spend a lifetime making it up to her, if she’d let him. “I know I’m an arse. I know I’ve hurt you. I know I don’t deserve you, but for what it’s worth, I …”
Ah hell. He’d never said these words to anyone in his life, and they didn’t come easily. His heart pounded, but he forced himself to continue. There was no going back now. She could laugh in his face and grind his heart under her tiny heel if she wanted to—which was no more than he deserved—but at least he would have told her how he felt. He took a deep breath and spit it out. “I love you.”
He heard her sharp intake of breath as she went still in his arms. For the longest time she didn’t say anything, but simply stared up at him. He’d never felt so exposed in his life. His heart felt like a hammer in his chest, pounding hard and unrelentingly. At just about the point he didn’t think he could stand another minute without squirming, she repeated hesitantly, “You love me?”
She managed to convey both wariness and skepticism in the inflection of that one word. He couldn’t blame her. He wasn’t all that comfortable with the idea himself. What the hell did he know about love?
He hadn’t expected her to jump in his arms and declare her love for him—if she’d ever cared for him, he
’d sure as hell ruined that—but it pained him to realize just how much cause she had to be cautious. He’d hurt her, and she feared he would do so again. “I know I haven’t acted like it.”
“No, you haven’t,” she agreed all too readily. “Why should I believe you?”
He should have known she wouldn’t make it easy on him. But he’d dug himself into this grave, so he needed to dig himself out. “I’ve never been so miserable in my life.”
Her mouth quirked. “And this is supposed to convince me? I think you’re going to have to do better than that.”
For a man who’d never thought he had feelings, let alone tried to talk about them, he didn’t know what to say. “I’ve never felt like this about anyone. You make me crazy. You make me happy. You make me want to be a better man.”
A smile hovered around her lips. “That’s sweet.”
He nearly choked. “Sweet? Good God, don’t let anyone hear you say that!” He’d never hear the end of it.
She eyed him expectantly. “Is that all?”
He gave her a sharp look. “This isn’t exactly easy for me; you could show a little mercy.”
She lifted an imperious brow. “Mercy? I didn’t think you knew the word.” She shook her head. “You know I’m beginning to doubt this fearsome reputation of yours. I didn’t think you were scared of anything.”
“I didn’t think so either,” he muttered under his breath. He’d rather take on an army of Englishmen with his bare hands—naked—then bare himself like this.
How could he find words to convey the enormity of what was in his heart? “You were right. I was fighting this. I was fighting you. I’ve done everything I could to make you hate me, but it wasn’t until I succeeded that I knew what a damned fool I’ve been. I swear if I could take back what happened in that boathouse, I would.” He dragged his hand through his hair, trying to find a way to explain the inexcusable. “I should have pushed you away, but I wasn’t strong enough. Somehow it ended up all twisted. I tried to make myself believe that all I felt for you was lust, and I made you believe it.”