She shrugged out of her worn dress, pulling off her underthings and slipping swiftly below the water. The warmth shrouded her body at once, and she closed her eyes, trying to allow herself to relax, but she couldn’t even imagine the state she was in.
She was in the Keep of a man who intended to marry her. A man who, as he had made very clear, would not settle for anything less than what he wanted. Amelia could already tell that it wouldn’t do her any good to try and protest anything he threw at her, and she would be smart to keep her mouth shut around him as much as possible.
She sank a little lower beneath the water. She could still remember, very well, how his arms had felt around her while they’d ridden. How he had held her, with a sturdy certainty that seemed to throb up through every inch of her body. She had never been that close to a man before in her life, so she didn’t know if the heat that had throbbed through her system was something she’d have felt with anyone.
No, she did know the answer to that question. Much as she might have wanted to deny it, it was him. Arran. He who made her feel the way she did. When she had looked at the man her father had picked out for her to marry, she’d felt nothing of the sort, none of the warmth that flooded down her, getting the better of her. A strange and twisted desire that she knew didn’t belong with a man as wild as him, but that she felt anyway—right down to her bones, to some secret place inside of her that she had spent a long time trying to pretend didn’t exist at all.
Finishing up with her bath, she heard Mairead outside the door. Sure enough, when she checked, she found a clean nightdress waiting there for her. She breathed a sigh of relief, and grabbed it, pulling the door shut before anyone could seeher. She hardly knew if her arrival was common knowledge among the Keep yet, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the judgements and gossip that would be shared about her when it was.
She slipped the garment on over her freshly washed body, her damp hair clinging to the back of her neck. She wished there was some kind of mirror she could look into, something she could use to help ground herself in the face of all that was happening—she could hardly parse the enormity of it, what it would mean for her to be a man’s wife. Let alone wife to a man like him…
A noise sounded at her door, and she sucked in a sharp breath, her head flashing around in a panic.
The door opened, and there he was, as though she had summoned him from the sheer intensity of her thoughts, Arran stood in the doorway, one arm raised to rest against the frame, his eyes pinned on her.
Her arms darted to her body at once, as though she was still undressed. She knew she was covered, but the nightdress was flimsy, and she was still damp from the bath. Though he would see much more of her when the two of them were wed, she wasn’t ready to show him everything yet.
“What are you doing here?”
“Mairead took good care of you, aye?” he asked, taking a step into the room. Her breath hitched in her throat.
“Aye, she did,” she replied, trying to keep her voice as neutral as possible. She didn’t want him to know what kind of effect he had on her; she was sure that he was aware, anyway. She didn’t want to gift him that kind of power, though she didn’t know how best to hide from it.
“Good.”
He moved another step towards her. She could feel her knees trembling slightly, but she stood her ground. She couldn’t give him an inch, not without risking more than she was willing to.
“We’ll be married this weekend,” he told her, matter-of-factly. She bit her lip.
“That soon?”
He eyed her for a long moment. She could smell the scent of him in the air; damp earth, musk, something deep and woody and masculine that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. And maybe, underneath it all, a hint of blood, like the blood she had seen spattered on his hands before, like the deep red of the walls around them, the walls that seemed to press them closer together than they had ever been before.
“Aye,” he replied. He spoke simply, clearly, leaving no room for her to argue. Would she have argued, even if she could? She wasn’t sure. When he looked at her like that, it was hard to muster up any word of protest, though she knew she perhaps should have tried to.
His gaze dropped from her eyes, and began to inch down her body. She was suddenly even more distinctly aware of how little she was wearing. She crossed her arms over her stomach, but she was sure he could make out the nut-brown of her breasts beneath the fabric.
His lips parted for a moment, as though there was something he wanted to say. Instead, his hand slid to her waist, his fingers, for a second, digging into her flesh with a surprising strength, as though he was marking her as his.
She looked up at him again. Those dark eyes, behind his dark hair, blazing back at her. And then, before she could get out another word, he pulled her towards him, and sank his mouth against hers.
The heat that had been building in her belly roiled to boiling point within her, as his mouth moved against hers. She couldfeel the roughness of his stubble on her skin, the strength of his body through his shirt. Without thinking, she moved a hand to his chest, feeling the steady thud of his heartbeat through the fabric, growing more and more intense with every passing moment. His mouth parted, and she could feel the low vibration of a groan emitting from his lips. She gasped, a throb of pleasure building in her faster than she could control it. And she knew in that moment that she would have done anything that he asked her, anything he wanted her to. She couldn’t have denied him for anything, no matter if it was before her wedding night, no matter if she barely knew him.
And then, all at once, he pulled back. His hand remained on her waist for a long moment, still gripping her tight, before he dropped it to his side once more. He was breathing hard, and he avoided her gaze for a moment, as though looking at her might break whatever composure he had managed to find.
She couldn’t take her eyes off of him, half of her craving more, half of her terrified by the fiery want that even a kiss had brought up inside of her.Was that how it felt to kiss a man? Why had she waited so long?
Because she had never met a man like him. And now, a man who kissed her like that—hard, with a passion she’d never felt before in her life—was going to be her husband.
And that kiss was only going to be the start of everything they would share together.
“You’ll be a good wife to me,” he murmured, as he finally met her gaze once more. She nodded at once. She would have agreed to anything that he’d say to her, if it meant he might touch her again like that. A tingling consumed her, pooling between her legs, her mouth still on fire from the feel of his lips against hers.
“Good.”
With that, he left, turning on his heel and making for the door. She found her lips parting, wishing she could call afterhim and get him to stay. Instead, she sank back towards the bed behind her, brushing her fingertips across her lips once more.
The next time she saw him, she supposed, they would be married. And when they were married, he would not leave her bedchambers after kissing her like that.
