He’s still shamelessly naked and I’m staring at his dick, which is possibly still half-hard.I still can’t believe he got that inside me. I want to see if he can do it again. I don’t care how sore I am.
I groan a little as I feel something cool sweep over my chafed skin. “That feels better.”
“Speaking of feelings,” he leers, “do you feel good and married now?”
“Yes, you ass. I believe you. We’re married.Legally.”
“Good!” Suddenly, he’s all business. “Because if we don’t show up to the family estate on Sunday for dinner, my mother is going to be displeased. Believe me when I say you do not want to see Elspeth MacTavish displeased.”
Cameron…
She turns away from me, curling on her side.
Ah. “You feel uncomfortable because of the nightclub maneuver, thinking everyone knew you were the bait?”
She pulls the sheet up over her shoulders.
“Not uncomfortable. Humiliated. Shamed.”
“Mo fhlùr…If it makes any difference, Mala thought we should have told you from the beginning. She comes from a horrible feckin’ family, too. You’ll have a lot in common,” I say dryly. “Very few people knew. My brothers. The bodyguards. No one is laughing at you and thinking of you as less.”
“I’ve just barely accepted…” she rolled over again, waving her hand at me, “...this. I feel like I’m orbiting a new sun, everything is different. The last three weeks have felt like suspended animation, waiting to see what was going to happen.” My bride sits up, wincing at the pressure on her sore ass and pulling the sheet up to cover her breasts, an action I note with some regret. “Now you want me to play ‘Meet the Family’ and pretend everything is normal when nothing is.”
“That’s understandable,” I agree. She’s right. “We can start slow. Would you like to have lunch with Mala first, get to know her a little? You can swap stories about fathers who are shite and arranged marriages to lecherous old bastards.”
“Are you calling yourself a lecherous old bastard?” She sasses me.
“I’m talking about the other one, ya’ Bessie! I’m only twelve years older than you.”
“Really? You’re thirty-two?” She frowns thoughtfully. “That’s so old. And what’s a Bessie?”
“A rude, bad-tempered woman, which ye’ are,” I say sternly. “And here I am bein’ all kind and understanding and shite.”
She gives a little giggle and it’s so fecking charming that I want to hear it again. Immediately. I like her unguarded smile, how she sets down the persona that protected her for so long. Like maybe she feels safe enough with me to finally do it.
Then my smile fades.
“I have to leave again.”
“Oh?” At least she looks disappointed.
“Aye, we’re at a sensitive juncture with a key shipping route for the Stepanov Bratva. If we close this off, it drives them further out of Moscow.”
“Where are you driving them to?” Morana asks.
“Good question. In World War Two, the Scottish Highlander battalions were calledDie Damen aus der Hölleby the Nazis.”
She chuckles, “I know a little German… the Ladies from Hell?”
“Aye. The Highlanders would wear their kilts and play their war pipes and they were known to be so ferocious in battle that the Nazi troops would flee before them when they heard the bagpipes.”
Smiling, she nods. “I remember my history lessons, back when the Russians and the Scottish were on the same side in World War Two, our people had great admiration for the Scot’s tactics. So how does this relate here?”
“Well, a regiment used this specific tactic we have in play, in a particularly difficult battle in occupied Italy. The Germans were tearing the country apart. The Scottish troops - they were called the Cameronians - drove the Nazis into a valley that ended in a blind canyon, with more sharpshooters lying in wait on the cliffs.”
“That’s genius,” she says.
“Less than two hundred Scots killed over a thousand Germans that day.”
