Chapter 10

10

Mary took the brush to her damp golden hair, working it through the length slowly and methodically. Though her new ladies-in-waiting had offered to help her with her hair after her bath, she had insisted that she was capable of managing it by herself, and they had retreated, allowing her to do as she pleased.

She knew it would take her a while to get used to the thought of having people fussing over her so. It had just been her and her sisters growing up, and, even when she had been staying with Amelia and Arran, she had not been offered much help. She had never needed it. But here, she was being treated as though she could scarcely stand on her own two feet without tumbling to the ground, and she supposed that was how everyone would view her.

Her bedchambers were simple but well-appointed; a large wall hanging covered the wall next to the window, showing a wolf tracking a rabbit out of its hole. It seemed almost imposing, but she tried not to think about what it might mean, to have such an image looming over her bed.

She was perched on the edge of it now, a four-poster affair with an ornately-carved chair beside i. On the chair, knots and snakes tangled in the wood, reaching up over the arms and the back. She could still smell the lightly-perfumed water that had emanated from the bath she’d taken, her ladies-in-waiting sprinkling rose petals upon it so that her skin would smell of the flower. Sure enough, the scent clung to her now. She had always thought of roses as a sweet flower, but now, as the smell of them wafted from her skin, she found that there was something decidedly more adult and sultry about them.

She heard footsteps outside the door, and tensed at once. Was it him? It had to be. She supposed he would come to her eventually, whatever business he had to attend to first. This was, after all, the night of their wedding, and she would have to… give herself to him in a way she had never given herself to anyone before.

A few moments later, the door swung open, and, as she had predicted, there he stood, on the other side. His eyes seemed to blaze an even more piercing shade of blue in the candlelight, and her hand stilled for a moment, body frozen in reaction to him. Excitement twisted with fear in her stomach. She knew not what to expect, but her undying curiosity was threatening to get the better of her.

He paused for a moment, simply looking at her, and then made his way towards her. She was wearing a nightdress, which came down to her ankles, but she was suddenly distinctly aware of how thin the fabric was. One touch, and he would have been able to feel every inch of her body, every part of her at once.

Perhaps she wanted him to.

He moved towards her, and then sank to the edge of the bed next to her. His closeness was intoxicating, the smell of him bringing her back to the night they had met at the ceilidh. She longed, for a moment, to lean towards him and bury her face in his neck, but she managed to restrain herself.

He turned to her, his eyes scanning hers, as though searching for something there he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“Did they take good care of you?” he asked her softly, and she nodded at once.

“Oh, yes, they were wonderful,” she replied. “I’ve never… I’ve never had anyone run around after me like that, though. I suppose it will take some getting used to.”

He eyed her for a moment, clearly surprised.

“You’ve no’?”

She shook her head.

“No, never.”

“With yer sister being who she is,” he remarked. “I thought you’d ken what it was like to be fussed over.”

“Well, my sister might be a Laird’s wife, but that’s not how any of us grew up,” she replied. “My father, he was… he had some issues with his finances, I suppose you’d say.”

“Is that so, aye?”

“Yes,” she replied, with a nod. “That was why he was going to…”

She stopped herself in her tracks. What was she thinking, coming out with something like that to him? She glanced away from him, hoping that he hadn’t paid attention to what had just come out of her mouth, but as soon as she fell silent, his eyes narrowed.

“He was going to…?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she replied, shaking her head. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

But, before she could brush it off entirely, he reached for her face, catching her chin in his hand and drawing her around to look at him.

“There’s nothing I won’t know about you, lass,” he murmured to her. His fingertips were slightly rough on her skin, and she found her breath knocked from her lungs as she stared back at him. His firmness with her did things to her she didn’t know were possible. Her mind flew back to the night in the stables, when he had kissed her, his tongue in her mouth like he was speaking a million secrets beyond her lips.

He smoothed his thumb across her cheek and dropped his hand by his side again. The moment he let go of her, she realized she wasn’t breathing, and she gasped in a long breath. She could hardly tell if it was fear or something else that coursed through her when he laid hands on her like that, but she knew, deep down inside, that she wanted more.

“What was yer father going to do?” he pressed, and she closed her eyes for a moment before she responded. She wished she could leave all of this in the past, but she knew it would not be so easy. This man was her husband now, and what he wanted from her, he would get.

“He was going to marry me to another man,” she muttered, her chin dropping to her chest. She couldn’t look at him. She could feel the anger pulsing from him in waves at the mere mention of another man, and she forced herself to meet his gaze once more.

“He was going to what?”

“He was going to… there was this man, a rich man, he wanted to marry me to,” she explained, as quickly as she could. She wanted to get this over with. It was hard to tell if the anger in his eyes was aimed at her or at the story she was telling him, and she didn’t much like the thought of leaving that doubt to stew much longer.

“My father has some debts to pay off, and he had offered him a decent amount for my hand in marriage,” she continued, her voice shaking as she recounted the truth of the fate she had so narrowly avoided. “He was… older, I suppose. And he’d struggled to find a bride close to his age, so he picked me, hoping I would be able to bear children for him.”

“Yer father was going to sell you to some pervert to pay off his debts?”

His voice was simmering with fury. She managed to nod. She didn’t know him well enough yet to understand if this anger was coming her way, or at her father, or at someone else entirely. He was still such an enigma to her, even though she wore his wedding band on her finger—an irony that was not lost on her.

“That’s why you agreed to marry me with such ease,” he muttered, shaking his head. “I wondered why you agreed so quickly.”

“You thought I would turn you down?” she wondered aloud, surprised. Nothing in the way he had carried himself, the things he had said or done, had suggested to her that he’d ever doubted for a moment that she would be his one day. He seemed certain that he was due anything he desired, and she was just another in a long line of things he wanted to own.

He stared at her for a moment, his eyes flicking back and forth between hers.

“I’d no’ thought you’d make it so easy fer me.”

“Oh, I thought…”

She trailed off. She didn’t know if she could say what was truly on her mind, not without exposing more than she was ready to. He leaned forward with interest, raising his eyebrows at her.

“You thought what, lass?”

She hesitated for a moment, but then, deciding there was no point in trying to hide from him, she said it.

“I thought you’d get everything you want.”

A grin curled up his lips, slowly, like the wolf on the wall hanging opposite them.

“Aye, I do,” he replied, and he lifted his hand to her face again. This time, his touch was more tender, so soft and gentle that it sent a current of excitement rushing down her arm. She drew in a sharp breath, wishing she wasn’t making it so obvious, but at the same time, unable to deny how much she wanted him, how badly she needed him.

“And what is it that you want, exactly?” she whispered. She knew the answer, but she needed to hear him say it. She needed to hear him tell her how much he desired her. It was the only thing that mattered to her in that moment. Even though he had married her, even though he had made her his wife, she still wanted him to say those sacred words, more important than any vows they could have spoken to each other.

He flicked his tongue over his lips before he spoke, considering his answer. And then, at last, he said it.

“You.”

With that, their mouths came together once more, hungry for each other like they had been that night at the stables. He pulled her into his lap at once, her legs draped over his, his hands moving on her thighs and her hips like he was making sure she knew she belonged to him. He let out a low growl against her lips, the sound of it shuddering through every inch of her body, and she felt that tingle that had started where his hand had met her face starting to inch down, down, down…

Then, to her surprise, he flipped her over and laid her on the bed. Moving on top of her, he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against his strong chest. She brushed her fingertips against his shoulders, marveling at the strength of him, as his mouth traveled down across her chin and towards her neck.

She felt his teeth graze at her there, and she was reminded, once again, of that wolf, that beast that could have torn the little rabbit apart with ease with a single motion. And yet, though it should have scared her, the notion of it sent another flood of desire coursing through her system, and she slipped her hand into his hair and pulled him back up to kiss her once more.

His tongue pushed deep into her mouth as his hands balled up her dress and pushed it above her hips. He let himself down on top of her again, and she groaned as she felt the pressure of his manhood against her for the first time. In that moment, some deep part of her knew how much she wanted it, how much she needed him inside of her. Though she had never been with a man like that before in her life, never even come close, some primal aspect of her being understood what it would feel like, and knew it would go some way to sating this need within her.

But, before she could so much as whisper to him how much she wanted him, he began to work his way down once more, starting at her neck, and brushing his lips over her shoulders, pulling aside her robe so that he could trail his tongue along the nut-brown curve of her breast. He let his teeth catch against her for the briefest moment, sending a shock of sensation through her. She expected pain, but instead, under his touch, it felt more like pleasure.

And he moved down, down, further down, until her nightdress was pushed over her hips and he had exposed the dark puff of hair on her mound. He let his breath warm a spot low on her belly, so close to her most sensitive spot she could scarcely stand it, and she found her hips lifting to try and meet him, silently begging him for more.

She looked down at him, her breath coming hard and fast by now, and found him gazing back up at her, nestled between her legs, hands tucked beneath her thighs to keep them open. His mouth was just an inch or two from her sex, and she could feel the warmth of his breath against her, the promise of it, of everything that he wanted to give her. Yet, she got the sense that he would have enjoyed keeping her there in that moment forever, making her squirm with need and never quite sating her, just to see the look on her face.

But whatever mercy he had in him must have been close to the surface on that night, because, at last, he moved towards her, and pressed his mouth to her sex for the first time.

Her back arched from the bed, her lips parted, though no sound came out. The pleasure was too intense to be translated into something as mundane as sound, no, the feel of his mouth, warm and eager against her, was more than she could make sense of. Her hands balled the bedcovers beside her, drawing them into her closed fists as she tried to catch her breath, as he planted kisses against her most intimate spot, over and over again.

A low whimper escaped her lips as she managed to glance down at him once more, and the sight of him like that was nearly enough to take her over the edge in that very instant. This man, this wild, dangerous man, between her legs like that, giving her everything that she needed, doing things to her she could never have imagined. His lips and tongue were soft and practiced, his hands digging into her thighs to keep them spread so he could have all the access to her he wanted.

Her hips rose to meet him, the waves of pleasure building and building until she could not think of anything else. The world could have been burning down outside that bedroom door, and she would have cared little for it, such was the intensity of the pleasure he was sending to every inch of her body. She began to breathe faster, her eyes screwed shut, focused just on the way it felt, the graze of his stubble against the soft skin of her thigh.

When her release finally came, the corners of her vision blurred for a moment, a raw, deep sound tearing from her lips that surprised even her. She could hardly control herself, her body writhing on the bed, her entire system coursing with sensation so intense she couldn’t think of anything but him. He didn’t move his mouth, coaxing the last of her pleasure out of her, until, finally, she had no choice but to push him away so she could catch her breath.

He gazed up at her for a moment, from where he lay between her legs, and she was struck, all at once, by how different he looked, almost vulnerable, boyish, with her shimmering sex still smeared across his lips. She moved down to kiss him again, almost forgetting what he had just done, but he pulled back before she could reach him.

“You should rest,” he murmured to her as he sat up once more, gazing down at her.

“Rest? But I…”

“You’ve had a long journey,” he intoned as he slipped from the bed, turning his back to her. She furrowed her brow, her body still tingling from the release that she had just reached. Had she done something wrong? She reached out for him, trying to pull him back to her, craving the warmth of his skin against hers, but he had stepped past the length of her arm before she could.

He moved to the door and paused for a moment before he stepped out, casting a look over his shoulder at her. In the dim light, she could not make out the expression on his face, or what he might have meant by it. She had no guess as to why he had changed his tune so suddenly, or what she could do to change it back.

“Rest well.”

With that, he stepped out of the door and pulled it shut behind him, leaving Mary with no other recourse but to fall back onto the bed and stare at the ceiling, confused about what had just happened.

But not confused about how certain she was that she wanted it to happen again.