Her husband banged their bedchamber door shut and pressed her against it, full body, sculpted mouth clamping on hers in a famished kiss.

They were just entering the old manor after dinner with his family. Fingal had sat in the carriage wordless, with his cinnamon glare fixed on her in the dim lantern light. Catriona did not know what to make of it, intending to ask as soon as they came home. But now, it appeared the cause had been this.

With a moan, she arched into him, arms twining around his taut shoulders for dear life. He held her by the waist while a hand lined her nape, keeping her in place for his plunder. Whisky, horse, and man mingled in his scent as his stubble caressed her satiny chin. Their heat created pure fire, hotter than the one blazing in the fireplace.

Somehow, he had divested her of her outer garments, giving her the freedom to wrap her legs around him to cradle a voluminous, pulsing erection that would not be denied. Long, dark hair escaped its confines to fall over her shoulders.

“I’ve been lusting after you for hours!” he rasped as he dragged those whiskers down her neck to suck on the pulse at the base of it.

How could he? They had been in the middle of a clan squabble!

A square hand tore at her chemise, causing her insides to erupt in a sweltering reaction. When would she have imagined that having her husband unclothe her in such a primal way would arouse her to madness? She lost her power of thought when he latched those hungry lips on one breast and took her to mindless pleasure. Her core ached so much, she feared it would combust.

“Take me, Fingal, please.” It came out as a faint breath because his expert fingers had found her dampness and feasted on it.

The wood rattled on the hinges with their urgent passion. “Yes, Catriona.” An insidious finger glided on a sensitive spot between her entrance and the nub above it, making her see stars. “I’ll be the stallion to your mare.” The image he planted in her mind nearly undid her; she could barely wait.

This was one of the few…delights he had yet to have her sample.

An unyielding bicep held her by the waist and he strode to the large bed. “On all fours,” he demanded as impatient, strong hands rucked up the tartan from his sinewy thighs to bend over her, half-undone, askew shirt still on him.

A deep, true thrust filled her unceremoniously as a masculine grunt aired on her ear. Hair everywhere, she arched more to give him ampler access, the heat of him scalding her spine. One of his arms braced him on the mattress while the other hand cupped one breast to tease it, increasing the excruciating effect of his possession.

And then he started lunging in earnest. In this position, he went deeper. She felt every inch of him in every inch of her. She was so close that in his next move she fell apart with a ragged scream.

He lost control. His steel arm banded her middle, making her open more for his taut hips to accelerate. In between pants, his still clad body rubbed on the delicate skin in pure desperation. “One of these days I’ll bend you over my desk,” he drawled and got her on the edge all over again. Erratic, rough, he kept going, and caused another wrenching deflagration in her.

It did not take long for him to lurch the farthest and explode with a strained growl, lifting his torso and pouring in her like a powerful feline.

Their sated bodies collapsed on the bed breathless, sweaty, and surrendered.

She lost track of time, or they drowsed off, she did not know. Her eyes squinted on the dark night beyond the still parted drapes. They lay in a tangle of limbs, bedsheets, and steamy intimacy. Her head turned to him in the firelight and found his attention clasped on her. Long minutes passed with them merged in each other.

His now bare, muscled frame came over her. His lips took hers, arms circling the feminine form, and then he was taking her while she held onto him with arms, legs and inner flesh like a vice. Naked this time, their warm skins touched everywhere. The hair-sprinkled torso abraded her breasts, the hair on his sex abraded her nub. This time, however, he took her slow, excruciatingly so. He savoured her with his mouth, his hands, his skin. That mouth of his murmured sensual words, naughty words, crude ones. Crude promises. They moved in tandem as he kissed and caressed her like a man possessed. Like a man tortured. Like a man in agony. After they found their culmination, he buried his face in the curve of her neck and fell asleep, never letting go.

 

Would she come out as needy if she admitted she missed him? Catriona looked through the window to the grey morning a week later. A week when she had barely seen her husband.

On her escritoire in her dressing room, a letter to Anna awaited to be finished and sealed. In fact, it awaited to go beyond the first paragraph.

He had left early for the stables while she lay awake in their bed—a bed from which he had been absent the whole night. Every night since the one they shared after the meeting. That had been the last.

The last and the most memorable, with its sultry passion and lethal lasciviousness.

Late to return, he entrenched himself in his study from which she did not see him emerge unless she stood guard by her window to a wisp view of him booting his way to his horses. Like now, for example.

All this hard-work caused admiration, of course. Autumn did not lay far when the livestock would have to be brought back from the pastures into barns for protection during winter.

But she missed him like a woman missed a man. Her man.

The void he left caused an intense longing and not only in the bedchamber. Everywhere. She remembered their conversations in the breakfasts and dinners they had had together. Their bantering that led to kisses. The kind-hearted way he treated the animals under his care and the people, his niece and nephews, siblings, father. Those commands he delivered in bed undid her, and out of it, enraged her.

Still, she loved him with all he was. With all her heart.

How untimely to discover what she felt for him exactly when he put this precipice-like distance between them. This could not go on, though. She must find a means to bridge this gap and reach him, find out what was going on inside that stubborn head of his. She required strategy for that, and she would develop one. Being married revealed to be not a war, but a learning of tactics and diplomacy to carry it out, leaving no loose ends along the way.

After sending the letter, she would go check on Fiadhaich, as she often did since she came back, and take her ride with Debranua.

Anything but sitting here wallowing in her sloshy emotions. They could lead to tears, and this was something she refused to do.

 

Luncheon had proved a solitary affair, a new routine these days. Before tea, Catriona sat with Mrs Thomson, the housekeeper, to discuss the needs of the manor. That was when Mr Thomson, the butler, came to announce Lady McDougal and Lady McKendrick’s call.

Catriona breathed in relief to have people to talk to in these hollow hours through which she dragged herself. She had formed a friendship with Freya due to the nearness of their manors, but Aileen had given her a positive impression at the meeting, and she hoped they could become good friends, too.

In the drawing room, she greeted her sisters-in-law with a brittle smile despite her sincere welcoming of them. She rang for tea and invited them to sit. They wore their usual garments with their husbands’ plaids, as did Catriona.

“We wished to come before I return to the McDougal,” Aileen said with a smile.

“You did well, Aileen,” Catriona approved. “When are you returning?” She sat on a settee, hands folded on her lap.

“Later this week, I’m afraid.”

Catriona marvelled at the other woman’s beauty that carried the marked features of the McKendricks with their varied shades of brown hair and eyes. Would Fingal’s and her children have the same family traits? Her own family held different appearances.

The blasted laird did not deign to even talk to her; thinking about babies seemed very out of place at the moment. Though they had been rather…active since the wedding. Who knew? A child might be on the way to keep her company if her husband refused the role.

“You had a shorter stay this summer,” Freya was saying.

“Too many things happening in the McDougal,” she answered. “Did I tell you Sam is becoming successful in Oxford?”

“Sam is Laird McDougal’s heir, by his first wife,” Freya explained.

Catriona remembered Taran McDougal had been a widower for long before he married Aileen. His son, a lanky, red-haired young man, had the fame of being bookish behind his large round spectacles. “I believe I met him once.” About three years ago, when she had last visited, if memory served.

“He’s about to start his third year as an undergraduate botanist, and the professor he used to correspond with invited him to stay on after he graduates.” The pride in her stance was unmistakable.

“Lucky Taran is still young, so Sam need not assume his role as heir for several years yet,” Freya commented.

“True. And Taran expects him to choose a lass from one of the clans until then,” Aileen completed. “Enough of us,” she changed the subject. “How is married life agreeing with you?” she fired close-range.

An intense tide of red invaded her cheeks. Her eyes looked everywhere, restless as her hands twisted on her lap. “I seem to be getting along with the changes.” She hoped the inane reply came out convincing at least.

“None of my brothers are easy,” Aileen confided. “If Fingal gives you trouble, just tell me and I will personally throttle him.” Her sister-in-law did not give signs of her obvious sharpness. She might very well have read between the few lines Catriona said.

And if her husband needed throttling, which it seemed he did, she would have immense pleasure in doing it herself.

A bubble of laugh came to her lips at her own thought and Aileen’s offer of help. “Thank you, I’ll let you know.”

“I do think Fingal did a good job with the refurbishing,” Freya said, introducing a new subject.

Tea arrived and they continued chatting in a friendly atmosphere.

 

Fingal heard women’s voices in the drawing room and made a detour to his study, taking refuge behind his desk. Thomson had informed him that his sister and Freya came calling.

He was in no mood to talk to anyone.

Much less to come face to face with his wife.

Not after the mistake of that typhoon-like night he had with her.

A mistake for he was not supposed to touch her ever again, nor that night either. A mistake because he had married her without asking properly. A mistake because now she would be shackled to him for life.

He dared not even stay in the same room as her. There remained no forces to resist his wife. The past week had been agony, with him almost locking his study and throwing out the key. The only reason he did not do it was that he needed to work the stables next morning.

And he had been toiling like doomsday in the hopes of exhausting himself enough to numb this craving for her.

It was not working.

The more he avoided her, the more the need for her gnawed at him.

He deserved no less. It was his duty to let her be. Let her free as much as she wanted. She was doing fine, if the reports he received from Craig and Mrs Thomson were anything to go by, he comforted himself.

Still standing, he turned to the window behind his chair, not really seeing the grey weather over the greenery.

If she wished to go back to London, to her family, he would not oppose, though her absence might destroy him. It nearly did when she had finished her job here and left. Not that he would ever confess it to Drostan, naturally.

And what if a small voice inside told him he was being a coward bastard? He had a wife, he should come clean, present her the choices. Admit to the mess he made. It was not possible to give her unmarried status back—annulment being out of question. He had mucked it up, no doubt. He should admit it, and to his feelings. He had come into love with her. It must be. The swell of emotions which bludgeoned him during the meeting possessed no other name. No other face.

Given an option, would she go from him? The possibility of an affirmative turned his blood into shards of ice. He expelled tense air through his nostrils, raking his hair.

The doorknob clicked shut. Pivoting, he saw the very wife who did not vacate his mind for a single minute. She stood by the entrance with that unfailing tonnish air that barely served as a thin varnish for her very Scottish temper. Their eyes clasped, hers with a determined gleam in them.

Talk about coming clean!

Her dressing of his colours amazed him as though she did not loath what he did.

She kept her attention glued on him when her hand found the key, turned it, and dropped it between her delicious mounds; the delicate chin lifted in defiance. The sight of her caused his guts to go on overdrive.

That he had thought to lock himself in to resist her made a mockery of the fact they were now enclosed in this place by her own hands. The view of her, that defiance, set his pulse to rush faster. He imagined all kinds of ways he could extricate the blasted key from her. Not to set himself free, oh no. But to throw it somewhere no one would find it, then clutch her to him and make love together for weeks, uninterrupted.

If his delectable amazon came to do battle, he would not be the one to turn tail. That was for sure!

Had she come to tell him she would leave, he did not know if he would have enough strength to let go. Merely the sight of the lass got him twisting in his skin to take her, keep her, the rest be damned.

“Talk to me, Fingal,” she directed as if she had all the right.

And she did, damn her!

“About the weather?” he taunted.

“Yes, the freezing weather.” She certainly referred to their estrangement.

“Not yet,” he delayed. “It’s late summer, you know.”

How would she look swollen with his seed? Unbidden, unbridled, the question assailed his mind out of nowhere. The motions of making her increase caused wild fantasies to sprout in his indecent mind. This woman was just so perfect for him! Did she not see it?

She did not buy the nonsense about summer. “You’ve been…absent. I want to know why.” Crossed arms, her bosom bunched to distract the hell out of him. To slide a hand between them would make him find that key—to paradise.

“You miss my…husband’s duties. I can provide them.” He meant to shock her into silence.

Sweet delusion.

A little knowing smile drew her ripe lips. “I do. But that’s not the point here.”

To hear she missed him did not help one bit. It originated in him the canon-ball-like impulse to go to her and give them both what they desired, what strummed so loudly in the room.

Loud was the attraction simmering between husband and wife. Loud echoed countless layers of feelings unconfessed and otherwise. Love, yes, and his shame, her loss at what to make of his distance, the yearning, the sacrifice he must make, the sorrow in her eyes.

“I’ve been busy.” He braced his feet, fists on his hips, and treated her with his scrutiny.

“Too busy to even have dinner with your wife?” Why did she have to ask these treacherous questions?

He would never be too busy for his wife. Every hour he spent in eager wait for the moment he might see her again. Even if only from a distance. Even if only when she trotted Debranua through the estate, or his servants informed him of her whereabouts, her activities during a day he forced himself to spend far from her.

Nearly eight feet separated them, but the tension thrummed as if they stood nose to nose. He wished they did because then he’d devour that saucy mouth of hers.

“The paperwork won’t allow for it.” Lame excuse, both understood it.

If possible, her spine straightened even more. “Quit the evasive techniques, Fingal.”

No one could accuse his wife of being daft. He should not treat her as such. Whether she wanted out or not, whether he could take it or not, he owed her at least a hint of his musings. Fingal tried to stay as rational as he might, except reason had nothing to do with this. His heart drowned in his love for the wife he took without permission. And he was striving to keep his head above water.

“You told your father you married me to spare your sister.” She asked for answers; she would get them.

Her dark eyes studied him for lengthy seconds. “This was one of the reasons, yes.”

His turn to study her, intrigued. “What other reasons could you have?”

Was it because of his horses? Or perhaps because her father intended an alliance with his clan. Catriona never denied her appreciation for her country; she would do anything, including marriage to a scoundrel like him, to achieve it. Would she not? Reasons abounded, and hers appeared infinite.

“A marriage decision is not based on a single aspect.” She came a few steps closer.

“Quit the evasive techniques, Catriona,” he threw back.

“The wifely duties aspect did not seem too bad.” More steps forward.

If she intended for him to pounce on her, she was doing an outstanding job of it. To remain in the same room, with her beauty and her determination, her sharpness and the scent he now inhaled as she approached, tested his limits. They were playing with dangerous fire. Their fire. He was. And his head became progressively less engaged here. A bonfire started to take him by assault as if he had been tied to a stake in a sort of medieval court. Torture, pure and simple.

“The other 'aspect' might be the fact I did not offer you a choice,” he ventured. The effort to keep his mind clear became more difficult by the minute.

By now, she had come close enough to his desk. She braced her hands on it and flayed him with a glare. “Do you think I wouldn’t have found a way to stay in London, if that was what I wanted?”

For a miss who had succeeded to travel to Scotland, train a horse, get him in tenterhooks and return to London, she would have accomplished anything to which she set her mind. “You can be a tad single-minded given the chance, yes.” To say the least. A trait that made him love her the more.

Her stare pierced him further. “And do you by any chance believe I would have said 'yes' at our wedding if I had no will to marry you?”

Fingal displayed a quizzical scowl. “What are you saying?” That dim, faint beam of something that should not be, but resembled hope, shone timid in a hidden and dark part of him. One he did not dare acknowledge to avoid a disappointment.

Her brows pleated as though she deemed him dense. “I’m saying I love you, you pig-headed giant!”

Then he did pounce. “Catriona!” The rakish smile he drew felt rusty with the tension of the last week. His bunched arms banded her as their mouths latched hungry. They kissed until they must come up for air.

Reluctantly, they separated. “I meant to return your freedom,” he rasped on her lips.

This woman loved him. Hell and damnation! He did not even fathom if he deserved this love, her. But she looked at him with so much unreserved emotion, he had no choice but believe his luck. His perfect match, perfect even when they disagreed. Especially when they disagreed, since the make-up process proved to be so delicious.

“And who are you to choose for me?” Her mouth dragged down his thick neck, nibbling on the smooth skin.

“Because I love you, too, you impossible lass!” he said heartily. “I’ll keep you here forever, in that case,” he commanded.

Catriona breathed a smile before she pulled him for another steamy kiss. “I cannot contest you there,” she breathed.

His feisty wife yielding to a command of his? Well, miracles did happen. Once in a blue moon, at least. He was not complaining, far from it.

Fingal lifted the feminine frame onto the desk, making her lie on the piles of papers, unconcerned. Skirts bunched up, she cradled him between satiny thighs as he bent over her.

Forgotten, the key fell to the carpet with a muted thud but neither minded.

“You promised to bend me over the desk,” she taunted for his aggravation.

His expert hands had pulled down her underdress, baring her bosom to proceed to kiss, lick and suckle the skin that came uncovered. “Yes, later.” The hot growl left no doubt about the accumulated craving. “I need every inch of you fastened to me first.” His lips feasted on a breast. “I missed you like hell!”

“So did I.” She clutched him with all of her as they embarked on a journey of desire and love.