Page 102

“Aye, they have been questioning my commitment tae m’manhood. I have had tae take a fight or two tae prove my steel.”

I pressed against him. “Och, aye,” I joked, “I can feel your steel.”

He chuckled with his head on my shoulder, collapsed on me. “Ah, mo reul-iuil, ye have a fine wit and a scandalous tongue.”

I stepped back from him and brushed the hair off my face. I raised my brow and smiled. “My tongue is not so full of scandal, sir, it’s full of sweetness and longing.”

He moaned and reached for my skirts to try to pull me closer again.

I stepped back further, and teased, “And if you would like to reacquaint yourself with it, my tongue, Master Magnus, I think you best be getting onto your back. By my accounts you have suffered some long years without me, and I believe you must be parched.”

He groaned happily. “Ye hae used my words.”

“And this has been entirely too much talking.”

He hung his head. “I canna take ye home tae Florida, tis unsafe, and here I daena have a room with a bed. I haena the status of married Young Magnus, nephew of the Earl of Breadalbane. Now I am only Magnus, I have nae connection and nae comfort. Plus on the eve of Lammas there are many guests sleeping here. There winna be privacy.”

I put my hands on my hips. “So where do you sleep?” I grabbed the mug, drained at least half, and wiped my mouth with my arm. I was beginning to have a nice buzz.

“In a room with hay spread upon the floor, some bundles pretendin’ tae be mattresses. About ten men. Quentin wasna jokin’ when he said twas a frightful stench.”

“And we can’t go home?”

“I canna. I have tae deal with this first.”

I sighed. Then I smiled and raised my brow mischievously. “Remember on our wedding night, you told me that when you were with women before it was always⁠—”

“Och, ye would?”

I nodded.

He looked left and right up and down the hall and stood and took my hand. “I ken just the place.”

67 - KAITLYN

He led me out of the Great Hall and through the corridors, our footsteps rushing, echoing through the rooms to a circular stair. It was dark, but not pitch black because of the ambient light from a small rectangular window that was not more than a sliver. It had a protruding brick below it, a bit like a windowsill. Magnus stood with one foot on a lower step the other on the higher step and lifted me to the window sill, his arms around, my back to the stone. The smell of baking bread wafted through the tiny window on the wisps of a summer breeze.

My husband’s hands on my bodice, his mouth on my neck, his beard against my face — he smelled like himself, yet everything about him was older, even more a man —

You’re scratchy. I whispered it into the shared air between us.

Aye. I dinna ken ye were comin’.

I chuckled into his ear and his wet lips found mine and we kissed, breaths and heat and words only for each other… I love you. I missed ye. I want you. He grabbed my ass through my skirts and hiked the whole bundle of me to his front. He breathed into my ear and kissed along my neck, nibbling and licking while his hands pulled up handfuls of skirts until my legs were exposed. My bare thighs against the wool of his kilt, scratching and soft and pressing and hard and rough and — his fingers explored between my legs, the sensations overwhelming. Cold brick pressed against the back of my neck, hot breath on the edge of my throat. My middle bound and constricted, hand rubbing up and down, friction and heat, yet bare and open from my hips down, cool in the stairwell drafts, scandalously bare.

He wanted me so much I could feel it in the tremble of his lips.

The sweat on the back of his neck.

With a moan of helplessness he pulled the front of his kilt to his waist and entered me, a sigh on his breath like relief. His forehead against the wall, cheek to cheek I arched toward him, weightless, he pulled and pushed with me. My hands up under his shirt, pressed to the ridges of the scars criss-crossing the landscape of his shoulders. Just underneath his skin, his muscles taut and rippling as he held me up and pressed me close. I rocked against him finding a rhythm and — ohgodogodogod — I drew in. My breath, my strength, I gathered him in. close. more. held. Waves rolled down through me⁠—

I flung my hands out to the stone walls and used them for counterforce — I canna wait — I know — it’s okay — escaped on my breath as he rode me hard and fast and deep and finally he ended with a near total collapse. My body reacted with a shiver. I wrapped around him, holding tight, in case his knees buckled and gravity took him down the stairs.

His voice emerged with the familiar rumble from deep in his chest. “Ye are a’quiver.”

“Yes.”

It was all I could think of to say.