Claimed by a Laird (16 page)

“What?” Anna shook her head in disbelief. The man certainly
had a flair for the dramatic. “That’s absurd, Galen. No one would go to war
over me.”

“I would.”

His words fell between them like a lead weight. Her lashes
flew up and she stared at him in silence. The fire threw menacing shadows
across his face. Was he serious? Strange, frightening emotions stirred in her
heart.

“But…but…” She shook her head as if she could dislodge them.
“But you barely know me. And the Campbells don’t even know I exist.”

“But they could find out about you,” he insisted with an
impatient sigh. “The feud with the Gowries began because my great-great uncle
took one of their lasses slated to marry an heir to the throne.”

Anna furrowed her brow in exasperated bewilderment. Is that
what all of this hatred was about—some Gowrie hottie sashayed past a MacAirth
who then thought it was perfectly cool to take off with a prince’s bride?

“You people are insane!” She flattened her palms against his
chest to push him away.

He remained immobile.

“Let go of me!” she demanded, attempting to twist her body
away from him and pull her arms free.

“I am not through with you.” The fingers of his left hand
dug into the flesh of her arm. “If you are who you say you are and the Campbell
clan does not know of your existence, then why are your eyes that of the
Campbell laird?”

Stunned, she halted her struggles and stared up at him.
“I-I-I don’t know. I guess he might be an ancestor of mine or something.”

The scar on Galen’s cheek twitched and his other hand
squeezed her jaw.

“But that was eight hundred years ago,” she rushed her
words, desperate to expel the darkness that had settled in his eyes. “Um, I
mean, I won’t be born for nearly eight hundred years.”

Anna sighed in exasperation over her confusion. She sounded
like an idiot.

Galen paused and the tension left his face. One corner of
his mouth turned up in a grin as he released his hold on her jaw.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. “I still can’t get my head around all
of this.”

“No, Annie, I am sorry.” He trailed his rough fingers across
her cheek and down her neck, her skin quivering. “I should never have
frightened you like that.”

He flattened his palms against her back and slid them down
to cup her buttocks, gently kneading each fleshy cheek. Her eyes fluttered
closed and she leaned her forehead against his chest, longing to give in to the
heady sensations of his touch.

Her fearful, logical mind warred with her aching, desperate
body. Perhaps if she kept him talking, she could pull herself out of the web of
lust he wove long enough to regain control of her senses. “What did you mean by
saying you’re keeping me?” she tentatively asked, her hands taking on a life of
their own as they slid up and down his biceps.

“Just that, lass.”

He shifted and his rigid cock pressed insistently against her
belly.

She gulped, not daring to move. “I don’t understand. You
can’t just keep me.”

He placed a soft kiss on top of her head. “I can and I am.”

His strange, sexist suggestion that she was no different
from his horse or dog infuriated her. Determined to set the man straight, she
shook her head and pushed on his chest. “No, you can’t. I don’t care what you
Medieval barbarians normally do. I am a woman of the twenty-first century and I
will not be ‘kept’ as though I’m nothing more than some pet.”

Galen loosened his grip and allowed her to push him away,
his eyebrows raised in genuine surprise. “It is a compliment to be chosen as a
laird’s woman.”

Her breath caught in her chest and she stared wordlessly at
him. Was the guy completely demented? Panic welled in her throat and all she
could do was shake her head. How did she get herself into this mess? She barely
knew the guy and already he was claiming some sort of right to her as his
woman? Why did she attract such possessive, arrogant men?

“You will be my wife,” he stated with authority as he
reached for her hand.

Wife? Where on earth did that psychotic idea come from?

Anna yanked her hand back, forgetting her nakedness as the
Graham Castle tour guide’s speech about Galen marrying an Anna Campbell
replayed in her mind. She shook her head in agitation. Regardless of the
century, she wasn’t ready for any of this—marriage, babies, a household. She
barely knew the guy and, the last time she checked, she was not a good enough
judge of a man’s character to make up for that fact.

The memory of James Gowrie’s smiling face as he leaned down
to kiss her after promising to love, honor, cherish and protect her flew
through Anna’s mind, quickly followed by the shocking pain of his fist slamming
into her face.

“I am not marrying anyone!” she shouted in near hysteria.
“No one, not even you, Galen, Laird of MacAirth, can make me do something I do
not want to do!”

“Come here, Annie,” he commanded, his jaw clenched.

She shook her head again. It was high time this man learned
she was not some submissive thirteenth-century woman, eager to do his bidding
because she thought herself to be his inferior.

Galen grabbed her by the waist and crushed her lips with
his. The kiss was savage and intense, sending a shock wave through her. She shuddered,
her resolve and anger melting away as the heat of desire flushed through her
veins.

Anna whimpered, suddenly weak and confused. She had to put
an end to this before she got hurt. Before she got pregnant. Or worse—before he
betrayed her.

“You are mine, Annie,” he gruffly whispered against her
lips.

Her name had never been uttered in her presence with such
raw passion before and it unraveled the last remnants of her will. Throwing her
arms around his neck, she pressed her open lips to his and a deep, guttural
moan escaped his throat.

He cupped her buttocks and lifted her feet off the floor,
pressing his cock into the softness of her abdomen as he carried her to the
bed. He leaned her onto the mattress, allowing her legs to dangle over the
side.

“Mine,” he whispered as he fell upon her and kissed the base
of her neck. He dragged his tongue up her neck to her ear. “I am claiming you
as my woman.”

“No,” she breathlessly groaned as he sucked her earlobe
between his lips. “You shouldn’t say that.”

“You are mine.” He traced her jaw with his tongue and kissed
her chin as he cupped one of her breasts, his thumb searing a trail across her
swollen nipple.

Heat rippled from her breast to her clit. “I get to decide
that, not you,” she protested, grabbing his face and bringing his lips to hers.

His lips parted and he slanted his face over hers, devouring
her mouth. The warmth of his lips was intoxicating and the desire to protest
against his one-sided life-altering decision slipped away. She thrust her
tongue into his mouth with fevered abandon.

Desperately needing his warmth against her naked body, she
skidded her hands down Galen’s back and seized the hem of his leine, pulling it
toward his shoulders.

He broke the kiss to assist her, yanking the garment over
his head and tossing it to the side. He showered kisses along her jaw to her
ear and then playfully nibbled her earlobe.

Her skin tingled beneath his breath on her neck. She dragged
her lips across his cheek, relishing in his earthy masculine scent surrounding
her. “Galen—”

“Enough talking, woman,” he grumbled. “You will cease this
need to discuss your worries whenever I wish to bed you.”

Her head wanted to argue with his casual dismissal of her
worries, but her heart was quicker on the draw. A small but joyful laugh
escaped her throat and she pressed a smile against his cheek. She had done
something similar to delay the inevitable when he began making love to her in
the tent a few days before.

Making love.
She resisted the urge to scoff at that
term. This was, after all, nothing more than sex, right? It was her body, not
her heart that betrayed her every time this man touched her.

Galen stood to remove his breeches and then tossed them
aside. His gaze roved over her breasts and down to her hips, sending shivers of
lust through her core even as an unwelcome heat of embarrassment over being on
full display for him surged through her skin. As if they had a mind of her own,
her hands moved to cover her breasts and mons just as she snapped her legs
shut.

He grabbed her forearms and pushed them against the bed as
one of his knees separated her thighs. “It is a shame to hide such beauty.”

“Beauty?” she repeated in wonder, her nipples aching as he
dropped his gaze to them. Did he really think she was beautiful?

He nodded and dragged his hands down her arms to her chest,
cupping one full breast in each hand and kneading her flesh. “You must have
cast a spell on me, love. You seem to get more beautiful every time I look at
you. It doesn’t even matter to me that you are a Campbell. You could be the
very daughter of the Campbell of Maree and I would not care.”

Anna’s heart melted. She slid her palms over his biceps to
his massive shoulders and smiled. “Enough talking,” she whispered.

Vindication filled Galen as the expression in Anna’s eyes
moved from clouds of confusion and distrust to the soft glow of arousal. It
irked him something fierce how the woman still treated his affections with such
suspicion. He had taken her into his home, cared for her while she was ill,
drew upon the patience and strength of the saints nightly as he slept beside
her during her recovery and offered to take her as his wife despite the fact
she bore the name of one of his enemies. Which, of course, she had hidden from
him. Had he not proven himself to her?

She squirmed beneath him and he grinned with satisfaction.
His arrogance in finally attaining her surrender fell away as his attention
dropped to her breasts, flushed and topped with hard, rosy nipples just
beckoning for him to taste. He lowered his face to her chest, inhaling the
sweet, floral scent of her moist skin. He dragged his lips across one nipple,
eliciting an arousing whimper from her lips. Using his tongue, he lazily
outlined it while brushing his thumb back and forth across the other. She arched
toward him and he sucked the rosy bud into his mouth. Gently holding the base
between his teeth, he flicked his tongue back and forth over her honeyed
nipple, slowly at first and then faster.

Anna groaned and threaded the fingers of one hand through
his hair while she traced his shoulder and arm with the fingers of her other
hand. The light, butterfly touch sent tremors through his skin and he rubbed
his painfully hard cock back and forth against her velvety thigh.

Releasing the swollen bud from his mouth, he licked and
sucked a path toward the other, slurping it in between his lips while his thumb
and forefinger gently rolled the first nipple into an even stiffer peak.

Her lips sprinkled light kisses across his brow and he
continued to flick her nipple with his tongue while he explored the soft flesh
of her hips. She bucked against him, rubbing her moistening folds against his
thigh. The alluring, sweet scent of her arousal tickled his nose and sent a
surge of fire through his cock. Dizzy, he pushed her thighs farther apart and
dragged his lips from her breast to her neck.

She whimpered and pressed her soft lips to his shoulder,
sliding her palm down his chest and his stomach. His muscles tightened beneath
her touch. She meant to stroke him.

He put his hand on hers to stop her, afraid he couldn’t
control himself and would come before he had the chance to claim her. But
silken fingers were too inviting. Her tongue flicked his earlobe and then she
kissed his jaw, dragging her lips across his scar.

Ah, to hell with it. Instead of fighting her, he guided her
to his rigid, straining shaft. Her delicate fingers wrapped around him and
slowly, agonizingly, she stroked him from tip to base. His cock surged and he
grunted breathlessly against her throat, nearly forgetting his desire to taste
her before ramming into her.

His blood pounded in his ears. He breathed deeply for
several moments, squeezing his eyes shut against the sweet torture of her mere
touch. His need to taste her, to give her pleasure before he took his, rushed
to the forefront and he unwrapped her hand from his cock.

“No,” he murmured, grazing his mouth across her sweet,
supple lips.

Confused and trembling with desire, Anna pressed her lips
against the corner of his mouth. “Did I do something wrong?”

His laugh, deep and sensuous, rumbled in his chest. He shook
his head and pressed his lips to her neck.

“Then why—”

“Because you are not ready.”

It was her turn to laugh. She caressed his cheek and drew
his hand between her legs. Rocking her hips, she pressed her wet, aching folds
against his heated palm. “I am more than ready,” she whispered against his ear,
sliding her tongue around the edge. “I want you, Galen.”

He seized her hips, his fingers digging into her flesh. “I
want to taste you first.”

Her neck flushed under his breath and quickly shifted to
goose bumps as he lifted off her and slid his lips down between her breasts to
her stomach.

Anna’s breathing turned shallow as he knelt on the floor
between her knees. He slipped his firm palms up underneath her buttocks and
dragged her to the edge of bed and kissed each thigh.

“Annie, look at me,” he demanded.

Her entire body burned as his breath caressed her throbbing
slit. She arched her back, barely hearing his command. When she met his gaze, a
sharp pulsation surged through her clit as an intense fire gathered behind his
eyes. She whimpered, writhing beneath his gaze.

Without dropping his stare, he slowly traced one finger
around her wet opening and then slipped it between her slick folds. Her core
contracted around him, shivering. She parted her lips and groaned, opening
herself wider for him. He slid a second finger inside and thrust them in and
out as he lowered his lips to her clit.