Knight In My Bed (33 page)

Donall's loins quickened, his pulse pounding hard through his veins. His great shoulders sagged in defeat. The effort of holding them straight and proud, a stalwart defense against his attraction to her, his feelings for her, crumbled as easily as a score of well-skilled sappers can topple a curtain wall.

"Nay, leave be with your tresses," he said, his voice thankfully low and deep again.

Low and deep, but oddly ...
hoarse.

Weary of riding vanguard in a battle he could not win.

Falling hard for Isolde MacInnes despite her potions and lies.

"It pleases me to see your hair thus," he said.
You ought tell her to shave it off and cover her bald head with a veil
,
 
his last vestiges of good sense chided in swift rebuttal.

Looking curiously at him, she lowered her hands. The heavy, silken strands slipped from her fingers, falling to her hips, gleaming like fired silk in the moonlight. "As you wish," she said, and gave a light shrug.

"What I wish, my lady, is to love you." His hands clenched against the words his heart tossed so glibly at her feet.

Glibly and wholly unexpected.

And most disturbing of all, wholly true.

Something flared in her eyes, but then she gave a wistful smile, and the something was gone. "Is that not why we doing ... t-this?„

"We are doing this" - he gestured to her and then at the little earthen pot of vermilion sitting innocently on the window ledge - "because you desired my affections, because it is - will be -pleasurable to us both, and because you are in sore need of enlightenment."

And because I have fallen in love with you
, his heart added.

She smiled, surely unaware of the balled might of a MacLean man's love massing so near, and gathered her tresses into her hands, bunching its abundance into a glorious tumble she pushed above her head. "Enlightenment and knightly kisses." Her smile turned coy. "And do you enjoy enlightening me?"

His manhood stretched and preened, eager to show her exactly how much he enjoyed ... enlightening her.

His heart swelled.

His soul melted.

"Saints, but you ask fool questions. Can you not see
 
I do?'

“I see you look displeased," she said. "That is all I see."

Donall's brows snapped together. Could she not see the hard ridge of his arousal, fully charged with wanting her? Boldly displayed, if only she'd drop her gaze to look.

"Lady, your beauty steals my breath. As a seductress, you are most talented and adept." He glanced fleetingly at his groin, hoping she'd follow his gaze, but she didn't.

"Irresistible though your charms might be, you are quite blind." He pushed away from the wall, taking unwise leave of the dark corner. Stepping into the pooling light by windows, he hoped she'd see his desire.

But she saw naught.

Her mere presence stirred his blood to a fever pitch stiffened his tarse to such a painful degree he wouldn't surprised if one false move caused the aching appendage snap off.

Glancing away, he stared out at the silvered night beyond the windows. He dragged a hand through his hair, drew a breath of the chill, tangy air.

Regrettably, it didn't cool him a whit.

He looked back at her, and promptly lost himself in her beautiful eyes, in the glorious mass of her rippling hair. Lost himself in his very fate, for her deftly working fingers had not simply undone her plaited hair.

Without him realizing she'd done it, the bold-hearted enchantress had undone his heart as well.

Smashed its casing first with her surprising refusal to accept his offers of ransom, then wrested it from his breast when she'd turned up her pretty nose at his gold brooch, and now laid further claim by turning those luminous eyes on him.

Eyes full of vulnerability, eager innocence, and entirely void of the glittering calculation he'd seen lurking in every other pair of female eyes that'd e'er peered at him.

Eyes that only saw his wealth and standing.

And mayhap his good looks ... something he hadn't sought, but wouldn't deny.

All had wanted what he could give.

None had wanted simply him.

Until Isolde of Dunmuir.

Donall swallowed the bitter laugh rising in his throat. Reaching for the little jar of whore's paint, he held it tight, letting the earthen pot's coolness sink into his palm.

The saints knew, he was in sore need of a cooling.

Keeping his back to her, he watched a distant line of mist gather far out to sea. A soft, shifting line of gray-white, blurring the outlines of MacKinnons' Isle, changing the contours of the horizon itself until the drifting, billowy mass eventually blotted the wretched isle from sight.

He curled his fingers tighter around the little jar. Would that he could erase his cares so easily as a line of simple fog
 
could swallow the view out a window, erase the truth that Isolde of Dunmuir didn't truly want him either.

But a shimmer of -hope refused to be banished.

Enveloping sea mist or damning logic, be damned.

He would make her want him.

She didn't care a whit about how many baubles he could gift her with. Nor did his high standing amongst the gentle-born of the Isles impress her.

And, heaven help him, that knowledge made him want her.

In the worst possible way.

And not just to stave the itch in his tarse.

Nay, he wanted her to ease the ache in his heart.

An emptiness he hadn't known needed filling until he'd seen her eyes fire with indignation at his ransom offers, watched them spark with pride and hope when she'd confided the one thing she did want from him.

A
child.

Not splendor and riches. Not fame. But a bairn to forge peace.

A fool notion, he' d thought at first, but one that had begun to please him. Feeling utterly defeated, Donall leaned against one of the window embrasures and breathed in the impassive scent of damp old stone.

The scent of capitulation.

Aye, even her ludicrous alliance scheme now struck him as appealing.

And she would ask if she displeased him?

Donall pinched the bridge of his nose. Truth to tell, the only thing displeasing him was not having met her earlier. In a less troubled time when he could have whisked her off to Baldoon and made her his bride.

As he'd sorely love to do.

Were such a feat possible.

Straightening, he drew back his shoulders once more, his knight's blood hot and ably reinforced.

Determined and prepared to lay siege to Isolde of Dunmuir's heart.

Isolde's heart tilted as she watched him at the window. She sensed the change the moment it happened, could almost see his resolve spinning away from him.

She needn't hear his gusty intake of breath to know he'd cast off the masterful control he'd displayed thus far and was steeling himself to ... surrender.

She swallowed thickly and began undoing the fastenings of her bodice. Her hands shook, her fingers making slow, clumsy progress. Her heart, her body, her whole being, surrendering to him even as she sensed he was about to give himself to her.

A chill tripped down her spine, its cold footfalls admonishing her because her reasons for doing so had changed so dramatically.

The other reasons yet lingered, but the true reason she succumbed made her pulse pound as she freed the final laces on her bodice.

She wanted Donall MacLean regardless of who he was and what he represented.

Despite the doubts still gnawing at her.

Despite everything.

She was falling in love with him.

Had fallen in love with him.

Isolde swallowed, watched his shoulders tense as she slipped her arms from her sleeves and allowed the gown to fall and bunch around her waist. He tilted back his head and stared at the tops of the arched windows as if he sought to beseech the gods for strength.

Then he turned around.

Raw desire simmering in his eyes, he handed her the little pot of blush of rose, his gaze boldly settling on the bodice of Evelina's borrowed camise.

The one crafted of see-through gauze silk with slits up the sides.

Something urgent and primal, a wholly male sound, came from deep in his throat. His nostrils flared and, though she wouldn't have believed it, his eyes went a shade darker.

He took her wrist and drew her into the pale circle of moonlight. "Stand here where I can see you better," he said, the huskiness of his voice stirring her as much as the warm, strong feel of his fingers moving on her wrist.

"You are more lovely than I'd imagined," he said, his words rousing her as thoroughly as the heavy-lidded gaze he let roam over every inch of her.

"By the saints, but you take my breath," he vowed, his breathing no longer deep and steady, but rapid, shallow. Releasing her wrist, he thrust his hands into her unbound hair. He reveled in the mass of it, smoothed his palms down it, glistening length. Lifting, sifting, tangling his fingers where'er he could as if he sought to savor and touch each and every strand.

Isolde caught her lower lip between her teeth, so great were the delicious shivers his ministrations set loose in her, so pleasurable the tingles washing over her, through her at his touch.

So intense the longing. The sharply exquisite anticipation he seemed to prize so highly.

With a low moan, one that pleased her immensely, he buried his face in two great handfuls of her streaming tresses, the raven darkness of his own proud mane a stark contrast against the gold-bronze tones of her hair.

He groaned then, a strange man-sound. Half pain, half pleasure. A tremor rippled through his bowed shoulders.

Knowing his enjoyment of her hair rocked him thusly bestirred her in a most disturbing manner.

Faith, he was drinking of her hair. Slowly moving his head back and forth, nuzzling his face into her tresses. Seeing him pay homage to her thus did peculiar things to her.

And made her bold.

"And now you've indulged your need to see, feel, and drink of my unbound hair, Sir Knight," she said, her daring sending hot little jabs of pleasure to the secret place between her thighs, "what of your second wish? The vermilion cream? Shall I use the blush of rose now?"

The seductress in her warmed to the game. "Do you think I still require such ..,
enlightenment?"
He nodded, but stayed her hands when she began to remove the little jar's stopper. "Oh, aye, you do," he said, a wicked gleam in his dark eyes, "but first, a kiss. To reward you for undoing your hair."

Isolde's heart leaped. "A knight's kiss?"

He nodded. Catching up a handful of her hair, he pressed his lips against the thick, glossy strands before he let its smoothness spill from his fingers.

His will to resist her spilling away as easily as the silken skein or hair glided from his hand, Donall gave in to the urge to take what she offered.

Everything she offered
.

He smoothed his hands over her shoulders, down the bared softness of her arms, then around and up her back. Sliding his fingers into the smooth curtain of her hair, he caressed the silky warmth of her nape.

A knight's kiss, then," he murmured, threading his fingers through the cool, satiny weight of her tresses, breathing deeply of her wildflower scent. "A thorough one."

He looked deep into her eyes as he eased his hands down her back. Searing need twisted inside him. Splaying his fingers around her hips, he caught her to him, drawing her as close as he could without taking full possession of her.

With trembling fingers, she traced the line of his shoulder. Her touch exhilarated him. Her grace and beauty near lamed him. She proffered her lips so sweetly, a raw primal urge tore through him, a need so fierce his heart thundered in his chest.

They locked gazes, each watching the play of light and shadow across the other's face. Then, patient no more, Donall touched a gentle kiss to the lone freckle he loved, and slanted his mouth over hers in a fierce kiss meant to brand her very soul.

Not lightly, not tender as before, but a powerfully possessive taking.

A thorough claiming of her warm, pliant lips.

But a giving, too.

For ne'er had he desired a woman more.

Ne' er had he wished to please one so greatly.

Ne'er had he loved.

Cradling the back of her head, he angled her face to accept a deeper kiss, used the gentle probing of his tongue to coax her lips apart, silently urging her to be the fine, bold lass he knew she was.

And she obliged, opening her mouth beneath his, accepting the glide of his tongue into her warm softness. Her lips, her passion, for once blessedly free of any traces of the noxious potion. He tasted her, drank of her breath, whisper-soft, sweet and fresh. A more potent elixir than anything her ancient crone could produce.