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“You used to be.” His chuckle reverberated in the air. “Eagerly.”
Eager? No. Famished! Up to this very minute.
“Not anymore.” And she wondered when she would stop lying. It became tiresome after a while.
“Really? Your body sent a whole different message.” The remark came dripping in smugness.
“You read me wrong.” She contradicted. Another lie.
“Did I?” The question came rhetorical as his tone implied he had the answer.
Her face received his large hand, callused, firm, warm. The desire to move her head and kiss it nearly undid her. Her breath hitched, her eyes bulged unseeing. A blunt thumb found her lower lip and caressed it. Her lashes weighed down; the need to suck that thumb in her mouth ached. And ached some more.
Tartan touched nightdress as he came closer. He was going to kiss her. One of those delicious kisses—his calamitous specialty.
She mustered the rest of her feeble strength, drew in air and steeled her voice. “Stay away from me.” It came out sure and definite. Cold.
The large hand fell away. She sighed relieved. No, not relieved. There would never be relief. The ache still throbbed in her. Endless. At least, she succeeded in putting distance between them.
So much distance that the chamber door opened and closed. He left her alone. And lonely.
A lonely as brutal as it would eternally be.
CHAPTER THREE
A night spent sitting on a bench by the fire did not predict a very fresh day, Drostan thought as he saddled his horse before sunrise. Neither did the frustrated desire which had coursed through him from the moment his wife opened this blasted front door. To tangle with her in his sleep proved to be fatal. A fatal weakness he seemed unable to get rid of, damn it!
This rekindling of his body with hers compared to inebriation with the finest whisky. The coarse scent of soap on her silky skin merely heightened his already sharpened senses. His hunger for her escalated tenfold instead of dousing. She was leaner, but her breasts became more voluptuous and her hips more enticingly rounded with childbirth.
His bairn. His family. His woman!
Her response to him so much more...heated. She might deny it if she wanted, but there was no contradicting its intensity. Keener, sultrier. More urgent. As if these years apart had affected her, too. Because it did him. More than he cared to admit. To find her here bared the depth of it.
During her absence, he had tried to dampen the void her disappearance caused in him. The manor’s daily chores transformed in his refuge. A way to forget. A way not to seek answers. Or to seek her. The moment he had first set eyes on her, she spoiled him for other women. The possibility of sharing his body with anyone but her disgusted him. No solace for him, no. Just loneliness and unsolved questions.
Her rejection implied he must stay away. To accomplish it would mean torture of the most refined cruelty. If only he stopped wanting her. If only he brought himself to eliminate the memories. Their time together engraved itself in his brain, though, minute by torturous minute.
One thing he should not ignore. Drostan would have to decide what he would do about Ewan, his heir. The bairn must come to the McKendricks. He needed training on the duties he should carry out when he inherited. He required protection and guidance. Impossible to obtain those in a crumbling cottage with precarious conditions. On this, he would not compromise.
“Papa.” The Laird turned to a yawning Ewan.
“Good morning, son.” He suspected Freya would not allow the boy out this early. He would usher him inside before he left.
“Are you leaving?” The rising sun illuminated his tousled hair and the cool breeze dishevelled it even more.
“I need to, mo bhalach, my boy.” He fastened the saddle buckle. “I would like to stay longer with you, but I have duties waiting for me.” The wee one must recognise his father cared for him.
“I want to go with you.” At this, Drostan straightened and stared at an identical pair of eyes.
“Your mama would not allow it.” He explained.
“Bring her, too.” He rubbed his eyes.
“I cannot.” Air exhaled forcefully through his nostrils. If things were as easy as a child imagined them.
“I do not want to be without mama.” The sadness in his cherubic face tore him in two. “But I would like to see your cottage.”
“I live in a manor.” What his bairn asked was to have both his parents together, his behaviour clear on that.
