“What do you mean?”
His fingers feathered over her arse cheek, now tingling pleasantly with the aftereffects of his spank. The sensation trickled to her core, and she released a measured breath, gritting her teeth against the urge to ask him to do it again.
This she hadn’t expected. Ten minutes ago, if someone had told her Robert MacLean was going to march into her cottage, demand she strip, and then strike her buttocks, she would have snickered and said, “I hope to see him try.” Then she’d have dreamed up a hundred different ways to avenge her arse, all of them involving bodily harm and misery to the man who’d wronged it.
“You obey readily enough, but I still see the resistance. In your muscles. In your eyes. In your voice.”
“Rob, I cannot—”
“Hush,” he ordered.
She allowed her eyelids to sink shut. God knew she didn’t want to argue with him. Not now.
One hard arm wrapped beneath her stomach and hefted her onto her knees. He spread a soothing hand over the place he’d smacked, and then, before she had a chance to take another breath, he thrust inside her.
A strangled gasp erupted from her throat, and she curled her fists into the bedsheet. His fingers tightened around her waist, holding her immobile, locked against him.
Lodged deep inside her, he froze.
Her arse cheeks, one of them still tingling erotically, pushed against the warmth of his pelvis. Her slick channel pulsed around the steely length of his cock.
“Rob,” she murmured. It felt so good. “Move.”
He didn’t. He didn’t move, and he didn’t speak. She tried to wriggle, to grind against him, but his grip on her waist was too firm. When this was over, the marks of his fingers would be imprinted on her skin.
“Move!” she demanded.
More pulsing, deep within her body. She didn’t know which one of them it was, but she groaned with pleasure as sparks ignited beneath her skin.
Still he didn’t move. The tiny fires in her veins faded, leaving her trembling in their wake.
“Rob,” she groaned.
His fingers tightened, but otherwise he didn’t budge. If he didn’t move soon, she would jump straight out of her skin. Closing her eyes, she clamped her jaw and twisted the linen in her hands.
“Please,” she begged, flinching at the desperation in her voice.
One of his hands released her waist, and he slid it beneath her body and up her torso until his rough fingertips brushed the underside of her breast. Ceana shuddered.
“Better,” he murmured. Two of his fingers found her nipple, scraping over the hardened tip, then tightening around it and giving a tug that made her exhale in a gasp.
His palm closed around her breast. He pulled out of her until the hot, blunt head of his cock rimmed her entry, and then he plunged deep.
“Oh,” she groaned.
More.
But she didn’t dare voice the command for fear he’d stop again.
With his hands on her breast and on her hip, he yanked her against him as he thrust forward in each long, deep invasion of her body. Every one of Ceana’s muscles engaged, until she undulated beneath the sheer power of his possession.
She’d long forgotten the chill in the air. Sweat beaded over her back and ran down her temple as his breaths grew ragged behind her. Her channel clenched spasmodically around his shaft, and he grew even larger inside her, until she was sure she couldn’t endure any more.
Sensation centered between her legs in a whirlwind, rising to the power of a gale. Dimly, she heard whimpering and abstractedly knew she was making those sounds of pleasure as Rob rammed into her, hard and relentless.
The whirlwind tightened and compressed, tighter and more intense, until it exploded, and she came apart, crying out. Rob groaned behind her, but he didn’t stop; he kept her going, squeezing her breast until her muscles softened like butter, and she sank to her elbows, gasping.
With a final harsh exhalation, he yanked out of her, and the warmth of his release spattered over her lower back.
She sank onto her stomach, eyes closed. A cloth stroked her just above the crack of her arse as Rob cleaned his seed from her skin. Then he brushed her hair aside and kissed the back of her neck.
She turned her head and opened her eyes. “Must you go? So soon?”
“Aye.” His voice had gentled. Pulling his shirt over his head, he sat on the edge of the bed, and for a long moment he simply gazed at her. She looked into his beautiful golden brown eyes, feeling no desire to speak, basking in the moment.
Then he shattered it.
“We should marry.”
She stiffened.
“I care for you, Ceana. Marry me.”
They’d come together in mutual understanding—or so she’d thought. Their needs had aligned, and they supplied each other with a basic, fleshy need. Rob had never implied that he was looking for a wife or a commitment from anyone.
Never share your past. Never let him into your heart. Always keep him at a distance.
Once, she’d laughed away those vital rules passed down from her mother and her grandmother before her. She’d mocked them, dismissed them as superstitious fancy. She was enlightened, she’d thought. She’d trained herself in the ways of the modern masters of medicine and knew better than to acknowledge superstitions handed down for generations by ignorant, unlearned women.
How stupid she’d been. Because she’d been so stubborn, because she’d refused to listen, she’d suffered and others had suffered. Others had died.
There was truth in science, but there was also wisdom in the old ways. Now she knew to respect both. She’d never second-guess her mother’s and grandmother’s warnings again.
Never
.
She released a deep breath. She admired Rob. She cared for him. She wished to know more about him, about what made him into the man he was. But—praise God—she didn’t love him.
Despite the words he’d just spoken, she was certain he didn’t love her, either. If he did love her, he’d reveal more of himself. He’d truly talk to her, share himself and his past. He’d wish to stay with her longer after he’d bedded her.
He stared at her, searching her face. “You don’t want me,” he stated after a moment of silence.
She hated this. Hated that she must do this to Rob, whom she liked so very much.
She shrugged lightly, carefully schooling her expression to indifference.
He looked away, shaking his head. “I don’t have much to offer you, but—”
She hissed out a breath, interrupting him midsentence. When she spoke, her voice was tight. “That has naught to do with it.”
There was so much more. Yet she wouldn’t speak of it to him. The curse was her own burden, not to be shared with Rob, or anyone.
She’d made a critical error and had allowed their liaison to go on too long. It pained her to admit it, but it was true.
She took a deep, strengthening breath, and managed to infuse a measure of haughty arrogance into her voice. “MacNab women never marry.”
“Aye,” Rob said grimly. “So I’ve heard. I’ve also heard you’re man-hating shrews and I shouldn’t go within shooting distance of any of you.”
She raised a brow. “For fear of being gunned down?”
“Aye.”
Yet the people of the Glen came to her daily pleading for medical help. She curled her lip. “Perhaps they are right to warn you off.”
He shook his head firmly.
She drew in a silent breath but kept her face immobile, frozen into a mask of disdain.
The moment people cease to fear ye
, her grandmother had warned,
is the moment ye’ll be in true danger.
Sliding his hand under the plaid covering her, he turned to her, his eyes dark. His hand came to a stop when it rested on her belly. “What if I were to get you with child? I try to come outside your body, but—”
“No.”
She’d already made certain that event would never come to pass. She’d never again risk bringing a child into this world only to be subjected to the stigma of bastardy. One would think that after five generations, MacNab women would learn. But no, each repeated the mistakes of her mother. Ceana had sworn four years ago that it would all end with her.
She pushed Rob’s hand from her skin. “You speak nonsense. You don’t love me.”
His lips tightened. “I do. As much as . . . as much as I’m capable.”
No
, she wanted to say,
you’re capable of so much more.
As reserved as Rob was, she sensed a great passion in him. But she kept her lips sealed shut and her expression flat. He was younger than her, with less experience of the ways of love. Someday he’d learn. Hopefully with far less pain than she had suffered.
“I care for you,” he said. “I admire and respect you.” His voice lowered, and his gaze dipped to peruse her form. “I take pleasure from your body.”
“Aye, and I take pleasure from yours. However, carnal attraction doesn’t promise a good marriage, now, does it?” Propping herself up on her elbow, she leaned toward him. “Listen to me, Rob. For a marriage to work, the bond must be deeper.”
“I must go.” Rising abruptly, he turned away to don his plaid and weapons in silence.
As he strapped on his belt, she asked, “Will you come back?”
“Next week.” He strode to the door, where he paused, his back to her. “Think on it.”
He stepped out and pushed the door closed behind him.
Ceana closed her eyes and lay for some time listening to the spring breeze rustle the thatch. Her body was still languid from their love-making, but her heart pounded and her mind whirled.
She’d tarried too long with Rob, but the truth was, she feared letting him go. The boundless loneliness ate at her, and she’d suffer without Rob here to soothe it.
Nevertheless, she’d taken their liaison too far. She thought she’d been careful, but she’d already led him to think she might offer him more than she could.
Let him go.
It frightened her, but she wouldn’t lie to him. She couldn’t continue to hurt him.
Sighing, she thrust the plaids aside and gathered her petticoat and stays from where they lay discarded on the floor. She had work to do.
She pulled her underclothes on with jerky movements, and then wrapped her
arisaid
about her body and pinned it on with her grandmother’s silver brooch.
Alan MacDonald, the laird of the MacDonalds of the Glen, had promised to come to the cottage before dusk to bring her some herbs from his wife Sorcha’s garden. He planned to head Ceana’s direction on his way to Camdonn Castle to welcome Lord Camdonn home, and said he’d spare her the walk to their manor. Alan appeared to consider the earl a close friend, though they’d once dueled over Sorcha, a story that always made Ceana chuckle. Men and their honor were two things she’d never fully understand.
Alan didn’t go today solely to welcome his friend home, however. He went to warn the earl, for since the official surrender of the Jacobites after last year’s uprising, the mood of the earl’s tenants had soured, and many were unhappy about his return from England. Rumors abounded that he brought a new wife home with him—an English lady—and that had served only to heighten the ripples of discontent. This area was rife with true-blooded Jacobites, and the idea that their loyalist lord was on his way home to lay down the law made their blood boil. Alan had worked tirelessly to calm the sentiment, but it was as contagious as an infectious disease, and he hadn’t been able to suppress it.
Ceana wanted to be here when Alan arrived, to discuss the problem of the poachers with him again. First, however, she needed to find some foxglove for a tonic for one of her patients who’d recovered from a case of scarlet fever but now suffered with the dropsy.
She drew her jacket from the peg by her table, grabbed the basket containing her tools, and ventured into the cool afternoon, closing her woven wicker door securely behind her.
Slinging the basket over her forearm, Ceana headed toward the forest on the slope of mountains behind the clearing surrounding her cottage. She vaguely remembered where Moira Stewart, her grandmother’s old apprentice and now the midwife’s apprentice, had shown her foxglove. It grew in a sheltered, rocky area somewhere near the pass through the mountains that led to the Lowlands, about a mile away.
When Ceana had last visited the spot at the end of autumn, a thick frost had clung to the branches of the barren trees and the pine needles. Now the forest had come alive, growing thick and green in the crisp, moist springtime air.
Ceana lifted her skirts and strode uphill, remembering the poachers had been out this way earlier this afternoon. She hoped they were long gone—she’d prefer not to be mistaken for game. Still, she kept alert for signs of human movement as she picked her way through budding rowan trees and stone brambles. Scanning for foxglove, she avoided muddy spots and clumps of weeds, and took a wide circle around a thick copse of alders.