A Kiss for a Highlander (10 page)

It had been a difficult day. Shaking off Sir Clive had been no easy task, and when Martha had attempted to remonstrate with Fraser for putting himself in danger by going on a fishing expedition, he had been unconcerned.

“Keep your heid, crabbit one,” he had said. “What’s for ye’ll no go by ye.”

Martha was tired. And the very large, very beautiful reason why she had not had any sleep the night before was not helping her mood by smiling down at her and being very Scottish in response to her fears. She felt her lips purse and her eyes narrow.

“If by that you mean ‘what is meant to be will be’, I have never heard a sillier utterance.” She slammed down the book she had been holding. “It is one thing to deal with danger as it comes, but it is quite another to actually court it, which is what you seem to enjoy doing.”

He had regarded her in surprise. Then, as he made a movement toward her with his hands held out, she had whirled away angrily and stomped upstairs to allow her temper the luxury of a few minutes’ indulgence alone. If the redcoats took him it would be quite his own fault. If the redcoats took him! Dear God, the very thought of it was unbearable.

She crept back down the stairs some minutes later and set about preparing the evening meal. She was aware of Fraser casting one or two confused glances in her direction, but she kept her head down. Heaven forbid that he should see her expression and know her thoughts.

When evening fell and they occupied their usual fireside seats, Martha decided that the best way to quell the desperate restlessness that threatened to overwhelm her sanity would be to darn sheets. Even the ones that didn’t need darning. She had just arranged her sewing basket next to her chair when Fraser, who had been slumped in his chair, gazing moodily into the fire with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, rose abruptly to his feet. Martha looked up in surprise, thinking he must be intending to go out. Perhaps to see Jack and discuss Sir Clive’s revelations. Before she could speak, however, he had come to stand over her.

“To hell with this.” He reached down and clamped his hands either side of her waist, lifting her from her seat. Sheets, darning and sewing basket tumbled across the floor in disarray. He carried her to his own chair, sitting back down and holding her in his lap. Martha was stunned into silence at the unexpectedness of his actions. He was so virile and commanding—all the things that had made her afraid of men. In reality, she knew now that what she had been afraid of was life. Yet with Fraser, she was fiercely attracted to the very masculinity that had scared her for so long. She breathed deeply to halt the quivering of her body. Her heart beat wildly when he raised his fingers and loosened the pins that held her hair, tugging it free so that it tumbled about her shoulders. One big hand gripped the back of her neck and drew her face down to his. When their lips met, she spread her palms wide over the broad muscles of his shoulders, exulting in the knowledge that his big, strong,
masculine
body was hers to touch as she chose.

With a low murmur of satisfaction, he deepened the kiss. His tongue stroked the inside of her mouth. She tingled with desire…
every
part of her actually tingled. How had she reached the age of twenty-six without knowing it was possible to feel so alive?

Martha’s skirt fanned out over Fraser’s lap, and she moved so that she could kneel with her legs positioned either side of his solid thighs, the way she had done in the priest hole. She wanted to feel even closer to him. He held her there, rubbing the thick length of his erection against her, and the intimate contact made her shudder with shock and anticipation. His tongue was seducing her. Thoughts of the wanton nature of her behaviour crowded in on her, and she welcomed them. She wanted to be all the things she had been brought up to consider wrong. She wanted to be a hoyden. She needed to be the prim English maiden who was about to take this rough Scotsman into her bed and into her body.

Martha broke the kiss, pressing her forehead to his as her breath came in quick, short, shallow pants. Fraser, in comparison, seemed relaxed and in control. How could he stay so calm when her every breath was ragged with longing and excitement, constricting her lungs so tightly that she could scarcely breathe?

“Will we go upstairs now, lass?” His voice shook slightly and she realised he was not in control at all. He was just better at hiding it than she was. She nodded, and he rose to his feet, holding her in his arms. Martha relaxed in his hold, tucking her head into his shoulder. He carried her up the stairs and into his room, only setting her down on her feet once he had closed the door behind him.

“Ye’re quite sure about this, lass? Last night was in heat. I’ll understand if ye tell me it was just once. I’ll no ask again.” His mouth was only a fraction of an inch away as he asked the question, and she rose on the tips of her toes, pressing her lips to his in answer. The kiss was soft and tender. She actually began to smile against his lips.

“Last night
was
in heat, Fraser…and that heat is still in me. If anything, it burns more fiercely now. ”

Fraser’s arms slid around her waist, bringing her back into the comfort of his embrace. His tongue traced the fullness of her lips before parting the seam. His lips were persuasive, his mouth firm, his tongue seductive. Moving his hands lower to cup her buttocks, he lifted her intimately against him so that she could feel again how urgently he wanted her.

The kiss instantly burgeoned into something more compelling and exploratory, bending Martha to its will. She clung to Fraser because she knew from experience that her legs would no longer hold her. Taking his time, he peeled away the layers of her clothing and carried her, naked and wanting, to his bed.

She turned on her side, watching him as he undressed. His skin was bronzed by the light of the fire, his chest sculpted to perfection, and the rest of him… Her throat constricted. He was so big. How had she taken him into her body? Even as the thought occurred to her, she reached out to touch him, desire overcoming her fear. His eyes dropped down to her hand when the tips of her fingers brushed his abdomen. Her heart twisted into a knot and seemed to lodge in her throat. Her hand paused on its downward journey, and she lay back again. Fraser joined her on the bed.

“I thought it last night. You are so small and I’m, well…” He glanced down and she followed the direction of his eyes.

“I noticed. Then and now.” Her mind went back to the night she had seen his nakedness as he lay at the foot of the cellar stairs. Even in its flaccid state, the size of his cock had imprinted itself on her memory. Now it was gloriously rampant and erect. Perhaps it was just as well she hadn’t seen him last night. If she had, she might have convinced herself that her body would not be able to accommodate anything so large.

“Don’t worry, lass. I will always make sure you are ready for me.”

She didn’t know what that meant, but she trusted him. He came to her, and Martha gasped as he parted her legs and bent his head between them. His lips brushed her intimately in a kiss as gentle as a sigh. There was nothing gentle, however, about the fiery-hot pain that stabbed at her core in response. His tongue was slow and lazy, sweeping over her in long strokes, pausing to flick her quivering bud until she was squirming wildly and clawing at the sheets, before resuming its leisurely exploration of the folds of her sex. He licked just inside her vagina, then drove his tongue deep inside her in a hard, stabbing movement. Before Martha had time to gasp out his name, he was doing it all over again. Within minutes a wild climax was crashing through Martha’s body. Her back arched off the mattress, and she cried out, clinging to Fraser’s shoulders and shaking all over.

Fraser kissed her breasts, transferring her own juices from his mouth to her flesh as he moved over her. He pushed her thighs wider with his hips as he positioned himself at her entrance. The return of his lips to hers brought her own essence to her on his breath and tongue, and she was amazed at the erotic thrill of it. He lifted her knees apart and pushed them back almost to her shoulders. Finding her open and slippery, he groaned as he shifted his hips and pressed his tip into her. She knew instinctively that he was trying to hold back, but she was so wet that he drove his whole shaft straight in. Long and hard and deep and wonderful.

She sensed him straining to go with more care than the passionate firestorm between them demanded. As her body bucked beneath him, he began thrusting in and out of her with such force that she cried out from both pleasure and exquisite torture. His cock slammed deep, and he fucked her hard so that their bodies bounced against the mattress, the springs squeaking, the headboard knocking. He picked up the pace even further, and Martha wrapped her legs around his waist, clenching her muscles in time with his thrusts to draw him as deep as she could. Whatever he could give her, she wanted more. His stubble rasped her soft flesh, his breath came in hot gasps and the muscles in his back tensed under her fingers. As he rammed himself wildly in and out of her, the exquisite friction heated her insides to the point where she felt she must be melting around him.

Fraser reached beneath her to grip her buttocks and lifted her so that he could open her further. A tormented groan escaped her. His thrusts became frantic in response, pushing them both further and harder, and she cried out incoherently, trying to tell him it was too much, but still not enough. His lips silenced her cries. He led her, drove her, guided her to ecstasy and claimed her, carrying her to that warm, delicious state in which every cell in her body sizzled and her internal muscles spasmed around him before finally relaxing in submission.

Fraser cried out with his own release, pulling out of her and dropping heavily onto her, kissing her forehead. Martha tried to speak, to catch her breath, but she couldn’t. When he had recovered his own breath, he moved his weight to her side.

“Stay here with me tonight,” he whispered, drawing her close against the comforting warmth of his body.

Chapter Ten

Martha normally woke at dawn, but the sun was much higher in the sky when she opened her eyes and took a moment to let the memory of the previous night wash over her. She was naked. A large, warm body was pressed up against her. A muscular arm was draped over her, the reddish-gold hairs catching the sunlight. One hand lightly claimed her breast.

Fraser had awoken her once in the night and made love to her again. Gone had been the hurried actions of their previous times. He had slipped into her from behind as she lay on her side, stroking her clitoris while pumping slowly and rhythmically against her buttocks until she was begging him for more, for harder, for faster. He was already awake, and the smile in his eyes as she turned to face him took her breath away.

“Good morning, crabbit one.” His teeth were sharp against her neck, and she with pleasure squirmed in his embrace.

“I never knew.” She watched his hand in fascination as he teased her nipple into a hardened peak.

“What did you not know?”

“That women could enjoy it,” she said, with a blush. “As a girl, I was told I must never let a man have his wicked way with me. That it must be tolerated and only then within the marriage bed.”

He lifted her face up to his, laughing in delight at her embarrassed expression. “No-one told you it would be your own wicked way too?” He took her hand and moved it down, wrapping her fingers around the thick girth of his shaft. “Yes, like you did when you seduced me in the priest hole. Up and down. Slowly.”

She nodded, moving her hand in time to the pace he had set. “So I thought it was only men who wanted it—” she gasped as he bent his head and bit her nipple, “—but I want you as much as you want me. And that is a revelation to me.” She looked down at his cock, observing the way it pulsed and grew in her hand. The sight of it sent a thrill of lust shimmering straight to an answering point in her own body.

“Faster now.” He covered her hand with his and increased the tempo.

“You must have bedded so many women.”

“No. Only one other woman before you, lass. And that one was my wife.”

He lifted her on top of him and, with his cock standing straight up from his body like a thick, proud flagpole, raised his hips and pushed himself up and into her.

Martha lay in Fraser’s arms and watched the dimming flames of the fire. The charred black wood splintered and broke apart as orange-red embers mingled with ash before swirling up through the brick chimney in a wave of smoke. Fraser’s lips brushed her neck and shoulders. After searing her body with passion, he was tender and sweet, so that every moment she spent in his arms was dreamlike. She loved holding and touching him and sleeping wrapped in his warmth after loving him, their body heat sealing their intimacy. Fraser told her he needed to feel her body against his. He wanted her close all the time.

He would wake her in the night with gentle kisses and whisper to her. Oh, the things he would say! Words about how good she felt around him, how hard she made him, what he wanted to do to her, how he could tell what she liked and which bits of her he wanted to taste, suck and lick next. Never in her life had she thought to hear a man express such wanting to her. Then, after he had taken her and driven her to a point just past ecstasy, he would hold her again and watch her face until she slept. But sometimes, just as slumber claimed her, she would see it again. That odd, unfathomable expression that troubled her.

Then Martha would wake as dawn touched the sky with wintry fingers, and it would be her turn to watch his face. When she did, she was pleased to see that Fraser slept deeply, with a smile of contentment on his beautiful lips.

“Will you tell me about your wife?” she asked tentatively one morning, when he opened his eyes.

“Aye, lass. I’d not expect you to give yourself so completely to me and then keep secrets from you. We were sixteen when we wed. Our fathers arranged the marriage. ’Tis the way of the clans. Her name was Kirsty and she was a pretty lass, but not strong, and life in the glens can be woeful hard. She could’nae get with child at first and that hurt her. In her heart and in her body. She thought she was letting me down. Finally, after we’d been wed five years, she gave birth to our son. He was a sickly wee lad, but a canny, trickit boy at the same time.” A slight, reminiscent smile touched his lips. Martha thought of his kindness to Harry and sharp fingers of sympathy and hurt reached inside her chest and twisted. He spoke of his family in the past tense.

“What happened to them?”

“I killed them.”

“No!” The word came out as a horrified gasp.

“Oh, you’re right to look so shocked.” The smile had changed now, it twisted his perfect lips into a bitter line. “But din’nae be afeared. I did’nae take a knife and cut their throats. What I did was just as bad. I neglected them when they needed me most, and because of my actions, they died.”

“I’m sorry.” There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.

He took her face in his hands and kissed her. “What if you and I should make a child, lass?”

“Well, I might not know much about these things, but I’ve noticed that you try not to…” She floundered, unsure of the right words.

“I try not to spill my seed inside you,” he said bluntly. “Aye, that’s true enough. It’s not a guarantee, though, and I’ll be honest with you, Martha, I’m not sure I’ve always made it in time.” He smiled into her eyes. “Ye drive me so mad with wanting I can’nae think straight when I’m inside you. But I will have to leave here soon, and I will be going into a battle I may not come out of.”

Martha winced. “Don’t speak of that.”

“I must, lass. I’ve not been fair to you. I needed you, and I took you. That was selfish.” He slid a hand down to stroke her flat stomach. “My bairn may be growing inside you already, and I can’t make you any promises. If it came to it, what would you do?”

“You didn’t take me, Fraser. We took each other. I knew there was no future for us. Yet I wanted this as much as you did. And, if it came to it, I would take good care of your child, never fear.”

“I don’t doubt it. You are a remarkable woman.”

“Until I met you I had never known what it was to feel…womanly.”

“Come closer to me, Martha Wantage. I’ll make you feel womanly all over again. Let me look at you. No, din’nae hide yourself from me, don’t be shy. We’ve gone past that stage now.”

In one deft move, he turned her onto her back. Deep in her core, her body blazed into instant arousal. She licked her lips as she met the steady lust-laden stare that pinned her to the bed. Fraser’s gaze on her body could draw out desires she never knew existed, and their eyes locked now in an unbreakable exchange. Martha remained transfixed by the passion in the golden depths of his eyes and the unspoken command that they held.

Responsive to his wishes, she allowed her knees to part slightly. A faint smile of approval touched his lips. She
wanted
him to smile at her like that, wanted that look in his eyes as he gazed at the most intimate parts of her body. Brazenly, she lifted her hips, parting her legs wider and displaying herself even more openly to his ravenous stare. The message was clear. She was his. Utterly. To do with as he wished. Her stomach muscles tightened with equal nervousness and pleasure.

“Och, you little beauty,” he said softly.
Beauty
. It was a word she had never thought to hear in connection with herself.

“Touch yourself for me,” he whispered. She blinked at the request, but she didn’t hesitate. Keeping her eyes on his, Martha traced her index and middle fingers up and down the folds of her swollen sex. Shuddering warmth radiated through her pelvis. Her breathing deepened. The urgency knotting in her belly became unbearably tight as she coaxed her own bud into plump, aching erectness.

“I need more, but I don’t know how,” she murmured.

“Let me help you.” He took hold of her hand, using his own fingers to instruct hers. Under his guidance, they moved together in a circular motion over her clitoris, sweetening and deepening the tingling feelings. “Better?”

Biting her lip, unable to speak, Martha nodded.

“For me too,” Fraser said, his eyes travelling from her face back down to her sex before he moved to fasten his lips over her nipple. Arching her back, she moaned as layer upon layer of glorious sensation washed over her. Every inch of her felt alive and sensuous and—yes, he had been right—
womanly
. This big, bold man knew her body better than she did, and she loved that knowledge as much as she loved the look in his eyes as he had watched her pleasure herself.

Martha was weak with desire now. Her eyes rolled and her eyelids fluttered closed. She wanted everything from Fraser. She wanted his lips, his tongue, his cock and his body. She wanted him on her and in her. She groaned out her need through clenched teeth. The feel of his muscular thigh and his rock-hard erection pressed against her while, at the same time, he tormented her nipple, making her senses spin. That masterful mouth licked and nibbled and deepened the first perfect tremors aroused by her own slowly circling fingers.

“Open your eyes. I want to look into them when you succumb,” he murmured, and she did, arching her back. The first spasms hit her in the same instant that Fraser rammed himself hard into her, driving her down into the mattress with his bulk. And Miss Martha Wantage, prim and proper governess, screamed his name over and over as her muscles clenched around him and her hands clasped his buttocks to draw him even deeper.

The stables at Delacourt Grange were built in three blocks around a central courtyard. Fraser, bored at having nothing to do, had gone there to offer his services to Tom. Jack, determined to regain the strength robbed from him by the redcoat’s bullet, had joined them. He was stripped to the waist, an ugly, very fresh scar marring the smooth sinews of his left shoulder. He lifted and lowered a bag of feed in his left hand. Harry, seated on a barrel, encouraged him to keep going and push his muscles further and harder. Harry’s dog, Beau had stretched himself out nearby and was gnawing contentedly on a marrowbone he had inveigled from Mrs. Glover.

“Sir Clive is with my father,” Harry said, pulling the corners of his mouth down and thrusting out his chest in a passable impression of their neighbour. “I’m sure he only came to see Rosie, but she hid in her bedchamber and told Mrs. Glover to say she couldn’t find her. He is boring my father with talk of the Jacobites.” Having struck up a close friendship with Fraser, Harry had promptly changed allegiance and become a devoted follower of Bonnie Prince Charlie. “He said the prince’s retreat has been marked by a series of skirmishes. Although he won the victory at Falkirk, King George has sent the Duke of Cumberland deep into Scotland in pursuit, and his tactics of haranguing the Jacobites seems to be paying off. Sir Clive said that both the prince and the duke were converging on a point close to Inverness. Is that not close to your home, Fraser?”

“It is indeed, lad. And if this nirlie wee feller who calls himself Lord St. Anton will just get a move on with these exercises, ’tis where I’ll be headed as soon as I’m able.”

“Damn it, man, stop your whining.” Jack laughed, showing even, white teeth. “I’m as weak as a kitten.”

“Give over. It is only a few short weeks since I took the king’s bullet out of you. These things take time,” Tom said.

“Och, get it lifted, Lord Jack or, so help me, I’ll gi’ ye such a skelp,” Fraser said, with considerably less sympathy.

Beau looked up and gave a single warning bark. Fraser followed the dog’s gaze. Sir Clive was standing to one side of the stable block, watching them and listening to their conversation. Unsure of how much he had heard, Fraser cursed under his breath, warning the others into silence. Jack bowed slightly in the visitor’s direction before slipping his shirt back over his head, and Harry rose to busy himself with the currycomb. Fraser grabbed up a bucket of feed.

“Will I see to Hercules now, Mister Drury?” he asked Tom, using the Derbyshire accent in which Martha had coached him.

He had a feeling it was already too late, however. From the look on his face, Fraser suspected that Sir Clive now knew exactly who “my cousin Jack” was. He was also sure that Sir Clive also now knew exactly what he must do to ensure that no dangerous Jacobite fugitive from justice would be able to upset his carefully laid plans for Miss Rosie Delacourt’s future. With a sinking feeling, he watched the pompous figure ride away.

“To the house with you, my fine lord,” he said, turning to Jack. “I’m thinking ’tis a few plans we’ll need to be making.”

When they entered the doors of Delacourt Grange, however, Rosie came hurtling down the stairs in a manner that would have earned her one of Martha’s sternest rebukes.

“Is it true? Harry told me Sir Clive saw you…that he knows who you are!”

Seeing the brief expression of anguish on Jack’s face, Fraser answered for him. “Aye, lass, it looks that way. We’ve lingered overlong and must soon be on our way.”

“You will go and leave me here all alone?” She turned to Jack, her expression forlorn.

“I suspect that will not be so for any great length of time, Rosie. I would be very surprised if you were not quickly married.”

She shook her head. “No, I will not marry.”

“Ah, Rosie. Don’t say that. I could not bear it if you should feel that way because of me.”

“I love you, Jack.” A little smile trembled on her lips, and not wanting to intrude, Fraser moved away. “You know that. And—loving you—how could I agree to marry another?”

“Would that I could ask you.”

“You can. ’Tis very easy. You have only to say the words.” She smiled up at him. “Ask me, Jack.”

He took her face between his hands with infinite gentleness. “Rosie, I promise that whatever comes our way, I will return and make you my wife. Will you pledge to wait for me?”

A single tear trickled down her cheek, but she continued to smile mistily up at him. “If it takes forever, Jack, I will wait for you,” she vowed.

“You have my word, Rosie. And I have yours.” Jack’s voice cracked on the words. “Now all I have to do is convince your father that I am not the worst villain in Christendom for my part in this. Then, Fraser, we will do as you wish and make our plans.”