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He grimaced. “I meant that I should never have risked your coming to harm.”
“You couldn’t have known the Donalds would be there.”
“No. But it’ll haunt me that I wasn’t the one who fought them off. That it was Ian’s sword that defended you, not mine.”
“His sword is your sword, my laird,” I said softly. “He’s yours and I’m yours. Everything and everyone in this castle is yours. If only you would accept it. I’d happily be whatever it is you need me to be.”
“My whore?” he asked, a touch of anger in his voice. Defiance, even. “My harlot? Because that’s how I’d treat you. That’s what I’d want you to be. When I give myself over to the carnal act, I’m not the man you know. I’m not a good man, then.”
“I don’t care,” I said, bravely. Recklessly.
“You should care!”
“But I don’t. Not as long as you’re the same man after. Because you’re a good man. A good laird. And I want you desperately.”
He looked stricken. “You haven’t the first idea what you’re saying, lass. Maybe someday, when you have a bit of experience with men, if you still think—”
“I don’t want to live in shame and ruin for anyone else’s lusts but yours. If you won’t take my maidenhead, I won’t be giving it or selling it to anyone else. I—I’ll join a nunnery.”
He scowled. “Which is exactly where you should be. You’d be safe in a nunnery.”
“But no one will ever touch me there, or make me feel like you did just now,” I whispered, inching closer to him, capturing his strong leg between mine. Squeezing it. “Tell me why it excites you to strike a lass with your belt.” Though he was so much bigger and stronger than me, he recoiled as if in retreat before an army. I had to hold him with all my strength. “Please tell me?”
Swallowing, he said, “It’s play. I like to see the red stripes on a pretty bottom. Like to know a lass feels low and subservient to me. Like to hear her cry out, knowing she’ll wear my mark for days and know that she’s mine every time she sits down.”
“But you do no real harm to her?”
He scowled. “Are you asking if I’d take pleasure in beating a woman with my fist and leaving a bruise on her face like the one you’re sporting, the answer is no. But I’ve slapped a woman who asked me to do it, and she enjoyed my doing so.”
My eyes widened. “So there are women who enjoy it.”
His nostrils flared. “Of course! But not women like you.”
“How do you know if you won’t try me? And plainly, you want to try me. Your member is straining for the want of it, my laird, and it can’t be healthy to deny yourself as you have been. I am offering relief.”
He seemed stunned. Both by my frank discussion of his sexual need, and by the insistent, shameless offer. “You’re a madwoman if you think I’d add to your pain today, after what you suffered.”
Though he wouldn’t be convinced, still I smiled softly. “Tomorrow, then.”
“You’re the relentless, lass!” He laughed, then stroked my jawline softly where it ached. “I’ll tell you what you can do to please me tomorrow.”
“What’s that?”
“You can prove to me that you really can make the best pie of any woman in the clan. If we’re lucky, you can serve it to your sister in welcome when my warriors recover her. If we’re unlucky, well, the baking of it will take your mind off your troubles.”
~~~
“A pie,” I said, bitterly. “The laird is drilling his men in the courtyard preparing for a possible siege, and he wants me to bake him a pie.”
Brenna seemed horrified—but not for the reason I was. “The cook will throw fits to have a woman of your ilk in her kitchen!”
“Well I can’t very well bake a pie in my chambers, can I? You’ll just have to tell the cook that it’s the laird’s command.”
Brenna bit her lower lip. “You don’t understand. The only person more powerful in a castle than the laird is the cook. All the men know that if you anger her, everything will be over salted for a week. I made her furious once and got a dead mouse in my rations the next day. You don’t want to anger the cook!”
Hm. It sounded very much as if I didn’t want to anger the cook. “What if—what if she doesn’t know who I am?”
Brenna sighed. “Everyone in the castle knows who you are.”
