Torn Between Two Highlanders (Sword and Thistle 2)

With all the spite she had in her body, Arabella said, “Never.”

“Good.” With satisfaction, the scarred warrior limped closer, his physical presence enough to intimidate Conall. “You heard her. So if I see you so much as look her way again, I will cut your eyes from your face.”

Conall’s expression twisted in defiance, but in the end, he turned and fled. Then Arabella was alone with Malcolm, her chest heaving while his breaths were deadly even. “Are you harmed, lass?”

“No,” Arabella said, her heart swelling a bit at his gallantry, even as she worried over the savagery of his threat. “You won’t really cut his eyes out if he looks at me, will you?”

“I don’t make threats I don’t mean.”

She believed him. “But we’re in the same castle together. And there may come a time when I want him to look at me.”

“Then he had better never do it where I can see.”

“Malcolm,” Arabella said, softly putting a hand to his sword arm. “Thank you for driving him off, but I don’t want you to cut his eyes out.”

“I wouldn’t be doing it for you.”

Her head tilted as she appraised him. “Why then?”

“Because it makes me bitter with jealousy to think that he once had a claim on you and threw it away, whereas I have none at all.” She couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d grown a horn from his head. And while she gawped he added, “You have ruined me, lass.”

“What?” she asked, both confused and horrified.

His hand actually trembled, and he tried to hide it by making a fist. “In all the years since my wife’s death, I have been content to sleep alone. Three nights sleeping beside you and now I cannot be content. I cannot sleep. And I need to if I’m to be of any use on the night watch.”

“Surely not in your condition,” Arabella said.

“The laird hasn’t the luxury to be choosy.”

I cannot sleep, he’d said. He meant it. She saw it in the shadows beneath his eyes. Last night, upon their admittance to the castle and his return to his own warm bed, Malcolm ought to have fallen into a deep slumber. But he hadn’t, and she wondered if that could really be because of her.

Then a tenderness stole over her such that it wouldn’t be denied.

“Come then with me, to bed, Malcolm,” Arabella said, reaching for his hand. “And get some rest.”

He knew what she meant; what she was offering. And a longing played across his features. He reached for her, but warned, “The scandal, lass…”

“I don’t care.” Her reputation was lost the moment the Donalds abducted her. Positively tainted when she spent three nights alone with men who were not her husband. And even if she wanted to pretend at virtue, she couldn’t now. She’d already confessed to Conall, who, in his anger, would tell anyone who would listen. She was good and ruined now, several times over. Taking a man to her bed in the middle of the day would be perfectly in keeping with her reputation now.

And so she let him lean upon her as they made their way slowly down the stairs to her chambers. Then she latched the door behind them, and helped him onto the bed, kneeling before him to help him remove his clothes.

When he was naked, she rose up, and Malcolm clasped her about the waist. Kissing her belly and her breasts. Drawing her down onto the mattress with him where they kissed as they had never kissed before. Arabella found herself tracing his scar with her fingertip. Felt herself open to him—surrender to him. And Malcolm was tired; she knew, because his fingers were unusually clumsy.

What followed was not the kind of heated, erotic abandon they’d shared before. As he drew her to kneel over him, and sink down upon his shaft, she realized that something had changed between them. As she moved carefully, gently, tenderly to bring him pleasure…it seemed like lovemaking.

At least for Arabella, whose emotions swelled in her chest until it ached.

His eyes never left her face as she moved over him, moaning softly at the caress of his hands on her breasts. And when his pleasure began to peak, and the tell-tale redness spread down his neck and chest in a way that told her he was close to his orgasm, he tried to stop her from riding him through it.

“I must spend outside of you,” he grunted, straining to hold back.

She knew he was right. She mustn’t get with child. It was one thing to damn herself to a life of harlotry, but a child was an innocent. And yet…and yet…she was so overcome with inexplicable love for this man that she wanted all of him.

Every drop.

“Stay in me. Stay with me. Come with me,” she murmured.

It was too much for him to resist. He rose up off the pillow with the strain, shouting out his release as it flowed warmly into her. As her own body convulsed with pleasure around him.