His lips so warm upon her as his tongue speared into her and then withdrew to swirl around a tingling place that made her moan anew and press her hips upward…the warmth of Alec’s breath almost undoing her.
The shaking growing stronger, her moans growing louder as he pulled her hips toward him and thrust himself into her at the same moment her climax crashed over her…masking the worst of a burst of pain that made her eyes fly open.
“Your maidenhead, lass,” came Alec’s ragged voice. His breathing hard as his thrusts deepened, one strong hand clasping her bottom while his other strayed upward to caress her breast.
His calloused palm teasing a hardened nipple as fresh shivers of sensation began to mount inside her that overcame any pain…Rowen staring up at him in amazement as he hauled her from the bed to hold her against him in a steely embrace, thrusting still.
Her legs encircling his hips and her arms flying around his neck, her fingers digging into his shoulders while she began to shake against him.
He shook, too, groaning brokenly against her ear until he found her mouth as a final thrust made him shudder, their hips joined as if one in a climax more blinding to Rowen than the one before.
Her head sank against his sweat-dampened shoulder, and she felt his grasp upon her bottom ease almost at the same moment she found herself collapsed upon the bed.
Alec sinking down beside her to pull her into his arms, his breathing still hard and fanning her flushed cheek while she lay there, limp and wholly dazed.
Her lower body still throbbed where he had kissed her and then claimed her…until he pressed his hand between her thighs to hold her there.
The throbbing slowly easing until her breathing, like Alec’s, had calmed. She opened her eyes to find him staring at her in the soft light cast by the logs crackling in the fireplace.
His eyes darkened and his expression unreadable, though she sensed he was about to say something. Rowen longed so intensely to hear sweet words, aye, even loving words from him after the intimacy they had shared?—
“Your clan will never want you back, lass, now that my seed has been sown inside you…no matter who it was that wished tae help you. My father said you would settle down once you’ve a bairn growing inside your belly—and no doubt, King Robert will be pleased that we’ve done our duty?—”
“Duty?” Stunned, Rowen gaped at him as Alec released her and sat up on the bed to give her a grim nod.
“What else would you call it? Dinna deceive yourself, lass, that what just took place means there is some affection between us. You wanted me slain, remember? Aye, probably you still do…and mayhap your acquiescence tonight is part of your plan for me tae lower my guard with your tears, your prayers, your body, but it willna succeed. I’m sending out a messenger tonight tae King Robert so he will know of your clan’s disloyalty?—”
“It wasna my clan, but my brother Errol!” Rowen blurted out, though at once she clamped her mouth shut at what she had just revealed in mounting fury.
Aye, her anger so hot that she lunged from the bed to sweep up her tunic from the floor and hold it in front of her naked body like a shield.
Alec rose now, too, and moved past her to pick up his own tunic and wrest it over his head while Rowen gasped at the blood smeared upon the bedspread.
Dear God, had he thrust himself so forcefully inside her that she was injured? She heard Alec’s wry laugh behind her that held no humor, Rowen whirling around to face him.
“So your brothers boasted about their sexual prowess, but didna tell you that a woman bleeds when she’s first bedded? At least I know now you were a virgin?—”
“Brute! You’re a fiend after all—just as I feared!” Rowen felt tears smarting her eyes that for a moment, seemed to soften the harshness of Alec’s expression.
Yet an instant more and she believed she must have imagined it when he turned away from her with a scowl and continued to dress.
She dressed, too, with trembling fingers as outrage, fury, aye, and anguish assailed her, though she swallowed back more tears as Alec made his way to the door.
“Dinna wait up for me, wife…unless you decide one bedding for the night isna enough for you—och!”
Alec dodged the water pitcher that Rowen had run to grab so she could hurl it at him, and then he was gone, slamming the door behind him before she could find something else to throw.
She sank to the floor, unable to stop the sobs overwhelming her.
She had thought mayhap he didn’t despise her for what had happened to him, but she couldn’t have been more wrong.
Ah, God, he hated her still. How could he not after what he’d said to her? She was nothing to him but a wife for bedding and bearing bairns, he had said so himself!
Rowen’s hands clenched into fists, and somehow she choked back the sobs threatening to become full-fledged weeping as she vowed to never again cry over Laird Alec Mackay.
If he believed that finding herself with child would make her settle down, he was sadly mistaken…and if he ever thought to seduce her again—for that is what he had done, aye?
His fervent kisses with no affection at all behind them.
