His Woman (20 page)

Her blush deepened at his words.

Duncan savored her shyness as he roamed over the soft curve of her shoulder, then sliding down, teasing with his tongue, nipping gently, enjoying the hitch of her breath, how her heartbeat pounded in her chest.

“Duncan?”

Her rough, passion-filled voice curved a smile on his mouth. He left a trail of kisses across her neck, marveling at her silky softness.

“Duncan.” The soft tremble in her words sent his own pulse racing.

“Aye.”

“You…You are still dressed,” she said, her voice shaky.

“I am at that,” he murmured as he knelt on one knee and framed her waist with his hands, pressing a kiss against the flat of her stomach.

She reached over as if to stop him, but he caught her hand. “I am not done with you yet.” Before she could speak, he lifted her and carried her to the bed.

Lying naked before him, Isabel made to cover herself.

“No, let me see all of you.”

Had he not already seen all there was to see? Touched everything there was to touch?

Isabel hesitated, lulled by the heat in his eyes. She’d anticipated making love to Duncan, but in her mind it had been hurried, frenzied, a mating rather than a deep joining of the bodies.

Never had she anticipated it being so much more.

Had he truly done those intimately wicked things to her? Had she truly let him? Her body quaked with the aftereffects she wasn’t sure she would recover from.

Was this normal? Did all women find such enjoyment?

Emotion welled up in her at Duncan’s thoughtfulness, at how he caressed her, watched her as if something to be cherished—his reverence something she’d believed she’d lost.

With her nerves receding, the warmth of moments ago flooded her body, tingles of pleasure rippling through her to tease her most sensitive places. She embraced each sensual shiver, the warmth pooling in her most private place, the rush of anticipation coursing through her body.

Never had she known being with a man would be so exquisite. Heat infused her as she remembered the intimacy of how he’d touched her. How he’d used his tongue with such indecency. And his fingers. He’d caressed her everywhere, stroked her until he left her blind with need. Even now, tremors from her release rumbled through her in silent ecstasy.

Wanting him to see her, Isabel uncovered her breasts. His gaze riveted on her, the intensity of his desire leaving her aching with anticipation. He scanned her body with mind-spinning slowness. Wherever his gaze roamed, her skin fluttered with excitement. She recognized the sweep of anxiousness, how her body tightened in readiness for Duncan’s touch. Was her response what he would expect from a seasoned woman as he believed her to be?

Nerves wove through her bravado. Duncan had known many women. Had he discovered her innocence? Unsure, Isabel started to look away.

Duncan caught her face in hands. Frowned. “What is wrong?”

Ashamed, she shook her head. “I know so little about the joining,” she whispered. “You are a man who has known the pleasures to be found in making love. And I…”

“Have been treated poorly.”

She looked at him then, the flicker of anger, of remembrance on his face in opposition to the softness of his words.

“No,” he said when she made to speak. “I do not want to know any details. At least for this night.”

Isabel swallowed hard, then nodded.

Tomorrow would come soon enough, and with the daylight, the reality that kept them apart.

He lay by her side, brushed a swath of hair from her brow. “This night is for us.” He kissed her gently, with urgency until doubts left her mind and her body filled with a languid heat. On a soft groan, he placed gentle kisses across her cheek.

“Your clothes,” she murmured through sensation.

“A fair request,” he replied through the next kiss. He stood. With infinite slowness, he removed his garb piece by excruciating piece. Muscles bunched, rippled up his arms and chest as he withdrew his shirt, exposing his hewn frame. A body made for war. A body that knew how to make love to a woman.

Piece by piece, he exposed himself to her. With his eyes locked on hers, he slowly untied the final garment shielding him from her view. Loosened, he slid his thumbs beneath the woven cloth, paused, then released. The tangle of cloth dropped to the floor atop the last of his garb.

He stood before her naked, totally exposed. Taut muscle honed to sheer perfection crafted a warrior’s chest, angled down to where blond hair narrowed to a tangle of twists leading to where he stood readied for her.

Heat stroked her cheeks as she looked her fill. His masculinity jutted proudly from a profusion of unruly curls that added to the power he exuded. She swallowed, trembling, unable to look away.

Duncan shifted and she jerked her head up to find him watching her, his gaze, dark, intense, and sensual.

“You are beautiful,” she breathed.

Desire kindled in his eyes as he knelt before her, his gaze never leaving hers. He traced his finger in a slow trail from the pad of her bottom lip across her chin, along her throat to pause where her pulse raced wildly.

“As are you.” His hand skimmed along her shoulders, curved to flow beneath her breast. “Touch me, Isabel.”

Curious, she reached out. His muscled body quivered beneath her fingers.

He caught her hand within his, set it over his heart; it pounded beneath her palm. “My tremors are from the wanting of you.”

He sealed his words with a kiss, one meant to seduce, to excite, to wash away all thoughts of everything but him. She savored the thrill of her naked body against his, the roughness of his maleness pressing against her soft, sensitive flesh.

Her hands slid over the hard planes of his body, the taut muscles exciting her more.

“Isabel,” he whispered as he positioned himself intimately against her. Propped on his elbows, he watched her a moment before he dipped to nuzzle her neck. “You taste like seasoned honey made only for me.”

With Isabel’s moans of passion firing his blood, Duncan pressed her onto the bed, enjoying her every shiver, her every twist of delight as he teased her with his tongue. Her taste exploded in his mind, a combination of innocence and woman, an intoxicating mix that he wanted forever.

Though there was a mix of questions and contradictions, these past few days with her had taught him that he still cared for Isabel. Now, with her in his arms, her taste potent in his mouth, he realized his feelings for her went deeper than he’d ever believed possible.

A shiver stole through him, but it had naught to do with how the slide of her body against his drove him wild, or that for the first time since she left he felt whole. The emotions storming him were more than he’d expected. More than he’d ever anticipated feeling for Isabel ever again.

A sword’s wrath, he loved her.

Except this time, there was no turning back. He’d not seen the moment coming, or if he had, he’d deluded himself with thoughts of caring, of his feelings of those growing up with her, of having wanted to marry her. How could he be such a fool to think he could ever have stopped loving Isabel?

The demands of his body moments before, the urge to take her, claim her, deepened to a fierce level. Aye, he wanted her, would make her his, but this time, he was offering her the greatest gift.

That of his heart.

If he was a fool to love her, so be it. He loved her too much to give her up now.

With his mind steeped in emotions he’d never again believed he’d experience, he poured them into his every touch, his every kiss. His fingers teased, lingered across her sensitive skin, wanting her to know what she made him feel. How he felt, for her.

With incredible care, he wove his hands over her skin, sliding along the flat of her stomach to the gift she’d given him this night. This time, when he reached his destination, the shock in her eyes of before darkened to needy expectation.

He inhaled her woman’s scent as he opened her fullness for his view. “You are so ready for me.” Unable to hold back, he tasted her, the warmth of her body’s invitation, his own body pounding its need.

“Duncan,” she gasped as he slowly suckled her most private place, his tongue teasing, then swirling to outline where she pulsed for him.

He pressed his thumb against the moist walls of her sheath, and her hips raised in response.

With her body writhing beneath his, silently begging for release, Duncan aligned his body over hers, his hardness pressing intimately against the warmth of her dewy entrance.

Glazed with passion, Isabel watched him, her breaths short and coming fast. She caught his hips, pulled him closer. “I need you so much.”

The pulse of her warmth throbbed against his sensitive shaft, testing his will. He held on to his control, barely. Covering her mouth with his own, he drew her into a long, drugging kiss.

Need built within him like a river gorged. As he inched deeper, Isabel cried out. She jerked and her body began contracting around him. Swept away by emotion, he pulled back and drove deep.

The slight resistance was his only warning as he tore through Isabel’s innocence. He didn’t miss the flicker of pain tangled within the passion.

Her slick walls tightened around him. Desire tore through his thoughts, suffocating all but the elemental need to take her. So he moved, withdrew to submerge himself in her heat, until his strokes grew fast and his mind blurred with the taking. Somewhere in the blinding haze of need, Isabel’s release broke his fragile hold.

Duncan poured into her, his body racked with blissful spasms that left him drained. Exhausted. He crumpled to her side. Out of sheer reaction he drew her to him, cradled against his nakedness.

Next to him, her breathing calmed. The rapid pace of her heartbeat slowed to a steady, normal pace when this moment was anything but.

Tears shimmered in Isabel’s eyes, but her emotion couldn’t navigate through the dark fury building within Duncan’s soul.

He wished they were simply lovers, not caught up in a web of deceit so he could relish lying in the arms of the woman he loved.

Loved.

Bitterness tainted the beauty thoughts of the word should bring. Pain twisted inside him. “How,” Duncan asked with lethal calm, “could you still be a virgin?”

“No more lies,” Duncan said between clenched teeth. “You will explain everything now!”

At the anger churning on his face, Isabel’s guilt at hiding her innocence and about Frasyer doubled. “Yes, I did lie to you,” she whispered, aching inside, “but I had a reason.” She reached out to touch him.

As if scalded with hot water, Duncan released her. He sat on the edge of the bed, his face cast in harsh lines. “A reason for lying to me these past three years? A reason for convincing me that you were Frasyer’s whore? What possible reason could you have for denying our love a chance to grow? Nay, no need to explain,” he seethed, “the reason is clear. You wanted Frasyer’s wealth more than you wanted me.”

“No!”

With her body still throbbing from their joining, she wanted to weep. She had envisioned the beauty of making love with Duncan, of the memories she would take with her and cherish. Now, because of her deceit, the consummation of their love, a sacred moment to revere, was destroyed.

She drew a steadying breath and sat beside him, not touching him, the smoothness of his gleaming skin marred by the cruel scar of his recent injury, another to add to those faded from previous battles.

“I have never loved Frasyer or was lured by his wealth,” she quietly said.

He glared at her in clear disbelief. “Prove it,” he said flatly. “I offer you one final chance to be honest. To tell me why you have lied to me in a way that has never left my mind. By God, Isabel, had you tried to hurt me, you could not have chosen a straighter mark than through your betrayal!”

His gaze strafed her still naked body. “Now I understand the innocence I sensed. How is it that he has never savored what I have tasted, never touched you with a lover’s hand? Isabel”—his voice seemed to catch—“if you ever loved me—nay, if there was anything true about our prior relationship, you will be, for once, completely honest about what has transpired between you and Frasyer!”

Looking at him, hearing the torment in his voice, the sadness in his eyes tore her apart. Oh, God, how could she have done this to Duncan, to the man she loved with every inch of her life? She folded her hands before her. Of course, she’d had no choice, but her soul wept for her role in all that they had lost.

But what if she told him the truth? What would happen then? Duncan, too, was not a man to give up what was his lightly. And she now saw that, however much he fought it, he knew they still belonged to each other. Would he confront Frasyer and force him into a fight if he learned of the tragic events?

For so long she had tried to protect Duncan. Look at what her efforts had brought. More confusion. More pain. Her mouth dry, she ran her tongue across her lips. Maybe it was time to put more faith in Duncan as a man.

She drew in a nervous breath and exhaled. “Three years past, I was so excited as it neared our time to wed. I loved you so much and looked forward to our life together. But as you know, since my mother’s death, my father has struggled to go on with his life. Raising two children on his own compounded his strife.”

“He loved you both,” Duncan agreed.

“Aye, but we were a reminder of the woman he loved. I have my mother’s smile, and Symon has—had our mother’s eyes.” She closed her eyes as the memories of Symon’s protectiveness swarmed her, his outrage when she’d left to become Frasyer’s mistress.

She reached up and worried the pendant around her neck bearing Wallace’s arms as she continued. “As the years passed, my father’s broken heart never healed.”

“And he turned to drink,” Duncan said, his expression softening a fraction.

She nodded. “He tried to be a good father.” Her heart ached as the memories of the past tumbled through her, her father’s struggles, his tears when he believed no one was around. “But hazed by drink, often his choices were poor.”

Isabel caught Duncan’s gaze, needing him to understand how much she regretted hurting him. “Then I met you. You will never know how much during those troubled years your friendship meant to me. When we fell in love, indeed, it was a miracle. I believed…I foolishly believed with you I would find happily ever after.”

She dropped her hands to her sides, then looked at the fire where yellow-orange flames flickered upward. “Late one evening, a week before you and I were to wed, my father came home drunk.” She shook her head. “Distraught, his eyes empty, his body slumped in defeat. I had never seen him so broken, except when my mother died.”

She paused to steady herself. “Before he spoke a word, I knew something horrible had happened. Sobbing, he begged me for forgiveness, even before he began to explain. When I eventually pulled the reason for his distress from him, I wished to God I had not.” Even now the memories of that night tore her apart. The anger had come as the life she’d planned shattered around her like a cold rain.

Tears filled her eyes and her body began to tremble.

“Isabel.”

The gentleness of Duncan’s voice had the tears flowing faster. She shook her head.

“Look at me, please.”

On a shaky breath she turned toward him, the softening of his gaze tearing her apart.

“Tell me.”

She wet her lips. “Th-that night my father had gambled with several men, one of them being Frasyer—a man who detests you.”

He nodded, slowly, thoughtfully. The beginnings of awareness flickered in his eyes. “A hatred he has made clear since I beat him after a practice spar in our youth.”

“That night my father lost heavily to Frasyer, gold my father did not have. He begged the earl not to take his home, promising to do anything in payment.” Her voice wavered, but afraid she’d fall apart, Isabel didn’t stop. “Frasyer’s request was so unthinkable that at first my father refused. But Frasyer gave my father until morning to agree to his offer, or he would be arrested and cast into debtor’s prison for life. A proud man, I believe my father would have ended his life before he allowed himself to be locked away.”

“What was Frasyer’s request to Lord Caelin?” His voice had become a rough whisper, as if Duncan suspected the truth, but couldn’t bring himself to voice it.

Tears burned in her eyes as if time had spun back to that terrible night. “There was something Frasyer wanted more than money. That only I could save our home and my father from spending the rest of his life imprisoned.”

Her words echoed into the somber silence, fractured by the crackle of the fire burning cheerfully within the hearth.

Duncan’s face paled. “Frasyer asked that you become his mistress?”

“Yes, except he made me swear to secrecy the reason why. He wanted you to believe I’d left you for coin, for a man of more wealth. He swore that if I ever revealed the truth to you, you would be killed. Besides my father, Symon was the only other person who knew the truth.”

The transformation on Duncan’s face was chilling to watch. Heedless of his nakedness, he launched to his feet. “The bastard. I will kill him!”

Fear piled atop the emotions swirling within her. “Do not say that. I have been trying to protect you.”

He rounded on her. “I do not need your protection now any more than I did then. I needed your love.” His eyes blazed hot, agitated, as if he itched to strike something. “You should have trusted me with the truth.”

“And what would you have done? A knight against a powerful lord. A man whose passions guided him, a man who acted before he mulled things through.” Duncan started to speak, but she continued, needing him to understand, regardless of his fury. “I wanted to tell you, desperately. But I knew if I did, you would confront Frasyer.”

“And die?”

His sarcasm fed her anger. “Do you not think I believed you could best him in a fair fight? Aye, of that I had no doubt. But in this Frasyer had proven that he would not fight fair. Though he swore if I told you, he would kill you, I also believed his methods would not be those of an honorable man. Do you not understand, I loved you too much to endanger your life? I loved my family too much to allow them to lose their home and leave them in disgrace.”

Duncan struggled to accept everything. “So you became Frasyer’s mistress,” Duncan stated, her story severing the tangle of emotions in his mind. “How could your father ask that of you?”

“He did not,” she corrected. “I made the decision on my own, knowing it was the only choice we had.”

Everything made sense now, her shocking decision to become Frasyer’s mistress, her father’s desperate grief when he’d explained Isabel’s whereabouts to an enraged Duncan.

And Symon. Oh, God. Over the past three years he’d witnessed Symon’s silent struggles since Isabel had become Frasyer’s mistress, had tried to convince him to open up to him, but Symon never would. Each day Isabel spent in Frasyer’s control would have destroyed her brother more.

Duncan began to pace, hurting, aching, but mostly furious at himself for not suspecting there was a deeper motivation than money behind Isabel’s actions.

He stopped. Turned to face her. “You are a virgin. Or were. I—” He blew out a rough breath. “We all believed you were Frasyer’s mistress.”

Heat slid up her cheeks, but she didn’t turn away and his love for her grew. “Initially, I as well. But he never touched me in that way or any other. At first I was convinced that all he wanted was to have me so you could not. Over the past year, I overheard a couple of the knights talking when they thought they were alone. It would seem that in a battle years before, Frasyer was injured. They expected him to die. Somehow he lived, but the wound left him scarred and unable to father a child. I owed his embarrassment to his paternal inability as to the reason he has left me untouched.”

The news should have relieved him. Instead, guilt weighed on his mind. “I have blamed you wrongly.”

“No more than I have blamed myself.” She slid her hands up and down her arms. “Perhaps one day we can move past this.”

A muscle worked in Duncan’s jaw. “You are too forgiving. These past three years I have satisfied myself with believing the worst about you.”

She shook her head. “I let you. No, I wanted you to. Duncan”—she said his name softly—“you have no idea how many times I wished, I prayed, things could have been different between us.”

“They will,” he vowed, emotion vibrating through him.

“No, however much I desire it, nothing has changed. After this is over, I must return to Frasyer.”

“No! You are mine.” The thought of losing her again turned his thoughts dark, vicious. “I am my own man. I have my own resources. I would rather fight Frasyer to my death than have you go back to him, thinking to protect me.”

She rose, a naked nymph that sent a surge of desire racing through him. “But I must also protect my father, and he depends on me to deliver the Bible and save him from certain death. He will depend on me again to keep him from going to debtor’s prison. And Bible or no, if I refuse to return to Frasyer as his mistress, my father will hang.”

He shook his had. “There must be another way. There are people we can petition—”

“I would give anything if there were, but my father assured me that he’d pleaded with everyone he knew when he fell into debt.” She held out her hands in a gesture of frustration, dropped them to her sides. “There is no one. All the men I love have been torn from me.”

The sadness in her voice battered his heart. Muscles bunched beneath his skin. He clenched his fists, wanting to scream his frustration, his mind sorting through options. His brothers would help, as would Griffin. With Griffin’s political link to King Edward, anything was possible.

Could he impose on his brother-in-law’s position with the English king to intercede?

The rebels needed the information Griffin covertly fed them under the cloak of his secret identity, Wulfe. How could he put his own needs and wants against those of a whole kingdom?

He could not.

Agonized, he pulled free and strode to stand before the hearth where flames greedily consumed the dry tinders. The odor of wood filled the space, a warm welcome to an empty heart.

What did he do now—give up, walk away from Isabel after realizing he still loved her?

He hadn’t even told her how he felt. What good would revealing that he loved her do? It would change nothing if and when they parted, making both of their pain worse for the brevity of its acknowledged existence.

However much he was disappointed that she had not turned to him, he found himself almost humiliated by the truth they faced.

Even now, three years after Frasyer had bartered for Isabel, with his sole intent for gaining her to hurt Duncan, he could do nothing. Bedamned, she was naught but an innocent pawn in a brutal game. Anger mounted atop his frustration until it was if he’d burst.

A sigh sounded behind him.

He did not turn.

Long moments passed.

The shuffle of sheets announced that Isabel had withdrawn to the bed. A bed where he’d lain with her. A bed where they’d made love. A bed where he’d taken her innocence. Duncan leaned his forearm against the stone hearth and bowed his head.

A virgin.

A ludicrous notion claimed his mind. What if she now carried his child? An ache built in his chest. He envisioned Isabel round with his child. A girl—one with her mother’s smile, a father’s pride.

A child Frasyer would claim as his.