A Highlander Christmas (9 page)

“Bonny Maggie,” he said against her skin.

Something—a hint of mischief, perhaps—flickered in her eyes, and she turned the conversation around abruptly. “What about you? Have you taken many lovers?”

“Er . . .” He pulled back. “That is not something most women wish to know.”

“I do.”

“Not so many, and none . . . none I would have married.”

She turned to face him, her brows drawn together in confusion. “Why not?”

Because they weren’t you.
Banishing that thought, he shrugged. “They didn’t want commitment from me, nor did I wish for it from them. They were lasses to warm a man on a cold night . . . not to spend a lifetime with.”

“I see.” She looked thoughtful.

It was difficult to keep from touching her. Whenever she was close, his fingers itched to feel her skin against his own.

“You make me feel so . . . different.”

He cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

“Different from how anyone has ever made me feel.” She paused. “Special.”

She was special. The most special, precious thing he’d ever seen. Raising his hand, he fingered one of her soft curls, then brought it to his lips and kissed it. He pulled it straight and released it, fascinated by how it bounced back. She watched him, her lips tilted in a soft smile.

Tenderly, he touched her plump bottom lip with his fingertip. He trailed his hand across her red-splashed cheekbone and down her nose, marveling at how it turned up slightly at the end. Then he gently traced her bruised eye and her arched, dark eyebrows. Finally he pressed his lips to the freckle between her brows.

She lay passively, studying him, the expression in her blue eyes unfathomable. He continued his exploration with his lips, moving around her hairline to her rounded jaw and then over the soft, silky skin of her neck. As he slid his lips over her collarbones, brushing over the scab between them, her hand tangled in his hair.

He moved on, allowing his eyes to drift closed, glorying in the taste and scent of her. She smelled fresh, like the forest after a rain, and she tasted like sweet cream. His lips drifted lower, and he opened his eyes as his mouth grazed the side of her breast. The pale round globes flushed wherever he touched them, and he touched them all over. Kissed them and loved them before closing his mouth over the taut berry of one of her nipples.

Gasping and shuddering beneath him, she whispered, “Logan, oh . . .”

He nipped gently, grazing his teeth over the peak, and she squealed. Suddenly tense all over, Logan raised his head to look at her. “Did I hurt—?”

Growling at him, she yanked his head back to her breast. “More,” she demanded.

He gave her more. He worshipped her breasts, licked them, teased, nipped, and suckled until she writhed beneath him, groaning his name over and over.

He slid his hand between her legs and was gratified to feel her slick and ready.

“Turn over,” he said hoarsely.

She flipped onto her belly, and his breath caught at the sight of her backside. Her spine dipped just above her curved pale buttocks, its top marked by two deep dimples. Her legs were slender, shapely, perfect. He ran his hands down her back, over her rounded arse, down the backs of her thighs, reveling in the smooth, supple texture of her skin. And then he followed his movements with his lips.

She trembled everywhere he touched her, as though the sensitivity of her skin had heightened a thousandfold.

He couldn’t get enough of her. He could touch her like this forever. But his cock had grander ideas. It was stiff as steel, and at its base, a tumultuous ache had begun to boil up from his balls.

“On your knees,” he rasped.

Again, she obeyed him immediately, rising on legs that shook like a newborn foal’s, her pale skin flushed all over, as pink and soft as a peach. He bent over her, moved aside her hair, and kissed her neck as he thrust home.

Sweet heat wrapped around his cock, squeezing him so tightly, he had to grind his teeth and curl his fists into the blankets to keep from coming as soon as he was fully seated inside her.

“Ah, Maggie,” he ground out. In response she arched her back and wiggled, driving him even deeper.

Instinct took over. He took her, deep and hard. Heat traveled through his extremities, deep, boiling through him, exerting a pressure so intense he had to close his eyes. Rearing up, he wrapped his hands around her waist and yanked her against him with every thrust. She helped him, slamming her weight back so they joined so intimately he couldn’t tell where she ended and he began.

“Logan,” she cried. Her back arched, and after the next drive he made into her, she stilled and then began to shake. A sobbing noise emerged from her, but her shake transferred to him in gut-wrenching spasms that made him shudder all over. His entire being centered in the pulsing pole between his legs and then exploded, flooding her with his soul, with his life.

When it finally began to subside, they both went boneless. She slid to her stomach, and he fell over her, only at the last second shifting as some part of him remembered not to crush her with his weight.

Sometime later, Maggie sighed and wiggled her bottom.

“Uncomfortable?” Logan sounded nearly unconscious.

“No,” she murmured. “Just wanted to look at you a while.”

He shifted to allow her to move, and she turned to her side to gaze at him in the flickering firelight. Outside the cottage, the wind made something flap against the stone exterior of the cottage, making a rattling noise.

“When do you think the storm will end?”

“Can’t storm all winter. A day or two longer most likely.”

“Then what?” she whispered. Emotion thinned her voice, and she realized she didn’t want to leave this place. She didn’t want to leave him. She didn’t want him to leave her.

He paused for a long moment. Finally he answered, in a voice as low and thin as her own, “Then I will take you home.”

They delayed longer than they should have, Maggie knew. It had been a full twenty-f our hours since the last snowfall. They’d been at Innes Munroe’s cottage for nearly a week now— the last four days spent almost solely in bed talking and making love until both of them were sore and languid, drunk with pleasure.

Two days before Hogmanay, the sun shone high and bright in the sky. Maggie stood in the doorway, staring out at the springlike scene. Melting snow dripped from the eaves, each drop twinkling like a gem in the glare of the sun.

Logan came up behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. She glanced back at him.

“We must go down the mountain today,” he said quietly. “Your family will be worried for you. They’ll be searching.”

She raised her hand to cover one of his. “I don’t want to go.”

“Nor do I. But we have families. We have duties. Both of us.”

“Aye,” she agreed. Yet his duties far outweighed her own.

Logan had said he’d take her north with him, but that was only out of duty should she be carrying his child. That was no longer a possibility, for her lack of pregnancy had been confirmed this morning by the onset of her flux.

Not once had Logan suggested she travel north with him because he wanted her. It was foolish to hope that he would ask her to go with him. He had a family to care for and lands to govern. Maggie knew he liked her, but perhaps he saw her as a distraction from his new responsibilities. Nevertheless, a large part of her craved to hear him say he wanted her at his side.

He was an honorable man, a just man, and he simply intended to see her home safe before leaving to shoulder the burden of his new duties. She couldn’t fault him for that, and she had no right to demand anything of him.

She was the laird’s cousin, but she belonged to no one, and she hadn’t wanted to . . . until now. Her friends and neighbors had called Maggie daft for preferring to be alone over marrying again. But she’d been repulsed by the idea, for she knew no one who struck her as remotely marriageable, so she had stretched her mourning for Duneghall for as long as she could.

She traced her fingers over Logan’s thick, long ones. The thought of separating from him forever terrified her, but he did need to return to his sister-i n-l aw, his nieces, and his tenants. And because she wasn’t carrying his child, he
would
leave her. Soon.

Sighing, she shut the door, turned, and wrapped her arms around him.

They set out late in the morning. The sun hung in the sky as if suspended from strings, bathing the pristine white slopes in a golden wash. They paused to search the spot where she’d lost her brooch for another hour, to no avail; then they descended the mountain, walking into the late afternoon.

The sun brushed against the treetops when they glimpsed the shimmering walls of the MacDonald castle through the leafless tree limbs in a deep-cut ravine below. The Christmas storm had reached the lower altitudes, and the roofs of the cottages surrounding the castle appeared sugar-coated and homey, with puffs of smoke curling from their chimneys.

They’d been silent for the better part of an hour. Logan had walked away from the happiest week of his life and now steamed with regret that they’d had to leave the cottage. If only they could have remained there forever.

Dreams never lasted, though. Duty called both of them home, and neither he nor Maggie would shirk their responsibilities to their respective clans.

Logan studied the MacDonald seat as they approached. It was a six-storied multiturreted castle built in the last century, compact and tall in comparison to its crumbling ancient counterparts. Sunlight reflected off its granite walls and sparkled on its steep slate roofs, sending glimmering light cascading over the more mundane thatched structures scattered nearby.

As Logan and Maggie strode along the shoveled path leading down the final stretch of mountain, a rider appeared in the distance. Two other men on horseback followed not far behind. Logan’s fingers tightened on the barrel of his musket, but within moments, the lead man’s angular features came into focus, and Maggie gasped.

“It’s Torean,” she whispered.

“Maggie!” the man shouted, recognizing her. He spoke to his horse, urging it to a canter. Logan gazed warily at the men as they approached. Reining short, Torean MacDonald smoothly dismounted. The other two held back, remaining seated on their stomping, impatient mounts.

“Maggie!” the man cried again. He gripped her shoulders and gave her a small shake as if to test whether she was an apparition. His eyes grazed over her partially undressed form and the too-l arge leather boots. “My God, Maggie. I thought you were dead.”

“Is that what Innes said?” she asked dryly.

“Aye. Well, he returned just two days ago, saying he’d been searching for you . . .” His voice trailed off, and his blue eyes skittered away, coming to an abrupt stop as they fixed on Logan.

“This is Logan Douglas,” Maggie said. “He . . . saved me. Took me in near frozen from the snow. Logan, this is my cousin, Torean MacDonald.”

Logan inclined his head at the laird but didn’t speak. He could see the family resemblance to Maggie in the dark hair, blue eyes and shape of the jaw, but Torean MacDonald was tall where Maggie was slight, with stick-straight hair and an overlong face in the shape of an exaggerated oval. He had an awkward, gangling look about him, as if he hadn’t quite finished growing into his adult features.

“Where are you from?” MacDonald asked.

“Near Wick,” Logan returned easily enough. “I’m on my way home from Sheriffmuir.”

The young man continued to assess him, his head tilted slightly. “You were captured at Sheriffmuir?”

“Aye.”

“And you escaped from the governmentals?”

“I did.”

“Well done!” MacDonald gave him a sharp nod and glanced at Maggie as if suddenly remembering her presence. “And I thank you for caring for my cousin. I should be honored if you would join us for a night before you continue on your journey home.”

“Thank you,” Logan said, though he would have stayed whether invited or not. He had no intention of leaving Maggie before he confronted the Munroe bastard.