But the air had changed entirely, and they both knew it, and neither said one word about it.
Four moves later, he took her queen.
The board tipped over as she reached for it, the pieces scattering across the coverlet and onto the floor. Neither of them moved to set it right, because they were both breathing too hard for any game at all.
“Ask, then,” she whispered. “Ye won. Ask yer question.”
“It’s nae another question I want,” he said.
“Then what?” she breathed.
He pushed himself up on one elbow above her, careful to keep his hand fisted in the linen to avoid touching her skin. In the firelight, he looked down at her with her wild hair, parted lips, and her pulse pounding at her throat. In that moment, he made the most critical and yet the most heartfelt decision of his life.
“Ye set the rule,” he said, his voice low. “Nay touchin’. And I am a man of me word, whatever else ye think of me. So I willnae lay a finger on ye, lassie. Nae one. But that doesnae mean I cannae have ye come apart for me right here, tonight, in me own bed.” He watched her eyes go dark and wide. “If ye want it. Only if ye want it. Say the word, and I will turn over and sleep like the dead and never speak of it again.”
She did not say the word.
After a long moment, she said in a voice he felt down his spine, “What would I have to do?”
“Only what I tell ye,” he said. “Can ye do that? Can that wicked, stubborn head of yers do a single thing it’s bid?”
“Try me,” she whispered.
So he told her.
“Pull up yer shift,” he said. “Over yer knees. I want to see ye.”
For a long moment, she did not move, and he thought she might yet lose her nerve and bid him turn his back and sleep. Then herfingers found the hem of the linen, and she drew it up over her knees and higher, slowly as he had asked, baring her pale thighs to the firelight and then the curve of her hips. Her breath had gone uneven before she was done.
“All the way.” His voice stayed low and even, and it cost him everything to keep it so. “Off, if ye’ve the nerve for it. I willnae touch ye. I gave ye me word, and a man’s word is the one thing he keeps.”
She sat up, pulled the shift over her head, and let it slip off the side of the bed, lying back naked before him in the firelight, every inch of her fierce and bare.
The sight nearly ended him where he lay.
“Now lay yer hand flat on yer belly,” he said. “Daenae rush it. We’ve the whole night, lassie, and I mean to spend every hour of it on ye.”
She did as she was bidden, her palm spread flat below her navel, her chest rising and falling quickly.
“Higher. Yer breast. Take it in yer hand.”
He watched her hand slide up and cup the soft weight of her breast, watched her thumb drag across her nipple and tease it into a hard pink point, and watched her gasp at what her own touch did to her.
“Aye. Like that. Roll it between yer fingers. Pinch, just a little. Tell me how it feels.”
“It…” Her back arched off the bed a bare inch. “It pulls. Low down. It pulls at me when I?—”
“I ken where it pulls. We’ll see to it.” His fist tightened in the sheets. “The other one now. Daenae leave it wantin’.”
She tended to the other breast, both hands on herself now, her hair wild across his pillow and her eyes black and helpless on his. He let her stay there for a while, working herself up under his orders, until her hips had begun a small, restless shift against the bed that she did not seem to realize she was making.
“Now, part yer knees for me,” he said.
A breath caught in her throat. She turned her face partly away on the pillow, and for a moment, her courage faltered.
“Look at me,” he said, gentle and absolute. “Nae away. At me. There’s nay shame in this bed tonight, only ye and me and what I am askin’ of ye. Part yer knees, lassie. Wide. Let me see all of ye.”
And Olivia, his fierce, ungovernable wife, who had walked into her enemy’s castle with her chin held high and challenged a council, a clan, and its Laird at every turn since she arrived, let her thighs fall open under his deep, dark voice and revealed the slick heat of her to the firelight and his hungry eyes.
