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“He thought I was sullied,” Arabella murmured.
Malcolm stopped stroking. “Who?”
“Conall. The man I was to marry. This is his cottage. I ran straight to him from the hell of my capture. And he never once asked me if I was hurt. Never asked if my family was safe.” Arabella swallowed down a sudden rush of bile in her throat, felt a stab of pain in her heart that she’d been too numb to feel before. “He never kissed me nor held me in his arms to offer comfort. No. All Conall wanted to know was whether or not I’d been violated.”
“Don’t marry him,” was all Malcolm had to say.
“As if a woman has a choice.”
“A smart woman can always find a way to have a choice. Don’t marry him.”
“I won’t. I’d rather be a whore.”
She spit the words. And she meant them.
“Is that why you wanted to touch me?”
“No,” she whispered, emboldened. “T’was because you wanted me.”
His eyes softened. “How could I not want you, lass? You saved my life.”
“Because you nearly died trying to save mine.”
He kissed her. It wasn’t warm and sweet and boyishly tender like Davy’s kiss had been. But smoldering in some way, even though his lips were cool against hers. Seeming to savor her kiss, he took a shuddering breath. “You make me lightheaded, lass.”
It’s the blood loss, she thought. He wasn’t a well man. He ought not be using his strength to kiss her. But kiss her he did, in a way that was not at all playful. In a way that spoke of a promise to do more. Much more…if he was restored to his strength.
She never heard Davy come in.
Not until he announced himself from the doorway with a clearing of his throat. “Good to see you’re on the mend, Malcolm.”
Arabella tore herself away from Malcolm’s kiss, rising so swiftly from the bed that she nearly stumbled, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. After her encounter last night with Davy—no matter what he’d said about staking no claim to her—what must he now think to find her kissing another man?
What was she to think of herself?
“It’s a dreich morning,” Davy blethered on, as if nothing was amiss, a pail of what looked to be milk dangling from one hand. “Cold, drizzly and miserable even for late autumn. But I see you two found a way to make the most of it.”
He said this with a smile, but Davy said almost everything with a smile. And if he was angry with her, she wasn’t sure he’d let himself show it. There was nothing to do but address it straight on. “That kiss just happened,” she sputtered, guilt-ridden. “I’m not sure how.”
Davy shrugged. “Malcolm tempts even the sauciest of wenches. They all want to be the one to heal his brooding soul—”
“Stap your havering or I’ll skelp you, Davy,” Malcolm snarled.
Davy only gave a hearty laugh. “You can’t even rise from that bed, man. But it heartens me to see that some part of you can still rise…”
Malcolm scowled, but the mention of his erection tenting beneath the blanket didn’t make him blush. It was Arabella who did all the blushing. She was mortified. She wanted to disappear. Especially when Davy leaned lazily in the doorway, blocking all avenue of escape. “It’s alright, lass. Didn’t Malcolm tell you that we’ve shared women before?”
God’s blood. Now that was the most wicked thing Arabella had ever heard in her life. A thing so shocking that her knees went a bit weak, forcing her to sink to the edge of the bed. “Wh—what?” Then, because that seemed too daft a question, she added, “Why?”
Davy took a sip of the creamy milk from the pail and cheerfully licked the foam from his upper lip. “Double the pleasure for half the effort. That’s why. When a girl feels four hands upon her instead of two, she turns insatiable, and will let you do most anything you like. It’s supremely satisfying for everyone involved.”
Arabella glanced over her shoulder at Malcolm, perhaps hoping that he’d deny it, but he didn’t. He didn’t look particularly vexed by Davy’s bringing it up, either. The two men were quite comfortable with each other, she could see. She was the interloper here. Though scandalized by the situation and uncomfortable with the lusts she was only beginning to discover inside herself, she was trapped in a cottage with two men who seemed scandalized by nothing.
And she felt as if she needed to escape them both.
“Milk?” Davy asked, offering her a ladle.
“No thank you,” Arabella whispered, brushing past.
