Saved by the Highlander (11 page)

“Hush, lass. Hush, Alice,” he murmured. “I loved your paper. I loved it more than anything these eyes have ever read.”

“Oh, sir,” she said. “Whip me. Please whip me. You, not Fiona.”

She felt Niall take a very deep breath, as if he were about to make a difficult resolution. The rough, homespun linen of his shirt scratched her cheek, but she found she did not mind at all.

“Come into my house,” he said, and began to lead her there, his arm around her shoulders.

Chapter Thirteen

How could he do this? The matter had seemed so simple, when he had finally caught sight of her standing upon the crag. Niall wanted to punish her himself, yes, but he knew he must have Fiona do it. He had even congratulated himself on his wisdom, and on his self-restraint at announcing it so forthrightly to Alice, so that he could not later decide that he wanted to bare her bottom and whip her, his better judgment overcome by his lust.

But Alice’s own need—the way her essence seemed to cry out to him, as the man who could fulfill her yearning better than any other—had defeated him utterly. When he had realized that the thought of the punishments and violations the laird visited upon his maids had not repulsed her, but had rather made her long for the same thing, but from Niall and not from the Lord of Lormoran, he had still thought he might simply bring her to Fiona. He could ignore the hardness of his cock on the path as he failed, from moment to moment, to deny purchase to the lewd pictures that crowded his mind.

Then, when she had finally said it,
Will you not whip me yourself?
, he had grown so very angry at his own weakness, and he had lashed out desperately, pretending to himself that he thought she longed for her vile laird.

And then:
You, sir. You.

The die was cast now. What would become of them? Niall felt Alice inside his arm as they passed through the door of the croft house, and he heaved a sigh as he resolved that from this time forward he would think of Lady Alice Lourcy, the beautiful girl whose complicated innocence he had tried in vain to save, as his highest joy, whether she walked upon his hills or she cried out under his cock.

He closed the door behind them, and he turned Alice to him again, holding her at arms’ length, but not letting her go from the hands that now felt terribly greedy to get her out of her arisaid, and of her chemise, so that he could hold her naked body and gaze upon it. He saw her eyes go wide, perhaps at the look of hunger he knew must be in his own.

“Did you walk too far because you wanted me to punish you, Alice?” he asked sternly.

She nodded, her eyes still wide.

“Do you understand that after I punish you, I am not going to be able to keep myself from making a woman of you?”

Her breathing came very quickly and she nodded again. “Do you mean…
fucking?
” she whispered. “In… in my cunny? And my bottom?”

Alice’s face looked so solemn as she voiced this lewdness that Niall found himself chuckling, though his eyes also went wide in astonishment. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose I must ask you how you know about such things, though. And it will be the more important that I know, because once I have fucked you, sweet Alice, I will take you to the minister, and we shall be wed.”

“Wed?” Alice said softly. “And I shall not have to go back to England?”

“No,” Niall said. “You will stay here in Kilmorin and be a crofter’s wife.”

“A clan chief’s wife, you mean,” she said, her brow furrowing a little.

“A clan chief who is also a crofter, and the chief of crofters. It will be very different from your palace.”

Alice laughed. “It is not a palace!”

“Your castle, then. Different, too, from Lormoran Castle.”

“All this if I ask you to be the one to whip me?” Her eyes fell from Niall’s face to his chest, as she seemed to consider the matter.

Suddenly Niall realized that Alice had hit the thing right upon its head. “Yes,” he said softly. “You must know what it means, now that we know how we feel about one another.”

“How do we feel about one another?” Her blue eyes met his again.

“Sweet Alice,” Niall said. “I love you. I want to be the one to whip you and fuck you. Much more, though, I want to be the one to hold you and keep you. To cherish you.”

Little tears glittered in the corners of her eyes. “I love you, Niall MacAlpin. I don’t know how, but I think it must have something to do with the saving, the spanking, and the strapping.”

“Then,” Niall said, suddenly finding he had to clear his throat to keep his voice from breaking. He cleared it, smiled at Alice, and began again, “Then I think you had better come lie over my lap. And you must take all your clothing off, first.”

“Not the bed?” Alice asked.

“Not yet,” Niall said. “I want to spank you as I would spank a little girl, first. I want to help you understand that you must obey me from now on, the way you should as my wife.”

“And… and that is why I must be… naked?” Her nostrils flared a little with the sudden harshness of her breathing.

“Yes,” Niall said. “To show that your shame belongs to me now, and you will obey my commands even if you find them humiliating. Obey me now, if you please, Alice. You may put your arisaid and your chemise on the bed.”

Alice chewed on her lower lip. “I’ll be naked, the way I was when you found me,” she whispered. “When the outlaw…”

Niall watched so many emotions flit across her face that he knew he had no hope of teasing them apart. His heart told him, though, that he knew how to help this adorable creature whom he now realized he loved to distraction. “Get undressed, Alice,” he said, “and come lie across my lap. I will not spank you hard.”

That seemed to make up her mind; her mouth took on a determined set and she looked up steadily at him. When Niall released her from his arms she turned wordlessly to walk to the sleeping end of the house. She began to unbelt her arisaid. Niall went to the table, pulled a stool out, and sat upon it.

As he watched her prepare for this act that seemed both so right and so wrong—so divinely ordained and also so very star-crossed—Niall had a strange, fleeting impression, that the heaven had shown itself more kindly than men and women had any right to expect it to be, no matter how hard they prayed. Never before had he felt that his will to master a woman had found an answer in her need for that mastery. He had spanked Megan, yes, when she needed it. But she had not needed it the way Alice needed his hand on her backside now, guiding her and claiming her.

Somehow heaven had brought Lady Alice Lourcy to the highlands, and allowed Niall that sight of her from the hill, in sore distress. Somehow the fates had decreed that she should be unharmed, but also in such a particular need of saving, from the men who stood all too ready to take away her innocence with terrible violence, that she had called out in Niall the side of him that he had kept carefully hidden. Alice had needed spanking from the moment she could not bring herself to see that she must come back to Kilmorin with him, and when he had given her what she needed, some kind of storm, with thunderclaps and lightning bolts, had arisen in his heart—and, it seemed, in hers as well.

How could they dishonor the decree of heaven that Niall should save Alice in such a way that her soul should cry out for the part of his soul that yearned so mightily for expression, but had never found it?

She lifted the chemise over her head and laid it upon the bed. Niall saw her naked shoulders, the curves of her naked hips, her lovely, naked bottom, from which the marks of the strap had faded. Her golden hair, released from the highland snood, poured down her back in beautiful ringlets. Could Niall possibly be the destined possessor of such a treasure—the heaven-chosen protector of a girl of such a pure, noble mind?

Yes, he could, he told himself, as Alice, her shoulders heaving in a deep breath, turned to him. For he had saved her not simply by slaying the outlaws sent by the lord of Lormoran, but by spanking her and strapping her, to show her that her pure, noble mind dwelt in a body that needed a truly noble master.

It was no time to be humble, Niall thought, as he indulged his thoughts and named to himself the character that he worked every day to uphold and improve. When a beautiful, naked earl’s daughter is walking toward you for her spanking, her little breasts like apples and their tiny nipples like cherries, her sweet little cunt barely covered with a light golden fleece between her slim thighs, that is no time to wonder whether you do have the worth you have labored so long to earn. Heaven has decreed that that worth should be rewarded, for you will soon feel a firm, shapely bottom squirm beneath your chastising hand, and then, afterward, you shall have a Sassenach maidenhead, such as you never dreamt of having.

Niall patted his right thigh. “Lay yourself down now, Alice,” he said gently. If they lived a score or more of years together, he did not think he would ever grow used to calling her by her Christian name. Nor did he wish to become used to it, he realized, because the moment she had begged him to call her by it, he had understood that she needed mastering as much as he wished to master her. To call Lady Alice Lourcy by her Christian name was to assert his nobility and his right to have her, hold her, and correct her when she needed correcting.

He reached out his right hand as she approached and put it around her naked waist, feeling Alice tremble at his touch. She started back a little, but he pulled firmly and toppled her over his lap. The lightness of her body sent a thrill through his frame, and he felt his cock give a little jump under his kilt. For the first time, he did not resist his arousal at Alice’s beauty or his even greater excitement at having her in his disciplinary power. His cock grew hard for her, and after he had claimed her with his firm hand, he would claim her with his manhood.

“Hold the legs of the stool,” he said softly, fighting to keep from stroking the prim ovals of her bottom, with their sweet milky roundness. There would be time for that after he had turned those little cheeks very pink, though not red—not today, since she had gone to the crag in the confusion of her love for him. “Push your bottom up for me.”

“Yes, sir,” he heard her whisper, from where her face was turned to the swept dirt floor, her flaxen hair spilling all around it. Suddenly unwilling to part with the sight of as much of her face as might be visible, Niall, with his left hand, took the tresses that veiled her cheek from him and laid them across her neck. Alice turned her face up, and he saw a questioning look in her eyes.

“I want to see your lovely face, my lady,” he said. “I want to see your penitence.” Then he brought his right hand down hard upon her backside, and the spank rang out in the croft house. “Now get. This. Bottom. Up.”

Alice turned her face back to the floor, yelping, and taking hold of the legs of the stool as he had commanded. With a sob of frustration that came as music to Niall’s ears, she obeyed and raised her bottom. He spanked that bottom quickly and rather severely, to ensure that she got the sense of his mastery his instinct told him she desperately needed, and her cries of submissive discomfort, as she kept her bottom raised, told him he had guessed aright.

Chapter Fourteen

Alice’s mind simply could not compass how wonderful the spanking felt, because that wonderful feeling came from real anguish: Niall’s hand was big, heavy, and very firm, and it hurt her terribly as he punished her for her disobedience. His hand was so big that he seemed to be able to spank her whole bottom at once, though he did move the spanks up and down a little bit, perhaps to give the different parts of her rear end a rest or—Alice’s heart fluttered a little more to think it—perhaps to make sure her whole rump received a thorough chastisement.

She started to cry as she wondered about that, not from the pain, really, though the pain made her whimper in and among the tears. The weeping itself, though, was in sorrow and in relief that the sorrow found could find expression at last. She felt at that moment she had a great, great many things to be sorry for, but that for all of them she now was atoning, with the help of the firm right hand of… her future husband. Had he really said that? Could she really allow it—and if she said she would not allow it, would he force her, as she was sure he could, being the clan chief? But if he were truly going to… to…
fuck
her, would they not have to wed? Somehow although she had not even now understood very much at all about fucking, she knew that a girl of her station must wed the man she fucked, even if he were a vile man and also fucked scullery maids.

“Will you be a good girl for me, from now on?” Niall asked. He had stopped spanking, and Alice felt strangely as if she did not want it to be over. She tried to nod.

Niall spanked her three more times, so hard that Alice cried out. “Answer me, Alice,” he said sternly. “Will you be a good girl?”

“Yes, sir,” she whispered.

“Are you sorry?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. Oh, she was so sorry. She was sorry that she had told her father so impetuously that she wished to marry Lord Roderick, for if she had only waited, as he had advised her to do, for a few months, she would surely have seen the lord of Lormoran for what he was. She was sorry that Lord Roderick’s feigned nobility, and his very distant relationship to her family, had led her pride astray, and made her think it must be a match made in heaven.

And she was sorry, more than for anything else, that she had ever thought Niall MacAlpin a barbarian. For now he put his hand on her bottom not with a spank, but with a caress, and Alice felt like the true barbarian, for she spread her legs and felt as if she were in grave danger of uttering some terrible lewdness like “Is my cunt pretty, Mr. MacAlpin?”

But Niall spanked her again, and she yelped. He said, “Close those legs, my lady. Your punishment isn’t quite over, and the time for pleasure has not yet arrived.”

“Will it arrive soon?” Alice found herself asking, though she had no idea from where the courage to speak those words had come.