“When I return with my sister, I must wed the MacKilyn’s daughter. But I’ll see to it that both you and Christiana are well cared for. I’m sure you’ll get on well with her and become great friends. You’ll have shelter and food such as we have and the freedom to spend yer time as you wish. You’ll want for nothing as long as I draw breath. You’ve my oath on that.”
She filled her lungs, slowly, deeply, and blew the air out again before meeting his gaze.
“Don’t give an oath you can’t keep.”
“There’s none that can stop me from keeping that oath.” He would build an entire section onto the castle if he had to. No matter the cost. No matter how long it took. This would be her home.
“No.” She shook her head, the gleam of tears shining in her eyes. “You can’t promise I’ll want for nothing because the one thing I want, the only thing I want, you won’t be able to give me.”
He opened his mouth to refute her claim, but she pressed one delicate finger to his lips.
“You can’t, Malcolm. Because the only thing I want is you. And no matter what happens, I lose you after tonight. Whether you’re lost in this battle you go to fight or you’re lost to another woman, the end result is that I can’t have you.”
There should be blood to accompany pain such as he felt now. Copious amounts of bright red blood. Enough to cover the largest of battlefields. But no, a broken heart did not bleed as a wound of the flesh would. Nor, he feared, would it heal as a wound of the flesh would.
“I . . . I have no choice.” He held her hand, grasped it tightly within his own, willing her to understand. “Skuld wove the skein of our lives long ago. What is to come after this night is not in our power to control.”
“Maybe not,” she conceded, taking his other hand in hers and pulling him toward her. “But what is to come tonight is completely within our control.”
She leaned into him, rising up on tiptoe to press her soft lips against his, dropping his hand to twine her fingers in the hair at the base of his neck.
He could push her away. Should push her away. But he couldn’t seem to find the strength for anything more than lifting his lips from hers.
“I will not ask you to be my mistress.” He would not dishonor either her or the woman he would marry in such a way.
“That’s a good thing, because I have a very strict, no-exceptions policy about not dating married men.”
She caught up his hand again and pulled him with her as she sank to her knees under the rowan tree.
He joined her willingly, though Freya knew, he should walk away.
Instead he caressed her face, running his thumb over her cheek. “One night, love. Can you live with the knowledge of only one night?”
She kissed him again, fiercely this time, breaking the kiss to capture his face in her hands. “I’ll have to. Because what I couldn’t live with is the knowledge that you’re the one man in the whole of time for me and I let you slip away without sharing even one night with you.”
Her fingers tugged at his shirt, freeing the cloth to slide underneath against his bare chest.
“Yer hands are cold.”
“All of me is cold.” She hooked her fingers in the waist of his plaid and urged him toward her as she lay down on her back. “Come heat me up.”
He wouldn’t make her ask him a second time.
MALCOLM’S BODY WASwarm and large and even had he not supported his weight on his elbows as he did when he covered her, Dani wanted him so badly that she wouldn’t have cared.
Cold air skittered along her skin as his knee nudged the edge of her skirt up along her leg, even as his fingers worked at the laces covering her breasts.
Need coursed through her body. Desperate, mind-numbing need.
She pulled at the sides of his plaid, crumpling the cloth in her fingers until at last the coarse hair of his legs brushed against the backs of her hands.
The drums in the distance beat in time with her need, a heady background ofnow, now, now,thrumming in her mind, until she moaned with her impatience.
His tongue playing a game of hide-and-seek at her ear, stilled, and a puff of air wafted over her lobe as he chuckled his response.
“Easy, love. We’ve this whole night for ourselves. We’ll take it slow and enjoy one another.”
“Like hell we will,” she panted.
