Chapter Twenty-Six
Late morning sunshine formed glistening columns throughout the forest, lighting their way. This time, it was Cainnech who led Aleysia past the strawberries and around the bend to the narrow opening in the thick bramble.
He waited while she stepped into the glade first. She’d changed her clothes quickly back at the castle. She wore her léine, bodice, breeches, and boots, but still, she felt his eyes on her when she passed him as if she wore her thinnest chemise. It made her blood go warm and her skin feel too tight for her body.
She looked before her and let her eyes bask in the splendor of a colorful palette that made her heart rejoice.
She turned to watch Cainnech enter, then went to him and fell into his arms. His arms molded her supple warmth to his body until she could feel every inch of his strength.
“Are you happy about William?”
“’Tis the best gift anyone has ever given me.”
She heard his heart beating fast within the deep rumble of his chest when he spoke.
Something was troubling him. “But?”
“There is no but,” he assured her with a smile and ran his thumb across her bottom lip.
“But you do not remember him,” she reminded him, loath to take his mind off kissing her. When his muscles stiffened beneath her fingers, she knew she might have gone too far. She patted and petted his chest and then pressed her cheek against it. “I want you to be happy, my love.”
He stopped breathing for a moment and then cupped her face in his big hands and tilted her face up to meet his. “D’ye love me, lass?”
She smiled at his handsome face. “Aye, Commander, I love you.”
He looked a bit stunned, but how would he know if she loved him or not? He had nothing with which to compare it. He didn’t question it though. Instead, he scooped her up off the ground and cradled her against him. “What have I done to deserve a heart like yers, lass?”
He kissed the answer from her mouth and carried her to the plushest part of the glade.
She felt weightless in his strong arms, lost in his passionate kiss. When he set her down in the bluebells, she clung to him, not willing to let him go.
He sat beside her and they laughed as they continued kissing. He took her lip between his teeth and gently pulled. She felt something burn below her belly and fought not to blush. Except for her experience with Cain, she hadn’t been kissed in years. There hadn’t been time. She knew nothing of intimacy and, yet, instinctively, she knew the way to angle her head and kiss him more deeply, until he groaned. She knew that if she tugged on his léine, he would remove it. She was correct.
She could have gazed at him all day, lost in his raw, rugged, male beauty. His dark hair fell over his sun-kissed shoulders, drawing her gaze there…and lower, to his belly, tightly knitted with sinew.
He caught her admiring him and smiled. “My scars dinna offend ye?”
“Offend me?” She ran her fingers along his chest. “They are signs of your courage.” She looked up and touched the small scar over his cheekbone. The scar she had put there. She had almost killed him the day he arrived at Lismoor. The thought of it turned her blood cold. “I would prefer it if you never got so close to a weapon again. Just because I did not kill you, does not mean someone else will not.”
He pressed his forehead to hers with a paralyzing sweetness that drew the breath from her trembling body. His deep voice resonated in her veins, setting fire to her blood. “I will live, Aleysia.”
How had this happened? She wondered about that, tilting her head to press her mouth to his. How had she fallen in love with a man she was supposed to hate? Every moment she was with him or away from him, her need of him grew. She loved watching him move, tasting his desire, touching him.
She flicked her tongue over his with confidence born from independence and with passion born from loving him.
He moved his fingers over her face like a light, tender caress, touching her while he kissed her. He pushed her down gently, his hand slipping to her neck, and lower. Her nipples grew tight and erect when his fingers brushed over her breast. She tried to remember to breathe while he kissed her and worked the tight laces of her bodice. He fumbled and she gazed at him, loving that he wasn’t deft at working the laces of ladies’ bodices. She helped him and closed her eyes when it was loosened.
He glided his arm beneath her and pressed her to his hard angles, kissing her mouth with exquisite thoroughness. “Lass,” the word left him on a raspy whisper when he slightly withdrew. “Ye dragged me oot of the ashes and into yer fire.”
She curled her lips and smiled against his mouth. “My heart would allow no less.”
She didn’t stop him when she felt his fingers on her belly beneath her léine. His touch was like a flame, burning a path up the side of her body to her left breast. She gasped when he cupped her in his hand.
“Dinna be afraid,” he whispered above her.
“I am not afraid,” she promised, despite her shivering. Perhaps she should be afraid. He was a Scot, after all. But she trusted him. He’d been protective from the first few days and never anything but gentle with her.
When he began to push her léine up, she thought she might die of embarrassment. He meant to undress her here in the open! But there was no one here to see. After Cainnech’s threat to kill them all, her suitors had left Lismoor. The villagers never came here, and Cainnech’s men certainly had no reason to come.
Oh, her heart thrilled at the thought of being even more intimate with him. When he bent to kiss her bare belly she stopped caring about her clothes and helped him undress her.
Finally, she lay bare beneath him, modest and untried, afraid to look him in the eyes, lest she see disappointment. Afraid also to look at him, for he was bare, as well—atop her. That is, he was leaning up on his splayed palms, keeping himself above her.
“Aleysia,” he groaned deeply and waited for her to meet his gaze, “ye are perfect, lass.”
He made her skin feel tight and her heart thud in her ears. She didn’t know what to expect. She should be afraid, and she was. But she’d somehow managed to capture the heart of this warrior. He might not be known for his mercy, but he would not harm her.
He looked down at himself and his heavy erection growing between them. When he returned his gaze to hers, he appeared a bit worried. “I hear this hurts if ye are…”
Her eyes opened wider, due both to the beast getting closer to her and Cainnech’s warning. “I am,” she told him quietly, suddenly not so sure she wanted to do this.
The long, grueling days of preparing for the Scottish army had strengthened her to many things, but she wasn’t sure taking a man, especially one like him, into her body, was one of them.
No. She could do it! She wasn’t afraid of some little—oh, but there was nothing little about any part of him! What if he smothered her? How would she breathe with all that muscle on her? He knew it would be difficult, that was why he hadn’t let himself down yet.
“I can do it,” she promised him, tilting her chin just a bit, unsure who she was trying to convince.
He lowered himself and then shot back up when he touched her and she nearly leaped out of her skin. “I canna do it.” He shook his head and pushed off. He landed in the bluebells and pulled his plaid over his lap when he sat up. “I dinna want to hurt ye and I fear I will. I know nothin’ aboot—virgins.”
She nodded. “We will need some help.”
He paled and then scowled. “Nae! I willna—”
“I would not feel right about asking Father Timothy for advice about this,” she said, pulling on her breeches.
He turned even whiter. “The priest? Advice?”
“We cannot ask any of the men,” she pointed out while hurrying into her léine. “They would give terrible advice. We cannot ask Mattie. She is but a child.”
“Aleysia, I am sure we can—”
“Of course!” She smiled thinking of just the right woman to ask. “Beatrice, the miller’s wife! She will know. She was always like a mother to me.” She smiled to herself, remembering, and then looked at Cainnech.
He was not smiling. In fact, he appeared quite horrified. She laid back and pulled him with her. They stared up at the sky for a moment, and then he turned toward her and pulled her close against him. “We will do as ye suggest, lass,” he said, as if his agreement in this truly mattered. “I willna see ye hurt.”
If anyone would have suggested to her that one day a Scot would vow not to hurt her, or that this fierce, angry man would go soft and give in to her whims, she would have called them mad. But Cainnech proved her wrong.
She stared into his eyes. “I love you, Cainnech.”
Instead of the reaction she expected, he looked pained. She realized, suddenly, that he hadn’t said he loved her yet. Her heart sank. She had just assumed… “Is it so difficult for you?”
“Aye,” he said quietly. “’Tis. Love is…” He stopped to think about it. “…’tis worse than death when ’tis lost.”
Oh, he couldn’t feel this way! Love was so much more than that. How would he ever heal? She realized that was what she wanted. Not for herself, for she wanted it for him since Father Timothy had told her about Cainnech’s life. But what could she do? He had his brother back. Was that not enough?
“’Tis true,” she said, her soft breath making a strand of his hair move over his jaw. “Sometimes love can be painful, but we need it in our lives, Cainnech. We need it to live because, most times, ’tis fulfilling and wonderful.”
“I have done just fine withoot it,” he argued quietly.
Rather than reply, she gave him the look such a preposterous statement deserved.
“I have,” he insisted.
“Are you happy?”
“Aye,” he said with a smile that made her forget everything else. “I am.”
She was happy to hear it. “I mean if you never met me. Were you happy before?”
“Life is not always aboot bein’ happy, lass. Things need to be done. Ye know that.”
“Cainnech.” She stopped him. “When is the last time you were happy?”
He didn’t answer. He bent his head to hers, but he said nothing. Not for at least fifty breaths. She closed her eyes and prayed she didn’t just ruin his time in the glade.
“I have been dreamin’ aboot her more,” he said, finally shattering the silence.
“Who?” she prompted, knowing every word brought him closer to healing.
“My…mother.”
Aleysia waited, feeling his heart beating against her…or was it her own heart?
“She is…” He shook his head against her, not wanting to think on it.
“She deserves her place in your heart, Cainnech.”
He began slowly, hesitantly, telling her first about his dreams, the screaming, and the flames—a babe crying. There were some things he admitted to remembering lately, like flashes from someplace deep of his brother Torin’s dirty face and his mother smiling when she saw him.
The more he told her, the more memories came rising like molten lava to the surface. He tried to resist for a while, but she was there, holding him, there with him in his anguish and helping him fight through it.
Later, they lay entwined in the sun-soaked, tear-drenched field of bluebells, kissing and smiling like fools, and kissing some more.
Finally, just before the sun set, they rose and set off toward the miller’s house. No one was home. The village was empty.