Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh Read online

  He’d taken a few steps when her lilting voice called after him. “And just who do you think will feed you, my laird?”

  “My cook, I presume.”

  At Kristiana’s huff, he turned back. She stood with her hand to her brow, her gaze locked in the direction whence he had come. “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for your cook.”

  He almost laughed, but refused to give in lest she think her wry humor affected him. “My cook is your cook,” he said sternly.

  She looked to him, her eyes as cool and clear as liquid sapphires. “’Tis hungry you shall be then. My cook is absent. I sent her and the caretaker to Inverness for supplies.”

  “Surely you have more than one.”

  She gave her head a firm shake, and the strands of burnished red that had come free from her braid when they’d embraced, lifted on the wind to frame her face. The effect softened her features, making her appear far more delicate than what he’d first believed. Not just her eyes, nor her cheekbones, but her ruby-red lips. Delicate and soft and luscious. And, of course, that’s exactly what they were.

  “Nay, ‘tis just myself, Fiona and her husband. The rest of the staff left months ago.”

  Tavish swept his gaze from her mouth in an attempt to forget how sinfully sweet she tasted. Not that his whole mind dwelt there. That portion of his brain propelled by his still swollen cock was on another part of her altogether. That part he held no doubt the hoyden would happily yield to him—be he stranger or the ghost of her husband—the dewy soft crux of her thighs that housed her heated cunt.

  “And what about the girl,” he bit out, his voice edged with an unbidden rasp. “The one who was with you when I arrived?”

  If Kristiana noted the change in his tone, she gave no indication. Worrying her lower lip between her teeth, she glanced to her right, to the glen that harbored Landon. He nearly groaned his thanks aloud when she released her lip. “Aye, she works here, but lives in the village.”

  He gave a curt nod and turned back to his mount, needing to be free of the vixen and the charm she worked on him with so little effort. He called over his shoulder as he started for the stable, “Then there will be plenty of room when my staff arrives.”

  “Your staff?”

  The chill in her words caused him to look back. Her eyes wide and her brow marred with faint lines, she appeared distressed. He’d never expected her to reveal such an emotion to him. In truth, he never expected her to reveal any honest emotion at all. Perhaps she thought he planned to evict her cook and caretaker, as she’d first feared for herself. “Ours, if you prefer,” he said lightly. “There will be a cook amongst them, to see we don’t starve when your Fiona is absent.”

  Her concern ebbed in a flash, to be replaced with unmistakable ire. She thrust her slender hand to her hip. “I’ll have you know, sir, I’ve not led your pampered life. I can cook well, and have even seen to the serving those times when Castle Wynderon was weighted to the gills with hungry guests.”

  Though Tavish had no mind to turn her into a servant, it appeared that’s exactly what she wished for. Far better it be one who saw to his hunger than his libido. “Then you’ll have no problem having a meal on the table after I’ve finished washing.”

  The fire in her eyes burned ever higher, and the hand on her hip fisted, making him wonder if he’d been mistaken in her wants. Unsure what to say to please her, and even more unsure why he thought to do so in the first place, he nodded toward the greenery that donned the castle wall and said the first thing that came to him. “The decorations are lovely. As you know, we Englishman love our holidays.”

  * * * * *

  Every word Tomas had spoken about his brother was true. The man had no regard for right or wrong, he simply doled out orders and expected them to be followed. It was a shame Kristiana’s manners dictated she feed the man, as she would’ve loved to march past him and up to her chambers for the remainder of the day, if not the rest of the year.

  Instead, she stood in the kitchen pounding dough for biscuits, taking her pleasure in imagining it was the laird’s too handsome face. He thought her a slut, a harlot no less! She—one of the few remaining virgins on MacBain land—the maiden who, until today, had never even known passion outside of whispered stories and those few trysts she’d chanced upon by accident. Who wished she’d still never experienced it, for passion at the hands of the devil wasn’t worth all the gold in the world.

  Neither was his appreciation for her holiday adornment. She’d been sorely tempted to rip the gay juniper and mistletoe down. The idea he’d know she’d done it because his gratitude bothered her stopped her from doing just that.

  Besides, there was more to consider than her feelings. There was an entire parish in desperate need of cheer. Tomorrow, they’d need that merriment all the more. When the villagers of Landon learned whom they were now forced to call master, those few who’d held out hope for salvation would surely fall to the wayside.

  To think she’d believed her patience would pay off, that a savior would swoop down and turn their lives around. The man who’d come instead couldn’t be any farther from a savior if he’d tried. He was a devil, a libertine.

  A scoundrel who made her breasts tingle and nipples bead just thinking about him.

  Damnation! She would not feel this way, this raw aching hunger to finish what they’d begun in the courtyard. She had lived three and twenty years without feeling a man’s caress, she could go awhile longer. Or forever, if God so bid it.

  Kristiana returned to her pounding, determined to stay within the walls of the place she’d called home for the last year and a half, and equally intent to veer far away from the man who would now live here with her.

  * * * * *

  Tavish woke to a scream. It took only a moment to realize it was his own. The bed’s rich blue coverlet was tossed to the floor and the bedclothes that should have covered him twined dangerously around his naked limbs and neck.

  Grimacing, he untangled himself.

  He’d like to blame the hellish nightmare on Kristiana’s cooking—it was easy to believe the chit had laced the biscuits and stew she’d fed him for dinner with poison. But he knew better. This dream had been haunting him for over eight months and it wouldn’t stop any time soon. Perhaps not ever.

  Swinging to the edge of the large four-poster, he reached for the spread and wrapped it around his shoulders. He wouldn’t fall back asleep tonight. He’d made that mistake once before, only to return to a hell far worse than the one he’d awoken from.

  Lighting the candelabra he’d doused a few short hours earlier, he slipped through the bedchamber’s door. He had no worry of meeting someone in the dank hallways. The cook and caretaker had not returned, and if Kristiana were like the ladies he’d known in England, she slept like the dead and well into the morning.

  Tavish hadn’t traversed the castle halls at night since before he was sent to England as a boy of seven, and still he remembered their seemingly endless maze of corridors and hidden passageways. Within minutes, he’d reached his once favorite part of the castle, the open parapet that overlooked the cliffs. Moonlight peeked through a cloud-filled night to shine upon the waves as they crashed against the rugged coastline.

  From his vantage at the battlement’s stone edge, he embraced the restless beauty of the surf, the burning the frigid air brought to his lungs, the briny tang of the sea.

  Here he felt alive. Free in a way he hadn’t experienced in too long.

  In England, the home of his mother—a lady by name if not actions—he might have been given a title, might even have come to be respected in society, but as a whole that didn’t mean a damned thing. He’d had to swear allegiance to a king he didn’t trust and, far worse, fight a country he loved, not once but numerous times.

  It was only this latest battle that scarred him, propelled him into asking the Crown for the land he should have come by naturally upon his brother’s death. This last battle that haunted his nights
as surely as it did his—

  “If you plan to jump, I suggest you do so before the tide completely washes in. ‘Twould be a pity if after making such a foolish leap, you only injured yourself.”

  Tavish swiveled at the lilting, feminine burr. Clothed in a scanty linen nightdress, her long hair streaming around her slender shoulders, Kristiana looked nearly an apparition. A ghostly beauty sent down from above to torment him with her alluring form and even more tempting mouth. “You’re awake, my lady.”

  Her gaze traveled the length of him, quickly snapping back to his face. Though it seemed implausible on someone so brazen, he swore a blush colored her fair skin. “Aye, and I’m dressed, which is more than I can say for you.”

  The scorn in her words brought a grin to his face. The urge to taunt her as she took such pleasure in doing to him was too great to let pass. He took a step toward her. “I was waiting for a maiden to debauch with my kisses, but it appears I’ve been stood up.”

  Her gaze narrowed. “Why do I find that so easy to believe?”

  He took a second step, aware he was enticing a woman he knew better than to bait. Yet, whether it be lack of sleep softening his brain or utter lunacy, he could not turn away. “Perhaps I’ll have to take advantage of the lady in my presence.”

  With a loud gasp, Kristiana stepped back, effectively pinning herself against the wall. “You wouldn’t dare. Besides, as we both well know, I’m not a maiden.”

  She was right, normally Tavish wouldn’t dare. Tonight—and with this harlot parading as a lady—he certainly wouldn’t think to respond to the lust churning his blood, nor that pulsing through his suddenly erect cock, drawing his balls ever tighter. He wouldn’t have if at that moment the moon hadn’t escaped the clouds to reveal a secret yearning burning in her eyes.

  A yearning that made him forget his judgment to concentrate entirely on the wicked desires licking through him, the ones that told him to take what she offered and fuck her until she believed she had earned her keep. “Oh, but we both know what a scoundrel I am, my lady. And honestly, I’ve never been one to quibble over virtue.”

  He advanced on her in a blink. The coverlet fell to the floor as his arms encircled her back and his lips crashed down upon hers. For an instant, her mouth was still and then it moved, her tongue darting out to lick fiercely at his. He suckled at her sweet flavor, all but drowning in the depths of her unbridled want. He bent slightly and pulled her closer to grind his engorged penis against the valley of her sex.

  She whimpered into his mouth, her hips arching automatically, stroking his hard, hot cock with her thinly veiled pussy. Tavish felt her wetness cloaking the head of his shaft through her gown, and any trace of rationale he still possessed vanished. Thrusting his tongue against hers, he reached for the hem of her nightdress.

  Just when his fingers would have made contact with the flimsy material, Kristiana pulled free of his mouth. She stared at him, looking every bit the part of Aphrodite with her fiery hair a wild halo and passion suffusing her fine features.

  “Gaven,” she squeaked out, her breathing coming as uneven pants.

  He grinned at her breathlessness and brought his hand from her back to stroke a thumb over her swollen lower lip. “Gaven is my English name, my lady. I find I much prefer Scottish on your pretty lips.”

  She shook her head, her throat eliciting a high clicking sound. A noise that almost made him believe she was frightened. Only, he knew better. This chit was far from a blushing maiden. She knew the pleasures of the flesh and had come to live in this castle by way of her parted thighs. Thought to remain in this castle via the same means. She was no lady. At least, not beyond what her title afforded.

  “Please don’t…” she murmured.

  He parted the softness of her lips with his thumb, and her tongue instantly glided over the tip. He growled his appreciation, able to well imagine how her mouth would feel wrapped around his cock, the roughness of her tongue as she licked at the fluid that beaded on the head of his shaft then swallowed his hot come. His penis undulated with the erotic visions that coasted through his mind and, as though she felt the movement against her cunt, she stiffened and drew in a heavy breath.

  Slipping his thumb free of her mouth to stroke along her cheek, he rasped, “Don’t what, Kristiana? Don’t stop? If that’s what you fear, I’ve no intention.”

  “Please…do…stop…”

  Tavish ceased his strokes, taken aback at the genuine fear that seemed to echo in her request. “You wish for me to stop?”

  Her gaze registered on his. There was uncertainty there, but not fear. Passion, yes. Need, certainly. Desire, more than he could ever remember seeing in a woman’s eyes. In the murky depths of her gaze was the truth. She didn’t wish him to stop, not even if her next word was a huskily whispered, “Yes.”

  He resumed his caress, ran his thumb to her jaw, along the sensitive flesh of her neck to feel her thrumming pulse then lower to her collarbone. She trembled, a low cry of ecstasy tripping from her lips as he slid her nightdress off one creamy shoulder.

  He chuckled in response. Her whispered ‘yes’ was quite clearly the lie he’d deemed it. “You’re not a very good liar, my lady. Shall we see what you are good at?”

  * * * * *

  God’s teeth, what was the matter with her? This was her brother by wedlock. Nay, not her brother, given her marriage to Tomas had never been consummated. Still, he was a stranger. One who’d not only invaded her late night perch, but who was a bloody Englishman! Quite possibly the very man to have slain her husband. Worse, her father or brother.

  “Oh…Tavish…”

  Oh no! Who was making these words come out of her mouth?

  Of course, it was him, her rogue companion. As he’d done earlier this day, he’d drugged her with the potency of his kiss, with the cleverness of his hands. And she knew well his next move. Without a single ounce of shame, he would steal her virginity, make her another of a countless number of maidens he'd defiled.

  That couldn’t happen. She wouldn’t allow it. No matter how wickedly delicious the scrape of his beard and the wet heat of his mouth felt nipping at her collarbone, his rough tongue laving over her flesh as he exposed her shoulder to the brisk night air, this had to end now!

  “Oh, sweet Lord!” The words ripped from her mouth as Tavish tore open the satin ribbons at the throat of her nightdress with a single yank.

  Excitement welled deep within her at his savage move. A flame of raw desire spurred low in her belly and her thighs shuddered with anticipation as his rigid shaft once more ran the length of her cleft. She wished she’d have thought to wear undergarments to bed. If she had, her juices wouldn’t be seeping down her legs, thickening the night air with the tang of her arousal. More, they wouldn’t be soaking through her gown to moisten his thrusting staff.

  Even as she thought it, he dropped to his knees, removing his hard sex from her touch. The whimper escaped her mouth before she could stop it. With a hearty chuckle, he dragged her gown over her other shoulder and drew the material down until her breasts were exposed to the cool night air. Her nipples turned to hard, swollen peaks that he quickly placed his thumbs over and stroked. Her breasts grew heavy and the fire building between her thighs escalated to an almost unbearable ache.

  The devil before her tipped his head back and flashed a crooked grin, his dark eyes alive with lust. “You’ve a beautiful body, Kristiana. It makes my cock so very hard.”

  She thought to tell him she cared naught for his pretty words, even less for his indelicacy, but he dipped his tongue into the hollow between her breasts, and all her words died away. Grasping her buttocks in his large, callused hands, he drew her firmly to him, so that his immense erection pressed against her inner thigh. She couldn’t stop her throaty cry of pleasure any more than she could stop her mind from drifting to that moment when he would pierce her with his bulging manhood.

  She wanted that moment. She had wanted it earlier this day and she wanted it again now�
��even if it was wrong.

  Tavish’s mouth settled over her breast, clamping on an erect nipple, and the desire flooding her nether lips increased tenfold. Burying her fingers in his long, thick hair, she arched against his masterful mouth and moaned her desire as he twisted her nipple in his teeth. His hands moved from her bottom for the briefest of moments and then they were back, beneath the skirt of her nightdress this time, skin on sweat-slicked skin.

  His long, strong fingers petted her backside again and again, stroking up and down the seam of her bottom. They were so very close to her quivering center, he could thrust into her at any moment. Steal her maidenhead, rob her of her virtue, of her innocence. A damned Englishman no less. The very man she had sworn to protect her people from.

  Jesu! She could not do this, she owed it to her clansmen to stop.

  Passion turned to self-derision in a blind second, and Kristiana wrenched her hands from his hair to press at his heavily muscled chest. When he remained undeterred, his furious sucks and licks continuing, she plied her nails into his flesh.

  With a grunt, he pulled free and stared at her. “You wish to play rough?”

  “I wish not to play. We must stop this now. ‘Tis madness!”

  A lazy grin spread over Tavish’s face, and the fingers that had been fondling her backside dipped low to tease the damp curls of her mound. “That it might be, my lady. But you’re such a tasty little strumpet I can’t seem to help myself.”

  His big fingers pushed past the soft down to stroke along the edge of her sex. She pinched her nails deeper into his chest, mewling her bliss over the tender assault. His throaty laughter reached her the same time as his words.