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“Aye, of course you are. I can make a pallet up for you—”
“No,” she said, her head drooping against his shoulder. “I’d rather…I’d rather stay here if you don’t mind. You’re very warm.”
“My blood runs hot,” he boasted. “Always has. Did I ever tell you about the time Malcolm and I got caught up in the snows?”
She must have fallen asleep during Davy’s tale—probably after the part about falling through the ice and coming up with a fish. Davy’s tales always seemed to involve fish. And she couldn’t fault his storytelling. It was only that she was tired to the marrow of her bones, and the feel of his strong shoulder beneath her head was as reassuring a pillow as she’d ever taken rest upon.
But the strength of him—the warmth of him—all that disappeared in the blackness of her dream. A nightmare, really. She dreamed of the men who tried to rape her. Of one of her captors overcoming her with a kiss that hadn’t been pleasant at all. She felt again the revulsion and terror, the sickly sweet taste of the kiss. And she came awake screaming. Kicking. Fighting as she fought those men, tears streaming down her face.
“Wake up, lass!” Davy shouted, shaking her a little.
“Get away,” she shrieked, still caught in the terror of her nightmare.
“It’s just a dream, Arabella,” he said, softly. Soothingly. “Just a dream.”
As Arabella quaked, her heart racing with the horror of being back there in that clearing with men intent on taking her body and taking her life, she slowly came back to reality. “Oh, God,” she cried, wiping the tears away from her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “Forgive me. I thought…I thought you were…”
“I know what you thought,” Davy said, gently stroking her arm. “But it’s all over now, lass. And so long as we’re with you, you need not fear it again. I would never let them take you a second time. Not while there is a breath left in my body.”
He was so close to her. So comforting. And she nodded, because in spite of the real danger they were in here in this cottage, far from the castle, she believed him.
“Can I get something for you?” Davy asked. “Some milk, some—”
“Would you kiss me?” she suddenly asked, tears still leaking from her eyes.
His lips parted in surprise. “Kiss you?”
It would make no sense to him she was sure, but the reasoning was, for Arabella, clear as day. “Today, those men ruined me. Ruined kissing for me anyway. Tainted it, forever. Now when I fall asleep, it’s a villain’s disgusting kiss that I taste. I fear it’ll always be that way every time I close my eyes until the day I die…unless I have a different one to wipe it away. I’d like to be kissed by a man who would lay no claim to me; to be kissed in such a way as to make me forget. Can you do that?”
Davy stared at her, his blue eyes betraying bewilderment. “I can’t say as I’ve ever turned down a woman who asked me for a kiss—especially not a bonny lass like you. And when it comes to reckless action, I’m usually the first to volunteer. But kissing you strikes me as not the wisest idea.”
Arabella was mortified. To have so boldly asked a thing and then be refused…was a nightmare unto itself. “I suppose I’m not too appealing in men’s garments and—”
“Oh, you’re plenty appealing. And if we’d met in other circumstances, I’d have already tried to steal a kiss from you ten times over. But it might just as well happen that if I kiss you, it’ll remind you of the man who forced a kiss on you. Then you’ll hate me as you hate him, and I’ll become a part of your nightmare.”
“No,” she whispered. “I can’t believe that. I want you to kiss me.”
“But you shouldn’t,” he said. “Not after what you suffered.”
Why was it that men were always so keen to tell her what she should do, what she should say, and what she should want? “Did it happen to you or to me, I wonder?”
He scratched his head, as if thoughts were racing inside it so fast as to make him itch. “Fair point. But, a man likes to be wooed, ye ken. I don’t know that I could kiss you proper, knowing that it was only because you hoped to forget. I’d have to know it was about a little more than that. I’d run for the hills if you made a declaration of love, but I’d have to know that you at least liked me a bit.”
Arabella gave him a teary smile. “I think I can see my way clear to like you a bit, Davy of Clan Macrae.”
His lips twitched up at the corners. “Well, if that profound expression of feeling doesn’t warm me to the cockles of my heart…I must be made of stone.”
She smirked, slightly abashed. “Would it help to know that I find your dimples to be irresistible?”
“No,” he said, firmly. “Every woman finds my dimples to be irresistible.” That’s when he reached for her cheek with a strong, warm palm that was a little bit calloused. And he tilted his head so that his forehead touched hers. “I want to kiss you, Arabella. But you’ll have to do better than praising my dimples.”
The feel of his breath on her face ought to have frightened her, but it didn’t, because his smile was so genuine. He was going to kiss her, she thought. And to encourage it, she said, “Well, I scarcely know you well enough to praise your good character, Davy, so I’ll say that you make a passably good porridge.”
“That’ll do,” he said, leaning in to press his lips to hers.
His warmth radiated though his kiss, into her. And he tasted…why he tasted of sunshine. Of warm summer days when the light glimmered off the loch, and the wildflowers erupted in riotous color. And if she ever doubted that there was a talent to kissing, he swiftly erased it.
He was tender with her. Slow and gentle. It was nothing whatsoever like the kiss that had been forced upon her. Nothing like any kiss she’d ever felt before. Davy did not pry her mouth open, but rather, teased her lips apart in a way that made her gasp. Oh, she liked it very much.
