He gave the horse a final stroke along its muzzle and led it to the side of the cottage. Since she wasn’t wearing her shoes and didn’t want to dirty her stockings, Ceana waited for him at the doorway. Less than a minute later, he returned and, seeing her waiting for him, smiled. He held out his hand. “Come back inside and get warm.”
She clasped his hand and he pulled her inside and led her back into the bedroom.
“You’re shivering. I’ll light a fire.”
“No, please,” she murmured, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. “Just lie beside me.”
He nodded, and they slipped under the covers. She clenched her teeth when the cold of his flesh seeped through the linen of her shift.
They clung together, slowly warming each other. When Ceana’s eyelids began to grow heavy once more, Cam’s arms tightened around her. “What am I going to do, Ceana?”
“You will go to sleep,” Ceana murmured. “Then, when daylight comes, you will wake up and go home.”
“I . . . saw something tonight.” Cam’s chest expanded as he took a breath. “Rather . . . I heard something.”
The raw tone of his voice pulled her into full wakefulness, and she drew back a little, tilting her head to look up at him in question. “What was it?”
He removed his arm from around her waist and pressed two fingers over the bridge of his nose. “Elizabeth . . .”
Ceana frowned. She didn’t want to hear Elizabeth’s name now. The word grated along her spine and made the magic of the night sizzle like the hearth after someone threw a bucket of water on it. Acrid guilt rose from her gut, and she tried in vain to swallow it down.
“She . . .” He took a breath. “She is having an affair with Robert MacLean.”
Ceana remained quiet, struggling to absorb this information. She’d known about Elizabeth and Rob’s attraction, of course, but had thought neither of them so foolish as to act on it.
“Are you sure?”
“I saw them together.” Distress creased Cam’s forehead. “I followed them to the loch, and I heard them . . . I couldn’t interrupt them. I was too . . . bewildered.”
Ceana still couldn’t speak. What could she say to this? How could she place any blame on Elizabeth and Rob when she had similarly transgressed with Cam not an hour ago?
“It is my fault,” Cam continued. “I never took the time to learn more about her, to understand her. She is . . .” His voice dwindled. “I never knew her at all.”
“Are you angry?” Ceana gazed at him, trying to assess this reaction. She had been Rob’s lover too, but it was over between them, and she certainly hadn’t expected Rob to remain chaste for the rest of his life. Yet she hadn’t expected Rob to cuckold Cam, either. She’d thought him more honorable than that.
The only thing that could have driven the Rob she knew to such an action was a powerful strength of feeling. Could Rob be in love with Elizabeth? She thought of the way he’d stolen those glances at her across the dinner table. The dark look in his eyes. It had been a pained, nay,
tortured
look, a look of unfulfilled, desperate longing.
Yes, it was possible. Rob might have fallen in love with her.
Nevertheless, Lady Elizabeth was the woman Cam planned to marry. The woman he’d selected to stand beside him for the remainder of their lives. Surely he should be furious—despite the fact that he lay naked beside Ceana at this very moment. Such were the different expectations of women and men.
“No, I am not angry with her, though I should be. I am angry with myself. At how I have botched every aspect of this betrothal.” Cam released a self-deprecating laugh. “Look at us both. We aren’t yet married and we have already strayed.”
“What will you do?” Ceana couldn’t imagine him doing anything as foolish as challenging Rob or hurting him. Rob would be safe, but Ceana worried for Elizabeth. If Cam canceled their wedding, if he told her uncle what Elizabeth had done, the poor girl’s life would be made miserable.
“I don’t know.” Cam’s throat moved as he swallowed. “There’s more.”
“Tell me.”
“Robert MacLean said . . .” He paused, took a breath, and tried again. “He told her that he is my brother.”
This time her response was automatic. “Do you believe him?”
Cam groaned. His eyes glistened. “I don’t know.”
She flattened her palm against his chest. “What do you feel? In your heart?”
Cam stilled under her hand, and his expression turned inward, searching. “I . . . don’t know. I think . . . I think . . . Yes. It could be true. It might explain a few things.”
“What could it explain?”
“My mother died when I was very young, and my father . . . I found him, once, with another woman in his bedchamber.” Cam turned onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. “I knew my mother was gone, that this woman wasn’t her, and I was enraged. I . . . attacked him. Even though he was a widower and he had every right to take a woman into his bed, at that age I didn’t understand. I felt he had betrayed my mother. Servants rushed in—they dragged me off of him.” He closed his eyes. “The woman . . . She sat up in the bed, gripping the blankets against her nudity, staring at me in shock. I think . . . If I am recalling correctly, I believe she might have had Robert MacLean’s coloring.”
Ceana released a breath.
“He is six years younger than me. That would make him the right age.”
“Oh, Cam.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “When I was a boy, I always wished for a brother. When I met Alan MacDonald in England years later, he became like a brother to me. And now he has a family apart from me. Yet I might have a brother of my own,” Cam said. “A true brother.”
“Perhaps you do.”
“Who is tupping the woman I am to marry.” Cam’s voice hardened, and Ceana finally recognized the glimmer of anger.
“Aye,” she agreed mildly.
He stiffened against her. “I should kill him for this.”
“Should you?”
“It is my right. Elizabeth is mine.”
“Is she?”
He gaped at her for a brief second, and then his lips snapped shut. He returned his gaze to the ceiling. “Yes. Legally, she will belong to me very soon.”
“And yet here you lie in bed with me.” Her words emerged in a flat tone, successfully hiding the pain it wrought upon her to say them.
If Elizabeth is yours, what am I to you, Cam?
But she couldn’t voice that question. She must keep this encounter light, not add unfounded significance to it. He’d just come from an enormous revelation about his betrothed and her lover. He had just come from a birth that had left him feeling invincible. Only now had he crashed back down to earth.
It was all as should be expected—no more, no less.
In fact, Ceana was relieved that he still intended to marry Elizabeth. Perhaps his desire to marry the Englishwoman would lessen the pain of Ceana’s inevitable separation from him.
Turning to his side, Cam slipped his arm around her waist and tugged her against him. “I’m here with you because I want to be with you.”
“Not out of retaliation for Elizabeth’s betrayal?”
He stared at her. “Is that what you think? You believe that I’d use you to take vengeance on my betrothed?”
“Aye. It seems the natural conclusion.” She gave him a wry smile. “Now that you’ve learned that she has betrayed you, you feel justified in betraying her.”
“No. That had nothing to do with it.”
“Well, certainly it is part of your purpose in bringing me here.”
“No.” He grasped her shoulder and squeezed tightly. “Do you hear me? That had nothing to do with it. I’m here with you tonight because . . . It was this night—all of it. The revelations earlier. Sorcha’s birth, and Alan’s arrival. The look on his face when he saw his wife and child—” Cam broke off. “It was all of it, Ceana. I wanted to share it with you. I wanted to
be
. . . with you.”
“And you
were
with me,” she said quietly. Already the blood sped in her veins, and arousal prickled along her spine. She ran her hand along the ropes of lean muscle wrapped around his torso.
His hand slid between her legs. “I came inside you.”
“Aye.”
“There could be a child.”
“No. I have already prevented it.”
He nodded, and she smiled at his trust in her knowledge of herbs used to prevent conception. “I cannot say the idea of my child growing in your belly is repulsive to me.”
She repressed a shudder. It could never happen. Not again. She couldn’t bear it.
“But I shouldn’t like to see you suffering the pain Sorcha did.”
“All birthing mothers suffer it,” Ceana said. “And we . . .
they
. . . bear it.”
“I have renewed respect for women.”
He’d missed her blunder. She nearly sobbed in relief. “Good,” she murmured.
His mouth descended to touch hers, so softly, a question rather than a command, and she opened to him.
His hands cradled her body. His lips sipped at hers like a bee probing a flower for the tiniest drops of nectar. Their lips brushed together in a delicate play of advance and retreat. His tongue slipped into her mouth, gently thrusting in a carnal motion as old as time.
Sighing, she matched his slow pace, tasting him, caressing him. Taking her time.
These could be their last moments together.
Cam moved lower, and his tongue flicked over the sensitive bud of her nipple.
“Mmmm.” She reached for his head and plunged her fingers into his silky black hair. She held him in place as he worshiped her breast, sucking the nipple into his mouth, a tug that pulled through her like a rope straight between her legs.
He released her nipple, nuzzled it, and she gasped at the sensation of his rough skin scratching over her breast.
Removing her hand from his side, he pressed her palm to his cock. It was in a state of growing arousal—the stage she loved, not quite rock hard but not flaccid. She curled her fingers and pumped, nearly groaning herself at the sensation of it expanding and hardening in her hand.
“Ah, Ceana.” His warm breath fanned over her cheek. He bit down gently on the lobe.
A fierce possessiveness shot through her. He was hers.
Only hers.
As quickly as they had come, she tamped the bubbling emotions down, locked them up, and buried the key deep in her heart.
Even if he were insane enough to forsake Elizabeth for her once they were married—a fate she didn’t wish on Elizabeth—she could never have him. He could never truly be hers.
Never
.
With a small sob that emerged sounding like a cross between a groan and a whimper, she pushed at his arm until he fell onto his back. He stared up at her with eyes that glittered like obsidian in the dim light.
She straddled him and adjusted herself over his cock, sliding over its length before she reached beneath her and lifted it into place. Then, slowly, she descended over him, throwing her head back in pleasure as her channel squeezed all around him. His hands slid over her hips and gripped her arse cheeks.
When he was fully seated inside her, she looked down at him.
“This is where you belong,” he said in a growling whisper. “Where I belong.”
Cam was a dreamer, she realized as she gazed down at his bonny face. Like most gentlemen, he attempted to make rational, wise decisions based on his status in society, but when his emotions came into play, he lost that ability. He clung tenaciously to feeling and desire.
Somehow, he’d engaged that part of her too. A shudder of panic rippled through her.
He felt her tremble. “Move, Ceana.” He lifted her buttocks and lowered her over him. Both of them groaned.
“Again.” Once more, he lifted her and lowered her. Not wanting to disturb his healing wound, she anchored her palms on both sides of him.
Grasping her upper thighs, he lifted her, then pulled her down. Together, they built a rhythm, he sliding nearly all the way out and then balls deep. Then she bent down and swiped her tongue over his nipple.
He heaved her off him. She didn’t know what his intentions were, but she wanted to feel him in her mouth again. She scooted down his body, licking down the length of his cock, tasting herself mixed in with his earlier release, and then cupped his ballocks and took them into her mouth, laving them as the crisp hairs around the base of his cock tickled her nose.
“Holy hell,” Cam muttered, his voice rough with desire, and she blew out a breath of satisfaction. He liked this too.
Gently, for she knew this was the most delicate part of a man’s anatomy, she rolled his ballocks in her hands. She took them in her mouth one at a time, suckled them, loved them. Then she swiped her tongue over his cock—it was even harder now—and took it into her mouth in a deep, slick glide.