She had none.
“We will no’ be ready to leave tomorrow,” she said as she tore her lips from his and began to undress. “It will be a few days yet, for naught is ready. No’ the house, as we maun leave it, nor the men. We have at least this night together.”
“Aye, so.” He stood there watching her as she shed her clothes, a thing she could not seem to do fast enough. “Ye said,we. Ye are still planning to accompany yer father, then?”
“I am.” She paused with the front of her dress undone, aching for his touch.Aching. “Does that matter? Does that change aught between us? Finlay, are ye angry wi’ me for no’ heeding ye and staying back, as Reagan says?”
“Reagan said that?”
“He implied it.”
“I am no’ angry wi’ ye. Fearful for ye. Worried half out o’ my mind. But that is nay the same thing.”
“Do no’ worry.” Half naked, she pressed against him. “I am strong. I am able.”
“Aye, so I ken. But Katrin…” He put his hands in her hair, and his touch affected her so strongly, the pleasure was nearly pain. “Life is made up meetings and partings. I would no’ part wi’ ye so soon.”
“Do no’ worry about it.” She kissed him again, putting all her passion into it. Why could he—this one man in all the world—not believe in her? Have faith that she was strong enough? To take Geordie’s place at her father’s side. To come back alive.
Strong enough, it seemed, to do aught except resist lying with him again.
“Touch me,” she begged when the kiss ended.
He swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. Once again, time—perhaps even life itself—seemed to slow down as she lost herself in the sheer need to be with him, and the rightness of it.
He finished undressing her and shed his own clothing without regard. He began kissing her, starting with the palms of her hands, working his way up her arms, down to her breasts and further, across her stomach, down her legs and up again. She surrendered herself to the sensation, knowing that, just like last night, she would be able to deny him nothing.
She yielded, as she would not ever to any other man. She lay in a haze with her eyes narrowed, watching the beauty of him as he kissed her, and when he nudged her thighs apart she did not resist. Whatever he wanted of her, she would give.
It was as he was bringing her to the pinnacle of delight, his tongue inside her, that the room altered. In fact, it ceased to remain a room at all.
Instead, they were outside with a sky full of stars stretching overhead and tall trees all around. Firelight flickered nearby and the man she loved—the man she adored—knelt between her legs, his warm mouth a searing caress.
Naught more for which she might live than this. To be sure, they were hungry, desperate, in danger and on the run. But so long as she remained in his company, she would ask no more of life.
“Adair,” she whispered as she shattered, and he took her in his arms and held her close before plunging into her, even while the stars sang overhead, an ancient song.
Ah,Katrin thought as she came to herself. She must have slipped into another of Finlay’s tales, the second one he had told, when Bradana and Adair fled across Alba together, the very spirit of the land helping to hide them. A curious thing…
But all she cared for now was the feel of Finlay inside her, and thewarmth of his touch. The way he tasted when she pressed her mouth to his. Be they in her bed, or out on the breast of Scotland, she wanted only to be in this man’s arms.
Dark found them, the light draining from her chamber as the daylight died outside. Katrin wondered if anyone was looking for her downstairs, if they would come searching. She was always on duty in the hall or the kitchens. But this, this was time apart.
“Finlay.” She turned to him and rubbed her lips across his. “Will ye spend each night wi’ me? Until I maun leave to meet up with Earl Randolph?”
At first she thought he would not answer. His hand lay upon her naked breast, the calluses earned by contact with the harp strings a wondrous abrasion. But he kissed her deeply and said, “Aught ye ask, alanna. Aught ye ask o’ me.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
One night, oneglorious night, and then two. Would they have more together before the Murtray troops were formed up and ready to depart? Katrin could not say, and had little time for it with a hundred thousand details to which she must attend. People looking for her, aye, and seeking her advice, her direction on every hand. Yet, following her second night with Finlay, she could barely focus on any of it.
Finlay.
Had it been a kind of waking dream that she’d experienced when he made love to her? Had she been half asleep, or had she merely imagined she’d been back in one of his stories? Had it been his voice, whispering and crooning to her that had taken her into the tale he had told of Adair and Bradana? Was she merely losing her mind?
She must be, since she remained intent upon spending the last two nights with the harper, as she had the first two. To be truthful, though, the time in his arms remained all she could think about. Even as the clan’s folk, troubled and worried, came to her. As she worked with Angus to verify the details that would keep the homestead running well while she was away.
For she still did mean to go away. To be sure, she did. She could not let the harper’s sweet kisses, or the places to which they took her, alter her plans. Was she not a woman determined to make her own decisions?
