All around her, clansfolk danced and drank and made merry. Vaila and James were regarding one another with the intensity of two predators assessing the severity of a threat, aye, but they were dancing while they did so, which Ailsa considered a victory. Davina, too, was twirling happily in the arms of a young warrior. Eilidh was standing at the side of the dance floor, her arm looped companionably in Mairi’s as they chatted with some of the other lasses.
Her sisters were all relaxed and happy. And Ailsa would have been relaxed and happy, too, except for the burning of Ewan’s fingers. Surely, his hands couldn’t be so hot that she could feel them through the many layers of her gown?
“Watch me,leannan,” he told her when he noted her wandering attention.
She knew it was dangerous when she did it. She did not truly understandhowdangerous. She didn’t realize how much his gaze would burn into hers, how the heat she could see sparking in his blue eyes would send tendrils of desire snaking through her.
Today, they had married. Their celebratory feast was coming to an end, mothers already slipping out with yawning children, couples sneaking out, thinking themselves far stealthier than they actually were.
Which meant that what remained was her wedding night.
She felt the sudden, bizarre urge to drag him out of the dining hall then and there. It was to get the whole thing settled and done with, she told herself. To validate the marriage in its entirety.
But another part of her recognized that for the lie it was. She wanted to be with Ewan because she wanted to know what it would feel like to have his kisses go below her jaw; wanted to know what it would feel like to have his rough hands caress her all over.
She wanted to know—though she was a tiny bit afraid, too—what it would feel like to make love to him.
The thoughts made her hot. It would be burning her cheeks now.
“Just bide, Ailsa,” he said to her, voice low and rumbling. “First, we’ll dance. Everything else will come in its time.”
It should have horrified her that he had apparently detected the turn of her thoughts. Instead, though, it made her feel oddlysatisfied. He understood her. Not all the way, certainly. They were still, in so many ways, strangers to one another.
But he knew parts of her, and maybe that was enough for now.
But she knew parts of him, too. And thus she was not at all surprised when her muttered, “Aye, husband,” caused possessive hunger to flare in his gaze.
Oh, she had liked that he had made amends with James. She did not truly want to be in the middle of a quarrel between two men who loved one another as brothers—particularly when it was clear to anyone with eyes that James’ preferred Donaghey sister was very much not Ailsa.
Nevertheless, that did not mean that she didn’t enjoy the way his jealousy had urged him to lay claim to her. And she was not above stoking that possessiveness, just a little bit.
“You play a dangerous game, wife,” he returned—and blast it all, but hearing her new title on his lips did something powerful to her as well.
She could not tease him without teasing herself as well. So she let the quips die on her lips and instead danced a little longer, let her husband hold her just a little bit closer. She let the fire in her middle grow and grow until it threatened to consume her.
After a minute—or an hour or a year—the musicians finally paused, taking a break to drink and eat before they returned to their instruments to play long into the night. Ailsa and Ewan would not be present for those long hours of playing, Ailsa knew the instant her husband looked at her.
“Come now,” he told her. “It is time for us to depart.”
He was being officious and high-handed, and she should have disliked it, but she did not. Not at all. Instead, it sent another thrill through her.
It was shocking, the lack of fanfare that they faced as they slipped from the dining hall. Perhaps everyone was too far in their cups to really notice her movements, or perhaps they sensed that the wedded couple needed privacy in these moments. But nobody stopped them as they left.
The pair moved silently through the hallways of the Keep, Ewan guiding Ailsa with her hand tightly clasped in his. With each step, a strangely pleasant tension ratcheted tighter inside Ailsa. She felt nearly breathless with it, with the mere knowledge that he would be taking her to his bedchamber, not the guest room she’d been given upon her arrival.
She tried chiding herself. If she was this disoriented over a mere walk, what would happen when they got to the true business of a wedding night? Ailsa didn’t know the precise details, but she’d grown up breeding horses. It couldn’t bethatdissimilar, could it?
The idea should have been horrifying. It wasn’t. And Ailsa found that she was suddenly without energy to further chastise herself for how she should or shouldn’t feel. What did any of it matter, anyway? There was only how shedidfeel.
Outside the door to his bedchamber—theirbedchamber, now—Ewan paused. He tugged Ailsa by their still-joined hands until they were face to face.
Ailsa was certain that there were a thousand things to say, and yet none of them came to mind.
All she could do was squeeze Ewan’s fingers. The gesture would have to be enough.
Yes,that squeeze said.Please.I’m ready.
Ewan smiled, and she felt it like a detonation, a spark meeting black powder.
