Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] (30 page)

Magnus folded his arms, waited, amazed to feel a grin crinkling his eyes and deepening the creases in his cheeks. His dimples. Mother of God, he’d almost forgotten how damned good it felt to smile.

Apparently too caught up in explaining herself to notice his mirth, Amicia snatched a convenient flagon off the table and poured herself a measure of finest
uisge beatha,
tossing it down in one choking gulp.

“Good sir, I mounted and descended those stairs so that I need
not
blush when standing before you unclothed,” she announced, her voice rising as she set down the cup with a loud
clack.
“So that my . . . er . . . exertions might pare a bit of the
womanliness
from my hips.”

She blew out her breath on a hot, gusty sigh. “See you, I’d hoped to rid myself of a bit of extra flesh—lest this body’s roundness repel you!”

Her color deepening indeed, she threw open his plaid and flung it aside. “Look you, Magnus MacKinnon,” she charged him, grabbing a barely-there roll of flesh at the top of her abdomen, pinching it hard before she let go to smooth her hands along the well-rounded curves of her shapely hips, “see my nakedness—the plumpness marring my belly, my . . .
form
!”

Magnus stared at her, too flummoxed to find words.

Did she truly not know how desirous she was?

How intoxicatingly beautiful?

Saints, the slight swell of her tummy delighted him. The luxuriant tangle of sooty curls at the tops of her thighs stole his breath, and the large, dark rounds crowning her breasts had him moistening lips run impossibly dry. Sheerest lust and raw, raging need swept through him like rivers of molten fire.

“Merciful heaven, dinna tell me you believed I’d find you displeasing?” he got out, strangle-voiced. “You—of all women?”

“And why not me . . . of all women?”

Because for more years than you know, just the whisper of your name across my heart has filled me with a warmth brighter and more beautiful than the light of a thousand suns.

Blinking, Magnus rammed a hand through his hair. Scalding heat crept up the back of his neck. Sakes, he half-expected to glance over his shoulder and discover Hugh had somehow let himself into the chamber, that his word-gifted bard of a brother hovered close behind him and had flustered the flowery sentiment in his ear.

But inside he knew.

The words dwelled in the deepest part of himself. There in the darkest, most intimate corner of his heart where they’d always been and, like as not, would e’er remain. Through this life and beyond.

Forever.

For eternity.

“Come you, Sir Magnus . . . tell me why.” She took a couple of steps toward him, her breasts swaying. “I am none so fragile that I cannot hear the truth.”

“The truth ought to be clear enough for you to see,” he said in a voice near as tight as the hot iron hardness lifting his plaid.

He stared at her, unable to tear his gaze from her voluptuous bounty, the raven curls adorning her woman’s mound. Saints help him, but a faint trace of her musky femininity wafted up from that jet-black triangle, the heady scent beguiling him.

“I need the words, my lord. My eyes see—and very well. Mayhap I see the truth. But even so, my heart would hear the words.”

“I’ faith,” Magnus swore, the boulder making itself known again. “Could you not tell that your kiss during the Claiming Ceremony near brought me to my knees? Is that not truth enough for you? Of my desire and my . . .
affection
?”

“And do I have your affection?” She touched a hand to his chest, smoothed her fingers across the hard-planed muscles before pressing her palm over his heartbeat. “I would know. Now. Before we . . . proceed.”

“Aye, sweeting, that you do—hold my affection. With all surety,” he admitted, the words freeing him even if they only told half the tale. “Never you worry.”

He looked at her, saw the doubt still swimming in her darkly luminous eyes.

“But I do worry, see you,” she said, blessedly making no move to cover herself.

Instead, she jammed fisted hands against her hips, the movement causing her large breasts to sway to and fro, the nipples tight and thrusting in the chill night air.

Magnus groaned, no longer trying to even conceal his aroused state. Indeed, he threw off Colin’s plaid, tossing it aside as swiftly as she’d had done with his.

If she wouldn’t believe the truth of his words, she’d be hard-pressed to deny the rigid length of him riding hard against his groin.

But she scarce noticed, her hot gaze fixed on the peat fire, her fingers digging fiercely into the sweet flesh of her abdomen.

“How could I think otherwise when, from my first day here, Janet made it clear she was your intended and you, my lord, made it more than plain you did not want me?”

“Janet was e’er a lass with . . . problems,” Magnus owned, lifting a handful of her hair, letting the silken strands spill through his fingers. “And I, lass, have been the good part of a fool.”

It was the most he was willing to concede . . . the most he
could
concede.

“I think you are anything but a fool,” she said, leaning back against the table’s edge, her expression softening, her eyes growing misty.

Too misty for his liking.

For it was affection and a fine lusty union he meant to share with her—not moon-eyed revelations and sentimental sighs.

“Colin has asked for Janet’s hand,” he blustered, seeking a topic to cool the heart-fire glowing in her eyes. To save him from having his own eyes grow all soft and dewy if she kept staring at him with her heart on her sleeve.

“He is man enough to master her problems—just as I am thinking she will prove every ounce the strong lass he will be needing at his side when he leaves here.”

Amicia gasped, her own cares momentarily forgotten.

She’d seen Colin and Janet together, and had harbored her suspicions, her hopes, for them both. But she hadn’t heard anything beyond the usual castle prattling and blether. The most of it snatches of vague speculation amongst the tongue-waggling kitchen and laundry wenches.

“Y-you truly do not mind if she leaves with your friend?” She had to know. “She seemed so . . . smitten with you.”

“For the love of Saint Columba, sweetness, have you not heard a word I’ve told you?” He looked at her, the blue of his eyes almost indigo in the firelit room.

“Nay, I see well that you haven’t paid heed to anything I’ve said. Mayhap deeds will speak all the louder?” He almost growled the words, the huskiness in his deep voice exciting her—the
implication
behind his words melting her.

A most determined look coming over his handsome face, he snatched up one of the discarded plaids, bunched its soft folds into a semblance of a cushion, and, reaching for her, hoisted her onto the table’s edge, thrusting the makeshift cushion beneath her to soften the table’s hard surface.

His hardness caught her eye, the sight of it undoing her.

Some wee demon inside her made her narrow her eyes at him in challenge. “I ceased fretting about Janet when I learned about the raven-haired lasses. Knowing about them—”

At her words, a strangled groan ripped from his throat and he urged her legs apart, stepping between them even as he splayed his hands around the curves of her buttocks, kneaded the soft plumpness he found there.

“There-ne’er-were-any-raven-haired-
lasses,
do you hear me, Amicia?” The words tore from his throat. “Nary a one. Not in the sense you understood.”

Amicia blinked, her breath quickening. She was acutely aware of the hot passion blazing in his eyes and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. “But I do not understand.”

“
You
are those raven-haired lasses! Always you! They were but pale substitutes for what I could not have.” He almost shouted the confession at her. “You and only you—the lass I have coveted since I first laid eyes on you. The lass I knew I could ne’er hope to possess.”

“Oh, dear saints,” Amicia gasped, her heart swelling with such joy she thought it’d surely burst. Her eyes streaming, she looked at him, not even trying to check the flow of hot-scalding tears. “Oh, dear saints,” she said again, the words almost too wobbly to be understood this time. “Can it be true?”

In answer, he pulled her against him, lowered his lips to hers in a searing, soul-stealing kiss. A blinding fusion of seeking lips, sweeping tongues, and hot mingled breath.

Years and years of need unleashed.

Over and over again, he kissed her with a reckless abandon that melted her bones and left their Claiming Ceremony kiss far behind. The wild tangle of their tongues watered her knees and moistened another, suddenly very damp and tingling place that pulsed and throbbed with an urgency that shocked her.

“Aye, it is true.” He broke the kiss just long enough to breathe the assurance against her cheek. “It has always been about you.”

Pulling back a bit more, he gave her a wolfish smile—a full, dimpled one that filled her with a golden warmth to rival the sun. “Think you I would have lost that long-ago archery contest had I not caught a glimpse of you standing near?”

“Oh!” Her heart flipped helplessly at his words, and a torrent of pleasure washed through her. Sweet, sweet bliss, the likes of which she’d ne’er thought to experience. “I—I . . . distracted you?”

Faith, she could scarce believe it.

“You, and none other,” he assured her, lighting a flurry of soft, heated kisses along the slope of her neck, each touch of his lips on her flushed skin arousing sensations that set the world to spinning around her.

Dear, sweet saints, indeed, but he ignited a tempest inside her that would soon be impossible to contain. Especially where her blood burned the hottest.

He pulled back to look at her. “Then, as now, you alone held the power to stop my heart,” he told her, skimming his hands along the curving lines of her body, letting them pause at the side swells of her breasts to stroke and caress with featherlight touches. “You, and no one else, stole my breath and, aye, fired my ambitions.”

“Your ambitions?” She could scarce find her tongue.

“To win you,” he said, his voice thick. “To work as hard as I could to make myself worthy and viable enough to seek your hand—and then, years later, when I thought I’d met that goal, and others, I—”

“Shush you, say no more.” She pressed two fingers across his lips. “I am yours now, as was e’er my most fervent hope and dream. And you have proved to me that you love me with the same fervor I have e’er loved you.”

Something in his face changed upon hearing her words, and her heart dipped at the transformation. Some of the tingling warmth rippling over her woman’s flesh drew back to linger in a slow, tremulous pulsing deep inside her core . . . a tightly coiled
waiting.

“You do love me, then?” she had to ask.

“I have dreamt of you every night of my life since I was two-and-ten.”

He was still caressing her breasts, and now began flicking his thumbs back and forth across her nipples, tracing slow circles around their edges, the deliciousness of his touch melting her, making his
no-answer
answer fade into the oblivion of visceral pleasure spreading through her.

“You dreamt of me?”

He nodded. “Nigh every night. And if I did not, it was only because sleep eluded me. But even in those times, you were there in my heart.” That, at least, was a truth he could share. He
had
held her in his heart, cared deeply for her.

He still did.

Especially now.

Leaning forward, he planted a wee tender kiss on the tip of her nose. “To be sure, my precious minx, your shadow walked beside me in my every waking hour.”

She watched him from heavy-lidded eyes, leaned back to allow his stroking fingers greater access to her full, firm breasts, her body accepting what he could offer her even as the slight tremor in her voice underscored her heart’s plea for more.

Her disappointment that he refused to tell her he loved her.

Truth be told, he didn’t know if he did, even feared himself incapable of any emotion deeper than ambition, pride, and the hot-burning desire he felt for her.

Her vital, voluptuous womanhood . . . her bright smile and the way her dark eyes appeared to hold the very sunfire in their depths when they glowed with excitement. Having her near made him feel
alive.

It was enough for him.

He’d make it enough for her.

“Aye, lady mine, I have always wanted you. Never you doubt it. ’Twas only your over-flowing coffers and the emptiness of my own that had me declaring I’d return you to Baldoon.”

He moved his hands to slide gentle fingers to and fro in the warm softness of her breasts’ lower swells, sought to use pleasure to dispel the slight frown that creased her brow upon his mention of her coin.

“What will it take to make you realize that a deep heart holds a thousand times more worth than the deepest of purses?” she asked him, her magnificent eyes glinting with fiery MacLean heat again.

A joyous strumming began somewhere deep within Magnus’s chest. Not in his heart. Och, nay, not there. But close enough to make him uneasy.

“Do you not ken I’d rather have you than all the richest nobles in the land combined?” she said, her voice strong and firm. “Shall I tell you that I enjoyed each shattered offer of marriage my brothers sought to gain for me—e’er in the hope that someday, somehow, I could be yours? Every word is true, my lord. Never
you
doubt it.”

Magnus stared at her, knew without looking down that the almost-real chunk of granite sitting near their feet had just sprung a rending crack.

A deep fissure, indeed.

And one that made him highly uncomfortable, for if he wasn’t careful, he’d fall right into it.

“Well?” she pushed him, reaching to light a finger through the dusting of red-gold hair on his chest. She thrust out her pretty chin, let her sheer will demand an answer. “Do you know it?”

“If I didn’t yet, I do now,” he said, knowing himself lost. “The saints know, I would even if you hadn’t voiced the words. Your eyes talk more than plain, my lady.”