The Highlander's Harlot (Sword and Thistle 1)

He growled low in his throat, and set the book aside. “I do want you. I’ve said it already. If I turned only slightly you’d see how hard I am for you just sitting beside you on a bed. But that’s not why I hoped you’d disobey your father and submit to me. I hoped you’d do it so that I wouldn’t have to hang him. Killing is a thing that sometimes needs to be done. And when it needs to be done, I shed blood with more ruthlessness than any other Scotsman alive. But if I can avoid killing an old man in front of his bairns, I do, ye ken.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” I said, softly. Both because I felt more charitably toward him that he hadn’t wanted to hang my father. And because my heart kicked up its pace at hearing that he wanted me, still. “And you should know that it was pleasurable. Some of it, anyway.”

Now it was his turn to blink. “What was?”

“You said that being with you was painful, but pleasurable for the right lass. For me—what taste of it I had—was both.”

He inched closer, his eyes narrowing. “And which part was pleasurable?”

“The kiss,” I said, though that wasn’t precisely true. I’d liked his hands on my body, too, even though he’d grabbed me roughly. But the kiss—that had been all pleasure.

Hmph, he said again, as if I were the greatest curiosity in the world. He took my cheek in his big hand, his thumb slipping over my lips as if they beckoned to him. “Well, I daresay kissing is one way to pass the time…but a torture, too.”

“I could endure it,” I said, very stoically.

He laughed at that, long and hard. He guffawed, in fact. “There’s something about you, lass…” He laughed again. “I meant torture for me. I’m not in the custom of denying myself. Kissing you, when I know I won’t take from you what that kiss invites, would be…”

But all at once, he seemed to change his mind. He tilted his head and brought his mouth over mine. The sweetness of it melted under the heat of his kiss, and was just as heady as the wine his tongue tasted of. His breath puffed warmly upon my cheeks, and my hands went to his cheeks, fingertips delighting in the slightly scratch of his stubble.

We kissed, and we kissed, until it seemed to fill me with a longing that I didn’t understand. A sweet, painful longing for…more. And more painful still, when, breathless, he pulled away. The thump of his heartbeat and the heat of his body let me know that he felt desire, but somehow he tore himself from me, and growled. After a moment, thoughtfully, he ran his hand down my side. “I meant to let you go in the morning. Tell everyone I’d had my fill, and leave you to give yourself to my men for money or take what man might still have you as a wife, in spite of your shame. But you’ve amused me tonight, and I’m not a man much for amusement. So in repayment, I think I must ruin you more completely.”

“Oh?” I asked, still a little breathless in anticipation. Whatever it meant to be ruined, I suddenly felt as if I must experience.

“Aye,” he said, gravely. “Taking you to bed just one night, makes you a fallen woman, though not a strumpet of sufficient fascination to anyone. But should I keep you for a time as my mistress, well, that sets the tongues of the castle wagging. The more infamous you are when I’m done with you, the more men will want you for the honor of having my leavings. Or to spite me by taking a woman who was once mine.”

I gasped a bit, offended and fascinated at the turn of his mind. “But you haven’t taken me—”

“They don’t know it, though. And we have your future to think of. So go on down now to your room and I’ll call again for you tomorrow night.”

This seemed at once a reprieve and torture. “You want me—you want me to go?”

“Aye. I don’t sleep easily with anyone else in my bed. And with you, I know I’d be up all night. You’ve already proved yourself to be more of a temptation than I expected, and I’m not in the habit of needlessly putting my self-control to the test.”

~~~

The next night he taught me to play with his chessmen upon a checkered board. The night after that, I actually won a game. He claimed it was because I’d bewitched him with my pretty eyes and pale bosom, and I found myself leaning forward so that he could see them better. “You’re learning to be a coquette,” he accused, stealing my queen from the board.

“Isn’t that what I should learn, if I’m to be a harlot?”

He rubbed the back of his neck as if I presented a manner of difficulty for him that he wasn’t certain how to solve. “I suppose that’s the advantage to being a whore; you may learn whatever pleases you and no one can object to it, ye ken.”

He wasn’t about to convince me that the station of life to which he intended to condemn me was in any way advantageous, but I was intrigued by the possibility he raised. “I can learn anything? Even to read?”

He smirked a bit. “Even in Latin, if you wish it. There are, after all, a few good Latin words you might want to know for between the sheets…”

I felt myself blush, though I wasn’t entirely sure why. And the next morning, I was awakened to a harsh pounding upon my chamber door. I knew Brenna would never make such a racket, and my breath hitched in alarm as I went to open the door.

Then it hitched again, when I saw the scowling man in the entryway. Not my mercurial laird, but rather, his brawny cousin, Ian Macrae.

And given the hostile look in his eyes, I counted myself lucky that he was carrying not a sword, but a book. “Sir?” I asked, drawing my shawl around me.

Ian snarled, “The laird has sent me to give his new whore an education.” Coming from another man, I’d have taken it as sexual innuendo and feared that I was about to be ravished. Why else would a man come to my private quarters unchaperoned?

But the expression on the apparently scholarly warrior’s face was anything but lustful. “I’m to teach you your letters,” Ian added, with all the enthusiasm of a man who has been commanded to empty a chamber pot.

Nevertheless, I was unexpectedly delighted! I determined to be the best possible student, reverently running my fingers over the leather when Ian set the book down, and marveling at the ink upon the page, when he pulled a chair close and opened the volume.

Ian seemed too big for the chair he sat upon, and heaved impatient breaths as I recited all the letters for him. “That’s an R, and that’s a S, and that—”