“Hush, loving. This will please you.”
Arianna remained tense as he kissed her there and teased her private flesh with his tongue. The women in her clan had occasionally mentioned such loving to her when her day to marry drew near, but she had been very certain that such an intimacy was not for her. As her desire, dimmed by her shock, roared back to life with a vengeance and she opened herself to his kiss, she decided that she had been hopelessly naive.
Each stroke of his tongue, each gentle nip and kiss, and even the way he caressed her thighs with his big hands, drove her wild. The need for his body to be joined with hers rapidly reached the point where she could wait no longer for him. Arianna heard her demand that he put himself inside her in a voice so thick with desire she barely recognized it as her own. She grabbed hold of his broad shoulders as he kissed his way back up her body with a slow greed that she had no patience for.
The moment he began to ease himself into her, she wrapped her legs around him and used them to push him deeper. She held him close as he filled her, fighting to hold back the need for release tightening inside her with every thrust of his body. Although she savored everything he did to her when they made love, Arianna enjoyed this part the most. This was when they were as close as two people could ever be. This was when they were one.
That realization was enough to cut the last tie she had on her control. Her release raced through her with such force, she cried out his name as her body shook from the strength of the pleasure he gave her. She was briefly aware of Brian thrusting fast and hard several times before he growled out her name and trembled in her arms as he found his own release. As she welcomed the warmth of his seed, she sank beneath the weight of the bliss pouring over her.
It was not until she felt the cool dampness of a cloth gently bathing her groin that Arianna began to return to her senses. Embarrassment threatened to swamp her and she struggled against it. It was not easy to defeat, however. Arianna had no trouble being touched there or having Brian enter her there, but kissing her there? Looking at her most private of parts? There was no denying that it had made her wild with desire, but now that desire had cooled, and she was left with the knowledge that she had shown none of a lady’s modesty or restraint. Shame over that was a worm trying to bore into her heart and mind and destroy the lingering pleasure she cherished over all they had just shared.
Brian tossed aside the cloth he had cleaned them both with and quickly rejoined Arianna in bed. He pulled her into his arms and kissed the hollow where her shoulder met her neck, enjoying the small shiver that went through her body. Despite that he was all too aware of the tension in her.
“Ye think too much, love,” he said, and was surprised at how her breasts moving against his skin as she took a deep breath and let it out slowly actually roused a spark of desire inside him. Obviously his body was a glutton when it came to the passion he found in her arms.
“Quite possibly,” she muttered. “Yet, weel, it was wonderful, but ...”
“But naught. We are nay more than two adults taking pleasure in each other.”
“I ken it.” She flopped onto her back, clutching the covers over her breasts and rubbing a hand over her forehead. “’Tis just that I dinnae ken who I am when the desire overcomes me.”
“’Tis a blessing when it is so strong, nay a sin or a worry.”
She grimaced. “I am nay surprised a mon would say that. It ne’er happened with my husband.”
Brian propped himself up on his elbow and looked at her. “He wasnae your husband. I think he wasnae much of a lover, either. Nay with you anyway.” He cursed his unruly tongue when she grew pale, distress darkening her amber eyes to a deep brown. “Arianna, I am a fumbling idiot. I ...”
“Nay.” She placed a finger against his lips. “Ye speak the pure truth. He was neither my husband nor my lover. I dinnae ken why I have such a difficult time remembering that. ’Tis only when we reached here that I ceased adding his name to mine, yet that shocked me when I did it. Ye would think that, since I can still hear things he said to me, that I would be able to recall that my marriage was a lie.”
“What do ye mean ye can still hear things that he said?”
Brian experienced a stab of emotion he easily recognized as jealousy and firmly told himself not to be an idiot. Claud had been no husband to her and, despite what attempts she had made to make her marriage a good one while still ignorant of the truth, Arianna had not loved the man. There was no ghost of some great love or lover for him to fight. What he had begun to see more clearly was that he just had to fight the poison the man had fed her for years. Claud Lucette had taken a bonnie, lively woman with confidence and strength, and turned her into a woman who questioned herself at every turn. Brian heartily wished he had been the one to kill the fool.
“The mon is in my head.” She blushed, certain that she must sound like a madwoman to him. “A part of me remains angry and defiant o’er all he did to me. Yet, the whispers of his insults and criticisms continue to haunt me. I then feel an utter fool that I ever listened to him only to ken that his words found some way to set down root in my heart and mind. Curse it, I am making no sense at all.”
He pulled her back into his arms and rested his chin on the top of her head. “Aye, ye make sense. I ken exactly what ye mean and have done so for a while. The mon poisoned ye.”
“Nay, he ...”
“Poisoned ye, slowly, for every day of the five long years ye had to suffer the lying fool. I told ye, words can be a sharp weapon and he used them against ye with a dangerous skill. Ye were barely a woman when ye wed him, and taken from a loving family to be sent to a place where no one cared for or respected ye. He used the uncertainty ye must have felt about your place there to make ye even more uncertain.”
And that still hurt, she realized as she nodded.
“Ye should have been supported by your mon, all who didnae treat ye right being severely punished. Instead, he stabbed at ye with cruel words day after day, and there was no one there to help ye shed the poison he fed ye all the time. The bastard hasnae been dead long. Ye just need more time to push out of your heart and mind all the venom he put in there. There are a few things ye need to remember at all times that will help ye do that.”
When he did not immediately tell her what those things were, she lifted her head to look at him. “What are they?”
“That he was a coward and he wasnae your husband. He kenned he was a coward, too, but couldnae accept that truth so he blamed ye for all that was wrong in his life. His every dealing with ye was a lie. I think he quickly kenned that ye were a clever lass with spirit enough to cause him some trouble so he did all he could to kill that spirit. He also kenned ye had wit and he needed to keep ye under his boot so that ye wouldnae turn that sharp wit to looking for why your marriage wasnae as it should have been.”
“Weel, I have finally cast off his name,” she murmured.
“’Tis a start. Now ye just have to cast off the rest of his lies.”
Arianna opened her mouth to speak and abruptly forgot what she was about to say. She looked around the strange bedchamber they were in. It was another moment before she recalled where they were.
“Brian,” she gasped, “ye had best slip back into your own room. The Camerons will rise soon and ye dinnae wish to be caught creeping about the place.”
“I am in my room,” he said, and had to bite back a smile when she looked at him with her eyes wide with shock.
