“I meant to bring you off again, before I took my pleasure.”
She smiled, kissing the corner of his mouth. “I’m glad you didn’t wait. I liked the wildness of it. I wanted to feel your completion more than my own.”
At that, he sighed and very tenderly took her face in his hands. “I canna get enough of you. I want to taste you again. I want to haul you over my knee and skelp you until your cheeks are pink. I want to blindfold you, and truss you up. I want to try anything and everything I’ve never tried before. And the strangest thing is, I only want to try them with you.”
“You’ve never taken a girl like this before?”
“Against the wall or atop the laird’s desk?”
Arabella forgot to breathe. “This is the laird’s desk?”
Davy laughed, trying to calm her before she squirmed out from underneath him and ran away. “He’s listening to music in the hall with your beautiful sister. He isn’t likely to catch us out.”
Arabella wasn’t sure if she should slap him or kiss him. “You’re a madman!”
“And madly in love with you, lass.”
Arabella’s gaze snapped up at him to see that he wasn’t joking. In truth, there was nothing playful in his eyes at all. He looked as serious as she had ever seen him. “You love me?”
He nodded, his voice lowering with emotion. “I have never met a woman like you. Never thought to meet one. I’ve met pretty things in a skirts who shriek at the sight of a mouse. And I’ve had my way with girls like that. I can’t be sorry for it. But you…you are the sort of girl who wields axes and steals boats. I said to you once that I couldn’t settle upon any steady woman. But with you, there’d be no settling about it.”
While Arabella stared at him, feeling her chest ache with love for him, feeling her blood sing the same song, he took a deep breath and asked, “I promised to make no claim on you when we took your maidenhead and I would keep that promise if you felt nothing for me. But I think you do feel something for me.”
“I do,” she whispered. “Of course, I do. But—”
“But it isn’t love?” he asked, a slight quaver in his voice.
“I think it is love,” Arabella tried to explain. “Because you make me happy, Davy. Truly, you do. But Malcolm and I—”
“I don’t care about that. T’was my idea to share you with Mal in the first place. I enjoyed every minute of it. Enjoy thinking about it even now and will probably stroke myself a thousand more times remembering it. You’re a sensual creature when overwhelmed in the arms of two men and he did things to you I’d like to learn how to do. And yet, it’s not sex I’m speaking of, Arabella. I’m speaking of feelings.”
Arabella’s heart felt torn in two. “As am I, Davy. I have feelings for Malcolm.”
“Ah,” Davy said, rolling off her slightly. Warily, he asked, “More than for me?”
Arabella hesitated. “Differently than I feel for you.”
“That’s a hard choice to make then,” he said, and she could see that he was hurt, though he was trying hard to be sensible. Whereas Malcolm’s pain was always evident from the dark cast of his eyes to the scar upon his cheek, Davy hid his pain behind a good nature. And it devastated Arabella to think that she should ever do anything to make Davy unhappy.
In the silence, he clasped her hand, and brought it up to his chest where their fingers twined. “I know it’s a strange time to talk of it, lass. What with the future being so uncertain, and enemies outside the castle walls. But I think we’d do well together. You love adventure as I do. And I would know better than to earn your ire lest I find myself eating a poisoned stew. Though, given your cooking, I’m not sure I could tell the difference—ooof!”
She struck him on the shoulder, which broke the tension, and they both laughed together before the seriousness of the moment overtook them again. “What are you saying, Davy? Are you asking me to wed?”
“I am,” he said, but then exhaled a low and rueful breath. “I am offering a proper church wedding. My name. My vow. My heart. But I don’t think you should accept. Not if you could be happy as Malcolm’s mistress. Because he can give you bairns. A family in truth, if not in the eyes of the church. Whereas I can only give you…myself. But choose you must, and choose swiftly before the two of us come to blows.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I can’t choose,” Arabella cried upon her sister’s shoulder.
She had expected her sister to react with anger when she told the tale of how she had given her maidenhead to two warriors. But given Heather’s fall from grace, perhaps she was the least likely person of all to judge Arabella harshly.
Instead, she held Arabella tightly in her arms, stroking her hair, and wiping away her tears. “Malcolm?” Heather finally asked. “Really?”
“What do you mean?” Arabella sniffed.
Heather heaved a sigh. “I might understand an infatuation with Davy. He’s more like you than not. But Malcolm, that scarred, unsmiling brute?”
Arabella stiffened, defensively. “Don’t ever say that about him. You don’t know him.” A surge of protective love flowed through her. “You don’t know how deep his thoughts run, how sincere his convictions.”