Once Upon a Plaid (14 page)

I hate you.
She had to. She owed it to William to free him.

Then she twirled away as the dance required, only to be captured by Will and turned in his arms again. They moved together, floating in time with the delicate music. Then at the melody’s climax, Will lifted her high with hands on her waist and turned her in a slow circle as if she weighed nothing.

She couldn’t help herself. It was like flying. Katherine tipped her head back and closed her eyes. Then he lowered her, close to his body, so that hers slid along his, every muscle, every bulge, every bit of her straining to fit with every bit of him. When her toes finally touched the ground, he didn’t release her.

Their breathing hitched from exertion. Katherine could feel Will’s heart pounding and knew he felt hers as well. Without a word, without asking, because they both knew he had every right, Will bent to press his lips to her exposed neck.

She couldn’t bring herself to even think
Go away
.

—From “The Twelve Days of Christmas”

 

 

 

—An observation from Nab,
fool to the Earl of Glengarry

Chapter Sixteen

Katherine’s skin tasted lightly of salt and warm woman. She melted against him, soft and pliant. That prickly, temperamental standoffishness was completely gone. She was no longer a rigid, saintlike touch-me-not.

He had his Kat back again.

She arched into him.

Willing. Shyly enthusiastic, even. God help him, he hoped she was already as wet and eager as she seemed to be because he didn’t know how long he could wait.

When he kissed her, she kissed him back. Not the desperate, “give-me-a-child-or-I-die” kisses that had characterized their lovemaking since losing Stephan. These kisses were gentle, almost questioning. As if she were trying to rediscover who he was by exploring his mouth. He let her, though it cost him dear to hold back.

Still, he couldn’t keep his hands from being wanderers, sliding over her, feeling every curve, every dip. He was tinglingly aware of her in a way he hadn’t been for a long time. He knew this woman’s body, but now he reveled in every remembered crease and angle.

But he noted a few differences from his mental version of Kat too. Her hips were a little wider, her breasts a little smaller. No matter. She was his. He felt very proprietary about every bit of her. Protectiveness swelled in his chest. He could see the dark shadows of her nipples, hard and straining against the thin linen of her shift.

He bent to take one into his mouth, sucking in her taut nub and the shift and the sweet lavender, the herb with which she freshened all her clothing, in a glorious mouthful. Over time, lavender had come to be ingrained on her skin. The fragrance was her. Now he knew what it tasted like, all green and minty with a hint of apple sweetness.

When he finally drew back, he continued to tease the tip of her breast through the shift, letting the linen scrape her charged flesh. Even if she’d been naked, the bedchamber was too dim for him to make out the color of her nipples. It didn’t matter. He knew they were a dark berry shade.

They’d been light pink when he married her, but after Stephan, even though she never gave the child suck, the areola around each tip had darkened. It wasn’t only physical things about Katherine that had changed.

She’d stopped dallying in their love play, always anxious to rush ahead to the final event that might result in a child.

But now she surprised him when she stooped to slide her hands under his kilt, up his thighs and then came back to stand on tiptoe for another kiss with her fingers fluttering over his groin.

Teasing. Playful.

His leg muscles went rock hard. His cock was already there. She fondled him, cupping his bag. Lord, he’d missed that, the way she’d take hold of him and stroke him, intent on pleasuring him instead of demanding he serve her and make a child because the moon was right and some old midwife had told her it was the most propitious time in her cycle for conceiving and it had to be now or never.

Of course, she’d kept him at bay for the last four months trying to keep from losing her most recent pregnancy, so he’d begun to look back at those days when she demanded he perform like a stallion with longing. He’d almost forgotten what it was like to make love to his wife simply because he wanted to.

It had been long enough for him to forget other things as well. William raised one of her arms and kissed along the crease of her elbow. He’d forgotten the small mole that hid there in the crook of her arm. He gave it a soft kiss.

“I love ye,” he whispered.
Every bit of ye,
he finished silently because his mouth was busy elsewhere. He kissed her temples, her cheeks, along her jaw to her ear.

She made a helpless little noise of need when he took her earlobe between his lips and gave it a nip. It almost made up for the fact that she didn’t say she loved him back.

He couldn’t remember the last time she’d said it.

Then she distracted him by tugging at the buckle of his belt. Katherine groaned into his mouth with frustration when she couldn’t seem to undo the catch.

“Let me before ye break it, woman,” he said with a chuckle as he undid the belt that held his plaid at his waist. After that, it was a simple matter to let the great kilt fall to the floor. He pulled his shirt over his head to stand before her bare as an egg save for his stockings and boots.

He took her in his arms again, rucking up her shift in handfuls so he could pull it over her head between one kiss and the next. Her mouth was so sweet he almost couldn’t bear to release it for the brief slice of time it took to slip off her shift. Once he got it off her, he tossed the shift into the corner.

Skin met skin. Oh, the feel of her, all soft and smooth. He’d never let her go.

Love me, Kat.
The words repeated in his brain like a song he was unable to find the end of.
I’ve loved ye since I dipped your braid in that wax. Dinna fret about making a child. Let me be enough for ye. Ye’re enough for me.

His heart sang the words, but his tongue couldn’t bend around them. Once spoken, words were chancy things. If he said them aloud, they’d hang in the air between him and Kat forever, never to be called back. Even though he meant them consolingly, they might send her down the path of melancholy over her childlessness again.

Or worse, she might decide he wasn’t enough.

He deepened their kiss and palmed her bum, lifting her against him. To his joy, she hooked her legs around his waist. Suddenly he didn’t need her to say anything.

He began backing her toward the bed.

She tore her mouth from his. “Not yet.”

God’s Teeth, if not now, when?
He swallowed back his oath and spat out a single word. It was all he could trust his voice with.

“Soon?”

Even that came out like a growl, rough with desire.

“As soon as ye take off your boots, William Douglas. We canna have ye soilin’ the linen now, can we?”

 

 

“Now?” Katherine gasped. Every muscle in her body strained with the effort of holding back. In the early days of their marriage, William had learned to play her body with a skill to rival the most celebrated harpist. His touch was light when he wanted to tease, determined and insistent when she needed it to be, and gentle when he was drawing out the final ebbing pulses of her release.

Even so, once their lovemaking had become more about making a bairn than shared joy, Katherine had been too tense for pleasure. More than once, she’d pretended. She wasn’t sure William could tell the difference. If he’d known she had only played at her release, he didn’t confront her or ask what was amiss.

Once again, they hid from each other, cloaked by silence.

It had seemed like a small lie that first time. What could it hurt that she feigned a release that didn’t seem likely to come? Then the small lie blossomed into a large one. In a very short time, she found she couldn’t tell him what she needed from him, even when he asked. After awhile, he stopped asking. It became one more wedge to divide them, one more brick in the wall they’d erected between them.

This time, however, he’d told her to try
not
to come.

And perversely, she’d never been wound so tight. She danced along the edge of release, advancing, then retreating, just like in the volta.
Come here. Go away.

She ached—blood, bones, and womb—she ached so intensely, she feared she’d shatter like a brittle bit of crockery if he didn’t let her come soon.

“Now?” she whimpered.

“Soon, love, soon.”

She drew in a deep breath but his warm musky scent shoved her closer to the edge.
Go away
. William had said to wait and she was determined to be honest this time. She was going to try.

Then Will climbed atop her. Balancing his weight on his elbows, he entered her. He drove his full length home in a single, slow thrust. She closed her eyes as his thick shaft slid into her.

Katherine expanded to receive him, stretched taut. It had been so long since she’d held him like this, she’d almost forgotten what it was like to be filled with him. She teetered on the edge of release, fighting the downward spiral in her belly.

Go away
, she ordered her impending climax. Will had a plan for them. She was determined to make it work as he wanted this time.

William held himself motionless, willing her to regain control, but in her heightened state of awareness she felt the blood pounding through him like a second heart between her legs.

He was as primed as she.

Why had he not released them both?

He cradled her cheeks with his palms and searched her face, his eyes feral in the dimness. Slowly, he lowered his mouth to hers and began a rhythm with his tongue to echo the thrust of his hips. She rose to meet him, desperation making her sob into his mouth.

The wanting was so keen, a sliver’s edge from pain.

Did he know she’d lied before? Was that why he wouldn’t let her body go now?

Doubt made her release sidle farther away.

Whether he said so or not, she was ready to welcome her bliss, but pleasure retreated again. She turned her head to pull her mouth from his. “I can’t—”

“Dinna fret about if ye can or can’t. Dinna try so hard. Just be, lass.”

He knew.
He knew she’d pretended. And he’d pretended all along that he didn’t know. A lie for a lie. That’s what they’d come to.

“Now, lass. I know ye want to,” he finally said. “Come to me when ye will.”

Of course, she wanted to. With every fiber of her being, she longed to feel those deep contractions pounding around him. She wanted to squeeze him tight without consciously working those little muscles, for her body to claim his and not let go. She ached for pleasure to crackle like heat lightning along her limbs, for the force of her release to make her body buck under his.

But instead, her pinnacle slipped farther away with each thrust. She tried. Her body tensed with concentration as she tried to call back the moment, back to the place where she’d been about to tumble into the waiting abyss and didn’t care because William was there to catch her. Bliss would buoy her up.

But she couldn’t find it.

Will was saying something in rhythm with his thrusts, but his voice faded in sibilant echoes and she couldn’t hear him. She knew he was right there, pumping in and out of her body, but she felt as if he were a long way off.

She was alone. And she couldn’t find her way back to him.

Her moisture began to dry up. What had begun as pleasure was turning quickly into burning pain.

A small sob escaped her throat. She didn’t mean for it to. She meant to lie very still and bear up until he was finished because she loved him. She didn’t want to hurt him by admitting her body wouldn’t rouse to him.

William evidently could hear the difference between a sob of lust and a sob of pain. He stopped, pulled out, and rolled off her. Losing him so suddenly made her feel as empty as when Stephan had been taken from her arms that last time.

Will lay beside her, staring up into the thatch of the ceiling, not touching her. His chest heaved. The air was musky with sex, pregnant with unfulfilled promises.

“Lord, Katherine, ye’re tearing my guts out.” He flung a well-muscled arm up and across his eyes. “Can ye not bear me at all?”

It wasn’t that. “Of course, I can bear ye,” she murmured.

“Ye just dinna love me any longer.”

She loved him fine. She loved him too much. It was all her fault, she wanted to say. He did everything just as she liked. Even making her wait had added so much wicked anticipation to their lovemaking. Until she had too much time to think instead of just feel.

Once she realized he’d caught her in the lie, nothing would go right. Her body didn’t work properly. Not to make love to her husband. Not to carry his child.

She owed him that annulment. It was the best thing she could do for him. She couldn’t tell him how she loved him or he’d never agree to it.

After this, surely he’d agree to send a request to Rome. That deadly silence was back. It hung between them, rotten as a cancerous growth. She reached over to lay a tentative hand on his shoulder, to soften what she was about to say. He startled as if she were an adder poised to strike and scrambled from the bed.

“William, I—”

“Not a word, woman,” he growled as he pulled his shirt over his head. “It took ye too long to answer. Whatever ye might say now will no doubt be a lie. God knows our marriage bed has been.”

She flinched at the anger in his tone.

He wrapped his plaid around his waist. He didn’t take time to pleat it, but simply strapped on the belt to hold it in place. He plopped into the only chair in the chamber and, with a grunt of effort, tugged on his boots. Then he stood. The room was too dim for her to make out his expression, but pain radiated from his stiff stance.

“I’ll trouble ye no more, my lady.” Then he turned and disappeared down the spiral stairwell.