“I’ll help you,” I crooned, hoping desperately he wouldn’t rise in anger when he realized that his letter was exposed, that I might have overstepped my boundaries.
He let me help him, allowing me to ease my arm through his, to hold him and guide him to bed. He was clad only in his underclothes, and his lean, muscled body was cool on the surface with a heated warmth under the skin. The dark of his hair and the dazzling light blue of his eyes created a delicious aesthetic contrast that I couldn’t help pausing to appreciate. He allowed me this, and seemed lost in a reverie of his own, gazing down at me as if I might have been an apparition. I pulled the furs down for him. When he didn’t react at all, still watching me with a glazed tenderness, I crawled under the covers, sliding over the wide expanse of the bed to my side of it. He followed me, covering us with the furs, lying to face me.
We lay like that for some time, just facing each other, with me touching his hair, smoothing it back from his face in a gentle, repetitive line. “’Tis all right,” I said softly, and he watched my mouth as I spoke, and my eyes. “You’re all right,” I said again, feeling somehow that he wanted to hear it. “I’ll watch over you.”
My fingers traced the line of his collarbone to the uneven surface of the scarred and sun-darkened skin of his chest. I touched the puckered knot of his mostpronounced scar, the one that curved in a pale crescent at the front of his left shoulder. It was long healed now but must have been a terrible injury.
“What happened to you?” I whispered.
He didn’t respond immediately. “My attention was diverted by the death of my own father,” came his low reply. “It was Campbell himself who speared me. Our fathers took each other’s lives that day. Campbell the younger is one of the most vicious men I’ve ever fought. ’Tis the only time I thought I might actually be taken in a fight. But it was not to be. Knox saved my life, right before I saved his.”
He spoke matter-of-factly, as though spearing, fighting and saving lives were something he did on a daily basis. Which I suppose it was. I knew him to be one of the most lethal warriors in all the Highlands. But there was sadness in his tone that was unmistakable.
“You miss your brothers.”
“Aye,” he said simply.
My careful exploration wandered lower, to the coiled muscles of his stomach. His hand reached to grab my wrist in a stronghold, drawing my hand away. “Stella,” he said. A low warning.
He released my hand, closing his eyes, as though the matter was now closed.
The night was lit with sound and sensation amid the enclosing darkness. I could hear the soft crackle of the fire. I could feel not just the heat of Kade’s body but his brimming restraint. I let my fingers steal again towardhim under the furs until my delicate touch again rested on the skin of his stomach.
He withdrew instantly, lying flat on his back, pulling his body farther from my reach so the coolness was starkly defined. “You know the rules, wife. We wait. We wait until you’re ready.” Then he lay back, again closing his eyes, yet his brow was still furrowed.
We wait.
I understood why, aye. He was using his self-inflicted rules to control himself, to allow me time to adjust. What I realized was that Ihadadjusted. I felt Iwasready. I wanted to challenge his rules, to push his boundaries.
“I’m cold,” I whispered, not entirely untruthfully.
Kade opened one eye, reaching to fit the furs more snugly around my shoulders, but he did not touch me directly. Then he lay back once again. “Good night, lass. Go to sleep,” he said.
Silence, for a time.
“I can’t sleep,” I said.
“’Tis late,” he murmured dismissively.
Stillness wrapped around us, embellished by the rustle of the wind outside, the lonely call of a faraway night bird.
Emboldened by the heavy darkness and the lingering epiphany of my husband’s writing, I reached again, finding his fingers. I held them in silence and he allowed this, although his breathing caught, as though I’d charged something in him. As though there were only so many times he could refuse me.
I wanted to reassure him, that I no longer regarded him as I once had, as a threat, as yet another man who might use his might in punishing, overbearing ways. “I don’t feel afraid anymore, husband. Of you,” I whispered. “I wanted you to know that.”
His eyes opened and he regarded me silently. Then he said, “I told you I would work to earn your trust, and I will.”
Without intent or design, I smoothed one finger along his open palm, curling my fingers around his hand, pulling it closer.
He held his hand firmly in place, and his eyes remained closed. “Stella. Cease this,” came his low command. And I heard in his voice his own simmering challenge.How far will you go?
I did not cease. My leg twitched forward of its own accord, causing my thighs to part slightly wider and my shift to bunch just higher. I couldn’t quite catch my breath, and my breasts rose and fell with my light gasps. I waited for his arm to relax, and I cautiously pulled his hand closer until I could feel the heat of it against my thigh.
His head turned, and his open eyes blazed with blue-lit intensity. “Little wife,” he said softly, laughter and promise in equal measure coloring his words. “Be careful, or you will get as much as you ask for.”
Aye, my fevered bodywasasking. I knew I was playing with fire. But I was already burning.
Returning his challenge, I drew his large, warm hand higher along the fine upper skin of my thigh, so veryclose to where I wanted to feel his touch. The anticipation was nearly overwhelming. He might still refuse me, aye, but the merenearnessof his fingers to my dewy, intimate folds was almost too much to bear. I was awed by the power he seemed to hold over me, and breathless at the heightened responses of my body to his.
