Chapter Eight
Mal’s lips were warm, and a little rough. He kissed her gently, sweetly, demanding no more than she wanted to give, and this seemed a contradiction. In other ways, Mal was a man who took what he wanted, but not in this.
She’d had a few stolen kisses in Edinburgh, some that were more heated than this one, but none that affected her as much as the reverent press of Mal’s mouth.
He could have taken what he wanted. She would have let him.
But the kiss remained chaste until she deepened it. Until she reached up with an awkward hand to touch his chest. Until she parted her lips and welcomed him inside.
He was giving her control, letting her lead this dance when other men hadn’t. When other men had held her in place and plundered her mouth. And this feeling of power seared her. It was heady and erotic, and it made the pulse between her thighs quicken.
The scent of cloves drifted to her—the soap they used—but on Mal it was mixed with the smell of earth and peat smoke, disparate things coming together in an intoxicating alchemy. Mal’s hands gripped her waist, and she bit at his lower lip, felt more than heard the hitch in his breath. A wave of pleasure washed through her at the reaction. She wanted to press closer. She wanted to press as close as she could get, to fit their hips together, to find some kind of friction for this aching want.
But she stepped back instead.
She didn’t want to tease them both with something she couldn’t give. She couldn’t let a kiss turn to more.
And regardless of whether it turned to more or not, Mal had made his feelings toward the Highland landowners abundantly clear. If he ever found out she was the sister of an earl—he would despise her. He might anyway when she left with no word.
But she quickly squashed whatever guilt she felt. What had happened to Mal’s family was awful, and her heart threatened to break when she thought of him, away at war, helpless to save them, helpless to do anything but come back to the tatters of what had once been a whole life. She didn’t know how he’d withstood such pain.
Or maybe she did. Maybe this—the path he’d chosen—was how he withstood it.
But that didn’t change the fact that Mal and his group were thieves. They had started this when they’d gone into her bedchamber, when they had violated her sanctuary, as if they had the right, and stolen a piece of her heart. She wasn’t leaving until she either had it back or was certain that it was lost forever.
We do what we must.
It was as true for an ex-soldier Highlander as it was for the sister of an earl.
“Catriona?” Mal was watching her. “I don’t think I’ve ever robbed someone of speech by kissing them before. I don’t know whether to be pleased or deeply worried about my finesse.”
Well, there was certainly nothing wrong with his finesse. There was only something wrong with her reaction to it.
It hadn’t quelled her desire, as she’d hoped. If anything, her curiosity had grown wider, deeper, starker. What would it feel like to have his hands on her skin? His mouth on her breasts? His fingertips brushing the insides of her thighs?
She squashed these questions like she might squash a bug underfoot (and sent a silent apology to Eleanor, who would be horrified at the thought of stomping any insect instead of preserving it for study or letting it roam free).
“It was a very…pleasant…kiss, Mr. Stewart,” she said briskly. “Have no fear on that account.”
“Pleasant?”
Earth-shattering, blood pounding, loin tightening, chest heaving…but really, there was no use going into all the little details.
“Aye, I’m sure I’ll remember it fondly.” She blinked at him innocently. And he blinked back.
“Fondly?”
“Of course. It will be quite a nice thing to look back on, from time to time, in the future.”
He was frowning. “Will it, then?”
“Aye, indeed it will, Mr. Stewart.”
His frown, somehow, turned even more severe. “Mal,” he corrected.
“Mr. Stewart,” she said promptly. “We wouldn’t want to become too familiar because of one little kiss, would we?”
She saw him shape the words—one little kiss. She almost felt guilty.
Almost.
Playing off the kiss was better than letting him know how very much she’d enjoyed it. Better for both of them.
“We should go to the others. Who knows what mischief they might get up to without us?”
She set a brisk pace and heard Mal, after a moment, follow.
Lachlan had said they would set out on a raid soon enough, and it was a good thing, too. They needed to steal some sheep before she found herself doing something even more foolish than thievery.
Like throwing herself at a man she could have no future with.
…
Mal was letting himself get distracted from the task at hand.
That kiss.
Damn it, that kiss.
He’d accepted Catriona’s challenge. He’d wanted to turn her inside out. Mal was, quite possibly, a fool. He hadn’t suspected he would be laid low by the sweet taste of her mouth, and she would be walking around as if it hadn’t even happened.
He found himself wanting to delay. Wanting to stay on the isle longer, if it meant keeping her close, if it meant the chance to kiss her again, to prove something to her, though he wasn’t sure what. But that was folly.
His men needed him.
He couldn’t let his desire for Catriona get in the way of that, no matter how magnificent he thought she was.
“Pack your things,” he said, the next day.
Ewan looked up. “Mal?”
“We’re leaving.” He met Catriona’s gaze, felt a quiver of heat deep within him when he saw the satisfaction in her eyes. He wanted to make her look that way, not just with his words, but with his lips and teeth and hands. “Take what you need.”
When they left the isle, the night was cold and lit by stars, the moon a silvery, shining sickle. Nights like these didn’t happen all of the time in the Highlands, but when they did, they were extraordinary. The black earth sank beneath Mal’s feet, the black sky above stretched out, endless, and white stars, strewn across the sky like dust, were forbidding in their perfection.
Distant peat fires scented the air. The silence was hushed and taut, a fraying rope. Danger heated his blood.
On nights like this, wild on the moors, Mal could almost believe that the five of them were the only people left alive on earth. That the world was theirs for the taking, and nothing and no one would harm them.
And if it was a lie…well, it didn’t feel like a lie.
On nights like this, Mal somehow experienced two opposite emotions at the same time—that his life was balanced on a ledge, precarious, and that he was invincible, immortal, untouchable.
Catriona was lit by the moon’s glow. “Highland ponies?”
Mal followed her gaze to the large, sturdy creatures gathered not far from the loch shore. They kept them around with a steady supply of apples, one of the men crossing the loch daily by boat to feed them.
They were one short for five riders.
“We’ll have to ride together,” Mal said.
Catriona shrugged, as if it didn’t much matter, but her shoulders tightened.
Mal patted one of the ponies on the neck, the thick, weatherproof coat coarse against his fingers, and breathed in the musky scent of animal. It pressed its nose into his empty palm and Mal laughed, reaching into his sporran for a small apple. “Ye only pretend to like me because I give ye sweet things.”
Mal felt Catriona’s eyes on him before she spoke. “You’re talking…to a horse.”
Mal pretended to cover the creature’s ears. “A pony, lass. A hardworking, pragmatic Highland pony…don’t compare them to those haughty English beasts.”
He saw her sudden smile, saw it flash white, and felt like he’d harnessed the moon.
“Up you go,” he said to her, after they’d placed wool pads over the ponies’ backs, bridled them, and found a chopped tree trunk to use as a mount.
She didn’t take his outstretched hand. She stepped lightly onto the trunk, then swung up onto the horse as though riding bareback was something she’d done before. He probably shouldn’t be surprised. Hadn’t she said she’d wanted to suck the marrow from life? Riding free across the Highlands was probably just one more item in a long list.
He wondered, suddenly, what else she’d done. He wondered if she’d lain with a man just to see what it felt like. If she had, had she liked it?
Unbearable curiosity swelled inside him.
And then Mal’s thoughts simply…went blank. His mouth turned dry as Catriona pulled the hem of her dress up past the knee so it wouldn’t interfere with riding. Dark stockings hugged shapely calves, the soft pale flesh of her lower thighs glowing in the moonlight.
She stared down at him imperiously, and he felt like a servant before a queen. “What are you waiting for?”
Her voice wasn’t imperious like her stance, it was low and soft, nearly inviting.
He had to swallow twice before he followed her up, settling in behind her. She kept her back straight, so they didn’t touch, but he could feel the warmth of her, could smell a faint hint of roses when the breeze picked up a long tendril of her dark hair and it brushed against his cheek, his lips.
He reached to take the reins, realized she already had them in her hands, and settled back with a sigh and a soft smile.
Then, they were off.
…
Georgina’s heart pounded, each beat in time with the rhythm of the pony’s hooves as they set a quick pace across the moors. Laddie was a low, swift shadow, running alongside them. She would have gone slower on her own, but these men knew these hills, knew where the valleys swept low and turned to bog, knew where the safe paths were. She kept sight of Lachlan and the others ahead of her, trusting them to guide her.
She trusted them. Outlaws and sheep thieves. It was laughable. Not only because of what they were, but because of what she was.
That trust would be shot to pieces in an instant if they knew. Already she felt her time dwindling. If this raid didn’t lead to the music box, she’d have to leave without it. Each passing hour was one hour closer to being uncovered.
But, somehow, this moment existed outside time.
The night and the hoofbeats and the stars surrounded her. The wild song of freedom in her veins rose like a chant—alive, alive, alive.
Before long, the tension eased from her body, and she didn’t worry so much about touching Mal. It wasn’t as though she could help it—and it was almost worse to be taken by surprise when she was pressed into him by each sudden jostle.
She let her muscles relax. She leaned back, braced against his hard chest, felt his thighs bracketed against hers. His hands curved around her hips lightly; his breath touched the nape of her neck. She was surprised to feel his heart beating, just as quickly as hers, against her back.
His hands tightened, and then, “You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
He whispered it, like it was a secret that he couldn’t quite contain, and her heart thrilled to the words.
But she couldn’t let herself be taken in. Not so easily.
“Perhaps you need spectacles, Mr. Stewart.”
“No,” he said. And his tone wasn’t light or teasing. It sounded entirely serious. “No—my eyesight is perfect. And even if it wasn’t, I couldna mistake you.” He leaned in close, lips barely touching her ear. “I wish you would call me by my name.”
“Is Mr. Stewart not your name?”
He huffed out a laugh. “Clever Catriona MacPherson. Sometimes I almost want to take you down a peg or two.”
“Then why haven’t ye?”
“Because I like you better above me.”
This conversation was dangerous. It felt like that game she used to play with her siblings in the winter—snapdragon—where there was a split second’s difference between emerging unscathed or getting burned.
This whole reckless endeavor felt a little like that game, come to think of it.
“Look,” he said suddenly. “Up ahead.”
The men had slowed, so she pulled lightly on the reins.
In front of them, dark shapes huddled. Bleats rose and fell like an indecipherable language.
A flock of sheep, ripe for the picking.