Then he collapsed upon me, all of us sweating and panting.
“She’s very beautiful,” Ian said to the laird. And then, bashfully, he seemed to remember that I was not merely an object to be spoken of. “You—you’re very beautiful. And…very…”
“Wanton,” the laird panted. “Which makes her even more beautiful. There is no sweeter music than when she screams in pleasure, which we will make her do again this night.”
And they did.
Ian had surprisingly clever fingers; he knew how to rub at my nipples and the swollen pearl between my nether lips, to bring me to climax again. And the laird tugged at my hair and took me again in the arse, as if he had decided it was his favorite way to take me.
It would be a lie to say that I did not desire Ian Macrae.
Like fire to ice, his softer touch was the balm to my laird’s rougher ways. And something came about between the three of us, that seemed to connect us beyond the body. Perhaps it was if all the ways of the world were suspended for the moment, here, in the laird’s bed, where neither man had to hide from one another the lusts of his heart. Where neither man bothered to stifle a cry or show any concern for skin against skin.
I came again and again, with both men, until I lost count. Until just the sight of either man’s softening cock became a challenge to rouse it again. Until both men were sated and drained and wearier than I was.
Chapter Seven
When I came to awareness again from whatever blackness had taken my mind, my head was resting upon Ian’s outstretched arm, and I heard the deep breath of his sleep behind me on the pillow. My own arm was stretched across the laird’s broad chest, fingers lightly tangled in the short hairs there.
I thought that he, too, must be asleep. But I’d spent enough nights in his bed to know the laird’s habits; he was too still for sleep, his breathing too shallow.
My laird had told me that sharing me with Ian would ease his mind and take a burden from him; that he would rest easier if I did it.
So why was he still awake and restless?
“Laird?” I whispered into the dark.
His finger pressed softly to my lips to quiet me. That’s when I realized that he was not only awake, but staring at me. He’d been watching me in the moonlight all this while, and I wished I could see his features better. What would I see in his eyes? As I wondered, he took my face in his hands and brought me closer to him. So close that our foreheads touched, making a little space between us that admitted nothing and no one else.
His warm breath caressing my face, he whispered two words very softly in Gaelic. So softly I was sure that I’d misheard him. Then he said them again, with more intensity than before. “Mo chridhe,” he whispered. My heart. That’s what he was saying to me. I startled at this tender term of endearment. Truly I did. Especially when he followed it with, “I have never loved a woman before. Never let myself love a woman. Never wished to love. But, oh, how I love you…”
No. He couldn’t mean it; especially not now. Not when another man’s sweat and seed were cooling on my body. Not when another man’s skin was still naked against mine! Perhaps that is why I so breathlessly said, “What?”
“Shhh,” the laird whispered, pressing his mouth to my ear. “Don’t wake Ian. I w
ould wait to say it until he had gone, but my heart will burst if I wait.” He took my fingers and held them against his heart, which throbbed hard and strong beneath my touch. “You have stolen this heart lass, little by little, each night since I met you. But tonight you claimed it completely. I cannot deny it to you, or to God or to anyone. Now you are my heart. Mo chridhe.”
Sudden tears of joy wet my lashes as I was overcome with emotion. I had his heart? Not only his protection, his kindness and his body, but his heart. It seemed to change everything. Such a thing seemed a miracle to me. A blessing beyond comprehension. I started to say as much. To tell the laird that I loved him, too.
When suddenly, the laird’s hand clamped over my mouth to hush me.
For a moment, I thought it love play. But then I realized that he wasn’t tensing for action; he was listening. Listening with all his senses. And so I listened too. I heard the faint sound of a scrape, like a shoe across the floor. A breath that wouldn’t have been discernible if I hadn’t been holding my own.
There was someone else in the room.
Someone other than Ian, who had also gone silent and breathless.
Things happened very swiftly after that.
I heard the whoosh of something slice through the air just before the laird twisted and threw me off the bed, onto the floor. The fierce fighting began while I was still prone, gasping from the shock of landing so hard on my hands and knees. Shouts erupted from the bed where I caught glimpses in the dark of my laird wrestling some shadowy figure.
Goods Blood, was it Ian? Had he treacherously used this moment to—
But no.
It was Ian Macrae who delivered a kick that sent an attacker flying, before managing to find his sword in the dark. The clang of metal against metal filled the air, and I began to shriek, realizing that there was a second attacker. The enemy had somehow gotten over the wall—snuck into the castle—and would slaughter us all.
I screamed, hopelessly vulnerable in my nakedness, but searching for something, anything, to use as a weapon. A dressing table went over in the close-fighting of the men and with it a candlestick—and I used my bare hands to stamp out the flame before the room caught fire.