“Alaina, I knew you’d come!” Peter O’Neill called out softly, coming toward her.
“O’Neill!” The quiet of the night was suddenly shattered with the deep thunder of another voice.
Peter went dead still and deathly white.
Alaina froze as well, not certain if she was more stunned by Peter calling out her name or Ian calling out Peter’s.
It didn’t matter. What mattered was the horrible tableau created here. She’d been so desperate to escape his room, Cimarron Hall, him. She was accustomed to wandering where she chose at home; there, it didn’t matter, there was no one near them, and their closest neighbors would never harm her. She’d been quite certain that Ian McKenzie had passed out with his whiskey bottle; she’d seen him with his brothers and cousins at the far edge of the lawn and she had prayed for just such a respite. In a thousand years, it had never occurred to her that Peter O’Neill might be here now.
But he was. And she knew exactly what it looked like. Peter, in this copse. Awaiting her.
She could feel herself shaking inside with a strange depth of fear unlike anything she had ever known before. Ian stared at Peter, and Peter returned that stare. Peter wore a dress sword. He pulled it from its scabbard, causing Alaina’s heart to skip a beat. But then he threw the sword out on the ground. “McKenzie, we’ll not have bloodshed. I’m not armed!” Peter cried out suddenly.
Ian McKenzie deftly unbuckled his scabbard, letting it and his cavalry sword fall to the ground.
“No bloodshed,” Ian agreed, but his tone was deadly; his blue eyes appeared obsidian. But even as he spoke, the trail behind them suddenly came to life with the sounds of branches snapping and footsteps falling.
Julian, Jerome, and Brent burst into the copse, pausing just behind Ian.
“Jesus,” Julian breathed, surveying the scene.
Alaina felt Jerome and Brent staring at her. Neither spoke. She knew what was in their eyes: fury at her betrayal. They were her friends, Sydney’s big brothers, almost her own.
But they were McKenzies. The look in their eyes was merciless. Ian McKenzie had married her. She repaid him thus.
“Well,” Peter said, finding a certain courage. “Will you look at this! The great and powerful McKenzies! The white boys and the breeds, towering talents with guns, fists, and blades, and all lined up before me.” He lifted his arms. “If you think you can just murder me in the woods and get away with it because you are the great McKenzies, you had best reconsider. My uncle is a state senator. You’ll hang, every one of you.”
“No one is going to murder you, O’Neill,” Ian said, his voice deep and quiet. “Not now. But if I ever catch you near my wife again, I will kill you.”
Peter shrugged. Then he started to walk out of the clearing, away from the McKenzies. But he paused by Ian. “McKenzie, you just might find yourself having a rough time keeping your wife away from me,” he taunted, and he made the mistake of giving Ian a fierce shove.
“Please—” Alaina started to say.
Too late.
Ian lunged for Peter. The two went down in a split-second flurry. Ian was on top of Peter. There was no contest. Peter didn’t get in a decent blow. Ian caught Peter’s right jaw. Peter howled.
“Stop it, stop it, please!” Alaina cried out, rushing forward, wondering if she could somehow stop a murder by casting herself between the men. Then again, Ian might just as happily kill her.
She never reached the fighters. Brent caught hold of her, an arm firmly around her waist. “They’ll handle it, Laina,” he told her softly.
As Ian raised a fist to strike again, Julian and Jerome came behind him, his cousin hanging on his arm, his brother on his back. “Ian, he isn’t worth it, he isn’t worth it!” Jerome hissed.
The two were able to drag Ian off his enemy. Julian knelt down by Peter. “He’s out, but he’ll be fine. Luckily, Ian, you didn’t break his jaw.”
Brent released Alaina and stepped forward, stooping down by O’Neill as well. “Let’s get him back to Cimarron,” Julian said. He and Brent took the burden of Peter and started back along the trail to the house. Jerome hesitated briefly, a hand on Ian’s shoulder, his eyes momentarily touching Alaina where she stood by the pool, barefoot and determined not to betray her shivering.
“Cousin?” Jerome murmured.
Ian, tense as a bow string, eyes hard on Alaina, spoke quietly as well. “I’m fine.”
Jerome nodded. “Well, then, good night.” He turned to follow his brother and Julian down the trail. Alaina very nearly shrieked out to him that she wasn’t fine at all, and that he had to come back and protect her. From her husband, his cousin.
She didn’t cry out; she couldn’t get her jaw to work. Ian didn’t move. He just stood there, dark hair fallen over a dark blue eye, features set in so grim a line he might have been composed of stone.
“Well?” he murmured quietly.
“This wasn’t what it appeared—”
“Oh?”
“I had no idea he would be here.”
“You just felt the urge to run out to the pool and strip and swim again?” The sarcasm in his voice was as cutting as a blade.
“No, I just felt the urge to escape your house, you, your room—”
“You dislike my house so much?” he inquired politely, arms crossed over his chest as he began to take steps toward her. “I’d rather thought it a handsome place, and I’m quite fond of my own room.”
She was on the defensive, turning to face him to keep from being cornered as he circled around her. “I detest your house and your room,” she whispered. “I—”
“But you weren’t meeting O’Neill?”
“No.”
“Ah, well, say that you didn’t arrange a meeting with O’Neill. Doesn’t it ever sink into that foolish little head of yours that running about naked can be dangerous?” he demanded furiously.
“I’m not naked—”
“Naked this afternoon; half naked now, Mrs. McKenzie!”
The way he said the words made her cringe inwardly, snapping out his own name with such contempt and anger that she had no choice but to fight back.
“No!” she cried. “No, I am not in danger, from you or anyone. I am not a weak and sniveling little thing ready to become a victim, sir. I can defend myself—”
“You can defend yourself?”
“I am excellent with a sword, sir.”
“Well, I didn’t notice that you brought a sword with you here,” he commented wryly, “but that aside, are you really so excellent that you feel you can defend yourself from all would-be attackers?”
“I took lessons for years. I bested a cavalryman quite easily this afternoon,” she informed him uneasily. He was circling her again. She had to keep turning to keep him from being at her back.
“Fine, then. Have at it with me,” he said. He gaze seemed like onyx. Hard, unyielding. Brutal.
“Have at it?”
“Indeed.”
“You want me to…”
He reached to the ground and drew his sword from his scabbard, tossing it toward her. It spun in the sandy dirt at her feet and she stared down at it before staring back at him.
“Pick it up,” he commanded. “Mine is a good sword. Peter’s is a silly dress sword, but I shall take it as my weapon and give you the advantage.”
“Don’t give me anything,” she warned him, wondering at what idiocy was driving her now. He was absolutely furious, she knew. And yet, he seemed as cold as ice. It made him all the more dangerous, his complete control.
“Pick up the sword; fight me.”
A grim, taunting smile curled into his lip. She felt her breath catch, for his hair fell in dishevelment over his forehead, his gaze was ice-hard, and the taunting curve of his mouth was oddly sensual against the rock hardness of his handsome features.
He had Peter’s sword in hand. He swept it through the air and gave her a mocking bow. “You can defend yourself; so you have said, when I warned you of the dangers of your recklessness. Fight for your honor. Best me, and walk away. Run back to your island with your father. Lose, madam, and your honor is mine.”
“My honor will never be yours!”
“If you can defend yourself as you claim, no man could take it from you, am I right?”
“I can defend myself!”
“Are we agreed on the terms?”
“The terms?”
“My terms.”
“We are not—”
“Yes, we are agreed; it is the very crux of the argument, for if I were any stranger with ill will and the violation of your chastity in mind, I would simply seize what I wanted—were I to win.”
“No one can seize anything from me.”
“So you say. Then fight me.”
“I will win!”
“Pick up the sword, girl. Defend yourself. Show me how infallible you can be, and that I need not worry about your half-clad midnight meanderings to bring shame upon our marriage. The sword! Pick it up!” he roared at her.
Convinced that she’d be skewered on the spot if she did not, Alaina bent down quickly for the sword, leaped back, and prepared to face Ian. “You’re a fool,” she cried out. “I know how to use this and if you—”
His sudden movement sent the steel of his sword clashing against her own. The force behind his blow was staggering, but she kept her grip firmly upon her own weapon. Picking up the skirt of her nightgown in her left hand lest she trip on it, she determined that she must go on the offensive herself, before the force behind his blows weakened her arm. She could move like lightning, and she went after him aggressively with a series of swift blows, nearly dancing across the soft earth of the pool’s embankment with the speed and grace of her movement. He fell back, and she felt a moment’s triumph. Then she realized that he was falling back merely to allow her to expend her energy while he feinted every blow. She had pressed him backward a good twenty feet when his sword suddenly started swinging in a series of arcs that she parried just by the skin of her teeth. She was forced back the twenty feet she had gained. They both paused for breath.
He made a sudden blur beneath the moonlight with his blade—one that she feared for a split second would indeed cost her her life as his steel just missed slicing into her breast.
She wasn’t cut. The delicate lace ties of her gown were neatly severed instead.
She knew better than to grow angry; a cool head was needed here. But she was infuriated. She began to attack him again with a swift series of blows. She was so swept up in her tempest that she made a swinging strike that would have severed his legs at the calves had he not been swift enough to leap from her attack and land on the fallen log just behind him. Not willing to lose the advantage, she attacked instantly, determined to bring him to the ground where she could rest her sword point against his throat and thus end the matter.
The log shattered; he lost his balance, falling flat upon his back. She leaped over the scattered pieces of wood, certain of victory, but just as she came for him, he made a miraculous flying leap back to his feet, striking her sword with a merciless blow that would have broken her arm if her fingers had not instinctively let go of the reverberating hilt.
Her sword flew, arced in the moonlight, came to rest point down in the earth about ten feet away.
She stared into the deep, damning blue of Ian’s eyes. She started to make a mad leap for her sword. His suddenly struck the ground before her, embedding his blade in the earth there in a manner that brought her to a dead halt.
She stood very still as he came around her, drawing his weapon from the ground. He raised the sword to her again, the tip of it resting just below her chin.
“Madam, do you surrender?”
She refused to answer, then inhaled sharply at the sudden flick of his weapon. But his blade didn’t touch her flesh. It lifted the fabric from her right shoulder. She felt the softness of the sheer gown and robe falling from her right side. She willed herself not to move. A second flick of the sword lifted the gown from her left shoulder. With the delicate lace ties slit, the length of the silky gown and robe pooled to her feet, and she stood naked in the moonlight, facing him.
He studied the length of her. Assessing her, his gaze amazingly dispassionate. He leaned upon the hilt of his sword. “Well?”
“Well?” she whispered, the breeze swept around her, seeming to touch her with strange fingers, so cool against the growing heat of her flesh.
“You have been beaten.”
“Never beaten, Ian; you have merely cost me my weapon.”
“You are beaten, and the point here is that you must learn that you can be beaten. If you would duel, you must meet the terms. Ah, the terms. I believe you’re supposed to seduce me.”
The breeze grew very chill; she burned against it. She remembered the feel of his hands, his lips….
“Seduce you! That was not in the terms!”
He grinned at her distress.
She moistened her lips. “I’ll die before I ever make any attempt to seduce you, Ian McKenzie,” she said without heed to her circumstances. She was standing there in front of him naked, and he was most probably still convinced that she had somehow made arrangements to meet Peter even after she and Ian had married. Perhaps she had best control her own temper and appeal to something in him other than the fury she knew she all too easily aroused. She curbed her tone to be very quiet and softly condemning: “You’re not behaving in the least like a gentleman.”
“Really, my dear wife?” His dark brows shot up. “Well, bear this in mind; Had you been acting like a lady at any time in all this, we’d not be standing here now. Hmmm, let me think a moment… No. No, it’s true; I’ve yet to see you behave like a lady.”
“You should be horsewhipped, McKenzie,” she snapped. She wanted to lash out at him so badly. She felt so absurdly on display, feeling the breeze all about her naked flesh, trying not to move or tremble, to waylay the heat that burned so fiercely in her. She would not feel intimidated, yet she was shaking…
Awaiting…
His touch.
“I should be horsewhipped? For… ?” he inquired politely.
“For criminal nastiness! Now, it’s really very late. We need to return to the house,” she told him briskly. She started to reach down for her gown and robe. The point of his sword fell into the fabric, pinning it to the ground. She looked slowly up into the hard blue darkness of his eyes.
“I think not,” he said. “You like to be naked by water, and you detest my house and room. So we shall stay right here.”
She couldn’t talk, couldn’t move, and was suddenly both very afraid of what he intended, yet trembling with the fire and anticipation of it. She couldn’t bear it. She decided to abandon her gown and simply run, yet the second she leaped to her feet, he caught her arm, and she was spun around and swept cleanly from her feet. She landed flat upon her back on the cool earth, breathless, staring into his eyes.
His thumb moved in soft line across her cheek. “I won; you lost.”
“When you fight to defend your honor, sir, you do so until the last.”
“But you have surrendered.”
“I have not; you have merely seized my weapon.”
“Sometimes it is wisest to accept defeat.”
“I refuse to be defeated.”
“Well, then, think of it this way: Those taken in battle must accept the victor’s conditions.”
She started to argue further; no words escaped her lips, for his mouth formed over hers with a stark demand that both angered and aroused. The pressure of his body bore her down; she was keenly aware of the rough wool of his uniform against her flesh and the soft sweet musky scent of the water’s embankment beneath her. More than anything, she felt the hot fire of his mouth, the savage demand of his tongue, invading and caressing, brutal, sensual, violating, coaxing, stroking again….
Then his hand curved around her breast, thumb against her nipple until she would have screamed with the sensation had she been able. She writhed with the encroaching whiplash of fire that seemed to dart through her, burning from those points where he touched her. His mouth flooded her body with warmth; his touch upon the naked flesh of her breast seared through her center and spiraled somewhere deep within her.
She gasped for breath, digging her fingers into his hair as his mouth left hers to suckle her nipple where his thumb had teased. She tried to form words to protest, but her mind failed to oblige her and she continued to do nothing more than gasp and twist and writhe, tearing at his thick black hair, dismayed to realize even that touch seemed oddly sensual to her fingertips. His hand slid slowly along her side, curving around a hip. Slid between the two of them, and then between her legs. The pressure of his thumb slid intimately down through the triangle of blond hair, parting her, stroking the most sensitive and intimate of female places.
She tensed like a jackknife, a scream forming in her throat. His mouth covered hers again with a frightening ardor and passion. She realized she’d not begun to estimate his strength until that moment when she lay pinned beneath him, realized his every movement was not guided by passion alone.
She pressed her palms against the hardness of his chest, but the force of his weight was such he didn’t begin to feel her protest. Nor could she cry out, for his kiss consumed her words. She twisted and writhed anew, on fire, seared by sensation, yet wild to escape the threatening pressure of his body. Her knees were thrust apart by a sudden supple movement of his body and the insistence of his weight. His chest and legs remained clad in wool; his hips were naked. She felt his hand and sex rubbing against her. A massive shudder swept through her. He burst into her with a single hard smooth thrust so knifing it instantly broke all barriers. She never screamed, for she could not. Involuntary tears of pain instantly pooled in her eyes. She clenched them tightly together, turning her head to her side as his lips broke from hers at last. She felt him looking down at her, just as she felt the fierce burning at the juncture of her legs. She wished fervently that she had the power to buck him off. She wished a giant bird would swoop down out of the sky and tear him from atop her—and perhaps tear him into little pieces in the bargain. She waited for him to apologize.
He did not. He held still, watching her.
He began to withdraw.
Only to plunge into her again. She bit fiercely into her lower lip, then felt his hands on her face, drawing it forward. She opened her eyes and met his. Even as she managed at long last to croak out “No!” she felt herself somehow stilled by the cobalt fire in his gaze and rigid tension in his face. She tried to part her lips to speak again. But again his mouth formed over hers. Demanding still…
Coaxing. Bringing liquid warmth.
Slowly, the warmth of his mouth seemed to ignite the burning between her thighs. The heat remained; the agony began to still. She found herself enfolded in his arms, his hands sliding down the length of her back, forming over her buttocks, drawing her more flush against the increasing furious pulse of his thrusts within her. Her fingers curled into his shoulders, nails digging. Pain faded to a dull throb. The burning was part agony, part pleasure. She prayed for it to end, yet something else had begun within her. Something she needed, something that was a different kind of ache. She hated his touch, his stroke, and yet…
She yearned for it. She had wanted to escape it. Now she twisted and arched to feel it, to feel the growing sweetness pervading her.
A rigor seemed to seize him; then a violent thrust brought him so deeply within her that she shuddered with the force of it. Then once again… and the mercury of his climax filled her anew with a sense of liquid, burning fire. And almost as instantly, he eased his weight from her, adjusted his Union-issue trousers, and lay staring up at the sky.
Naturally, as a maturing young woman, she’d had her fantasies regarding men and women and love. And admittedly, they’d had to do with Peter O’Neill. But they’d never gone much further than pretty pictures of Peter on his knees, asking for her hand, rising to capture her lips in a blissful kiss while the sun shone down and the birds chirped melodiously.
Never had this particular picture—herself lying naked in the woods, hair entangled with grass and leaves— entered into the realm of imagination.
Yet she lay perfectly still for an instant, sorely pained, humiliated, and suddenly, with his body warmth gone, quite cold.
Then Ian’s deep voice broke the stillness that had settled over the night as he mused contemplatively, “So you hadn’t slept with him … as yet.”
She rolled over and socked him hard in the stomach. She had to get away from him. He hadn’t had a chance to tense his muscles. He cursed, leaping to his feet, but a second too late, as she sped past him to dive into the pool, desperate to ease the pain in her body and soul.
By the night, the fresh spring water was wickedly cold. She surfaced with her teeth chattering, half afraid that he had dived after her. He hadn’t. He stood by the pool’s edge, watching her, her gown and robe in his hands.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded crossly.
“Swimming… bathing!”
“Get out.”
“Go away.”
“Get out! It’s very late now. And if you think I’m leaving you here, Alaina, you’re insane. Get out here.”
“Not yet. I—”
“All the water in the world will not wash today away. Get out here.”
She was freezing, so she determined to comply. Shivering, she emerged a distance from him, only to realize that he had her clothing. She twisted the length of her hair, wringing the water from it as he came impatiently to her.
“I don’t want your help.”
“Madam, it’s undressing with which you don’t seem to need assistance.”
“McKenzie, I will find a way to best you! I’m telling you, I don’t want help.”
“But you need it.”
She could either accept his assistance or lose her clothing, so it seemed. He helped her. The ties on her sheer ivory robe were slit; naturally the robe fell open. She grasped it together, spinning away from him, trying again to escape him. But again he stopped her with a firm grip upon her arm.
“Alaina, where do you think you’re going?”
She stood stubbornly still, staring at him, then allowed her lashes to fall.
“Back to that hated house and my hated room?” he queried softly. He caught hold of her chin and raised it so that their eyes met. His voice grew more harsh. “Alaina, what did you think? We were married today. It wasn’t what you wanted; it wasn’t what I wanted. It was what was necessary. But it’s done now, and if you didn’t realize it yourself, I gave you fair warning that I wasn’t the type of man to courteously refrain from sleeping with the woman I had married.”
“Oh, indeed, you did do me the great favor of marrying me!” she cried. “Other respectable men wouldn’t have married the botanist’s wild daughter, but you’re the great Ian McKenzie, and you do know your duty!”
“I did what was necessary,” he said, eyes narrowing. “But have it as you will; this marriage was forced upon us both. I’ll be damned if I’ll be denied what small pleasures might be wrested from it.”
“Small pleasures… Oh!” She wanted to strike him again; but he was far too prepared for a wild attack by her right now. She spun around, wanting to run back to the house ahead of him just to have a few minutes’ respite. His hand was on her.
His damned hand. Swinging her back around with a sudden, savage force. “Ian—”
“We go back together, Mrs. McKenzie.”
“No, Ian, I just—”
Despite her protest, he swung her up in his arms and started through the moonlit forest trail. “We go back together, just like any married couple.”
She looked up into the set, grim lines of his face. “We are just like any normal couple,” she seethed. “The husband drinks a bottle of whiskey with his good friends, then ravishes his wife. Isn’t that customary?”
She was startled to see a wry smile slip into his features.
“How nice. I hadn’t begun to imagine anything so charmingly usual and domestic when we stood at Reverend Dowd’s this afternoon.”
She let out a soft oath of impatience. His arms tightened around her, and she realized that he had come to a halt at the edge of the lawn, looking back on the house.
“So you hate Cimarron,” he breathed. “What a pity, my love, that you must hate your home.”
If she weren’t quite so bogged down in her own bruised torment, she would have told him that she had lied before to hurt him, that she loved Cimarron. The house was beautiful, the epitome of grace.
But she was hurt.
“It’s your home, not mine.”
“Oh?” he queried.
“My home is on the bay.”
“Your home is now where I choose it to be,” he told her curtly, walking again. He paused once more, and she realized they were just below the balcony area that led to his room.
“Perhaps, in the future, it will have to be somewhere without rose trellises,” he muttered, and started walking again.
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
“Through the front door. It is my home,” he told her.
“But what if—”
“If someone sees us? Why, we’re behaving like your customary young newlyweds. I doused myself in whiskey with my friends and ravished you by the pool. And now…” he paused with a shrug.
“Now what?” she asked worriedly.
“I imagine that in my attempts to be a good husband, I’ll have to drink more whiskey, alone, I’m afraid—my very good friends all seem to have gone to bed for the night at last. So let me see … I douse myself in whiskey, and then…” His cobalt eyes had a hard, devilish glitter to them as he gazed down at her. “And then ravish my poor, downtrodden bride—inside the house this time. Whether you despise Cimarron and my room within it or not, Mrs. McKenzie, it seems that my bed is destined to become a place you’ll have to learn to love.”
“Ian, please…”
“What?”
His gaze, sharp as an icicle, fell upon her. She tried to speak. “I need to be alone. I… you…” she stuttered.
An odd sensation of warmth swept through her; she couldn’t go on. He entered the house through the front door, but they met no one in the breezeway, nor as he carried her up the stairs to the second story. Moonlight spilled through the open French doors. Embers still crackled in the hearth against the spring night’s chill. The room was illuminated in a mix of the ivory moonlight and the red touch of the fire. It was a very handsome room. But a masculine room. His room.
Dear God, but she wanted to run. To understand what had happened without feeling his arms imprisoning her. Without the sound of his voice invading her. Without his touch….
“McKenzie, put me down. Now.”
She spoke desperately, but it sounded more like she was screaming as he obligingly dropped her. She’d been dropped down to the comfort of his bed.
She could see his features clearly; despite the dim light, shadows touched his face. She knew that he stared down at her, that he stood with an angry tension—created, perhaps, by the sound of her voice—knotting his fingers into his palms so that his hands were fists at his sides, and despite herself, she gasped softly, cringing from him.
She swallowed hard, trying to remain perfectly still, thinking that he would reach down with force and wrench her close again.
But he didn’t.
He just stared a moment longer. And she was disturbed by something that sounded like a contemptuous sniff.
Then, to her amazement, he turned and walked away. His door opened.
And closed.
And he was gone.