Chapter Seventeen

H ere, naked upon the bed, his eyes alight with feverish desire, Torsten had seemingly shed the cold, austere exterior.

Raina marveled at this as much as she did at his touch.

He returned to her lips, appeasing that hunger while one hand remained between them, closing over the fullness of her breast. He kneaded gently at first and then more deliberately, stroking and teasing her nipple, until her breast was swollen and aching. His touch was at times light and sensuous and then nearly painfully teasing. His hand roamed intimately over her breasts, her belly, her hip, marking her as his.

"Madness," she remarked, for the wealth of the tumult rising inside her.

"And just the beginning," Torsten whispered before he ducked his head and gently sucked her nipple into his mouth. "Easy, lass," he coaxed when she stiffened, and then returned his attention to her breast and its aching peak.

Pleasure warred with an agony of confusion, for what he was building and how it might end. He laved her breasts with his tongue and grazed her nipples with his teeth. Desire clenched deep inside her. Raina glanced down, fascinated by how the light rippled over her pale, tender flesh and the contrast of his suntanned, roughened hand, capable of rousing so loud and clamorous a desire.

Hot, seeking lips burned a trail over her navel and beyond. Raina squirmed. His hand settled firmly on her thigh, pushing it upward. She cried out when his mouth settled into the patch of hair between her legs, tasting her, stroking his tongue until she writhed beneath him. He spread her legs and caressed her until every inch of her trembled and she clutched at the blankets and furs.

She wrenched her hands free, threading them into his hair, but didn't know if she should push him away or pull him closer. His fingers briefly took the place of his tongue, parting her, sliding between her slick folds and then inside her, rousing a whimpered groan from deep in her chest. And then his tongue returned, swirling against her as he stroked his fingers in and out.

She was mindless at the same time she was attuned to every decadent caress of his tongue and fingers. His tongue toyed with her, teasing her, one moment lapping fully against her, the next flicking only the tip against her sensitive bud. Raina was pulled into a frenzy of pleasure, drowning in its sea. She lifted her hips to meet his mouth and fingers and simultaneously pushed at his shoulders, twisting beneath him as she tried to evade the unrelenting, ruthless pleasure, but he held her firmly until all the waves roared at once and pleasure exploded inside her. A cry sounded inside the bedchamber and Raina realized it had been torn from her lips.

Strands of iridescent delight coursed through her. Her breathing was labored, and her eyes would not open. She pushed Torsten's hands away, her flesh and nerves on fire now. God's bones, but how her body sang and strummed and tingled. She was only vaguely aware of Torsten crawling up her body on his hands and knees .

Awareness returned with new sensations, realizing he was as naked as she now, and his rigid manhood skimmed enticingly along her flesh as he climbed. Raina opened her eyes as he nudged a knee between her legs.

She lifted her hand, her fingertips tingling yet, and lay it against his cheek, wanting to smile her appreciation for what passion and joy he'd wrenched from her.

With infinite care, he brushed his lips against hers. A faint sheen of perspiration glistened on his brow and shoulders. Her heart beat against his.

"And how could I have told ye of that?" He asked, his voice naught but a rasp, as if he, too, were consumed by pleasure.

"You could not," she whispered, breathless. "It's fresh and upon me still, and I cannot describe it."

"So much better to feel," he remarked, settling between her thighs. The hot length of his erection met with her moist entrance.

Her body responded to the unfamiliar but achingly sweet feeling, clenching and prickling with awareness.

"Oh, God, yes." Her voice was not yet her own, was wispy and fragile.

Torsten bent and kissed her, bringing to her a curious scent, the musk of her desire, she guessed, boldly swirling her tongue with his. He deepened the kiss and joined his body with hers, shifting his hips forward as he entered her. It was strange, the way he filled her and stretched her. Nothing was familiar, everything new. Raina embraced it, all the delicious torment.

Torsten eased forward and withdrew, brushing the hair away from her face as he laid heated kisses along her jaw and the column of her neck. Then he met her lips again, devoured her now, and thrust his hips against her, wringing a gasp of pain from her.

His blue-eyes found hers. "Once and nae ever again," he said. "The tearing."

Shivering at the picture painted and grounded from the delights of heaven, Raina was given pause. Now what?

"Feel," he reminded her after a moment, his face buried in her hair, his breath warm on the side of her neck.

His hips moved, his cock retreated and returned with an agonizing deliberateness, tantalizing her with the fullness of him. He rose above her. Raina wasn't sure what he saw when he looked down at her, but her heart ached for how beautiful he was, his expression hard and yet tender at the same time.

Another luxurious stroke and a breathy snort of amazement erupted from her, for how swiftly and expertly he'd unleashed all the wonders of her body. The intimacy of this act, skin against skin, the delicious friction, brought to life what she was sure had nearly killed her a moment ago. She gripped his shoulders, not sure she could survive it this time, even as she rocked her hips instinctively against him. She clamped her lips, craving this, more, him. Sweet torment grew, blistering, spiraling.

"You are fire," she murmured, "and I am burning."

" Jesu , lass," he said with a hint of wonder, shifting over her, rocking into her as his hand found her breast and his fingers deliciously tormented her nipple.

He began to move faster, with more urgency. Raina opened her legs wider.

Divine pressure built inside her, tremors of arousal rising again. Aware now of what awaited her, she clutched at him, pulling him deeper, frantic for another release. Once more pleasure engulfed her, in deep, long strokes. Raina felt again as if she were flying, soaring upwards. She arched her body against the stone wall of Torsten's chest and was certain the earth moved. She felt as if her body were turned inside-out.

He gave several more thrusts and then one final shove, and he grunted, rearing up. His broad shoulders shuddered, and he filled her core with warmth, uttering her name through clenched teeth.

Wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders as he collapsed against her, Raina inhaled his deeply male scent and the heat wafting off him. A belated soft moan squeaked past her lips when he next moved, slipping free of her.

Cool air kissed her skin as he rolled onto her side and Raina deflated inside, until he pulled her roughly up against him, wrapping his arm around her waist while she snuggled her back into his chest.

After a moment, she confessed in a sleepy voice, "To be honest, I wasn't much thinking about a babe during any of that."

His chuckle rumbled against her spine. He pressed a kiss to the back of her head. "Nor I, lass."

Raina sighed, filled with a vast contentment. She scratched her short fingernails lightly over the hair-covered forearm around her middle.

She absolutely adored this man who'd finally, properly made her his wife, who wore neither frowns nor scowls, but various expressions of awe and desire, who spoke in that husky sensual tone and had curled her toes with his touch, who exuded so much male virility and made her believe she was utterly beautiful.

Raina fell asleep understanding that she very much liked her husband, the Torsten de Graham who'd allowed himself to lose control with her tonight.

But she was bitten by a small bug of apprehension as well, very much afraid she was bound to lose her heart to her husband.

PERHAPS HE WOULD NOT return to war, after all. Or not so soon, at any rate.

How could he possibly leave her? he wondered several nights later.

The day after he'd made love to her for the first time, he'd told her at last meal that they would not repeat the night before, not yet, not until her body had healed.

His wife had frowned at him and was quite disagreeable for several minutes, refusing to speak to him as she finished her supper.

At length, Torsten cajoled, "Raina? Ye understand why."

"I do not. And I don't understand how you can feel what's inside my body."

She realized the nuance and innuendo as soon as the words left her mouth.

Neither had any success restraining the intimate grins that brightened their faces.

Though her grin remained, she attempted to maintain her annoyance, exhaling a tart sigh, staring out over the crowded great hall, saying quietly for his ears alone, "And here I was about to tell you that I was feeling unusually fatigued today and would likely be retiring earlier than normal."

So how could he leave ?

How could he leave behind pleasure so intense, unlike anything he'd ever known? Raina was...suddenly, she was everything to him. Torsten willingly allowed himself to be drowned in her, her scent, her body, her touch, those charming little noises she made when he rocked deep inside her.

Frankly, he didn't recognize himself, the man who allowed every barrier, every wall, every inhibition to be so easily swept away and kicked aside by a wife he didn't want but whom he couldn't get enough of.

She was a wonder in how at ease she was, even speaking about what they did in the bedchamber each night, making light of it one morning, saying, "I'm not complaining at all, mind you, but this does create an awful lot of laundry."

He had noticed that fresh sheets were fitted on the mattress each night. The furs had been folded and tucked away in the kist at the end of the bed, no longer needed. They slept in each other's arms, sharing body heat, sometimes waking in the wee hours and disturbing the bedsheets yet more.

Her curiosity and her own lack of reticence was another constant matter of wonder to him. She was eager to be initiated, asking how to please him, her eyes widening with wicked expectation when he'd sat naked in the unbroken chair before the hearth, guiding her, naked as well, to straddle his legs.

He hadn't slipped immediately inside her, though it took quite a bit of effort to resist the temptation. He allowed his erection to linger there between them, wanting her to feel how hard and hungry he was for her.

"You mean to tease me," she'd said, her breaths coming quickly .

Torsten had cupped her breasts in his hands, teasing her nipples to stiff peaks. Raina had latched onto his shoulders, squirming in reaction. And then, having discovered that small movement moved the soft, sensitive flesh between her legs against his iron-hard staff, her gorgeous mouth had formed a small o and she'd done it again.

"And now who teases whom?" He growled at her, eliciting a smile from her that seemed to him a siren's beckoning.

He let her go on grinding herself delicately against him, until he could suffer the torment no more, and he might have wept for the beauty of sinking into her slick, warm heat on that occasion. In that moment as her body melted against him, his world was filled with her. He knew nothing else. And he let it be.

Granted, on another night she talked through what should have been a delightful instance when he took her hand and closed her fingers around his cock for the first time. She had questions ("where do you put this when you're atop your destrier?"), was eminently curious about the appearance ("it looks rather red with anger"), and wondered what she might call it ("I once heard a maid—I won't say who—refer to it as a sword; she said she'd liked to be speared by a certain gentleman, but I cannot imagine myself speaking so... cheekily"), but damn if he didn't grow and surge just as swiftly under her artless handling and in spite of her chatter as easily as when he hardened with arousal watching pleasure enfold her.

Still, he rejected any notion that he regularly joined his soul to hers and not only his body, even as it felt like that at the time. ?Twas simply he, a new husband, giving into the delights of the flesh—with Raina they were endless—all in an effort to solidify his position as laird and commander of Lochlan Hall and give her the babe she desired so badly. At night he allowed himself to feel with both body and mind but during the day, he staunchly reminded himself that he had no intention of developing feelings for his wife outside the bedchamber.

That's what he told himself, anyway. And yet, in the ensuing days he'd begun to think that rather than abandoning Lochlan completely and forever when eventually he did return to the king's side, that he might in the future split time between Glenbarra Brae and Lochlan, if God wished that he should survive the war well enough to do so.

Even as he listed numerous reasons in his head why he might do this—Lochlan having a far greater thriving industry, being richer and requiring more than only an absentee laird; being further south and closer to either fighting as needed or perhaps the capital once it was established; the lure of the beach and the sea, which he'd come to appreciate as an appealing setting—he knew, deep down he knew, it was her. She would be what brought him back to Lochlan.

RAINA AND PEIGI SET out from Lochlan Hall, the keep standing tall behind them, its stone walls softened by the warm light of the late summer sun. The sea's briny scent faded as they walked inland, though the cliffs and dunes hardly shielded them from the needling wind. Beyond the newly erected palisade and the even rows of tents belonging to Torsten's army, the path before them was dotted with late-blooming wildflowers, their colors muted but still lovely .

As they strolled toward the village to collect the commissioned linens from Judith the weaver, Peigi huffed and shook her head.

"Nigh on a week, milady," she said, clutching her hood at her throat, "and I'm waiting on ye to tell me aye, he's finally made ye his wife and ye have nae more need of plots and schemes to entice him." She hooted a bit with ribald laughter. "And dinna demur, milady. I dinna ken ye're trying to hide it but I'm saying ye canna. Och, but it's written all over yer face."

Raina rolled her lips inward. In truth, she thought she might burst for wanting to tell someone what had transpired—many times, over many nights by now. She watched the treads of her feet, not quite sure how one went about sharing such intimate news.

"So, he's made ye his, made ye a woman and naught but a blind man winna have kent. And I'm guessing by the grins ye wear all morning, and all the extra washing ye're throwing at the lasses, he's nae only willing but..." she glanced sideways at Raina, her smirk broad, "but he makes like a great luver, dinna he?"

Raina clapped her hands over her mouth to curtail the burst of laughter that came. While her cheeks flamed bright red despite the nip in the air, Raina heard herself confess, "If I'd known then what I...I, well, saints be praised, Peigi, I'd have lobbied right from the start for a real marriage."

Peigi chuckled. "I kent he'd be guid between the sheets, he has that look about him."

Raina laughed softly, her cheeks flushing. "Yes, he does. I understand what that means now." She felt a pang of regret for speaking so personally, so bawdily, with the housekeeper.

Sensing her remorse, Peigi wagged her finger at Raina and said, "Ye dinna have a mother, nae sisters nor friends. Yer still Lady Raina, but it'll do nae harm to have a friend, aye? And ye ken, I've got big ears but I dinna have flapping lips."

"Thank you, Peigi."

"Aye, and am I nae looking forward to bairns? Fill the keep with them, milady. Please, will ye? Bairns everywhere!"

Raina laughed more freely even as she blushed again. She laid her hand over her cheek and one over her stomach, thrilled by the very idea.

"Winna be long," Peigi predicted. "So long as ye keep showing those dark but happy circles under yer eyes, tired but happily so for how he manages to keep ye awake at night, it winna be long."

Raina blushed even more, but her heart swelled with hope.

Of course, repeatedly she told herself it was all about that, making a baby. 'Twas lies, all of it. Yes, she would dearly love to hold a child of her own, to cradle a tiny life and feel the warmth of a family. But what she truly wanted was Torsten. She yearned for his love, for a connection that went beyond the mere act of creation. She wanted his affection to be rooted in his heart and not simply be a physical desire for her body. Though she was enslaved by his touch and wanted it desperately, it wasn't enough for him to seek her out in the quiet moments of the night, driven by passion and need. She craved the tenderness in his gaze, the whispered words of love that spoke of a deeper bond.

Wishful dreams and naught but that. Though Torsten satisfied every desire inside their bedchamber, he did not often seek her out during the day, did not seek her counsel or her company. During the day, he remained mostly absent, immersed in his duties, training, and the business of administering to Lochlan and its people. She feared that, despite their intimate moments, his heart was still shielded by walls she could not breach. It was clear to her that he still saw her as a temporary companion, one that he would soon leave behind as he marched off to fight.

She knew he would not remain at Lochlan forever, would likely be called to war or go looking for it, leaving her behind with only memories. The prospect of him leaving gnawed at her, a painful reminder that she was not indispensable to him. She told herself repeatedly that she must not fall deeper, that she must not hope for more than what he was willing to give. Despite the tenderness they shared under the cloak of darkness, daylight revealed the stark reality: Torsten's heart was still out of reach, and his inevitable departure loomed over her like a dark cloud.

Many times she had to remind herself of the objective. It was a child she wanted originally, not Torsten as a devoted spouse who after three and a half decades understood that he was incapable of love. He had warned her.

Ah, but a babe.

I won't need Torsten, she told herself, if I have a child. I won't miss him if he leaves me with a babe.

These words became her mantra, a shield against the ache in her heart. She convinced herself that the joy and fulfillment of motherhood would be enough, that the love she would pour into her child would fill the void Torsten's absence would create.

Raina immersed herself in the daily routines and duties of Lochlan Hall, her mind constantly returning to the thought of a child. She imagined a small life growing within her, a tangible connection to the future that did not rely on Torsten's presence. The idea of a child became her anchor, grounding her in the midst of uncertainty and emotional upheaval.

And sometimes she hid herself and cried, her heart breaking a little each day, knowing she lied to herself, and that she was in love with her husband, and that she desperately yearned for him to love her in return.