Page 21 of Claimed By the Enemy Laird

“Then get off me,” she breathed. Her fists had closed in his shirt, and they did not push.

Neither of them moved.

He could feel her heart racing against his chest and the warmth of her through the thin silk, and he wanted her so badly that his arms went taut as bowstrings. She felt it. He saw her feel it. Her lips parted, and her eyes dropped to his mouth, and then flew back up to his face full of shock and fury at herself.

He pushed himself up off her. It was harder than holding Angus against the wall had been.

She scrambled off the bed, breathing as hard as he was.

“Ye’ll no’ touch me,” she said.

“I’ll no’ touch ye against yer will. Ye have my word on that.” He held her eyes. “So the first touch will be yours, lass. Let’s see how many nights ye last before ye cross this floor to me.”

“Ye think a great deal of yerself, MacVey.”

“I think a great deal about that chapel,” he said.

It was true, and it galled him. He had meant that kiss as a mark for his people to see. Then she had dug her nails into his wrist and opened her mouth under his, and he had forgotten there was anybody else in the chapel at all. He had sat through the whole feast with the taste of her still on his lips.

She had no answer. He turned away before he broke his word in the first hour of giving it. He pulled the grey wool blanket off the bed, carried it to the big chair by the hearth, and dropped into it.

Iona stared at him. “Ye’ll sleep there?”

“I’ll sleep where ye leave me room,” Alasdair said.

The fire had burned low while they were at the feast. She looked at it, and he saw her frown, the same frown she had turned on the ink spreading across his study floor. Then she crossed the room and knelt down on the stone in front of it.

She raked the embers into a heap at the back of the grate, set fresh peats on end around them, and covered it all with grey ash so it would smoulder slow. Her hands knew every move.

“I did this every night at Dunmore,” she said. “It’ll last till morning. And it’ll keep yer chair warm.”

When she leaned in to settle the last one, the silk pulled tight across her back and showed him the whole long line of her, from her shoulders to her hips. His mouth went dry. His hands closed on the arms of the chair until the wood creaked.

“So ye’ll keep my chair warm,” he said, “and no’ me.”

Iona sat back on her heels and looked at him over her shoulder.

“The chair,” she said, “doesnae talk.”

She got up and brushed the ash from her hands. She went to the far side of the bed and drew the curtain halfway along it, and he heard the laces of the wedding gown being pulled loose, one slow hiss of cord after another. Then the bed creaked under her, and the curtain stopped moving.

Alasdair sat in the warm chair she had made for him and listened to her breathing, quick at first, and then slower. He thought of the silk lying where she had dropped it, and of her in nothing but her shift, with that red hair loose across his pillow. He thought of his mouth at her throat, and of going lower, slowly, until she stopped calling him MacVey and said his name. His whole body ached with it.

She had sworn she would never share his bed. She was lying in it now, behind a half-drawn curtain, a few steps from his hand.

He wondered how long either of them could keep it up.

6

Iona woke burning with shame, and for one blessed moment she could not remember why.

Then she remembered, and lay rigid behind the half-drawn curtain with her eyes shut and her fists closed in the sheet.

She had slept in his bed. She had lain on the far edge of it in her shift with her back to the room, listening to him breathe in the chair by the hearth. She had thought of his mouth on hers in the chapel, and of his hand at the back of her neck, and she had hated herself for every moment of it. And yet she had more indecent thoughts about him. His weight pinning her down into this very bed. His arms rigid with how badly he wanted her. His hands, if he had not taken them away, finding the laces of her gown one by one. Somewhere in the dark she had stopped listening.

Now there was grey light on the curtain, and no sound in the room at all.

She sat up and dragged the curtain back.