Duff sat in the chair by the bed, wondering if he’d made the biggest mistake of his life by letting Patrick go, and not going after Charlie when he realized that she’d gone after him. If the Fergussons were holding Elsie for ransom, he could have used Patrick as a bargaining piece.
But Charlie was correct. More than likely she would lose them both if he went. He had no choice but to put his trust in a man who had cleverly deceived them.
He was thinking of ways to hurt Patrick if he didn’t return with both his sisters safe and sound. Duff would go to Skye to find him if he had to.
Skye.
He was still thinking of it and Patrick’s promise to bring him there when the man in the bed uttered a word on a soft, crackling voice.
“Wah…gah.”
Duff bolted to his feet. Water! “Aye, aye, ’tis coming.” He hurried to a jug of water and poured a cup. “Her you go, friend.” He held the cup to the man’s lips and slipped his hand behind his head to support him while he drank.
“Not too much now,” Duff told him gently and smiled when the man looked up at him. His eyes were a striking shade of blue against the dingy color of his skin.
Duff looked into them and felt his belly flip enough to make him ill. Where had he seen—?
“Nay,” the man cried out and tried to move his scant body away. His eyes grew even bluer when tears filled them to the brim. “It cannot be you, Duff Cunningham. It cannot be you.”
Duff swallowed and wished he’d gone to church more often. There, he could have learned more about a man coming back to life.
“Kendrick?” Duff’s heart welled over even as his mind refused to believe who he was speaking to. How was it possible? “Kendrick, you’re alive.” He wasn’t dead!
He wasn’t dead!
Patrick’s body was hard and ready to take her, but he wanted to take his time with her. She was an untried virgin just a day ago. He didn’t want to hurt her or make her dislike lovemaking. He intended on making love to her often.
Presently, he basked in the supple fullness of her breasts, shaping them in his hands, kissing each in turn and tugging gently on her tight nipples until she writhed beneath him.
She took her fill of him as well, kissing his chest and biting his shoulder, tempting his restraint to falter.
When she opened her luminous eyes and gazed at him, he felt his heart falter as well. He wanted a life filled with her. Only her.
“Do I truly drive your every ambition?” she asked on a gasp.
“Aye, lass, ye do.”
“Show me.” She smiled and spread her legs high around his waist.
His control snapped. He rose up like some fabled, fiery beast and did as she asked.
He wasn’t sure he could hold himself back with her. A power he had no control over swept across his heart like wind across the muirs. It made him drunk with desire for her, willing to give up all. For her.
He sank into her and stretching over her body, kissed her hungry mouth. He retreated and returned, then had to stop himself.
This was more than he’d ever done before. It meant more to him. Everything to him. He wanted to breathe with her, bind himself to her, brand her as his.
He plunged deeper. She grew warmer and wet around him. He swelled inside her, on the verge of bursting. He dared a look at her and found her glorious head thrown back in ecstasy, her tight, erect nipples pressed to his chest. Hell. He had to stop again.
Lying sill atop her, he smiled when she lifted her head. He moved over her, settling deeper. He couldn’t get deep enough. He kissed her parted lips once, twice. “Ye bring me pleasure, lass, and I’m findin’ it more and more difficult to contain.”
Her haunting lips curled into a smile, captivating him. “What is this power I have over you, MacGregor, that one movement…” She undulated her hips beneath him. “Can tempt you to snap?”
He looked at her, wondering how he’d survived all these years without her. “It must be love,” he whispered, dragging his mouth across hers, and answering her thrust with a long, salacious one of his own.
“Aye.” She closed her eyes and breathed across his lips before he kissed her. “It must be.”
How had it happened? he pondered, drawing his head back to look at her. Love, the thing he feared, had found him. Oddly, he wasn’t afraid anymore. “Ye exhilarate me, Charlie. Ye’re all I need. All I want.”
He made love to her two more times that afternoon. No thing and no one existed, save her, her lithe body pressed to his while he took her from behind on their knees with his mouth at her throat and her breasts in his hands.
He proved to her that she drove his every ambition while she moved, impaled to the hilt, atop him. Och, but that time had been especially exhilarating to watch her thrill at being in control of their pleasure. She moved him, changed him and he never wanted to go back. They found their release together and laughed when it was over.
He held her close in his arms, fully aware of the power of what his heart felt for her.
Gone were the nagging doubts that haunted him before he met her. His convictions had changed and he was glad. In fact, he never felt happier—or more tired. Neither of them had gotten much sleep last night.
They would leave soon, see to the stranger, and then they could both get some sleep.
But not yet. He didn’t want to let her go yet.
How was it possible to bind oneself to another and feel so weightless? Had he ever felt as alive as he did now? Hell, if he’d known love felt like this, he would have considered it sooner. But no. He was glad he discovered it with her.
“Charlie, ye’ve become m’ only love.”
A moment later he realized she was asleep. He held her for a little while longer, but he didn’t want to fall asleep as well. If they slept through the night, Duff would come looking for them, and Patrick didn’t want them found like this.
Smiling, he kissed her head then disengaged himself from her and sat up. He looked around at all the purple and saw it a little differently. He shook his head at himself and chuckled. What the hell kind of pansy had he become to let the sight of heather choke him up? It reminded him of home, and of her. The sight of it anywhere would always bring him back to this place.
He understood now why his grandsire always picked the fragrant shrub for his wife.
Rising to his feet he bent again to pluck a shoot from the ground without losing a single blossom. As a lad, he’d hated his lessons in the heather-carpeted glens outside the castle, but he’d learned the proper way to break the shoot and mastered it until he had nothing left to learn and was set free to cause trouble with his cousins.
He walked around now, picking only the fullest shoots, from pale lilac to deep purple until he had a large bundle clasped in his hand.
He was a MacGregor, after all.
Feverish and foolish, mayhap, but still, a MacGregor.
Charlie dipped her face into the spray of heather clutched in her arms and inhaled. She’d done the like at least seven times on the way back to Mary’s house. It was a tradition for the men in Camlochlin to gather heather as a symbol of love to their wives.
It was a lovely tradition and if she ever heard another unkind word about Patrick’s kin, she would remember only the tales Patrick had told her.
Patrick loved her, she thought, smiling into her heather, loving the feel of his arm around her waist, holding her steady against the swift pace of his horse. He loved her and he found no difficulty telling her how it stunned him.
Poor rogue. He was as innocent about love as she was.
Whatever was going to happen now? She thought she should know for certain, and avoid anything unexpected later.
“I cannot go with you to Camlochlin yet,” she told him, lifting her face from the petals. “I cannot leave everyone…Mary and the children, to Hendry.”
He nodded, his eyes set on the Wallace holding. “I know. We’ll wait until we find a way to keep them all safe.”
“We will?” She gazed up at him. “You’ll stay?”
“Of course I will.” He met her gaze and smiled. “Do ye think I’m goin’ to give up kissin’ ye?”
“What about your family? They will not approve.”
“They will in time.”
“And my father?” she asked him, stopping him with a palm on his chest when he dipped his mouth to hers.
“M’ aunt’s sister is the queen,” he replied with a flash of his dimple. “Yer father willna object to our weddin’.”
His aunt’s sister was who? Their what?
Every other thought fled at his kiss.