Hescared her. She might have thought she knew him, but Robbie Boyd, hardened warrior, was not the noble rebel she’d watched as a girl. She was alone with one of the most feared men in Scotland. A man who by all accounts was a scourge, brigand, and barbarian. She was completely at his mercy, and the precariousness of the situation—and her vulnerability—slid down her spine in a terrified chill.
Eight
It took Robbie a minute to realize he was scaring her.
Before that he was lost. From the moment she’d turned, with every inch of that damp linen molded to her chest, he hadn’t had one rational thought in his head. With all the lustful thoughts swirling around, there hadn’t been room for anything else.
Hell, there hadn’t been room for much else since the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. Even his dreams had been filled with her. Images that had made him wake up hard and restless this morning. Images that had come back to him during the day, too many times to count. Images that it turned out were nowhere near as spectacular as reality.
Thisimage was going to haunt him for the rest of his life. Every pair of breasts he saw from now on would suffer from the comparison.
The funny part was that she didn’t even fit what he’d thought of as his ideal. To be blunt, he liked them big and lush, with sweet, juicy nipples. He liked to bury his head between the soft mounds of flesh, to watch them bounce, jiggle, and sway as he drove in and out. He liked them to pour over his hands as he gripped from behind (aye, he especially liked that), to suck the hard peak of a substantial nipple into his mouth and draw it between his teeth and tongue.
Not that he opposed variety. But if he’d had an ideal, that would have been it.
Until now. The two perfectly rounded mounds of flesh before him were not generously proportioned by any means. They would fit in his hands with nary an ounce of flesh spilling over. But the shape was exquisite—masterful in its detail—putting any Grecian sculptor to shame.
They were high, round, and firm, and perfectly proportioned to her slim ribcage and waist. Her nipples were small and a dusky shade of pink. When they hardened under the heat of his gaze, they weren’t much bigger than two pearls. Not much to pluck between his teeth, but he could still practically taste the tiny points on his tongue, and it took everything he had not to reach out and rub one under his thumb. To circle the wrinkly edge and pinch the delicate tip gently between his fingers and see if it felt as perfect as it looked.
It would be. God, he knew it would be.
He felt like a child who’d just opened a door and found a room full of sugary confections waiting for him to gorge on. And God, she was sweet. Sweet and so damned ripe, it took his breath away.
Her skin was like freshly poured cream, smooth and velvety white. In God’s way of devising the perfect torture for a man, he’d matched the naughty little freckle on her lip with one above her left breast. He didn’t know which he wanted to put his mouth on first. But it was all he could think of.
Blood pounded through his veins. He throbbed hard with need. Seeing her like this had stripped away all pretense of control. His attraction to the lass went beyond rationality. His body didn’t care if she was English, if she was Clifford’s sister, if touching her would be the biggest mistake he ever made in his life. All his body wanted was to smooth his hands over every inch of her soft skin until it was just as hot as his, until her cheeks flushed and lips parted with pleasured breaths, until her hips pressed against his in silent entreaty, until he opened her with his fingers—and maybe even his mouth—and made her slick and wet for his entry. And until he came into her with a hard thrust and made her his. He wouldn’t stop thrusting until she came, until she screamed his name and every last shudder of her release had ebbed from her spent body.
He’d never felt anything like this, and the force of it overpowered him, dulling everything else around him.
Until he saw her eyes widen. The effect of that was like a dousing of ice water. He was brought back to reality with a hard jolt.
“Christ, I’m sorry.” He took a step back. “I don’t know what—” He stopped and cleared his throat, trying to let the strange tangle of emotions in him calm before he said something he shouldn’t. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
He turned away, giving her a chance to fix her gown and his blood time to cool. Only then did he allow himself to look at her again.
She couldn’t seem to cover herself quickly enough. She’d donned not only her gowns, but her cloak and plaid, and was still eyeing him warily.
He didn’t blame her. What the hell had come over him? He’d never so completely lost himself. He’d never allowed himself to lose focus of what was going on around him. He’d never allowed himself to be that distracted by a woman. Never. He was always in control. But something had come over him, and she’d seen it.
But damn it, no matter what had come over him, he would never force himself on any woman, and he needed her to know it. “I am many things, but a rapist is not one of them, Rosalin. Believe what you will of what they say about me, but know that. I will never force you and would kill any man who tried.”
The latter came out with a ferocity that surprised him, provoking questions he didn’t want asked. Such as why the hell did he feel so protective toward her?
She lifted her gaze for a moment, and then dropped it again. “All right.”
“I mean it.”
She looked up at him again, this time meeting his gaze. He could see that some of her fear was gone, but not all of it.
His mouth tightened with anger. Not at her, but at the subject he was about to broach. He hated talking about the past. Hated thinking about what had happened to his sister. He couldn’t recall ever talking about it—even to his Highland Guard brethren who knew what had happened. But he would raise the vile specter this one time to make her understand. “My only sister was raped.”
She gasped. Her eyes locked on his, as if she knew the flat matter-of-factness of his tone hid a deep, searing pain—a wound that would never be healed.
She put her hand on his arm, and he stared at it, feeling his chest tighten.
“I’m sorry. That must have been horrible. But she is lucky to have a brother who cares for her so deeply.”
Cared. She meant it as a kindness but didn’t know how much pain her words caused. He’d loved his sister more than anyone else in the world. Pretty and vivacious, always with a smile on her face, she hadn’t been much older than Rosalin the last time he’d seen her. “A hell of a lot of good it did her. I wasn’t there to protect her when the English garrisoned the King’s Inch castle in Renfrewshire and invaded our village. When the captain learned she was the sister of the rebels Robbie and Duncan Boyd, he decided to make an example of her. He didn’t use her once, but over and over. He made her his whore and raped her until she couldn’t bear it anymore and threw herself off a cliff into the sea to end her suffering.”
