“Aye. And I ken how hard it is to come by. Where did ye get it?”
She raised an eyebrow and gave him a mysterious little smile. “Does it matter where I got it? Just drink it, and eat the porridge too. If you do all right with that, tonight I’ll cook you a proper meal.”
He let the matter go, for now, but added it to all of the other inconsistencies surrounding Willa. This lass was not at all what she seemed.
She chatted to him while he ate, talking about inconsequential matters and not really expecting him to answer, which he didn’t. He was having enough trouble just concentrating on getting the food to his mouth, because once again he’d had a raging hard-on from almost the moment she walked into the room. One moment he was fine, and then it was as if every inch of his body steadily became aware of her. The feeling began with a sharp squeeze of his chest as soon as he caught site of her, and from there went tingling and spreading down through his arms and legs, to his very fingertips and lower, making him ache in a way he never had before. As if he’d been lit on fire by her mere presence. It was confusing, this powerful reaction, and frustrating too. Drust just didn’t know what to make of it. He would have thought for certain she had cast some sort of enthrallment spell over him, but he would have been able to feel it. Besides, common spells didn’t work on him. No, there was something else at work here, but damned if he knew what it was.
Willa bent to collect the tray from his lap, and her fingers brushed against his straining cock. He had to bite down hard on his tongue. God, how his body wanted her! In his mind he could so easily imagine reaching for her and flipping her onto the bed, covering her with his body… Wanting something so life-affirming as primal, heart-pounding, desperate sex must be a normal reaction to a brush with death.Strange, though; he’d never even come close to being this lust-crazed, not even as a young man coming of age, not after a battle, not after the time he was shot with an arrow that narrowly missed his heart… this was different, raw, elemental. Not just lust, he realized, but the urge to claim, to mark, to possess. And it seemed to him that not just any woman would do, onlyher.
He tested the theory, thinking about any number of the pretty lasses back at Creagmor imagining them here… standing before him, naked. He waited, but it was as he suspected. Nothing. He felt nothing. It was only her.
Should he just take her as soon as he was able and be done with the need once and for all? He would have to leave the sect he had worked so hard to become a member of… though he was beginning to wonder if Bren was right about the wisdom of his vows. After all, there was much he could accomplish with his sword arm elsewhere. But no. If he took her innocence, he would have to offer her marriage, and he had no need of a wife. He wouldn’t know what to do with one anyway. And a wife would likely want bairns, which he would not give her. Never would he risk the life of a woman he cared about like that. And the life of the bairn as well. He had seen his own mother die in childbirth, and could do nothing to save her, or the tiny lass she had borne… the sister he would never know.I could never watch my woman die like that, knowing my own lust or want of an heir had killed her…
But what if she wasn’t an innocent? Then he could have her with no regrets and no marriage vow, couldn’t he? Och, but that would mean another man had taken her first, had touched all that smooth creamy skin, shared the secrets of her body. The thought did not sit well with him, and he felt the anger rise in the pit of his stomach, spreading through him like wildfire.
I will kill the bastard who dared to touch her!
Willa had been sitting nearby on a wooden chair, sipping a cup of tea and watching Drust obviously lost deep in his thoughts. As his brow furrowed and his lips pressed tight in what seemed to be anger, she stood, brushing down her skirts and then gathering the breakfast tray from his lap. She carried it to the kitchen and then came back, to find him with his eyes squeezed shut and his fists clenched at his sides. What on earth was he thinking about… or was he in pain?
“Drust? Are you all right?”
Drust looked up, seeming startled that she had spoken, then fixed her with an angry glare. Obviously whatever he had been thinking about had not left her in his good graces. There was so much more beneath the surface of this complicated man. Would she ever discover who he really was? He had known about tea… “So, where are you from?” she ventured.
He sighed and rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Ye ken I canna tell ye that, lass.”
“Oh. So you must be someone quite important then, right? Because otherwise it wouldn’t really matter. I mean, if you were just some ordinary farmer, you probably wouldn’t have too many enemies.”
“I’m no’ a farmer.”
“I know that.” She tilted her head to look at him. “Do you have any sisters?”
“No.”
“Do you know how you ended up at the mouth of that cave?”
“Aye.”
“And you know who hurt you?”
“Aye, but lass… I’m no’ going to tell ye, so stop asking questions. I thank ye for the care and the shelter, but ye will never ken who I am or why I was wounded, or anything else about me. It’s too dangerous for ye to ken, and it’s too dangerous for me to tell ye. Just as soon as I’m able, I’ll be leaving and ye’ll do best to forget all about me. I’m no’ the man ye think I am.”
She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “All right. But I’m not telling you my secrets either.” She leaned closer. “And I havelotsof good secrets.”Then, she gave him a peace offering.“You can go out for a short walk, if you promise to behave and rest again when I say you’ve had enough.”
“Dinna try to control me. I am not a child”, he muttered petulantly. “I can walk whenever it pleases me to.”
She rolled her eyes at him, then her gaze slid up and down the length of his body.
His cock pulsed under the sheet, almost as if she had touched him physically.
Her lips quirked. She was feeling particularly saucy today. “Yes, I canseeyou’re not a child, but even so, you don’t seem to have enough sense to rest and heal properly.Thatis probably because you are a man”, she couldn’t help but add. He must be feeling better if he was being so grumpy, well, compared to his usual grumpiness, anyway. “I swear that without women to beat sense into them, men would have all died off years ago. You’re just lucky I’m here to save you from yourself.” She turned back towards the door. “Are you coming for a walk with me or no?”
Just when she was wondering if he was going to lie there and sulk to spite her, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed, then stood as if he was completely hale and hearty. Only the way his lips pressed into a thin white line of pain gave him away. She almost winced in sympathy.
Knowing better than to offer help, Willa walked into the kitchen, then outside. Drust followed, and she could not help telling him to be careful of his stitches. She thought he might have actually growled at her.
Together they walked slowly down the little path that meandered down to the river. Willa led him to a bench she had made by putting a board between two of the larger rocks that lined the river bank. She sat down and gestured to the place beside her. Drust looked less than certain, but slowly lowered himself to sit beside her, the pain and stiffness of his injury impossible for him to hide completely. She looked over at her warrior. She had come to think of him as hers, even though in reality, he was anything but. He seemed to belong only to himself, or maybe to whatever was on his mind when he looked as if he were a million miles away. To his sword-arm? A lover back home? Perhaps his honor? His face gave away nothing.
The thick, silky waves of his hair fell haphazardly around his shoulders. She wondered if he usually tied it back. Yes, she remembered it was tied with a strip of leather when she found him. The tie had been as bloody as the rest of him and she had discarded it when she washed his hair. Perhaps she should offer to comb it and tie it back for him later…
