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Plus it allowed him to hold her in his arms for a little longer...
Finally, he could delay no longer, and he glided them down to the footpath beside Octavia's car. While they flew, her arms had found their way around his neck and he would have given anything to keep them there. Her body was so soft and warm and lovely...
Oh, but her lips on his cheek were softer still, so lovely his breath caught in his throat. "I think you're a perfectly good protector. You couldn't possibly have thought of everything, and you said it wasn't even your idea. You can't protect fools from their own stupidity. That's Murphy's Law, isn't it? That if there's more than one way to do something, someone, somewhere will find a way to do it so utterly wrong, it'll result in catastrophe."
"I have never heard of such a law."
Octavia laughed softly. "Maybe it was after your time. Anyway, you said you waited until the miller was gone and only Carline was home. You couldn't possibly have known...oh!"
"What is it? Are you hurt?"
She shook her head. "This is Carline Bell we're talking about, isn't it? Crack shot with a rifle, who'd greet uninvited guests on her steps with a gun beside her. She was a legend in the colony. What if she was the shooter, and there wasn't anyone else? Because a woman alone out here, even I'd be inclined to shoot first and ask questions later. Maybe she shot you, and then took your bodies out to the cemetery to bury the evidence, which is why no one knew about your raid."
Harlow could only shake his head. "Carline was just a slip of a girl. There is no way she could have carried one of us anywhere, let alone all four. She might have been the one who shot me, but she had to have help rowing the bodies up the river to the cemetery, and burying them."
"Her brother, maybe? You said she had a brother. And there was Sean Bell, remember. She married him about then. Maybe he helped her, too."
Harlow wasn't sure if he felt better or worse, knowing he'd likely been killed by the woman they'd come to carry away. They'd had no intention of harming her...all Grant had wanted was the flour in the mill. Stan would have treated her like any stolen bride back in Scotland. It was such a time-honoured tradition, it had never occurred to any of them that she might object to being stolen.
"Fools. We were such fools," Harlow said.
And he was the biggest fool of all...not for what he'd done then, but for the thoughts he couldn't seem to banish now. Thoughts of Octavia in his arms, with no clothes between them. Stealing her for a bride of his very own...
If only she'd agree and not emulate her ancestress in trying to shoot him.
NINETEEN
The sky was already lightening by the time Octavia pulled up outside Bell Cottage, but she didn't want to part from Harlow. She ached to feel his arms around her again, and she didn't think he should be alone right now. Not with all the things he'd revealed tonight...
But while she was still wrestling with whether she should invite him inside, Harlow had already made the decision for her.
He bowed. "Until tomorrow night, Octavia. Should you have need of me, I shall take shelter in the ruined cottage."
Carline's cottage. The last place he should be, after learning that she'd likely been the one who shot him.
But he'd already departed, and dawn was approaching. She was too late. If only she'd had the courage to say what she wanted on the way home...
But she couldn't even say the words in her head, let alone out loud. Because they were crazy of course.
What kind of mad person wanted to take a monster to bed, let alone hand him her v-card?
This was all his fault, being so heroic and all. When he'd flown her up into that tree, holding tight to her with his hard body pressed against hers, all she'd been able to think about was climbing him like a tree. By the time he'd brought her down to the ground again, her underwear was soaked through and she didn't want to let go of him. If there hadn't been a bunch of fishermen under the bridge, she might have surrendered to the desire to make out with him in the car.
And now, here she was, at home alone, about to go to bed alone, but there was no ignoring her soaking wet knickers or the deep ache inside. Even if she couldn't say the words, her body knew what it wanted: Harlow, in every possible way.
Maybe it was time to get that vibrator out of the box, and actually use it.
She'd bought it after talking to a couple of girls at another mine site. They'd been mourning their inability to maintain a normal relationship with anyone, what with their fly-in-fly-out schedules making them spend so much time at the mine site, and then one of the cleaners had told them they didn't need a man to make them happy – they should do what the American girls did, and buy a vibrator. Guaranteed orgasms, and you never had to wash anyone else's socks, or listen to him mansplain anything. So Octavia had bought one on the way home, but the infernal device was still in the box, in the bottom drawer beside her bed.
She'd taken it out once, but it had looked so big and intimidating. It hadn't helped that she'd bought a metallic silver one, instead of emerald green or the even more daunting flesh-coloured ones.
Now, in the dim predawn light, it looked more grey than silver. Like the stone skin of a gargoyle. And bigger than she remembered.
She flicked it onto the lowest setting, letting it hum in her hands for a moment before she brought it to the apex of her thighs. The humming head teased her clit, so she pressed it against herself a little harder, until she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out as the first orgasm hit.
Now she understood what the other girls had meant about guaranteed orgasms. She didn't even have to push it inside her to feel...to feel...
The second one took longer than the first, but it was quickly followed by a third. If she hadn't been soaking wet before, she definitely was now. But now she was aching even more to feel Harlow inside her, when all she had was this dick shaped device and a bottle of lube she wasn't sure she even needed right now.
