Dark Side of the Laird (Highland Bound) (2 page)

I tossed my linen napkin onto the table and start
ed to stand.

He held up his hand
, staying me. “Nay, dinna get up. Your meal will get cold.”

“Too late,” I said with a nervous laugh staring at the stiffened porridge that appeared to have taken on a
gray hue.

He
stalked toward me, the way he always did. Sensual, powerful and determined. My body immediately came alive, recalling how many delicious things often happened in the wake of his pursuing me. Hot, torrid, dangerous.

His thighs brushed my for
earm as he stopped right beside my chair and I craned my neck to look up at him, taking in his raw, dangerous beauty. Logan leaned down, his eyelids lowering and I swallowed as his lips neared mine.

Every kiss made me shiver. Every kiss excited me. Every kiss made me want to strip bare. This one was no different.
I sank back in my chair, unable to hold myself steady, and he followed me, lips on fire. Logan tantalized me with his tongue, skating it over my lips, sinking it into my mouth only to withdraw when I touched mine to his. He teased me, taunted me, until I was breathless and then he pulled away, a satisfied smile on his lips.

He knew what his kisses did to me, how they made me feel and he liked it. Cherished it. Aspired to it. I was a hot and bothered mess. Goosebumps up and down my arms. Nipples hard as stones, slick sex, clenching thighs, breath heaving.

“Ye’ve not eaten or slept in days,” he murmured.

I nodded, watching the way his body unfolded in the chair opposite mine, legs stretched out, his bare knees poking from beneath his pleated plaid.

“Tell me,” he urged, steepling his fingers beneath his chin and studying me.

“What?” I shrugged. “There is nothing to tell.”

“Tell me what is on your mind.”

I chewed on my lip. He’d promised me that he’d speak to the king. Promised me that we’d be together. And yet… “Lady Isabella is still here.”

Logan’s eyes narrowed and lips turned down in a frown. “Aye.”

He didn’t elaborate. Just
aye
. What the hell was I supposed to say to that? Frustration mounted inside me and old insecure monsters reared their heads. I shoved them down, beat them down. Logan had never made me feel small, insignificant. He’d never told me I was worthless. Never made me feel like less of a person than Steven did. If anything, he’d worshipped me.

I waited, holding my breath. When a number of moments ticked by and my lungs started to burn I let it out, sat forward, my eyes locked on his.

“Aye?”

He nodded. “Not of my choosing.”

“Did you…speak to the king at all about us?”

Again he nodded, but slowly. “Aye.”

My breath hitched. “Logan—”

Sensing my frustration he cut me off. “
My desires were not met well by my liege.”

I nodded having deciphered that much on my own.

“I kept your name hidden from him, though I’m guessing he surmised that ’twas ye.” Logan pushed out of the chair and walked to the window, pulling back my shutters and looking out. He crossed his arms over his chest, tense all over.

I approached him, slipping my arms around his waist from behind, leaning my cheek against his back.

“He can’t win,” I said.

“I fear he already has.”

Chapter Two

Logan

’
T
was hard to keep my anger in check when every inch of me felt the intense urge to leap upon my horse and chase the king down. At every turn, James had been there making decisions without regard for me. Over the last dozen years, he’d bribed me with gifts—bawdy women, barrels of fine wine, jewels, silver. And I’d been happy to tilt my head in thanks and receive my gifts with pleasure. But lately, his enticements had not…enticed me. Not with Emma showing me what I’d been missing.

Since she’d walked into my life, I’d never been the same. And I’d realized something—that those gifts had been a means of shutting me up. Of making me bend to his will. Of doing his dirty work. I’d been r
uled round for over a dozen years by that spoiled piece of shite.

I gritted my teeth, keeping my anger on a tight leash so as not to scare Emma. The lass had been through enough—more than enough. Hell, she wasn’t even from this time
. Five hundred years separated her from now and where she came from. I couldn’t say belonged, because I felt she belonged here with me. Her time-travel didn’t bother me at all. Magic happened frequently when the stars aligned and it wasn’t something I’d been foreign to. There were others who proclaimed to have come from another place. Though her travel was a fact I’d only just learned recently, ’haps in my heart I had known all along.

I’d been drawn to her like a ship to a beacon light upon the land, she led me home, centered me.

Her coming here had been a blessing for me, though I wasn’t entirely sure it was a blessing for her, even if the signs pointed to it being both our destinies.

“We will need to give him more time, ’tis all,” I managed to say, though even I could hear the strangle in my
voice.

Emma stared up at me skeptically.

“Time?” She hooked her thumb toward the window. “I don’t think all the time in the world is going to help now. He’s left Isabella here. With you. What will you do about her?”

Any thought of Isabella left a sour taste in my mouth. I’d just as soon toss her onto a hole-riddled
ship and have her guide herself home. Fate would either lead her to safety or the choppy waters of the sea would swallow her and her evil intentions. “Ignore her the best I can.”

“And what if she…” I watched the play of emotions across Emma’s face. Lord, she was being tormented by her vivid imaginings of illicit happenings.

I leaned forward, eyes locking on hers, gripped her shoulders and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “I will not allow her to come near me. Dinna fear for me, or her. I swear to ye, Emma, she will not come between us.”

Emma nodded, chewing one of her luscious lips. She gripped onto my shirt and tugged me closer, gazing up at me as though she’d memorize my face. “I don’t want to spend our time together worrying.” She glanced away a moment before looking back. “I never know how much time we’ll have.”

A reminder that her time here was not guaranteed. Even if she’d tried unsuccessfully twice now to get back to her own era, did not mean the tides of time couldn’t change their minds.

“Let us not worry then. Let us simply enjoy each ot
her’s company.” I skimmed my lips over hers, feeling her sink against me, relaxing somewhat into my embrace. I massaged the tense muscles of her back and deepened the kiss, slanting my lips harder over hers, my tongue darting in and out of her mouth, teasing, tasting.

Whenever I touched her, the world, my troubles, haunting demons, all vanished and it was just the two of us, her healing touch captivating me, pulling me in
, drowning me in everything that was her.

I growled in the back of my throat, body suddenly on fire with need for her. Cock hard, muscles tense, I lifted her up and carried her over to the bed. With each encounter, I tried to teach her a lesson in lovemaking, tried to bring her to new heightened levels of sensitivity and restraint, but not this time.

Nay, right now I just needed her. Needed to feel her warmth all around me, needed to drown inside her instead of thinking about what James had said to me earlier that morning. Needed to forget the wench who would do her damnedest to put herself between Emma and I.

“I need ye,” I said to her, tossing her onto the bed and covering her with my body, feeling every lush curve against my hardness.

“Yes, take me.”

I shoved her gown up swiftly around her hips, slid my hands up her thigh and dipped my fingers against the wet dew of her folds.

“Och, ye’re already so wet,” I said, kissing her hard, owning her with the simple prod of my tongue as I thrust two fingers inside her tight, wet, hot sheath.

“Always,” she murmured against my mouth, moaning and bucking her hips upward. She spread her thighs wide, nails raking down the linen back of my shirt.

I hiked up my plaid, taking hold of my stiff cock and notching the head to her opening.

“I canna wait,” I said, needing
to pound inside her.

“Don’t.”

All the permission I needed. I let intensity take hold. I thrust inside her, arching my hips upward just as she tilted hers. A perfect fit. Deep inside her clenching quim, I started to feel whole. Every exquisite inch withdrew in tumultuous rushes of sensation. I thrust back in, deeper, hitting the knot of flesh at the top of her sheath and listening to her hiss in pleasure and pain.

What a pair we were.

“Faster,” she said, her body clenching, the wet walls of her cunny gripping me tight. Already, she was close to climaxing.

I pumped faster, our hips clashing together in tune to the sounds of the bed scraping on the floorboards. I took
her hands in mine, threading our fingers and bringing them up over her head as I pushed and pulled my hips to hers.

Emma brought her legs up higher, gripping them tight to my waist as she used her abdominal muscles to lift her buttocks from the bed and hold them there, letting me go deeper, letting each pound of my pelvis to hers slam against that tiny bundle of nerves—her clit
as she’d named it.

Every thrust, every pull, she moaned and gasped. I loved her response. Loved everything about her. Loved that she healed me with her touch and made me want to be a better man.

I captured her lips again in a searing kiss, feeling her tighten all the more. She was close. My cock lurched with sudden a sudden furious need, feeling that hot and cold sensation burn its way up and down my length. Then climax gripped me. Still I held it at bay, trying desperately to maintain some control, but then she bucked, cried out against my lips and I was lost. Control forgotten, relinquished in exchange for a leap into ecstasy. She cried out, her entire form quaking violently. Her wet channel sucking me in further as it fluttered with release.

“Oh, Emma,” I growled, biting her lower lip a little harder then I should.

She whimpered, then bit me back.

I chuckled, slowing my pace until a few lazy
thrusts were all I could manage, then rolled to the side and pulled her into my arms.

“Thank ye,” I murmured.

“For what?”

“For taking my mind off the sniveling tart for a few moments.”

Emma laughed, though I could tell that beneath her bluster, she was pained by Isabella’s presence.

“I will try my
damnedest to send her away,” I said.

“Can you do that?”

“The deed will not please my brother. In fact, he will undoubtedly punish me for it, but it can be done. She likely will not leave willingly, so I’d have to truss her up and have her escorted by my men.”

“Does she reside near her uncle?”

“Wouldn’t be surprised if she lived with that bastard.”

“Just don’t send her back the way you sent him.”

I couldn’t help a laugh. That MacDonald swine had tried on so many occasions to harm my clan, to kill me. The last time he came, he even threatened the life of the king. Proclaiming himself Lord of the Isles and future king of Scotland.

I’d sent him back to his northern isles shackled to his ship with the very manacles he’d brought in chests to enslave my people.
When he’d returned yet again, I’d shown him my idea of hospitality in the dungeons, but he’d escaped, and now his niece roamed freely within my castle.

“She is his spy,” I said, wondering what the wench was up to at that moment.

Emma nodded, her head bouncing against my shoulder. “Looking for your secrets right now even.”

“Under MacDonald’s instruction.”

“That, and because she wants to trap you.”

“Trap me?”

“Into marriage.”

“Hmm. I dinna know whether she truly wants to marry me.”

Emma snorted. “Please, Logan, she was practically growling and peeing on your leg as though that might ward off any other women.”

“I’
m glad she didna do that.”

“Me, too.
What a mess that would have been.”

“Aye.” I stood and pulled her up, too. “I’ve got to meet with Ewan. What have you planned for your day?”

She smoothed out her gown and frowned. “Nothing quite yet. With Isabella lurking around, I might just stay in my chamber.”

“Dinna let her get to ye.”
Anger at the wretched intruder made me scowl. Emma didn’t deserve to be a slave to her chamber.

“What choice do I have? I don’t want to have her confront me.”

“’Haps she’ll ignore ye. Ye made it clear we had no designs on each other.”

Emma
pursed her lips. “Yes. But woman’s intuition is…”

“Usually right.”

“Just as I said, someone may be coercing Isabella to marry you—the king and her brother—but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to.” She wrapped her arms around my neck. “You are one handsome, charismatic, intense man. I’ve wanted you from the moment I met you.”

“So ye think she desires me?” I wiggled my brows and tucked my arms around her waist
so she couldn’t escape me.

“You’re a brute.”
Emma pouted in a way that made me want to take her to bed again. To prove how much a brute I was not, and how much she was the only woman for me.

“I’m sure Cook would love your help in the gardens, picking last minute harvests. Maybe even helping with storing everything for winter. With the first frost already coming, the crops are in danger of being ruined.”

Emma sighed. “You’ve convinced me. You know, I never knew how much I liked gardening and watching food grow before I came here.”

I chuckled. “And how did you grow your food before?”

She gave me a worried look. “You’re going to think this is odd, but I bought it at a market. We had these great big buildings filled with food, all year round. It was shipped from warmer places in winter or greenhouses, fresh things in crates and non-perishables in boxes.”

“
Non-perishable? Sounds evil. And warmer places? How could it be warm somewhere else? And what is a greenhouse?” There were so many things about her world I’d yet to understand. Sounded like a fantasy, unreal and weak. They’d not dealt with the hardships we had that made us strong.

Emma smiled up at me, brushed an errant strand of hair from my forehead. “A greenhouse is a tiny house that is built for plants. It has a clear ceiling so the sun can reach the plants, but it
’s insulated to keep it warm.”

“Clear ceiling?”

She nodded. “Glass or plastic—a synthetic material.”

“Huh.” I wanted to build one. Right away.

“And, there are places where the weather is different than here. You have spring, summer, fall and winter, where your weather gradually changes from warm to cold and back again. There are places in the world where it is warm all the time, and places where it is cold all the time.”

“Where are these places?” Emma’s view of the world was amazing and I wanted to see it, to experience it the way she told me.

“It is warm all the time in the south, and on tropical islands. Cold all the time in the north, kind of like the tips of your mountains always have a bit of ice.”

I grunted my acknowledgement, trying to let all of her information sink in. “’Haps ye should show cook how to build a greenhouse. I would love to eat fresh fruit in winter.”