book JdM6x1406931-20978754 (11 page)

“Oh, no,” she said. “I told Calum and Alan that if they gave us another morning, I should make them breakfast tomorrow and the day after. I am going to make your breakfast now.”

“Naughty girl to barter away my breakfasts!” he teased.

“Oh, you shall have yours, too, and yours will be better because I will make them second, and I am always better at things the more I do them.”

“Clever girl,” Angus laughed.

“You must stay in bed, My Lord,” Elisabeth said. “I thee command.”

“Oh, dost thou command me, naughty lass? I think a bottom may be in need of the strap.”

Elisabeth put her basket on the great table and tripped lightly over to him. The look in her eyes was that same desire he had first seen when she had struggled under him on their wedding night, the helpless craving for his hand over her, upon her, that seemed to make Angus weak as well.

“Promise me, Angus MacGregor?” she whispered. “You will strap me if I command thee?”

He nodded, overwhelmed by how much he wanted her.

“Then I command thee to stay in bed,” she said, “and never get out.”

He twined his arms around her back and kissed her and held her close. “You will be strapped for that naughty command after breakfast,” he whispered in her ear and gave her naughty bottom a mighty spank that made her yelp into his shoulder, though the force had to travel through all the pleats of her arisaid.

* * *

When Fiona arrived an hour later, all was changed from the previous day. As Angus carted fodder from the barn to the fold, he caught Fiona looking quizzically at him, and he felt his face grow hot, sure that the canny wife must sense that there had been some chastisement involved in the transformation of haughty Elisabeth Grant into the bubbly companion she was today.

For Fiona and Elisabeth were laughing and laughing as Elisabeth’s lessons neared their completion. This morning it was Elisabeth who began making the little bawdy jests about Angus’ hands that made him give her a look that said that even though they now shared the secret of her love of his mastery, he was more than capable of making her backside pay a price she would find she was not quite so able to afford. It was Elisabeth, too, whom he overheard speaking of the days to come, when Calum and Alan would marry and Glanaidh would become a place where one might have a proper wedding feast.

“Though,” he heard her saying, perhaps purposefully loud enough that it might reach his ears, “I will not complain of my own, seeing how pleasing my Angus was after it.”

Fiona seemed puzzled at first, he thought, but by the time she left to return to Achmonie, she had, it appeared, succumbed to Elisabeth’s new charms. He hoped that whatever damage had been done the day before, as Fiona carried the tale back to the gossips of Achmonie, could now be undone with new word of his bride’s eagerness to show her gratitude at being taken into the hearts of the MacGregors.

Elisabeth and Angus went to sleep well-pleased with one another. Though Elisabeth professed herself sorry that they were both too exhausted either for discipline or for lovemaking, he could tell that she was as well-pleased as he to let this fine day rest easy upon their hearts, being the first day of an understanding that it seemed might last them a very long while.

Chapter Thirteen

Elisabeth was awakened by a pounding at the door. It was nearly pitch-dark in the house, the only dim light provided by the banked embers in the hearth.

“Angus,” a voice was calling. “Angus, ‘tis time!”

Angus got out of bed and kissed Elisabeth, then went for his kilt. With alarm, she watched him reach also for his sword belt.

“What is happening?” she asked, trying to keep the fear out of her voice. “Where are you going?”

“It’s a raid, dearling,” he said. “We must get back some of those sheep the MacDonalds took from us.”

“Must you go on it, and you new-married?” she asked, pleading.

“Hush, Elisabeth,” he said. “Yes, I must. Someone must keep Calum and Alan in line.”

“When will you return?”

“Look for us by midday. Loose the flock from the fold when you have fed them. The lads and I will be back for the folding.”

He kissed her again, and then he was gone, before she had time even to think of how she might earn a strapping out of the occasion and perhaps delay him that way.

* * *

She was very proud of herself—and it was right pride, indeed the very rightest—for how many of her lessons from Fiona had stayed with her. She fed the animals and weeded the garden and even practiced carding a little on a fleece that Angus had judged too poor to sell. It would be a long while, she knew, before she would have enough of her own carded wool to make a rolag for spinning, but Fiona had brought one for her to practice upon, and she diligently worked at it for an hour, though the yarn she produced was so uneven that it made her ashamed.

Immediately when she saw the uneven yarn, though, she wondered if Angus would spank her for being such a poor spinner, and although she knew that he never would while she was still learning, the thought of him turning her over his knee next to the spinning wheel, saying softly, “You must learn, Elisabeth Grant,” and then letting his heavy hand fall across her little bottom cheeks, occupied her imagination for long moments as she found that her right hand had somehow made its way up under her arisaid to rub her cunny (she still blushed to think of the naughty word) through her linen shift.

It was the thing that her cousin had once been thrashed for by their governess, she remembered, back in Edinburgh. It was a thing that maidens must never do… but what of brides who have been claimed by bridegrooms, she wondered. Surely once one had a man’s yard in one’s cunny…

She lifted her shift and wormed her hand under it. She spread her knees upon the little spinning stool and touched herself where Angus had deflowered her and then ran her fingers deliciously upwards, to the place where all the feeling seemed to find its center. She moaned at the sensation. It was not the same as having Angus there, but at the thought of what he might do to her if he found her like this, she felt the moisture come more and more greatly, and she began to move her fingers inside herself like he had when he had kissed her there, too. She felt the… the spend… coming—she was almost there.

And then she heard the bleating of sheep and men coming up the road. Guiltily, hurriedly, she withdrew her fingers and put herself to rights, hoping that Angus would not see that her eyes were as strangely bright as they felt.

Elisabeth got up and ran out of the door. They were dirty but unhurt, as far as she could see, and they had at least fifty sheep with them. More mouths to feed, she thought, but the look of triumph on Angus’ face was wonderful to see. She ran to him, and he caught her around the waist and kissed her.

“I missed you,” she said up into his face. “Are you hungry? I will lay out a hero’s dinner for you.”

“First you, then dinner,” he said and led her into the house. As soon as the door was closed behind them, she had an urge that she could not resist, and she knelt in front of her conquering hero. He looked down at her in surprise.

“Angus,” she whispered, “while you were gone, I…”

“What lass?” he asked.

“I missed you, and I thought of you,” she blushed deeply, “and I… touched my cunny, though I know it is wicked.”

He laughed. “Did you, now, milady?”

She nodded. “Do you think… do you think I must be punished?” With these words, she put her hands up, underneath his plaid and his shirt, and pulled them up. “Is it a punishment, Angus, to have to do this shameful thing, perhaps?” There was his massive yard, and she began to give it little kisses and to nuzzle it, gratified to see and feel how much harder it seemed to get under her attentions.

“Yes… ” Angus’ voice seemed to trail off.

“And then perhaps you’ll have to strap me?”

“Oh… yes, Elisabeth…”

She took his manhood as deep as she could into her mouth, feeling that this act was only his due, as the glorious raider he was. The taste of him was harsher than it had been when she had first had him upon her tongue; he tasted like sweat and sheep, but the shame of that taste was delicious to her, because she felt him grip her head as if he could not help himself and hold his yard into her. What a strange sort of blessing it was to feel she had a man who would make her gag upon his man’s staff because that was how he found his pleasure!

“You’ll swallow my seed now, wife,” he growled as he moved back and forth, holding her head still and using her mouth as a place to ease the fire she had roused in his loins. Her hands came up around his legs and held his strong, bare buttocks—the hair there, with its unfamiliar crinkliness, felt to her fingers like a proof of his manhood and his right to have her as he wished, and the power she felt in the muscles there seemed to set her veins afire. And Angus seemed to like the way she held him there, for he growled wordlessly and held her head against his loins. She felt his yard pulse inside her mouth, and then she felt the hot seed shoot out as she tried to swallow as he had told her to do.

He pulled his yard out and knelt by her and embraced her, cradling her head in his huge right hand. “Elisabeth MacGregor, is there no end to your naughtiness?” he asked her with a bemused smile on his face. She smiled back and said, “Must I be strapped now, Angus? Girls who do such wicked things need chastisement, do they not?”

He laughed. “It seems the only way truly to punish you, lass, is to take away your strappings.”

She pouted.

“I think I would rather have you over my knee, though.”

“Truly?” she said. She had thought of that position but imagined that perhaps he found it not to be punitive enough.

Angus rose and went to the bed and sat upon it. “Skirts up and over my lap, Elisabeth. Your naughtiness must have its proper reward.” She felt like her smile could never be removed from her face as she obeyed him and knew for the first time a posture of which she had once feverishly dreamed. As his huge hand began to spank her, she looked at the floor with wonder that this tiny croft-house had not yet burnt down, ignited by the heat that seemed to be in her cunny whenever Angus MacGregor touched her.

After he had spanked her soundly and given her, of his mercy, a spend over his lap, they lay upon the bed for a time together before she went to begin the men’s dinner.

“Were you frightened, lass, to be here by yourself?” Angus asked, as he held her upon his chest so that she could hear his great heart beating in his powerful chest. “I had not thought of it, or I would have told you to run to Achmonie to be with the other wives.”

“I would not have minded being with Fiona, but what of the animals?”

“Do you think you can be canny and flee if you need to?”

“What do you mean?” Elisabeth thought she heard a note of concern in his voice. “Is there a chance that raiders would come to Glanaidh?”

“I do not know, dearling, but Ian MacDonald is not a man to forget an insult like an axe-haft across his face.”

She turned her face from his chest and looked up into his eyes. Her own eyes filled with tears, “Oh, Angus…”

“Hush, Elisabeth. ‘Twas nothing.”

“But I never thanked you, properly. Thank you, My Lord, for saving my honor.”

“And did I not get, out of the deed, the loveliest, naughtiest, wickedest bride a Highlander ever had? I call that a very fair bargain, lass!”

She loved the way his belly heaved when he laughed, and she kissed his chest again and again, thinking of how truly noble he had been that day, only four days before, though it seemed another lifetime.

When his laughter had faded, though, Elisabeth thought about the danger he had laid before her. “What if…” she murmured, “I knew how to defend myself?”

“Do not be foolish, dearling. ‘Tis much better to run. You would be over the hill towards Achmonie in no time at all.”

“But what if I could not get away?” She felt him tense under her as he considered it. “What if they came in the night, after you and the lads had left on a raid of your own?”

“It would never happen, dearling.”

“What if it did? Would you not rather I knew how to put a dirk between Ian MacDonald’s ribs than that he could take my honor at his pleasure?”

She did not, truly, even know why her mind had run along this strange course.

“Does my Highland eagle wish for sharper talons, then?” He laughed, and she laughed with him; it had become their jest about the way she spent, crying out and seeming to tear at his flesh. Then he said, “Aye, certainly I would rather you knew that. But I would not have you stay to make the foolish attempt instead of fleeing to my kin.”

“If I promise to fight only if I cannot flee?” Elisabeth, with her chin on his plaid, over his breastbone, looked up into his eyes. She could tell that she was gaining her point, for he gazed back at her with a look of appreciation; he liked her fighting spirit, despite himself, she could tell. That was why she wanted to learn to fight, she realized; she knew that if she could show him the ferocity of her determination to remain the Lady of Urquhart, somehow, even as she made a life as Elisabeth MacGregor, he would love her the more for it.

* * *

Thus it was that very evening, Angus put a dirk in her hand and said, “This was my father’s, dearling. It is yours now.”

Then, at his instruction, she had to put the dirk down and she spent the next hour learning how to stand and how to move her feet. She remembered how quickly Angus had darted towards Ian MacDonald in the market square at Urquhart, but watching his feet as he showed her, she grew even more amazed that a man so enormous could move so much like a cat.

Elisabeth was sweating torrents by the time Calum and Alan returned from folding to laugh at her, but Angus professed himself well-pleased, and even impressed, with how quickly she learnt and how naturally she seemed to take to it.