Chapter 13

13

As Kiernan walked Mary back to her room, she felt the crackle of anticipation in the air. The promise, she was sure of it, that something was going to happen tonight, something that she had been waiting for since the moment she had stepped foot in this Keep.

After he had gifted her the horse earlier that day, she had spent the rest of the evening with him. The two of them had taken dinner together, sitting next to one another at the large table where his subjects gathered, and she had felt his leg pressing against hers beneath the piles of venison and bread that weighed down the table before them. As though he wanted her to know, with no shadow of a doubt, that her closeness was the most important thing to him in that moment.

As though she could have mistaken it for anything else.

And now, after everyone else had retreated to bed, he was taking her to her bedchamber. Though she had joked with him that she was perfectly capable of finding it on her own, he had insisted on walking her there himself, as though he was not quite ready to be apart from her yet. She knew how he felt. Every time they parted, she found herself craving more, making some deal with whatever spirit might have been in charge of such a thing to steal a little more time with him.

He paused next to the door when they reached it, and she hesitated before she spoke. In this fragile moment, she knew she had to convince him to stay a little longer, to make just a little more time for her before he vanished.

“Thank you for my gift,” she told him softly, pushing a strand of hair back behind her ear where it had escaped the plait her maid had put it in that morning.

“Aye, I’m glad to have given it to you,” he replied. “Though I suppose I’ll need to give you lessons before you can ride out on her.”

“I’m a quick learner,” she assured him, tipping her head to the side. As she spoke, it struck her how suggestive those words must have sounded, coming out of her mouth as they stood just outside her bedchamber.

His eyes flashed with amusement, the implication not lost on him either.

“Are ye, aye?”

He rested his thumb on her chin lightly, his fingertips caressing the side of her jaw. His hands were rough and callused, but somehow, that made his gentleness seem even more tender to her. As though it were reserved for her, and only for her. As though there were nobody else in the world who got a chance to experience it.

She swallowed hard. Her lips tingled with the anticipation of the kiss she wanted so badly. But she did not how to put it into words for him, how to tell him what she wanted. She had never craved it before in her life, and the words seemed to escape her.

“Is there anything else you’d like to learn, I wonder?” he murmured, as his thumb inched up towards her lips. She let out a low moan as soon as she felt him touching her, unable to hold back. There was something almost unbearably exciting about having him so close, yet not knowing if he was going to give her what she wanted. She wasn’t sure she could take another night alone, but it wasn’t her choice to make.

And it never had been.

“Yes, I do,” she breathed finally, answering his question at last.

“And what might that be?”

Her breath hitched in her throat. Did he want her to say it? To put into words the truth of the lusts she had been taught to keep to herself for so long? Her mind spun as she tried to make sense of it, of the enormity of what he was asking. She could feel a warm heat flooding her cheeks at the mere notion of saying it out loud.

But, as he gazed at her, a look of amusement on his face, she knew it was the only way that she would get what she ached for. He wanted to know she needed this as badly as he did.

“I want…”

The words caught on her lips. He raised his eyebrows at her, silently prompting her to keep talking. She closed her eyes, gathered herself, and then forced herself to continue.

“I want you to take me.”

There it was. The words she had been far too scared to say out loud. A confession to the darkest pits of her desire—to her husband, no less, the man who laid claim to those parts of her. When she opened her eyes once more, a smile had creased up his lips.

At last, he closed the distance between them, and kissed her hard.

The two of them stumbled over the threshold to her bedchamber together, her hands in his hair, his fingertips trailing along her waist and down to her hips, where they dug in tightly. Like he had on their wedding night, he guided her back towards the bed and moved on top of her, letting her feel the pressure of his manhood against her hip. There was no doubt that he wanted more, he hardly had to put it into words for her to understand.

She gasped as he slid his mouth to her neck, his hands moving around her to deftly undo the strings of her dress. His tongue traced along to her ear, dipping inside for the barest moment as he pushed down the straps of her dress, and eased them away from her body, exposing her for the first time.

He knelt up between her legs, gazing down at her once he had stripped her dress away from her. She was wearing nothing but a slip, and it barely concealed what of her body lay underneath. To her shock, he took the flimsy fabric in his hands and tore it away from her body, tossing it aside, before he dived down on top of her and covered her exposed body with his hands and his mouth.

His lips trailed between her breasts, his hands groping at every inch of her he could find. It was as though he were a starving animal, feasting on her greedily, taking in every part of her he was able to. She grasped onto his shoulders, feeling the strength of him, reminded, all at once, of how easy it would have been for him to take anything he wanted from her if the fancy had so taken him.

But he’d waited. He’d waited until she had been able to tell him that she wanted him. And now, as he ravished her, his tongue dipping into her navel before he traced it along the crease of her thigh, he would not hold back, he would not still his desire for her.

He kissed her once more, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close, so she could feel the steady thud of his heart against her chest. He was pressing himself into her, and, even though his clothes, she could sense that the size of his manhood was… something to be seen, that was for certain. He reached down to his trousers to release himself, and she caught a glimpse of him as he drew himself into his hand.

But she hardly had time to take him in before she felt the pressure of him at her entrance for the first time. She gasped, her back arching from the bed, her hands tightening on his shoulders, and he stilled himself there, though she could tell it took every bit of restraint within him to do so. His breath was ragged and his eyes were dark as he gazed at her, silently waiting for her word before he took her.

Though she could barely manage to speak, she kissed him again, a silent promise that everything he wanted to give her, she could take. With that, he moved towards her, and, for the first time, began to ease himself inside of her.

It did not feel much as she had imagined it would. No, it felt far better than that. The strength of him, the fullness, it was almost more than she could take, but in the most delicious, satisfying way, like a need she hadn’t even known she had, but now, she was sated at last.

His arms slipped around her, pulling her in close and tight, and she felt her breath stutter in her throat as their bodies came together fully, his hips flush against hers, taking her completely, filling her to the very brink. She gasped against his shoulder, inhaling the deliciously masculine scent of him, letting it wash through her and consume her, as she had longed for since the first time they’d met.

She soon found that her body moved against his with a practiced ease, almost as though some part of her, deep down, knew exactly what she craved from him, and knew how to get it. Her breath was starting to come harder and faster now, her heart beating hard in her chest as the pleasure began to rise between her legs.

But it was more than just between her legs, it through her whole body. She could feel it tingling to the very edge of her fingertips, to the top of her scalp, flooding every part of her as though this was everything she had been waiting for. She could feel the similar sensations as to when his mouth had been pressed against her sex, but even more intense now, as he slowly pushed into her, his strokes deep and hard, his breath throaty against her ear.

It was that sound which took her over the edge; the sound of how much he desired her, how completely impossible it seemed for him to hold it back, even for a moment. As much as she had struggled to read and understand him all this time, here, now, she knew that he wanted her, and the knowledge seemed only to add to her pleasure, until, at last, she reached her release.

She cried out, the sound so loud she was sure everyone in the Keep could hear them, but she didn’t care. Wasn’t it right for a Laird and his lady to come together like this, in the confines of her bedchambers? Her thighs squeezed around him, her body demanding more, more, more, as the pulsations of pleasure coursed through every inch of her system. She could barely breathe, the corners of her vision growing ragged as she processed the sheer intensity of this feeling, the passion of it.

“Oh,” she gasped against his ear, and, a few moments later, she felt him reach his own release inside of her. He moved into her one last time and then stilled himself there. She could feel him throbbing within her, the warmth of him inside of her a new sensation, but one that she knew she would be craving over and over and over again.

He didn’t move for a long moment, just holding himself there inside of her as his breath returned to normal. He planted a kiss against her shoulder, and she turned her head to kiss his lips once more, their mouths coming together with the hunger of people who had only just found one another.

But then, as he pulled back, she sensed something shift in his demeanor. A cold rush moved through her, as she looked at him, but found that he would not meet her gaze.

“Kiernan?” she whispered, and she reached for his cheek, but he turned his head before she could touch him, as though even her fingertips would have been too much for him. How could this be? How could they have shared something so intense, so intimate, and now, he seemed to balk at the idea of her caressing his face…?

“I should… go,” he muttered as he rolled off the bed, standing up and dressing himself quickly. She stared after him in utter disbelief. No—no! This couldn’t be happening.

“Kiernan, please,” she begged him as she reached for the covers, scrabbling to pull them up over her body. Though he had just seen every inch of her body, taken her in ways that nobody else ever had before, she suddenly felt as though she couldn’t stand to be exposed like this, as though he could see a part of her she did not want him to. He was turning his back on her, walking away from her, and her head spun with hurt and confusion as she tried to piece together what she had done.

Before she could so much as speak another word, though, he strode for the door. Pausing for a moment, he turned to look back at her, and his face, to her horror, was written with regret. A thousand words bubbled to her tongue, but none of them could escape before he stepped out of the door and left her there, in the dark, all alone, wondering what had just happened, and if it had all been some kind of terrible dream.

Though she knew even the deepest depths of her subconscious mind that she could never have invented something so perfect.

Kiernan made his way back towards his quarters, his mind reeling, a sickness twisting in his stomach. The whole time, all he could think of was the look that she had given him before he had walked out of the door and left her behind.

How could he have done something so foolish? All this time, he had been able to keep his distance from her—well, maybe not as much as he should have, but at least he had not taken her purity from her completely. Everything that had happened between them, up until tonight, wouldn’t have been the kind of thing that might put another man off marrying her, if she kept it to herself. But now? Now, he had taken her. He had consummated their union. There was no going back now, no chance at annulment, no way for him to convince himself that this was all a game to get further into the Aitken Keep. She was his wife, and he her husband. They were partners, having come together in the most intimate way they could.

Nothing he could do would change that.

He had only left her there because he could not trust himself to stay around her any longer. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if he remained in her presence, he would be drawn to do the same thing again. The way her body had felt against his, the softness of it, how she yielded beneath his touch. Even now, as he tried to close off that very line of thought, he wished he could go back to her and do it again. He wanted to lose himself to her body, to her kiss, to her touch, her softness and sweetness, her innocence, matched against his harshness.

But even those thoughts made him feel as though he was betraying the clan. He had told his men, assured them, that he knew what he was doing, and they had trusted him—at least, enough to allow him to continue, though he could scarcely imagine that many of them would have stood up against him. He had intended for this marriage to serve as a way to open the doors to the Aitken clan, a clan who had defied his father despite his best efforts, but now… now, it was as though everything he had worked for was crumbling around him.

What would his father have thought of him if he had known that he had been with a part of the Aitken family? Of course, Mary was no Aitken by blood, but Arran had spoken to her and protected her as though she were. And now, Kiernan had given her a closeness he knew he could not take back, a passion that would never be erased from his mind…

And he had little idea of where that left him.

He reached his quarters and stepped inside, the air suddenly feeling cold as he imagined her in her bed, alone. How hurt she had seemed when he had walked away from her. She was just a young woman, she’d never known the closeness that she had shared with him that night. Now, their first time would be irrevocably tied with the memory of him walking away from her when she had wanted him to stay. No matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried, he knew he could not undo it.

He lowered himself onto the edge of his bed, and put his head in his hands. He knew he could not undo what had been done, and he knew little of what it would cause next. But he was sure that the harm he had caused tonight would come back to haunt him.

That the look in her eyes wouldn’t leave his mind tonight, even in sleep.