Chapter Eleven

 

 

 

Niall’s first thought many hours later was that he must be dreaming.

It had happened before—he’d held Mairin close, felt the slight weight of her leg over his, breathed in her scent, of fresh air and sweet woman, and been convinced it was real. But then he would wake, hard and alone.

As he drifted up from sleep, he thought this was much the same, a fabrication of his mind and body, an incarnation of what he wanted so badly.

Though he was warm from the neck down, his nose and ears were cold. When he cracked his eyes open, he could see the white puff of his breath before his face. He must still be in the woods, then, and Mairin out on watch.

But then his eyes focused on the ceiling of the inn room, and the events of the night before came rushing back. Mairin’s nightmare. Niall opening the shutters.

And then getting into bed with her.

A flood of sensation hit him at once. Mairin lay curled against him, her leg hitched over his thigh. Her small hand clutched the front of his tunic right over his pounding heart. The scent that had teased his mind in sleep was real—Mairin’s scent.

He must have stiffened, for she made a faint sound of displeasure and burrowed deeper into his shoulder, settling closer still.

Despite the fact that he was suddenly ablaze beneath the bedcovers, he thanked every star in the heavens that he was fully clothed, for he didn’t trust himself not to lose control if they were touching skin to skin. What was more, his breeches restrained a raging erection mere inches from where Mairin’s leg draped over him.

Even through his tunic and her chemise, he could feel every contour of her. The gentle rise and fall of her breathing caused her sweetly rounded breasts to press into his side. Her narrow waist was a deep notch into which his hand had settled. Her bare toes curled against his calf as she lifted her thigh higher on his with a little sigh. That brought her pelvis flush against his hip.

Niall lay completely motionless, willing this moment to last forever. Waking up with Mairin in his arms was so much more intoxicating than he could have conjured in his wildest dreams. It was the best damn thing he’d ever experienced.

He knew it couldn’t last—shouldn’t last. Mairin would never be his—not in the way he wanted her. As she’d so aptly pointed out, he could never change the fact that he was English. He would always remind her of her tormentors, of the captivity that still haunted her dreams.

But for at least a few seconds, it didn’t matter. He was only a man, and she only a woman, the two of them entwined and unburdened with all that should separate them. So he let himself drink in the feel of her like a man dying of thirst.

He could tell the second the precious moment ended, for she stirred again, then went rigid.

“You’re awake.” He held still so as not to startle her. She would scramble away, he knew, and he would never impede her.

She remained stiff as a wooden plank in his arms, yet to his shock, she didn’t move out of his embrace.

“A-aye. About last night…”

When she didn’t go on, he risked lifting his head to steal a look at her face. In the soft predawn light falling through the open window, he found her cheeks glowing rosy and her lower lip pinned between her teeth.

She was embarrassed, he realized.

“There is naught you need to—”

“I shouldnae have—” she began at the same time.

They both fell silent. Niall counted his pounding heartbeats, willing her to go on, to open up to him as he had opened up to her about joining the Bruce’s cause the night before.

When she began fiddling with the soft wool of his tunic, his heart nearly leapt from his chest, but he managed to remain motionless and silent.

After a long moment, she exhaled.

“Blast it all,” she muttered. “Ye ken already. I am…afraid of the dark.”

Though he’d already realized that, he knew it took a great deal for her to say it out loud—and to him. “Aye,” he said gently.

“It is foolish, I ken,” she hurried on, ducking her chin so that he couldn’t see her face. “I havenae been able to rid myself of the silly affliction yet, but if I manage it properly, it willnae be a problem again, I assure ye. I’ll work harder no’ to be a burden to ye on this mission. Ye neednae—”

“Mairin.”

“Aye?”

Niall picked his words carefully. “You don’t have to apologize, or feel ashamed. The nightmares, the darkness…there is a reason for your fear, is there not? A deeper cause?”

She jerked upright, staring hard at him. “What do ye mean?”

Damn it. He’d gone too far, pushed her for too much, too soon.

But under her sharp gray gaze, he couldn’t go back.

“Logan told me something of your past. Of your captivity.”

Her eyes flared with pain, followed by hot anger. “He had no right to tell ye.”

“He wanted me to understand what this mission would mean for you—how challenging it would be to return to England. But even before he told me aught of your captivity, I’d already deduced some of it.”

Her brows lowered in suspicion. “How?”

“Because of what I could see with my own two eyes. Because of the state you were in when you arrived at the camp with Logan all those years ago. Because…” He gritted his teeth. “Because of the way you flinched whenever I was near. I knew you’d been hurt, and that England was the source of your pain. Logan only helped me understand why.”

She was silent for a long moment, eyeing him. “How much did he tell ye?”

“We don’t have to discuss this if you—”

“How much?” she demanded again, lifting her chin and steeling her jaw.

Niall met her defiant gaze. “That you had been taken from your home as a girl of ten and held as leverage over him by the Order of the Shadow.”

“Aye.”

“That you were locked in a root cellar for six years,” Niall continued.

“Did he tell ye what they did to me in that time?” she asked. She clearly fought to sound unaffected, but he didn’t miss the tightness around her eyes.

“Mairin…”

“They starved me, mostly,” she said, nodding down at her slight form. “That is why I’m so small, even now. I didnae get enough to eat when I was meant to be growing. They also threw vermin into the cellar. For sport.”

A sudden, wild urge to question every last Englishman in existence in order to find and punish the men who’d tormented her swept through Niall like a blast of raging hot air from a blacksmith’s forge.

“Did they…” He had to swallow hard against the bile burning up his throat. “Did they touch you?”

Mairin laughed, a humorless, bone-dry sound. “They promised to, but then I told them I was a witch.”

“You…what?”

“When I began…changing,” she said, lifting one shoulder and dropping her gaze. “They noticed. And they started saying foul things, threats of what they wished to do. So I began shouting in Gaelic whenever they’d open the cellar hatch. I told them I’d put a curse on them. I even acted possessed a time or two, writhing and screaming and the like.”

Niall was torn between blinding fury at the thought of her captors even thinking of touching her, and stunned shock at her response to their depravity.

“And that worked?”

“I overheard one of them speaking to another about a bad itch and several red spots on his—” Her gaze darted down to where the bedlinens covered his groin.

Niall nearly choked then, but he managed to avoid it with a few ragged coughs.

“I took credit for it,” Mairin went on levelly. “I said that because he’d spoken of violating me a sennight before, I’d given him a pox on his prick. They didnae dare get close to me after that, but they made sure to torment me in every other way they could conceive.”

She looked at him with those slate-gray eyes, seeming to dare him to pity her.

“What else did my brother tell ye?”

“That when the Order fell, your captors abandoned you, left you there to die.”

Mairin nodded slowly, her lips a hard line. “Aye.”

“How long were you alone?”

“I dinnae ken,” she said. “Without the hatch opening on occasion, I couldnae tell day from night. Logan guessed mayhap a month.”

Niall ground his teeth together so hard that his jaw throbbed. “He said he found you just in time.”

“Aye,” she murmured, her voice wavering ever so faintly for the first time. “He did.”

She gulped a breath, and Niall realized she was fighting back a sob. It was a crack in the otherwise impenetrable armor she’d donned while discussing what she’d endured. It was almost as if she were speaking of someone else before, yet now he saw that she did that to protect herself.

“He nursed me back to health for three months in England, for he didnae believe I would survive a journey to Scotland. But then he realized that if we didnae leave, I would never truly heal. So he took me to the training camp,” she concluded flatly.

“But the memories followed you.”

When her gaze snapped to his, he gentled his voice.

“In the nightmares, you are there, aren’t you? In the root cellar.”

“Aye,” she whispered. “In the dark. With the rats and the stench and the never-ending fear.”

He held her gaze, lowering his voice. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

“I have told myself that many a time,” she said, her voice tightening to the point of breaking. “But the f-fear never t-truly goes away.”

When her face crumpled, Niall reached for her without thinking, pulling her into his arms once again.

He held her while she fought to regain her composure. After a few shuddering breaths, she pulled back enough to pin him with stormy eyes.

“This doesnae change aught, ye ken. I can still complete this mission. Ye neednae treat me as though I’m made of glass.”

“Aye, I know.”

“I can see to myself,” she went on. “I am no’ a weakling. I’m still a warrior and a member of the Corps.”

It struck him then just how much Mairin felt she needed to prove—to Logan, to the other members of the Corps, but mayhap most of all to herself. Just as it did for Niall, far more rode on this mission for her. But while Niall longed to demonstrate his loyalty, Mairin needed to prove that she was more than her past.

More than a victim.

“Mairin,” he said slowly, holding her with his eyes so that she could see the truth in every word he spoke. “The last thing you’ve ever been is weak.”

Surprise flickered across her delicate features, but he went on before she could speak. “I appreciate you confiding in me, but I agree, it changes naught about our mission,” he said. “It only confirms what I already knew—that you are stronger than steel.”

She started at that, her eyes widening a fraction. Her lips parted, but whatever she’d been about to say faded as she continued to stare at him.

In the silence hanging around them, something seemed to shift. Niall’s blood hammered in his ears. The hairs at his nape stirred as awareness rippled over his skin. The inn room seemed to fall away, and only Mairin existed.

Her whisky-colored hair was a tousled cascade around her bare shoulders. The neckline of her chemise revealed her delicate collarbones and the hollow at her throat, which jumped with her pulse. Her dove-gray gaze swept his face, settling on his mouth.

When she wetted her lips, Niall nearly cursed. But then the breath to do so left him, for she rocked forward and kissed him.

He froze, afraid that if he moved, he would startle her away like a skittish sparrow. But then he sensed her hesitation and the tentative rigidity in the press of her lips.

Was this…could it be her first kiss?

Warmth surged through him, a combination of tenderness and hot yearning. If she was inexperienced, he ought to dissuade her uncertainty by taking the lead. But he would need to keep his hunger for her on a tight leash, else he’d overwhelm her with the fierceness of his desire.

That was going to be damn hard, for the need to touch her, kiss her, savor every inch of her, had been building for four long years.

Before coming to the Corps’ camp, Niall had dallied with a girl at Trellham’s May Day celebration. And after he’d begun his training, he’d had a few brief, passing interludes with lasses from Roslin village.

But from the first moment he’d laid eyes on Mairin, there had been no others. No more carefree kisses. No more meaningless trysts. How could he even think of touching another lass when Mairin had captivated him so completely?

Now, all the passion, all the longing he’d kept in check these last four years threatened to break free like a raging flood barely held in check by a crumbling dam.

Carefully, he lifted a hand to her hair, letting his fingers slide through the silky strands until he cradled her head. She hesitated, then relaxed into his touch, letting him hold her as he angled his mouth over hers.

He kissed her softly, finding the corners of her mouth, then the crease, then savoring the delicate fullness of her lower lip. She remained still for a moment as she received each gentle brush, but then she began imitating his movements.

She was a quick study. He shouldn’t be surprised, for she was always the first to pick up a new fighting technique or maneuver in the training camp. She matched his pressure, tilting her head until she found the connection that pleased her.

At her eager responsiveness, his fingers tightened in the hair at her nape. She gasped, opening to him. He took the opportunity to show her how they could be joined more fully. He dipped his tongue into the heat of her mouth, caressing slowly. A noise of surprise rose in her throat, but when he found her tongue with his, she melted like warmed butter, sagging into him.

He caught her up against him, delving deeper into her sweet, hot mouth. Her arms snaked around his neck, her fingers teasing his hair. Sensation shot across his scalp and straight to his manhood, which strained against his breeches with painful need.

Unable to think clearly any longer, he rolled them both so that she lay across the bed on her back. He curved over her, his weight on one elbow, their mouths still fused together.

His hand left her hair and trailed down her side until he gripped one slim, soft hip. He pulled her even closer, until his achingly hard cock was wedged between them with naught standing in the way but her thin chemise and his damned breeches.

Mairin arched beneath him in response, a sound of frustrated longing muffling against his lips. She didn’t know how to relieve the need building between them.

The realization was like a splash of ice water. She was innocent and inexperienced. And Niall was coming dangerously close to changing that.

He shot from the bed as if it were on fire. Mairin sucked in a breath, staring at him wide-eyed. Her lips were swollen and berry-red from his kiss. Her chemise was rumpled and a flush warmed her cheeks.

God, he’d almost done exactly what he’d promised not to: use the delicate bond they were forming on this mission to wheedle his way into her affection—and her bed.

Bloody hell, he was supposed to be protecting her, not seducing her. Aye, she’d been the one to kiss him, but he should have put an end to it immediately, not taken her for a tumble.

“That…that was a mistake.”

Hurt flickered across her smoky eyes, but she quickly hid it behind a granite wall.

“Aye.”

He’d wounded her, damn it. Embarrassed her. But how could he explain why he couldn’t touch her, couldn’t let himself hope for more, without laying his heart at her feet?

He worked his jaw for a moment. “If we are to be partners in this mission,” he said at last, “we cannot confuse things.”

“Aye,” she said again, her voice resuming its normal flat edge. “I dinnae ken what got into me. It willnae happen again.”

Devil take it, those were the last words he wanted to hear from her after that scorching kiss. But what little honor he had left demanded that he accept them.

He scrubbed a hand over his face and through his hair, fumbling for his wits. “I’ll…I’ll go see to our horses. We ought to get an early start this morn, for the fresh snow will slow our progress.”

He barely waited for her nod before shoving his feet into his boots and striding out the door, closing it firmly behind him. When he was alone in the dim hallway, he let a shaking breath go.

Logan’s warning not to touch a single hair on Mairin’s head rang in his ears. He’d sworn to keep Mairin safe on this mission—including from his desire.

He’d already broken that promise. He could not fail again.