Thirteen
 

Cate had definitely won all right. Gregor kicked the twisted bed linens off him and jumped out of bed for the fifth or sixth time—he’d stopped counting—to pace around his room like a lion in a cage. The cage of his own mind.

The pacing eased his restlessness, but only temporarily. The moment he climbed back into bed, put his head on the pillow, and closed his eyes, the images would start again. The tormentingly sharp images of Cate in bed with the reeve’s son on top of her. Kissing her. Touching her. Not pulling back. Slowly lifting the hem of her linen chemise, sliding his hand up her bare thigh …

Gregor swore and pounded the side of his fist on the windowsill with enough force to make the glass shake. He bent his head, resting it on the shutter, closing his eyes and willing the maddening images to go away.

Slowly, his pulse returned to normal and the fiery madness cooled, driving the heat from his blood and skin. He lifted his head, took a deep breath, and turned to scan the dark chamber, the soft glow of the peat providing just enough light to see by. His gaze stopped momentarily on the flagon of whisky sitting on his bedside table, as it had done many times tonight.

“I know you drink more when you are unhappy.”

He didn’t drink too much, damn it. He was always in control, and never drank to the point of drunkenness. But the number of times he’d woken up in the past year with his head feeling as if it were splitting apart told him she wasn’t completely wrong.

Christ, now he couldn’t even have a drink of whisky before bed without hearing her voice. Actually, it was the drink of whisky he wanted to not hear her voice. To blur the haunting images and let him get some rest.

Perhaps he should have gone to the alehouse after all.

Who the hell was he fooling? He didn’t want to go to the alehouse and find a lass to take to his bed. “I think you want me and no other.” She was right, damn her. God knew it probably wouldn’t last. He was bound to desire another woman at some point. He had enough of them to choose from; eventually one would catch his eye.

But what if he only ever wanted Cate?

Was that even possible?

All he had to do was think of his married brethren to know that it was. With the exception of MacLean, who’d been estranged from his wife since the start of the war, every one of his fellow Guardsmen was faithful to his wife. Even Raider and Hawk, and they had nearly as many women throwing themselves at them as he did.

Of course, they were “in love” with their wives, which was an emotion Gregor didn’t know whether he was even capable of feeling. He’d cared about Isobel—and sure as hell lusted for her—but the kind of flowery romantic love the bards wrote about, or the powerful this-is-the-only-woman-for-me and I’ll-do-anything-including-die-for-you emotion his friends had found? He’d never felt that.

You’d die for Cate.

The voice at the back of his mind jarred him. But that was different, wasn’t it? She was his responsibility, his family—he was supposed to feel that way.

She was his family.

Ah, hell. His heart sank like a stone in his chest. She was his family, and he’d tried to get rid of her with no more thought or care than he would have given to a stray cat—or dog, he thought, recalling his words to Pip earlier. Worse, he suspected he’d unintentionally hit a tender spot with respect to the father who’d abandoned her.

The father he hadn’t known about. He’d been surprised—and not a little angry—to learn about her lie, but perhaps he shouldn’t have been. He’d always sensed something wrong when Kirkpatrick’s name was mentioned. Now he understood why. He didn’t like that she’d lied to him, but he supposed he couldn’t blame her for trying to erase the “stain” of her birth when given an opportunity. Though he didn’t care about such things, she wouldn’t have known that at the time.

Actually, he felt more outraged on her behalf. What kind of man could abandon his own child like that? No wonder she hated him. Gregor would kill the bastard himself if he could.

Yet she probably thought he was trying to do the same thing by getting rid of her—walking away from her, just as her bastard of a father had done.

He crossed purposefully to the bed and forced himself to lie down.

Cate wasn’t just family, and he knew it. What he felt for her was different. Confusing, frustrating, and maddening perhaps, but different. He didn’t know what it meant, but he suspected that if he ever wanted another peaceful night of sleep, he might indeed have to marry her.

For the first time that night, he closed his eyes and the images did not return. He might have been able to sleep if the screams hadn’t torn him from his bed.

“Stop!” she tried to shout. “Get off my mother!”

But the soldier kept thrusting, his mail-clad form moving between her mother’s legs. He turned, the dark, refined features that should be handsome twisted in an ugly, taunting smile that dared her to try to stop him. She struck him with the hoe over and over, but all it did was make him laugh harder. The maniacal sound rang in her ears, mixing with her mother’s screams.

Make it stop! Please, make it stop!

Strong arms grabbed her, and she tried to wrestle free. “No!” she cried. “I have to help her!”

“Cate!” a deep voice penetrated the darkness. She was shaking. Nay, someone was shaking her. “Wake up, sweetheart. You have to wake up. It’s just a dream.”

She opened her eyes. Gregor’s face stared back at her in the shadows. She was sitting up on her bed in his arms. It was he who was holding her, not the soldiers.

She leaned into him, burying herself against his chest, taking refuge in the protective strength of the arms around her, and letting him comfort her. He murmured low, soothing words against her head as he gently rocked her sobs away. Gradually, the breath returned to her lungs and the panicked race of her pulse began to slow.

It was just a horrible dream, a return of one of the nightmares that had haunted her for years after that horrible day. There were different versions, including the one she’d just had where the soldier was raping her mother, and she kept hitting him over and over but he wouldn’t die. Another was of Cate in the well, starving and dying of thirst. All the joy and relief she experienced when she heard the rescuers turned to horror when the face that looked down at her wasn’t Gregor’s, but the soldier’s. The worst was the nightmare that actually happened, the replaying in her mind of those hideous seconds of her mother’s death, in slow, precise detail.

She thought she’d rid herself of the nightmares for good, but all it took was seeing that man today to bring them back. Deep down, she knew they wouldn’t be gone until the soldier paid for what he’d done.

Suddenly, angry at herself for the weakness, she drew back from the wall of Gregor’s chest—his bare chest, as she was just noticing—dabbing her eyes on the sleeve of her linen chemise. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

He released her. “You had a nightmare.”

His gaze turned to the open doorway. Her embarrassment increased tenfold. It seemed like half the household was standing on the small landing outside her room. In the stream of light coming from the torch mounted outside her chamber she could see the concerned faces of Ete, Lizzie, Pip, and two of Gregor’s guardsmen, Bryan and Cormac.

“It’s all right,” Gregor said. “Return to your rooms. I have her.”

I have her. Though she knew it meant nothing, her heart tugged sharply nonetheless.

The light dimmed as the crowd dispersed. Gregor stood to light a candle from the brazier, taking the time to add another block of peat to the fire. Before returning to sit beside her on the bed, he closed the door.

Suddenly self-conscious, she felt her cheeks grow hot under his steady gaze. The temperature in the room seemed to have shot from the dead of winter to the height of summer in a few seconds. She was hot, and she knew it wasn’t from the peat; it was from the intimacy of being alone with him in her small bedchamber. Of course, the broad, muscular chest shimmering in the candlelight that seemed to fill every inch of her vision wasn’t helping matters.

Good gracious, how did it get so defined like that? There didn’t appear to be any spare flesh on the man of which to speak. She could count the lines crossing his stomach, for heaven’s sake.

He truly was magnificent.

But he didn’t care about her. Reminding herself what had happened earlier—and his plan to be rid of her—she pursed her mouth and forced her eyes from the fever-inducing display of muscle.

“I’m fine,” she said briskly. “I’m sorry for waking you. You can go back to bed now.”

He took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, lifting her gaze to his. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re still shaking.” She was, she realized. “Christ, I’m still shaking. You scared the hell out of me. You sounded like you were in agony.” She had been. The agony of being helpless to do anything as your mother was raped and murdered before your eyes. “The soldier?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She stared into those gorgeous green eyes, felt her heart swell, and then shook her head. The soldier was the last thing she wanted to talk about. Not when Gregor was holding her like this. It might be the last chance she ever had.

The air in the room seemed to change. It grew sharper and filled with a strange buzz. His eyes darkened, and his voice, when it came, deepened. “What do you want, sweetheart? Tell me how I can make it better.”

Sweetheart. Her heart thudded. It was the second time he’d called her that. He never used endearments with her—never. Did it mean something? Was the tenderness in his eyes a trick of the candlelight, or could she trust what she was seeing?

There was one way to find out. She told him the truth. “I want you to hold me in your arms and kiss me. I want you to make me forget.”

Gregor stilled, cursing himself for a damned fool. What the hell had he expected? He knew better than to ask a question to which he didn’t want to hear the answer. But there she was in his arms—practically sitting on his lap—with her big, dark eyes wide and shimmering with tears, her face still pale and stricken by the tortured memories of her nightmare, looking more vulnerable than he’d seen her in a long time, and he’d never felt so bloody helpless in his life. He would have done anything to make it better. Anything to wrench those memories from her mind and allow her to forget. So he’d asked his fool question.

God’s breath, she had no idea what she was asking of him. Kiss me. Make me forget. As if it were that easy, when just looking at her gazing up at him made his pulse race and his blood feel like something churning in a volcano. He wanted to do a hell of a lot more than kiss her. A whole hell of a lot more. And he didn’t trust himself to touch her. He, the man who never lost control and always knew exactly what he was doing in the bedchamber, realized he was looking at the woman who could break him.

Every instinct in his body was standing on edge shouting Warning!, telling him that kissing her in the broad daylight was bad enough; he’d be mad to do so in a darkened chamber, alone, with both of them barely clothed.

But she needed him, damn it. How could he refuse?

Easily. But he didn’t want to. God knew, he needed to forget, too. The memory of her scream was too fresh. His blood had run cold. An icy sheen of panic had raced over his skin. He’d thought someone was hurting her, and it had left him weakened, stripped bare, without his usual defenses.

Aye, that was the only explanation for how easily he succumbed to her siren’s call. How willingly his lips touched hers, even when he knew how hard it would be to pull away.

He could do this, he told himself. Just a kiss to make her forget …

But it was he who forgot every damned thing in his head the moment his mouth touched hers. His senses exploded. All he wanted to do was sink into her and never let go.

How was it possible that anything could feel this good? Her lips were just as sweet and soft as he remembered. So pliant and … open.

Ah hell, before he could stop himself, his tongue was in her mouth again, and he was giving her those long, deep strokes that made him think of swiving. Lots and lots of swiving. Sweaty-limbs-in-tangled-bedsheets kind of swiving. All he’d have to do was lay her back, untie the braies he’d thrown on, lift her chemise, and he could be inside her. Deep inside her. Plunging in and out in the same frantic rhythm of his tongue. He was hard as a spike just thinking about it.

She was so sweet, so incredibly hot …

His arm tightened around her back, drawing her closer. He felt the bead of her nipples against his chest, and just like that, the barely controlled kiss was gone, replaced by the hungry, swirling maelstrom of need that devoured his good intentions and spit them out like the pile of shite that they were.

There was no such thing as “just a kiss” when it came to Cate. He wanted her in a way that he’d never wanted another woman, with an intensity that snapped the steely reins of his control as if they were a few brittle strands of thread. He didn’t understand it, didn’t really want to examine it—it was just the way it was.

He slid his fingers through her silky hair, cradling the back of her head to plunder her mouth more fully. She responded with a low moan and an insistent press of her chest that went straight to his bollocks and tugged—hard—with a primal urgency that didn’t want to listen to reason or honor or any other excuse for not taking this kiss to its natural conclusion.

She wasn’t making it easy on him to do the right thing. Cate was kissing him back with every bit of passion that he was feeling, making all those breathy little moans that drove him wild. Her hands weren’t helping matters any either. She’d laced them around his neck when he’d first kissed her, but now they’d slid down to his shoulders and were gripping him as if she would never let go, her fingers digging into the muscle with an intensity and fervor that told him exactly how much she liked what he was doing to her. A lot. So much that he knew he could make her shatter with a few strokes.

He groaned, knowing he shouldn’t think about that. What he should think about was stopping.

But how the hell was he supposed to resist all this warm, baby-soft skin that smelled like wildflowers, lips that were as soft and sugary as warm honey, and hair—he let it pour over his hands—hair that slid between his fingers like silk?

And then there was that tight little body straining against his chest, the firm mounds of her breasts with the hard pink tips digging into him, that gave him just a teasing hint of what she’d feel like naked against him. But it wasn’t enough. He wanted to feel all of her against him. He wanted her under him. On top of him. On her hands and knees in front of him. Any way and every way.

It would be so damned easy to push her back on the bed and give himself all the contact—the naked contact—he craved. Skin to skin. He wanted to see her strong, slender body spread out beneath him like a banquet to feast upon. He wanted to suck the tiny nipples that were raking his chest, lick his way down the slender curve of her belly, and taste the sensitive place between her legs.

God, he really wanted to do that. Feel those hard spasms against his mouth … taste her pleasure …

He groaned deeper into her mouth as the erotic images swirled through him, jerking his cock hard against his stomach.

His body pressed forward, urging her back, as the desire became too much to bear. It felt like a weight pressing him down. Touch her. Take her. Make her yours. It hummed through his blood, zipped along every one of his nerve endings, and seemed to have taken command of every bone in his body.

He was breathing hard now, his heart hammering in his chest and ears, his skin hot and too damned tight as need pounded through every muscle and vein in his body. She was practically under him, her body stretched out beneath his. He wanted her so intensely, his body was shaking with it.

Everything about it felt so right. But somewhere in the depths of his lust-crowded brain, he knew it wasn’t.

He’d taken precisely one woman’s maidenhead in his life and had regretted it ever since. Then, he’d been a seventeen-year-old lust-starved lad whose weak attempt at honor had been rather handily disposed of by a few soft pleas and tender words of love. He was an experienced man now who knew better—and the right order of things. Cate deserved a wedding, a husband, and a marriage bed. Not a frantic, lust-hazed coupling at a vulnerable moment. He was supposed to be comforting her, not seducing her.

With a mumbled oath, he pulled away. “We have to stop.”

She blinked up at him, looking half-ravished and eager for the other half—not a good combination for a man fighting for control. “Why?”

“It isn’t right. Your maidenhead belongs to your husband.”

Christ, he sounded like an old man, or a stern guardian—neither of which sounded right at the moment. And if the crushed look in Cate’s eyes was any indication, she’d taken his attempt to do the right thing wrong.

Still, he might have been able to hold to his honorable intentions if she hadn’t reached out and pushed him right over the edge.