Seduced by a Rogue (29 page)

Mairi watched him stride to the door and put down the kitten, smiling when it spat at him. Rob made a powerful dark shape
against the lantern glow. As he shut the door and went next to light candles from the lantern, his torso turned golden.

Her body tingled where he had touched her. Her mouth still seemed full of him, the taste of him, and her breasts… He had touched
only one, had thumbed its tip for less time than it took now for a flame to leap to life on the candle. Yet, she could still
feel his touch, could still feel the heat of the flame he had lit there.

It had spread to her very center, had warmed her all through. Was this what it felt like to be with any man, a husband? Something,
some ill-wishing demon within her, whispered that it was not, that all men were different and one’s experience with any two
was likely to be different, too. Still, coupling was coupling, a physical act that all animals knew how to do—or should know.

Her thoughts stopped, and her body tensed again as he moved toward her.

“Did you say your robe is damp?” he said, setting the candle in its dish.

“Aye, a little.”

“Then you should take it off and wrap yourself in your sheet. I’ll just slip under the blanket then.”

“Aye, sure,” she said, beginning to slip off her robe.

Rob turned his back, aware that he still felt the effects of the two jugs of whisky he had drunk with Fin, and knowing he
could not trust himself if he saw her naked. Not with candle glow turning her lovely, silky, curvaceous body golden all over.
By rights, he had no business staying one more moment. But he hungered for her, and she wanted him to stay. Moreover, she
feared the still tumultuous storm.

Sakes, it was the least he could do. Accordingly, he slipped under the coverlet as he was, feeling an absurd, cocky sense
of having taken the place from the fierce little kitten. He chuckled at the absurdity of such a thought.

“What is funny?” she asked as thunder rolled again outside.

“I was just thinking that Tiggie must hate me right…” He paused, touched bare skin that was not his own. “I told you to cover
yourself with the sheet.”

“Did you? But I want you to hold me again, and it would get in the way.”

It would, he agreed silently.

Deciding he had protested enough, he gathered her close, turning onto his left side so he could hold and stroke her—to warm
her. But he scarcely made it past her nearest elbow before he captured her mouth again.

She responded as swiftly as she had before, stroking him wherever she could reach. When she caressed his chest, her fingers
found a nipple, stopping his breath. Although it was not, by any means, the first time a woman had touched him there, Mairi’s
touch went deeper than he could remember anyone’s going before.

He rarely made verbal sounds when having sex and usually heeded his partner’s reactions only insofar as they would help get
him to his goal.

With Mairi, determined as he was to stop things before he might get her with child, he savored every feeling she created in
him and paid much heed to how she reacted. He wanted to know which things he did stirred her most.

When he took her right nipple between his lips, then between his teeth, she stopped stroking him and went still. He used his
tongue then, laving her nipple, and delighted in the gasp he startled out of her.

When he stopped, she said quickly, “Go on, that feels wondrous good. Does it feel so to you when a woman does it?”

“If you’d like to find out, try it,” he said.

“Sakes, have you never
had
a woman do it to you before?” she asked as she turned toward him and pushed him gently onto his back.

“That would be telling. Ouch!” She had nipped him with her teeth.

“You are too old not to know such things about yourself,” she said as she stroked his chest and played with his nipples.

The more she did, the more he lost himself in his reactions, until he knew he could stand it no more and surged up again,
pushing her back and taking control. He caressed her until she moaned and squirmed beneath him. Then his hand moved to the
fork of her legs, and she moaned louder but squirmed less as he caressed her there. A lingering crack of thunder made her
jump, and his fingers slid inside.

“I thought the storm had passed,” he muttered, his fingers still busy below.

“Don’t talk,” she said.

A voice in his head said, “Easy, laddie, stop!”

Another murmured, “But I don’t want to stop.”

“Neither do I,” she cried on a near wail as her body arched against his teasing fingers. “So, don’t!”

Evidently the latter of the two voices in his head had been his own, not an imaginary one. But he wanted her then more than
he had ever wanted anything.

Although his better nature argued against it, his baser one strongly suggested that he could deal with any problem that taking
her might create in the future. He had, after all, come to care for her
much
more than he had ever thought he would.

When she moaned again, he knew she was as ready as any inexperienced woman could be, and his own body screamed its hunger
for her. Without allowing his better self another word, he moved over her, murmuring soft nothings without hearing them through
the roaring in his ears as his body responded with every fiber of its eagerness to join with hers.

She cried out once, giving him pause. But her breathing came rapidly, and she seemed as immersed in their passion as he was.
When he reached his peak, his better self screamed warning, inspiring him to pull out at the last minute and spill his seed
onto the sheet between her legs.

As he lay spent atop her, she squirmed. Realizing he was probably crushing her, he shifted to lie against the pillows and
draw her in close to kiss her. Holding her as he did, with her head on his shoulder, he felt deep content.

“I just thought…” she murmured. Then, after a pause, she added, “Will you have got me with child, do you think?”

“’Tis unlikely,” he said. “I pulled out to avoid it. But in troth, lass, I’m told that doing so is no perfect assurance that
one has
not
begun a child.”

“I see.”

“I’d apologize,” he said. “But once again, I’m not really sorry. I could blame the whisky I drank earlier with Fin. But the
plain truth is that I wanted you.”

“Aye,” she said. “Me, too.”

A
fter brief reflection on the delights their coupling had provided, and on all he had just said, Mairi murmured, “Still, I
expect we should not have done it.”

“Mayhap we should not,” Rob agreed. “But I could not seem to stop myself. Nor do I wish it undone. We must marry, of course.
I’ll see to arranging it at once.”

“Nay, then, we cannot,” Mairi said firmly, determined not to let him see that the idea did appeal to her. The fact that it
strongly appealed astonished her. But she could imagine how others would feel about it—especially her father… and Phaeline.

“Lass, we must not fratch over this. ’Tis too important. What we’ve done—”

“What we have done, we did together,” she said. “There can be no dispute over that. But we cannot marry, sir. I am still underage,
and my father would never permit it. Nor could I disappoint him by marrying without his consent into a clan that he deems
an enemy. He would view it as the basest of betrayals, I promise you. In troth, I believe it would kill him for any daughter
of his to betray him so.”

“But your own reputation,” he protested. “You must consider that, Mairi lass. People will believe the worst of you if they
learn what has happened here.”

“People believe what they believe,” she said. “Sakes, but my having been with you here for as long as I have ensures that
those inclined to believe the worst will believe it now in any event. I would not have them say instead that you forced me
to marry you. And they would! You must know that they would.”

“We would deny it. By my troth, I would not force you even if I thought I could. Which,” he added dryly, “I do
not
.”

“Well, you could, of course, simply by overpowering me, for you are gey strong,” she said. “But otherwise, you could not.
Sithee, I have learned much about marriage law from my cousin Jenny, enough to know that no one can legally force a Scotswoman
to marry if she does not want to. I know my rights regarding marriage settlements, my father’s barony, and other such things,
too.”

“I’ll remember that and take care not to cheat you.”

“You would never cheat me,” she said. “I do know that much about you. But it does not matter. There can be no marriage between
us—now or ever.”

“We’ll see about that,” he said. “I will
not
have people saying wicked things about you. So that is all there
is to—”

“My family has grown accustomed to my lack of suitors,” she interjected. “They already fear that I’ll never wed, so I have
only to let them go on thinking that. They will tell others so, and so sincerely that those others will believe it, too.”

“Aye, they
will
believe it,” he said grimly. “Because, whatever anyone may have thought was the reason
before
I abducted you, they will now believe that you remain unwed because I took advantage and then
refused
to marry you. We must marry, lass, if only so others can know of our feelings for each other and—”

“Enough, sir. You begin to make me believe you would marry me only out of pity or a hope that you might then avoid being called
a rapist. Why should anyone believe aught but that you married me because you
had
taken advantage—mayhap in hope that you could thereby gain control of the Dunwythie estates?”

“You don’t believe that.”

“I don’t. But many others would.”

“Aye, perhaps, but what if I
have
given you a child?” he demanded.

“Then mayhap we’ll talk again,” she replied, refusing to let something that might or might not be the case sway her from seeing
the certainties. “There may come a time when I
will
marry,” she said. “But if I inherit the estates, my husband may not care about what happened here. Meantime, sir, I must
think about my father and my own duty. To marry you and live at Trailinghail would be a further betrayal of him as long as
I remain heiress to his estates and responsibilities.”

Rob was silent.

He understood familial duty only too well. How the devil could he insist that she ignore such duty when he had abducted her
in its service?

The annoying voice that too frequently piped up from the back of his mind suggested then that duty was not all that had spurred
him to that injudicious feat.

He hushed the voice. He was sure he would never have thought of abducting Mairi Dunwythie had his grandmother and Alex not
both insisted in their own ways that he owed absolute duty to his clan and to his family, and had each not done so, so soon
after he had laid eyes on her.

Although he could not deny that he had wanted her then, or that her beauty and her casual dismissal of him had stirred a primal
urge to conquer her, duty had certainly spurred him to consider planning her abduction.

When she’d presented herself to him, so near the galley, during his exploratory visit to Annan House, his nemesis, impulse,
had seized hold and forced his hand.

“You are smiling again,” she said, visibly irked. “This is serious.”

“Aye, lass, I ken fine that it is,” he said. “I was just thinking back. Sithee, when I saw you in those woods, I acted without
considering
any
consequences.”

“But you must have considered them! You were only there to abduct me.”

He realized that although he had thought much about that day and they had often mentioned the abduction, he had never told
her exactly how it had happened.

“I just wanted to see if my plan was feasible,” he explained. “I’d heard you had all returned to Annan House, but I was sure
that your father must have the place well guarded, so I went to have a look.”

“And ran right into me, because I had escaped the house and walked down to the barley field,” she said. “Sithee, I heard your
boat, the oars thumping. And when I realized you had beached it on the riverbank, I moved closer to see.”