“Feel better?” she asked in a coy voice that matched her smile. Even the corners of her eyes crinkled with sexy glee.
Reade barked out a panting laugh and lifted his head. When he shifted his hips, his cock slipped from her, dripping and satisfied. He glanced down at himself, then back at Blair.
“Aye. Quite the inventive solution for heartache. Perchance if we’d approached our anguish this way earlier, we would no’ have had animosity to begin with.”
Her eyebrows rose high on her clear, perspiration-slicked forehead. “I offered,” she said wryly.
Reade gave her a tight smile and bowed his head. “So ye did. More the fool me for no’ taking ye up on the offer.”
She pushed herself up into a sitting position on the edge of the bed and pressed her hands against his damp chest.
“Well, now we both know better how do deal with such things when they arise. In case we have any future complications, hmm?”
Reade had to grin. He’d not considered lying with his wife as a method to overcome his sorrow, but as she so aptly pointed out, it was tremendously effective.
“I must caution ye, then,” he told her as he bent his head down and kissed her with smiling lips, “I might find myself distraught much more often.”
Her arms slipped around his back, drawing him closer so his chest pressed against her face, and she rubbed her cheek against the rough hairs of his chest.
“When I am with ye, ‘tis like nothing else in this world,” she spoke against his chest, her breath warm on his skin.
Reade ran his hand down her smooth hair. “Aye, lass. For me, too. ‘Tis like ye touch my heart when we are together. Thank ye for helping me overcome my anger.” He wrapped his arms loosely around her shoulders.
“Ye know if I had any information about the Campbells or a letter, I would have said such to ye, aye?” Blair said suddenly. Reade’s arms stiffened slightly, but he forced himself to stay calm. Why should she say such a thing now? They had shared an intimate moment — perchance her heart felt as exposed and touched as his?
“Aye, lass. I believe ye would have said something by now.”
“Your family and ye have been the only real family I’ve ever known. I would never do anything to hurt them or betray ye. ’Twould be like betraying my own heart, and that’s had enough pain to last a lifetime.”
Reade hugged her tighter. He well understood the pain of betraying one’s heart. He still had twinges of it when he thought on Blair as a Gordon and who her dead husband had been, but pushing those thoughts to the side had become much easier as of late, if they interceded at all.
“Heartache pervades, like the ripples in a loch when ye throw a stone into the water. But,” he said as he waggled his eyebrows, “as ye so aptly showed this evening, those ripples do fade.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Seamus called his sonsand his brother, Ian, to a meeting at the Glenachulish stronghold early in the morn. His sister’s husband, Ranulf, had ridden over from Bidean nam Bian, seat of the Bidean Glen Coe MacDonalds at the MacDonald-Campbell border to join them. He was of Viking heritage, his golden mane long and braided at the temples. His lean muscles and ice-blue eyes bespoke his Nordic blood, but his thick calves and aquiline nose came from his mother’s Scots side. Ranulf was a blend of nations surrounding the North sea, and the moment Seamus’s sister, Malvina, had laid eyes on him at a Ceilidh, she was smitten and had begged their father to make an introduction, followed shortly by a marriage proposal. The birth of her firstborn a few short months later may have played a larger role in their legal union, coupled with threats from her Uncle Glengarry himself.
