Chapter Sixteen

“We dare not have a fire,” Diarmad told the lass beside him. They sat together in the dell he had found half way down the glen—a place just large enough to conceal them and both horses. He only hoped he’d left no trail behind.

It did not matter which of the men—Archibald or MacNeal—won the combat back there. The other would come after them, and the result would be the same. Diarmad had very little with which to defend Mara MacIvor, naught but a single sword and every last drop of his blood. That might not be enough if their pursuers came in a swarm.

“Do you think they will be able to follow us?” Mara asked.

He had done his best to assure not. But MacNeal and his lot were able trackers who had trailed them before without Mara knowing; the bandits as a whole would be skilled in that regard. And he, Diarmad, had several times been forced to choose speed over caution.

“Quite probably,” he admitted, hating to add to her dread. He could feel her weariness and despair as if they were his own. The lass had been shattered by her ordeal, the last of her considerable strength nearly gone.

They—and the horses—desperately needed a night of rest before running again.

He turned to Mara and laid his hand on her knee. She sat so close beside him her shoulder butted against his. “You are certain they did no’ harm you?”

She shook her head. Her wild hair made a nimbus around her face. “You say MacNeal’s greed turned him?”

“He wanted for himself the kingdom I offered Archibald.” He could deliver that kingdom to neither, which meant he must stay one jump ahead.

He pondered and tried to determine their location; at the moment he barely knew north from south. But he would have to set a course when morning came.

Meanwhile…meanwhile the night closed around them, the two horses dozed, and the way Mara MacIvor looked at him took his breath away.

“We will no’ need a fire,” she said, “if you keep me warm.”

She moved still closer. Diarmad gathered her up and drew her across his knees, precisely where he wanted her.

“Mara,” he said.

Their lips met without further persuasion, followed by their tongues. Raw need leaped within him, brighter than ordinary desire. He felt at once empowered and humble, as if he owned her and at the same time knelt at her feet. He wanted her beyond expressing, required her still more.

She moaned, and the sound further ensnared him. Time ceased to exist as they explored one another’s mouths, the heat rising until Diarmad’s heart pounded up in his ears, even as he grew hard below.

When at last she drew her mouth from his, he felt it like a physical loss, until she whispered, “We made one another a promise, as I recall, back in yon cave.”

He gazed into her eyes, questioning. “Do you say, Mara MacIvor, you are willing to give yoursel’ to me this night?”

“More than willing.” She leaned forward and ran her tongue along his bottom lip before moving her warm, open mouth further down to his throat. Deliberately and shamelessly, she tasted him, ran her tongue still farther down and down until it encountered the hair on his chest.

“I ha’ but one complaint, Diarmad Ramsay.”

“What is that?” And how could he answer it? He felt as if his wits might fly clean away, leaving him in a welter of searing desire.

“You are wearing far too many garments.” She followed each word with a little flick of her tongue. Diarmad had a sudden blinding vision of her hot mouth closing on him down below—or perhaps, as he prayed, it was a presentiment.

“Aye, well,” he managed to croak, “you keep insisting I wear the cursed things.”

“But I thought you detested them.”

“So I do.”

“Then by all that is holy, why have you no’ shed them? I tell you, I caught a glimpse of you bare once, and I ha’ never stopped wishing for it again.”

“Is that so?”

“It is.”

“And you, beautiful lass?” He brought his hand to her bodice and pressed the palm to her breast. The soft mound, delectable even through the fabric that covered it, felt lush and warm.

“Do as you will,” she told him, “for on this night I am yours.”

The breath hitched in Diarmad’s chest, but he did not let that stay him. They might have but this one night before they faced capture and ultimate execution.

He must make it last, despite his damned impatience.

He unlaced her bodice slowly, with fingers that trembled, and the fabric parted to reveal two heavenly swells, white in the near darkness. His turn, now, to bend forward and run his tongue across her flesh. Aye, he had wanted this nearly every time she moved or he looked at her, but the taste of her outmatched all his imagining.

She lay back across his knees supported by his arm, his free hand still at her breast. Her wild hair spilled around her shoulders, and the cool air pricked her nipples into tantalizing peaks. Her eyes met his, full of emotions he scarcely dared identify. Lust? Surely. Love?

That possibility shook him to his heart, but he could not let it stay him now, not with plundering her on his mind. He bent to her again, and the last of his restraint flew away.

****

From the first moment she beheld him behind her family’s burnt shieling, Mara had desired Diarmad Ramsay. All the while they journeyed together, even when they squabbled and disagreed, that desire had continued to ride her hard.

Not nearly so hard as she wished for Diarmad Ramsay’s beautiful body to ride hers, now.

He had stripped the clothing from her slowly in the near dark, his mouth claiming each bit of skin he uncovered in turn. All the while he remained clothed, save for his open shirt where Mara planted her hands with unconscious claiming. The slow progression heightened her desire unbearably, lit her from within, and made her feel both powerful and vulnerable. She did not like relinquishing control, and the sensation confounded her, but cursed if she would leave go of him.

By the time he stripped off the last of her garments, she had been reduced to a state of quivering shamelessness. With her breasts still wet from his tongue, she parted her thighs and began to pray.

The sensation of his fingers sliding into her brought her to fever pitch. He fixed his bright gaze on hers as he entered her again and again, and she felt him like a rod of iron beneath her buttocks.

Why did he wait? She wanted that rod to replace those fingers. Now.

“Please,” she whimpered.

“For what do you ask, Mara MacIvor?” His voice crooned at her out of the night.

“You.”

He withdrew his fingers from her ready body, but only to pluck at one breast. She nearly reared up off his knees.

“Are you certain?”

Sweet heaven, if she were any more certain she would wrap her naked legs around his neck and get that clever mouth of his where she wanted it.

As if he heard her thoughts, he slid out from beneath her at last, but not to disrobe. Instead he gently parted her thighs further, bent his head, and answered her prayers.

And oh, by all that was holy—or unholy—she had never conceived of such pleasure. His lips wooed her in the most intimate of kisses before he entered her with his tongue, and she ignited with bliss.

Och, and even her most daring dreams had not conceived of this. It certainly had not been this way with—ah, but she could no longer recall the lad’s name, filled as she was with Diarmad, only Diarmad. Diarmad who now owned her body, and to whom she would willingly offer not only her flesh but her very life.

While still her mind quivered with pleasure, he withdrew and made his way up her body, dropping kisses as he came. When he reached her mouth, she seized him in a firm grip.

“Get those clothes off,” she growled, “and fulfill your promise.”

He laughed, which did powerful things to Mara’s pulse. “I needed to taste you first. I ha’ been imagining how you would taste, far too long.”

“I hope I do no’ disappoint.”

“What do you think?” He kissed her deeply, open mouth to open mouth, and she tasted what he had tasted, tangy and potent. She knew no shame then, and no doubt. She tore at his clothes, her mouth still fastened to his.

He laughed again, breaking the kiss, and reared above her. Gaze holding hers, he shed his doublet and his sark, revealing magnificent shoulders. When his hands moved to his kilt, Mara stopped breathing. Who needed to breathe?

She had seen all of him behind the shieling, aye, but not in a state of arousal so flagrant it widened her eyes and turned her blood to liquid fire.

Helpless, she reached for him. “I want to taste you also.” Yet she did not know if she could wait to feel him inside her, filling and completing her.

And when he murmured, “Not just yet,” she snared him with naked legs and drew him home.

Home. How could she even imagine that word in these straits? She had no home now, and he lay far from his. But as his body wooed her with power and sweetness, as he plunged into her again and again, that notion echoed and reechoed in her mind.

Until she shattered into a thousand pieces and lost the capacity to think at all.

How much time passed then, Mara could not tell. She came to herself slowly, awareness finding her in bits: first the sensation of his cheek against her breast, where it had come to rest, and his breath sweeping over her; next the fact that he remained still inside her, the two of them fused into something far greater than either of them could ever be, apart.

The scent of him, and their loving, enfolded her like the heat from his body, a heady perfume. His hair brushed her cheek, his fingers splayed across her belly.

And she still wanted him, just as fiercely as ever.

How could that be? After she had lain with Donald—ah, aye, that was his name—she’d been quite certain she never wished to do so again. But that had been a rough-and-tumble thing.

This… She had no words for what had just passed between her and Diarmad Ramsay, nor for the bright need that rode her yet, even with him still inside her.

He lifted his head slightly and gazed into her eyes, making her heart stutter in her chest.

“Well, Mara MacIvor, and did I keep my promise?”

“You did, Laird Ramsay, and quite well.” She drew a breath that lifted him on her breast. “And, I hope, no’ for the last time.”