She’d already ceded too much to selfish male power. He wasn’t going to add himself to the list of men who took advantage of her.
For the sake of his sanity, he needed to cover her up. He returned to where he’d slept and picked up his coat. “Here. You’ll get cold.”
She was cold now, if the hard nipples were any indication. He struggled to ignore the way her breasts filled out that infernally transparent linen.
Her breasts were larger than they’d been when she arrived at Invertavey. A couple of days of good food had added a beguiling roundness to the skeletal figure he’d carried from the beach.
Another unwelcome jolt of desire shook him, as he recalled holding her breast. Soft. Round. The perfect size for his palm.
God help him, that wasn’t something he needed to think about when another day’s riding lay ahead. A day when he had to hold her in his arms and devote every agonizing second to reminding himself that she didn’t want him.
He wished he’d thought to bring a second horse and a cohort of his clansmen on this rescue mission. All this privacy with Fiona tested his honor to breaking point.
“Thank you,” she stammered, and he saw a flush rise in her cheeks.
“Ye dinna have to trade your body for my help.” As he watched her tug the coat around her with shaking hands, he felt utterly disgusted with himself. “If you’d gone ahead with what ye tried to do, it would have turned our alliance into a squalid transaction. I pledge myself to your service, Fiona. You’re a victim of huge injustice. My word is enough to bind me. Ye dinna have to confirm my allegiance in any other way.”
Humiliation flooded her face, and he realized that he was right to think that what had just happened stemmed more from calculation than gratitude. The elegant jaw hardened. “I won’t let my daughter suffer my fate.”
Diarmid remembered back to that awkward moment when she’d slammed her mouth into his, more an act of violence than of desire. Her lips had been closed as firmly as a bank safe. A man might almost imagine the girl had no idea how to kiss, which was ridiculous, given she’d been married and borne a child.
He bloody well had to keep his hands to himself. Fiona needed his help, not his seduction. Chivalry forbade him from asking for anything in return.
But as he stared at her across the room, chivalry’s voice was a feeble whisper against the drumroll of craving.
I can keep my hands off her. I can.
Diarmid wasn’t sure he believed it. Because even when she’d trembled with fear, his hands had adored her slender shape, his senses had filled with the warm, floral scent of her skin, and those taut, closed lips had tasted like heaven.
He clenched his fists at his sides and prowled across to the d
oor. “I’m going out to check on Sigurn.”
Fiona scrambled to her feet, giving him a glimpse of long, coltish legs and bare, narrow feet. “You don’t have to go. I won’t…I won’t do that again.”
Her slender hands twined in front of her. The heavy folds of his coat covered her like a nun’s habit. He should feel less on edge, now he’d restored her modesty.
He felt like he teetered on the brink of a precipice. Because he’d seen more than enough of her tonight. Enough to know he’d never forget the sight of her clad in only a drift of white linen. Plague take her, she could stand before him wearing sackcloth and ashes and he’d want her.
And tonight he’d touched her. His hands could never unlearn the satiny softness of her skin.
“Aye, I do,” he said grimly, opening the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her take a step in his direction.
“You’ll be cold out there.”
“No, I bloody willnae,” he muttered. “And if you’ve got an ounce of sense, lassie, ye willnae follow me.”
Blindly he blundered out of the bothy and stood shaking with reaction in the soft summer gloaming. He gasped for breath as if he’d run up Ben Nevis.
By heaven, the sooner he got his charge safely to Achnasheen, the better. He hoped to hell that seeing Fergus and Marina would remind him he was a man who had a few principles.
It took far too much effort to force himself to make the short journey to the stables, where he intended to stay until they rode out in the morning. Two nights with Fiona Grant, and already he felt wrong when she wasn’t sleeping within reach.
Chapter 14
It was the evening of the next day when they came over a ridge and Fiona found herself looking at a scene from a fairy tale. From where she sat, warm and safe in Diarmid’s arms, she drank in the spectacular landscape. The green slope swept down to a turreted castle standing guard over a glittering loch, with the sea a shining silver mirror behind it. Across the water, a line of jagged hills rose against the clear violet sky.
She must have made some sound, because Diarmid pulled a tired Sigurn to a halt on the brow of the hill. “Bonny, isn’t it?”