‘Need of a wife?’ he growled out the words as he grabbed for her. ‘You will not be his wife.’
Aidan’s fingers slid along the shift, grazing those breasts and finally sliding in under her arms. Holding on to her waist, he lifted her and dragged her up to sit on his lap. With her legs spread on either side of him, the wee beastie between his legs surged between them. She gasped and slid back just enough so that she did not sit on top of it.
‘Again?’ she asked.
‘Still.’
‘Oh.’
Her mouth formed the sound, but it was the wonderment in her gaze, reflected by the fire’s light, that undid him and his efforts not to try to tup her this night. That and the way her gaze followed her hands down his body to where he really wanted them to be. Now he, Aidan MacLerie, heir to the earl and the consummate lover and seducer of women, found that it was his turn to beg.
Chapter Twelve
She was truly a failure in life.
She had killed her mother in childbirth.
She had failed to be a boy who could have helped her father more than a worthless girl.
When she was grown and could have helped his aims by accepting the marriage he’d arranged, with a pretty purse of coins going in his pocket, she had refused. He had beaten and starved her until she gave in, barely able to see or speak at her wedding due to the bruises on her face and body.
That had mattered little and had not stopped Torcaill, a vicious, dangerous man, from claiming his marital rights on her whenever and wherever he wanted. And he’d wanted. Insatiable in all things, his desires for fleshly pleasure were known throughout their village. Whether wife or whore or unfortunate in his path, he swived his way through life, as though it mattered more than breathing or eating did. Refusal on her part was not an option. He demonstrated that well and frequently, shaming her before her kith and kin and even strangers passing through the village.
Fighting back aroused him even more, making him more and more vicious, so she learned to lie still and let him do what he would do to her. When he realised what she was doing, it infuriated him. Then he would slap her and pinch her until he got a reaction, leaving marks and bruises all over her. Once he caned her so badly she could not sit for days.
Even when the healer had told him she was carrying and that treating her harshly could end both the pregnancy and her life, Torcaill shrugged and took what he wanted anyway—as he always did. She tried to say no and tried to explain that she was beginning to bleed. Incensed by her attempt to refuse him, he finished tupping her and then beat her until she lost the babe inside. And, as the healer told her when she came to after the bleeding and the fever that racked her for four days, she had also lost the ability to bear other children.
She prayed as she faded in and out of consciousness that day—prayed for her own death and his. And when the Almighty answered part of her plea and ended Torcaill’s life, she smiled for the first time in months. Catriona had outlasted him and would survive.
Her father showed no remorse at all for her treatment at Torcaill’s hands. He belittled her for not taking rightful care of her lawful husband and set out to find her another one. He needed coin and decided that whoring her out would make more of it faster than trying to find another husband for the barren, worthless woman she was.
Barely out of her sickbed, he dragged her to the village centre and began offering her to any man who would meet his price. And, for the first time in her life, with nothing left to lose, she fought back. Her loud struggles were what had drawn Gowan’s attention and his intervention.
She’d cost him a huge sum, all his coins, not something a simple warrior could earn back quickly in service to his chieftain, and she could give him nothing in return. Even those few, early attempts to please him in bed turned into horrifying and embarrassing encounters. So she turned her efforts to being whatever kind of wife he needed.
Yet not a day passed that she did not feel that she had failed Gowan. He said he needed and wanted no more children, but a few words spoken in passing made her believe he did.
He stopped sharing her bed years ago, never returning after those few attempts proved so much a failure. It was not for a lack of need on his part, for she knew he paid coin to lie with one of the village whores from time to time.
And she could not even be a good mother to his son, for Munro had rejected her place in their household from almost the first day she returned with Gowan.
Then, not knowing how to deal with the flirting of this handsome, young, bold man, she’d dragged Gowan’s good name into the dirt along with hers. It all proved she was the worthless slut her father had called her all those years ago.
Laughter bubbled up inside her, threatening to escape, while tears began to burn her throat and eyes. Worse than either of those, she wanted to touch this man who’d bought her way out of poverty on just the promise of attempted seduction as his collateral.
In the dark of night when emotions and guilt attacked her, she was tempted to get up and walk away. To walk until she could walk no more. And then to lie down and let go of life. The temptation to do that this night tormented her and Catriona might have done that except for Aidan’s words.
‘Touch me. I beg you. Put your hands on me now.’
Startled at the vehemence of his words, she felt the tension increase in his hard thighs beneath her. His breathing grew shallow and fast and heat poured off his skin. His body readied itself for pleasure and she watched as his flesh pressed against the lacings of his trews. She’d seen it earlier, naked and bold in his hand, and now hers itched to release it and hold it.
She shivered then and it shook her whole body. But it was not in fear or because the air chilled her—it was plain and simple desire that coursed through her. When once and always in the past, the thought of pleasing a man turned her stomach, now she wanted to touch him, to taste his skin, to caress the hard, rising flesh to its full size. What had once been a weapon of terrible pain and fear now intrigued her.
So, could she? Was she ready to invite her seduction to reach its conclusion? Or should she walk away before this fire of passion that threatened to ignite between them did, burning them both in ways she could not even contemplate?
‘Cat. Pleasure me.’
Those words, usually a demand followed by forced measures, should have stopped her, but they did not. They were not an order this time, but a plea and spoken by a man who could have forced her the same way others had. The flesh between her legs began to ache with the same need he’d caused in her earlier—one that he could incite and then soothe with his touch. Now he asked her to take control of his body. To touch him.
