Chapter Seventeen
The torches had all been lit and the fire stoked by the time Sorcha and Brandt returned to their room. As she’d promised, Morag had sent a few maids in to clean and tidy during sup. Neatly tied sprigs of bog myrtle and thistle lay on the pillows, and Sorcha smelled freshly laundered sheets along with the soap she’d used during her bath, rather than the musty, closed-up air of the room as they’d first found it. Though she’d barely touched her food, she didn’t feel hungry. Her stomach churned, but it was from unease, and the silence Brandt had wrapped himself up in ever since Lady Glenross had fled the great hall.
Their conversation had gone from pleasant and polite, to murky and barbed within moments, it had seemed. Who are you? Brandt’s question had sent Rodric’s wife running, with tears in her eyes. Aisla had excused herself to follow her mother, and soon after, Callan had also bid them a good night.
All the while, Morag’s hushed and fervent advice to Sorcha and Brandt earlier, to leave as quickly as they could, that it wasn’t safe here, and that devils roamed these lands, repeated in the back of her mind. There was something wrong with the Montgomery, and as Sorcha toed off her slippers and felt the shock of the cold stones against her feet, she wanted only to lock the door and stay safely tucked away in her room with Brandt.
He went to stand before the hearth, his jaw screwed tight just as it had been since the great hall. She watched the shadows play over his profile—the strong, sharp lines of his forehead and nose, the concerned furrow of his brow—and wished she could read his mind. She had her suspicions; all the talk about Monty had likely dredged up memories. Though before, when speaking of his father, there had been a softness to Brandt’s expression. A softness that was not there now.
“Tell me,” Sorcha whispered.
Brandt turned his ear to her, not bothering to soften his reply. “Tell you what?”
She flinched at the bleakness in his voice. “What was that with Lady Glenross?”
The duchess had been appalled at Brandt’s confession that he’d been born a bastard. Affronted, even. The woman seemed to believe that he had not been born out of wedlock, which hinted to her knowing much more about Brandt than she’d led them to believe. But then she’d fled the hall like the very devils Morag had spoken of were at her heels.
Brandt didn’t answer Sorcha’s question, only giving an abrupt shake of his head. Clearly, he didn’t wish to speak about it. And why should he confide in her? Her heart had swelled during sup, when Rodric had insulted her and he’d risen in her defense. But Sorcha also knew that had he stayed quiet, Brandt would have been pegged as a weakling. A man of no courage. Perhaps her husband had only stood in her defense to prove that he would not be trifled with.
The excuse hurt, and it also rung hollow. She wanted to believe he’d meant his words, and that his defense had been genuine. But he kept changing his mind, this obstinate man, and the moment Sorcha thought she knew what he was about, he seemed only to go and prove her wrong. One moment, he couldn’t keep his hands off her. The next, he was walking away. She wanted him to at least talk to her, the way he had during their travels here. But most of all, she wanted to chase off the haunted look in his eyes.
Sorcha went to him, her feet padding across the floor, swept clean by the maids and covered in spots by rugs and animal pelts that had not been in place when Morag had first shown them the room. Brandt seemed to sense her approach, and she saw the muscles in his back and shoulders tense.
“You should get some sleep,” he told her without turning around. “Take the bed, and I’ll take the chairs here. It will be hours yet before I will be able to close my eyes.”
Standing so close to him, she couldn’t stop her hands from reaching for the knots of tension in his shoulders. He inhaled audibly when she touched him, her fingers pressing firmly into his bunched muscle.
“Don’t be daft,” she replied. “That bed is big enough for the two of us and our horses.”
“I don’t think Morag would appreciate that mess.” She caught sight of his profile again as he tilted his chin, and saw his lips break into a smile. Sorcha massaged his shoulders some more, and his head lolled back, a soft groan expelling from his throat. Her thumbs dug into the muscled flesh beneath the soft linen of his shirt, kneading and rolling, until she felt the largest of the knots start to loosen.
“You have strong hands,” he murmured.
“Sit,” she told him, gently leading him into one of the cushioned chairs in front of the hearth.
“Sorcha—”
She pushed the heels of her palms into the tops of his shoulders. “Let me do this for you, leannan.”
“What does that mean?”
Sorcha hadn’t realized what she’d called him. She felt herself flush. “It’s a silly Gaelic term of endearment; it means nothing.”
Without giving him a chance to protest her touch or react to her stupid slip calling him sweetheart, Sorcha sank her fingers deep into the muscle tissue just above his clavicle, wringing a deep groan from him as she squeezed firmly. She kept the pressure on while following circular motions with her thumbs along his upper back. She worked for a few minutes in silence, punctuated only by the sounds of pleasure escaping his lips.
The small moans tugged at places deep inside her own body, but Sorcha kept herself focused on the task. She wasn’t able to stifle a small gasp when she slipped her fingers inside the neckline of his shirt to palm his warm skin. She loved to touch him, the feel of his bare skin against hers. Any part of her. His muscles leaped reflexively beneath her touch, but she calmed them with wide stroking oscillations. She wanted to press her lips to the hollow where his neck met his shoulders, follow in the path of her fortunate fingers, and trail her lips along the length of his spine. Sorcha marveled at the texture of his skin. He was steel overlaid with silk, strength wrapped in tenderness.
Her fingers crept into his soft hair as she massaged his scalp, threading through the long burnished strands. Brandt sighed with pleasure again, and this time, her entire body responded. The more she touched him, the more she craved. Sorcha kept going, even after she’d felt the tension dissolve and his flesh became malleable. She was only torturing herself, she knew, but she was so drunk on the sensation of him that she couldn’t stop if she tried.
“That feels incredible,” he murmured.
“Good, I’m glad. You’re as stiff as an old branch.”
His chuckle was low and deep, striking a pleasant chord within her. “Stiffness seems to have become my Achilles’ heel these past few weeks.”
“Perhaps you need to stretch more,” she suggested innocently.
Brandt made a choked sound and then forcibly cleared his throat. “Are you volunteering your services, my lady?”
A heated blush overtook her at the underlying innuendo, and she was grateful she was out of his range of sight. Their banter was most dangerous when combined with desire. She took the coward’s way out. “Only my fingers.”
“I give myself over to your leisure, then,” he said softly.
Cheeks scorching, Sorcha returned to the muscles around his collarbone, thinking of how his fingers had pleasured her. How his tongue and mouth had done the same. Pleasing him now, giving him the same sensation of complete release as she massaged the worry and stress he’d built up inside over the last many days, made her feel powerful. In the moments when Brandt had brought her to ecstasy, there had been nothing in this world she wouldn’t have done or given or said to be able to continue what she was feeling. In those moments, he’d held complete sway over her. He’d had the power.
Now, as his head relaxed against the back of the chair, and her fingers delved under the collar of his shirt, she knew she was the one who held sway. For a tantalizing moment, she wondered if she were to walk around the chair and climb into his lap whether he would continue to succumb. The scandalous thought made her dizzy.
The smooth feel of his bare skin was heaven and hell in equal measure. She wanted to lick his sleek neck. Bite into the corded muscle. Rub her breasts against his bare back in wicked abandon.
I want you, leannan. I want you.
Every rational bone in her body argued that she should move away, but she couldn’t stop. He needed this. He needed her, even if he wouldn’t admit it.
She moved from his neck to his shoulders once again, the breadth of them and the heavy muscle under her palms strumming a violent chord of want inside her. It throbbed along the insides of her ribs and cascaded down to her thighs in molten ribbons. Her senses were so heightened it wouldn’t take much to push her over the edge…the same precipice he’d brought her to twice before. Sorcha squeezed her legs together, and her breath snagged.
Diah, what he did to her was beyond sinful.
Exhaling somewhat shakily, she concentrated on rubbing her thumbs into the base of his neck and working them in slow circular strokes. She aimed for safer ground with serious conversation. “Do you think your Monty could have been the man Lady Glenross spoke of? The one she knew as Pherson?”
A muscle jumped reflexively against her thumbs before settling down again.
“It’s possible,” he answered. She’d put him at ease enough to speak to her about it, at least.
“She spoke well of him,” Sorcha added.
“Yes,” Brandt replied, his voice hitching lower. “It did sound as if she’d been fond of him.”
Sorcha heard the suspicion on his tone, and the knots in his neck suddenly became harder to massage. She lowered her lips to his ear. “Tell me something about him. A memory.”
Anything to direct his mind along a different path.
He sighed, and she breathed in the warmed spice of his skin. This man drove her desire like nothing she’d ever imagined possible. Just the deeply masculine scent of him made her want to touch her tongue to his ear, press it against his neck, and feel his pulse leap. But she restrained herself. He needed more than one kind of release; Brandt needed to talk.
“A memory,” he repeated, again turning pliable beneath her constant ministrations. “I was young. Maybe eight, and my stepmother, Anne, had just passed,” he started, his lashes having fluttered shut. “We didn’t make it a habit to celebrate birthdays, but that year, Monty attempted to bake muffins. He burned them to crisps.”
Brandt chuckled, the sound reverberating up through Sorcha’s hands and into the small bones of her arms. “I managed to choke down two before he insisted we give the rest to the hogs. But even they refused to eat them, and hogs eat anything. He was a terrible cook.”
She smiled at the lightness of his voice. “He sounds like he was a good man.”
He opened his eyes, and from her vantage point, she thought she could see a flicker of doubt. But then he spoke, and the admiration he held for Montgomery Pierce, or Pherson Montgomery, was indisputable. “He cared for me, and I cared for him.”
She stilled her hands. “Then why is it you sound so sad?”
Surely, he missed his father, but from what she recalled, it had been many years since his death. Sorcha also couldn’t help noticing that he hadn’t used the word love. Perhaps she wasn’t the only one he was running from.
“Because he never told me the truth,” he answered. “Though I think he might have tried. Near the end. I can’t be sure, the words were muddled, and he never finished his sentence. At the time, I thought was trying to reassure me that being a bastard shouldn’t matter. But now, after Lady Glenross insisted I wasn’t bastard born…”
“What do you think he wanted to tell you?” she asked.
Brandt shrugged. “That I belonged somewhere. That I had a home with kin and people who shared my blood. But blood doesn’t necessarily mean family.” He paused as if thinking through his words. “Family is in the heart.”
“Then why did you want to come here?”
He went quiet for a long time, though his body remained calm. He shifted, digging into his pocket to retrieve the ring he’d tucked in there earlier. They both stared at it, cupped in his palm. The Montgomery colors seemed to burn brighter, the thread of gold shimmering through the blue and green crest on its surface.
“You could show her, you know,” Sorcha said softly. “Rings like these are heirlooms for a laird’s family.”
He twisted the ring in between his thumb and forefinger. “Which was why I thought it was one of the laird’s sisters. But now I’m not so certain.” His voice broke slightly upon his whispered confession. “We have the same eyes, Sorcha. Lady Glenross and I.”
Sorcha stilled. She’d been sitting on the duchess’s left and the woman had never once looked at her directly. Her mind tumbled over itself. There was little resemblance between them, if any at all. She was fair-haired and slight, while his looks and build favored the laird. What did he mean they had the same eyes? Did Brandt think he was her son? With Monty, or the late duke? If it were the latter, then that would make him…Diah…the Montgomery heir.
“Brandt, do you think the duchess is your mother?”
His entire body stiffened at the hushed incredulity in her tone. “I’m not entirely sure what to think.”
A new rush of tension coiled underneath his skin, and Sorcha wanted only to soothe it away. Her attempts to get him to talk had worked, but besides the memory of those birthday muffins, thoughts of his father—or the identity of his mother—only seemed to make Brandt more upset. She wanted him to unwind, to bask in the soothing sensation of her fingers, as she always did his. Even now, she worshipped the feel of his body. She wanted more, though. More than just touch. And she wanted to give him more.
Blushing at what she was about to do, Sorcha forced her fears away. He was her husband…at least for this moment. She might not know much about marital accord, but she knew he wanted her. And want was a powerful motivator.
She leaned forward, over his shoulder, pushing her hands lower under his shirt, across his front. Her palms filled with his hard pectorals, his muscles leaping at her touch. Her fingertips brushed over each nipple, and she saw him shift his hips, readjusting his seat in the chair. His body went tense, but it was a different kind of tension. This one made his pulse speed up, his heartbeat quickening beneath her fingertips. Primal satisfaction curled through her.
“What are you doing?” His voice was a dark rasp that scraped along her senses.
“Touching you.”
He inhaled sharply as her fingernails grazed gently over his nipples once more. “I don’t think—”
“Then don’t think. At least not right now,” Sorcha whispered, her lips so close to Brandt’s earlobe that she could not help but dart her tongue out to taste it. “How does this feel?”
He made a grating noise in his throat before clamping his hands down upon both of her wrists. “Dangerous,” he said, his voice slightly hitched.
Brandt held her so firmly that she’d instinctively arched backward before she relaxed into him, letting her breasts come to rest against his shoulders as she’d craved doing earlier. The scent of his warmed skin wafted into her nostrils, and she inhaled deeply. Her mouth watered, and her nipples ached from under the confines of her bodice. Once more, she gave in to the inclination to taste him, scraping her teeth along the column of his throat beneath his ear. His body jerked as Sorcha lapped and nibbled her way down his neck, while her trapped fingertips scoured the shelved muscle of his torso. She wanted to taste every heated inch of him.
“We both seem to tempt danger,” she whispered into his ear. “Don’t we?”
“Why are you doing this?”
She tried to be as blasé and as self-possessed as he had been with her. “It’s just pleasure, Brandt. Nothing more. Let me do this for you.”
In response, he angled his chin upward and caught her lips with his. The kiss was dark and carnal, his hot mouth clinging to hers. A moan escaped her as his tongue delved deep in search of hers, finding it and coaxing it between his teeth until her knees felt like rubber. Her fingernails scraped gently against his taut chest, and the low fierce growl in his throat made her wild. Sorcha kissed him back just as fiercely. Just as possessively.
Still gripping her fingers, Brandt released her mouth and her hands and drew her around the side of the chair. The heavy-lidded look in his eyes made every drop of blood burn in Sorcha’s veins and turn to liquid fire between her hips. God, one scorching glance from him was all it took to make her want to tear off her clothes and throw herself at his mercy.
“Sorcha, we both know where this road leads.”
Brandt’s words were at odds with his eyes and the thumb insistently stroking over her knuckles. He wanted her to resist him. As if she could do such a thing. She was hanging on to decency by the slimmest of threads, and she had no intention of walking away. Not from this. Not from him.
She licked her lips, and his eyes settled on her mouth. “Do we? Are you a savant now?”
“It is unwise,” he murmured.
“Don’t worry, leannan, your virtue will be quite safe, I promise.”
Brandt chuckled as Sorcha made the decision for him and sat in his lap. He was aroused. Impressively so. He groaned as she wriggled against him, the rigid length of his erection settling in between the gap of her thighs. This time, slowly, teasingly, she leaned forward to catch his mouth with hers. His eyes darkened as her tongue slipped out, licking the inside of his upper lip before biting gently upon his full lower one.
Brandt’s arms banded around her, pulling her flush to his chest, and he took her mouth with a ravenous, uncontrolled hunger. A pulse of worry wicked through her. Not worry exactly…more like breathless thrill. Excitement. She had never seen him like this. Brandt had always been so controlled, so in possession of all his impulses, but now he seemed almost feral, as if driven by dark desires he no longer wanted to keep at bay. Sorcha responded in kind, biting, sucking, licking deep. And when his mouth moved to her throat, she flung her head back in abandon. She wanted him to see exactly what he did to her. She could feel his arousal beneath her, growing harder by the breath.
Cradling his head, she gasped as he massaged her breasts over her bodice. And when his fingers closed around one of the aching peaks, pinching gently, she moaned her approval. His mouth moved to her neck, trailing down in wet nudges and bites that made her senseless. The day’s growth of stubble abraded her skin deliciously as he laved and sucked her flesh. Sorcha couldn’t wait. She wanted to feel him. Lifting her weight slightly, she slipped her hand beneath her legs to close around him.
Brandt tore his mouth from her skin, his stormy eyes darting to hers when her fingers gripped the thick length of him through his trousers. Without taking her eyes from his, she slipped off his lap and onto her knees, wedging herself between his parted legs.
“Sorcha…” he said in a hoarse voice, his hand falling on top of hers at his groin. The hard flesh beneath her hot fingertips jumped.
“Let me,” she whispered.
After a searching look, Brandt lifted his hand. He was just as lost to passion as she was. Perhaps more so. And Sorcha wanted nothing more than for him to lose every bit of himself in pleasure. Briskly, she undid the fastenings to the fall of his buckskins. She’d felt him against her at the river, caressed him in her palm, but nothing prepared her for the proudly erect sight of him. He was beautiful and so devastatingly masculine, it took her breath away. Sorcha swallowed hard as her fingers cautiously encircled his girth. He was thick and warm and heavy in her grip, his body pulsing in hot, powerful surges.
“Bloody hell, Sorcha,” Brandt swore, clutching the sides of the armchair with brute force.
Suddenly, she was gripped by a paralyzing anxiety. Brandt’s face was contorted, his jaw clamped tightly and eyes screwed shut. In pleasure? In pain? Was she hurting him? She had no idea what she was doing. He’d liked her massage before. Perhaps it would be the same for this part of his body. With a tentative motion, she rolled her fingers along the shaft, pressing gently, trying to gauge his reaction. Brandt’s eyes flew open, dilated, and a muscle hammered to life in his cheek.
“Do you like this?” she asked.
“Yes,” he gasped, one hand reaching out to cover hers. He stroked hers up and down from base to tip, and then back again. “Like so.”
She was an apt student. Once she got a rhythm going, his hand fell away, and indistinct sounds of pleasure left his lips. Emboldened by her success and his response, Sorcha dragged her thumb over the rounded blunt end of him, fascinated by the pearl of moisture she found there. His skin was boiling hot, so sleek and silky hard that she couldn’t help herself. She leaned forward and pressed her lips to him.
Brandt almost bucked out of his seat as his entire body shuddered.
“You don’t have to do that,” he gritted out.
But she wanted it. Sorcha wanted to bring him the same bliss he’d given her. She opened her mouth and took him inside. Her husband’s growl was primal and bestial. It made lust explode within her with the force of a thousand stars. She drew him deeper, teasing the ridge with her tongue, testing him, learning the shape of him. His spicy male scent made her dizzy, and his smooth, salted taste made her mouth water. She wanted to swallow every delectable inch of him.
Sorcha almost laughed. It was nigh impossible to fit all of him in her mouth, but she was determined to try. Using her hands and her mouth in unison, she delighted in the moans and coarse words that emerged from his lips as she continued her exploration…licking here and nibbling there. Watching to see how his body responded. Every muscle on his stomach clenched, his legs like stone on either side of her. She reveled in her power over him. Heat pooled between her legs as his breathing grew more ragged, his hips rolling upward into her mouth at a faster pace. She knew what it signaled from the last time he’d rocked frantically against her at the river. His release was close.
Clamping her damp thighs together, she felt something inside her own body tremble, and sensation rippled through her. It was nothing like the pleasure she’d experienced with him, but her entire body felt tied to his…tethered in some kind of sublime harmony.
With a guttural cry, Brandt gently disengaged her from him and moved one hand down to his groin. He drew her up with his free hand until she was splayed over him in his lap, rocking her wet, trembling core against his hard thigh and sobbing with her own unexpected release. A few frenzied strokes later and he thrust upward, spilling his seed between them with a deep groan of satisfaction.
Breathing harshly, Brandt rested his forehead against hers. Neither of them moved for several interminable moments. With a sound of contentment, he wrapped one arm about her, cradling her against his chest and nuzzling his face into the crook of her neck.
Sorcha craved the words that such intimacy brought. But she knew it was a hopeless wish. They would find pleasure in each other’s arms, but not love.
She was ashamed to admit she would rather have that than nothing at all.