He should leave MacKay, but he couldn’t leave her at Alber’s mercy. Nor could he take her with him back to Sutherland. He was trapped between impossible alternatives. The only honorable solution was to get word to Anders to meet him, switch places with him, and let the real Anders continue what they had begun to its inevitable conclusion. Betrothal. Marriage.
Was he willing to do that? To give the woman in his arms to his brother? Never to let her know the fire she felt with him was started by Stellan, not Anders? To grow old watching his brother make a family with the woman he wanted for himself? Or would she know the moment Anders approached her? Was the magic only with him, and seeing Anders after this would tell her exactly what he and his twin had done— switched places in a dangerous game that could only hurt them all.
He stepped back from her and pulled his hands from her lush body. “We canna continue this, Mariota. Too much depends on yer marriage. On ye being wed the right way, nay because ye are ruined and ye must. That would make me nay better than Alber.”
She watched him for a moment, eyes wide and liquid. He feared her tears would start to fall at any second and he hated the idea that he had caused them. He never wanted to hurt her.
Instead, she surged forward, knocking him back, and his arms went around her of their own volition.
“I dinna care. If I have to choose between ye and someone like Alber, I want more from ye,” she said and met his mouth again, sucking his lower lip and tracing her tongue over it as he had done to her.
His body roared to life just as the door opened behind her.
CHAPTER 13
As Stellan registered the noise at the door, he pulled away from Mariota. They were not touching when it opened, but the damage may have been done. They should not have been alone like this. And most certainly they should not have been found, both breathing hard and flushed with sensual need. Need that could never be met.
Mariota whirled around, stiffened, then relaxed. “Fionnuala.”
The woman looked like an older kitchen lass to Stellan, but Mariota must have been a favorite of hers because she put her finger over her lips and stepped out of the room, closing the door behind her. Stellan went to it and opened it again, then tilted his head in an “out” gesture to Mariota. She gave him an apologetic smile and left the room. He waited a moment, giving his pounding heart a chance to slow, then followed.
“I be sorry, lass,” the woman said. “I…” She gulped and continued, “I didna mean to interrupt.”
“Ye didna,” Stellan told her, determined to protect Mariota. “We had things to discuss and needed a quiet place for it.”
“Sure and ye did,” the woman answered, her gaze on the floor, then left them in the corridor without explaining what errand had brought her to the storage chamber.
“That canna happen again,” he told Mariota once they were alone. Though his body was telling him he wanted it to— right now. And the pulse beating in Mariota’s throat signaled the same. She wasn’t the only one playing with fire.
“It can if I wish for it to.”
“Nay, it canna, and ye ken fine why.” He ran a hand through his hair and down the back of his neck, praying for the whirlpool to calm that was swirling blood from other parts of his body into his groin. “Now tell me what yer da said. Ye confronted him, aye?” It was the best way he could think of to lower the temperature between them. Recalling the confrontation with her father would surely distract her from the blood singing in her veins. He hoped it would do the same for him.
“There’s naught more to say than I told ye earlier. I ken what ye are trying to do. But ye canna deny what is between us.”
“I must, Mariota. ’Tisna my place— or my wish —to risk ye that way.”
“Nay yer wish? What was that then?” She asked and pointed at the door they’d hidden behind. “For it seemed like ye wished it well enough while we were there.”
“I… things got out of hand, lass.”
She frowned at his words, her brow wrinkled and her lips pressed tightly together. “Did they,Stellan?” she said. “Or did the lie finally become truth?” Anger blazed in her eyes. Or was it contempt? “Do the men with ye ken who ye really are? Are they meant to protect ye rather than me?”
Mariota’s words stabbed Stellan in the chest, right through his heart. This is what lies wrought, he thought as his blood turned cold, and he deserved it. But he didn’t have to like it.
“Ye ken?” His heart beat hard against the wall of his chest. She desired him,Stellan,enough to know the difference between him and his twin.
“I have for a wee while. I couldna be sure until—” She waved at the door behind them. “Ye and yer twin may look exactly alike, but ye are no’ the same at all, no’ in the way it matters to me.”
She touched his chest with her fingertips, making his breath catch and his heart threaten to beat right out of his chest. How could such a simple touch destroy his restraint?
“Ye are nay the same here,” she said, her gaze on her fingertips. Then she looked up at him with eyes showing moss rings around deep, dark wells. “Ye dinna have the same smile or laugh, and ye dinna have the same heart. Anders’ eyes have never burned into me the way yers do. The way yers are right now. He has never made me crave his touch the way ye make me crave yers. How could I no’ see the difference? It took me a while to believe what I sensed. I was willing to go along with whatever ye two were planning, deceiving my da so ye could come along in Anders’ place, but why did ye have to try to deceive me, too? I always felt something with ye, and naught with yer twin.”
The pressure of her touch forced him to fight his urge to reach for her. He wanted nothing more than to pull her into his arms, close a door behind them, bar it this time, and make love to her as his body demanded. As hers, from her beating pulse to the scent of her arousal told him she would welcome. But he couldn’t. He was too relieved that what he’d sensed from Anders had also been true. Friendship, but no attraction with Mariota.
She wanted him. And God knew he wanted her.
“I’m sorry, Mariota. I am. I had to lie. ’Twas the only way to be with ye. To see if these feelings between us were real. I still mean to keep ye safe, nay to be the one to dishonor ye. To ruin ye.”
