Page 51 of Devil Black

He need not read her mind for that. Her warm body said it all, wriggling against his and conveying her desire far better than words. He slid his hands from her hair down her back, then further to cup her buttocks, drawing her closer. She opened herself to him like a flower. He longed so to plunge himself into her, it fairly unhinged his mind. Yet certain things must be said.

“Thank you for championing me this day, Wife. I confess, such defense half surprised me, given your past anger with me for—as you have repeatedly accused—making a weapon of you.”

She sighed deep in her throat and twined her arms around his neck, curling her fingers into his hair. “I no longer feel angry. Hurt, perhaps, and wishing things could be different between us, that you were not still in love with someone else—Aisla.”

At the sound of the name, pain clenched at Dougal’s heart, nearly crippling him. “I will never—never love anyone else,” he admitted, the confession torn from him.

“I know. And no woman wishes to learn she will always come second, even in her husband’s bed.”

“I desire you,” he told her—impossible to deny it in the present circumstance. “Is that not enough?”

“At some moments it is.” She brushed her lips across his lightly. “At some moments, I find it is not.”

“Which moment is this?”

“Let me warm you, Husband. Let me warm you to your heart.”

She warmed him three times before dawn. Even then, when he rose to leave her, his desire remained unspent. He eyed her where she lay in the bed, lit by the dull morning light, stark naked and drowsy, her rounded breasts and slightly parted legs a rampant temptation. What was this madness he felt for her, that refused to calm? Aye, so, he found her beautiful. But no matter how many times he accommodated her physically, he could never satisfy the longings he now suspected of occupying her heart.

“I am sorry,” he whispered, and she widened her sleepy eyes at him.

“For what?”

He shook his head. He did not want her to care for him, for his heart was a wounded and blackened thing. The devil knew, he did not deserve a woman like this.

“For continuing to use you, I suppose,” he told her wryly, “despite your forgiving heart.”

“Do you hear me complaining?” she asked. “Come back to bed, Husband, and use me sorely again.”

He smiled despite himself. “Wicked!”

“Am I not? As befits, perhaps, the wife of an infamous devil.”

“Aye.” Despite himself, his fingers tarried in the act of fastening his clothing. The tightness beneath his kilt told him he would be well able to take her again.

She sat up in the bed and her red hair swung across her breasts. “Where do you go?”

“Out to check the fortifications, one more time.”

“Would you not rather stay here? It sounds to be sleeting again.”

“I would rather stay here—temptress!” Yet he turned away, wondering whether she could possibly come to terms with what he was, and was not, able to give her.

She flopped back into the bed. “I suppose I shall just have to wait until later, then.”

****

Curse her, it proved all Dougal could think about that whole day long: the warmth of her in the bed, the promise in her eyes, and what he meant to do about it. Even as he rode his boundaries with a party of his men, enduring the stinging sleet, even as he conferred with Lachlan concerning likelihoods and possibilities, and when he weighed the odds for battle, Isobel occupied his mind.

Not even the view from his battlements, one that usually filled him with a feeling of deep possessiveness, served to distract him. Late in the afternoon, when he and Lachlan stood on the walkway of the highest tower braving the wind, his eyes caressed each fold of land, outlined in light and shadow, but his mind dreamed of caressing his wife.

“I mean to ask your sister to marry me,” Lachlan said.

“Eh?” Dougal turned and directed a stare at his friend. “Have you lost your mind entirely?”

“You know,” Lachlan looked thoughtful, “I believe I have. ’Tis the only explanation for what has come over me these last weeks, since she returned home—unless, of course, you allow for the possibility of love.”

“I do not believe in love,” Dougal said harshly.