Chapter Seventeen

Diarmad awoke to the alluring sensation of Mara MacIvor’s mouth moving on his skin. The sheer, staggering pleasure of it chased every sensible thought and all chances of further sleep from his head.

He opened his eyes onto darkness and wondered how much time had passed. Surely it could not be the same night when he had drawn her up across his knees and taken her for the first time, finding in her well of heat a belonging he had never imagined.

Nay, for she must have been in his life forever, and part of him.

But as his senses returned, he realized they lay in the small hollow he had located last evening, with the patient horses still standing beyond, he and Mara naked and fast in one another’s arms. His mind stumbled over it as he tried to sort out all that had occurred: the flight from the cave, refuge, and then the sheer white heat of their intimacy.

Aye, he knew her now. He had tasted her just as she had tasted him—that memory held the power to stun him to the tips of his toes. It must be near morning, yet the dark still hung around them, and Mara’s mouth became insistent.

Even as he came awake she freed herself from his arms and slid her lips down his body, lingering at shoulder, chest, and ribs. He felt the flick of her tongue, followed by the brush of her wild hair, and just like that his desire came alight.

By the devil’s eyebrows, how could he be aroused again, so soon? Yet so he did find himself, and his member stood strong for her when she reached it, her obvious target.

“Mara,” he breathed.

“Aye, Ramsay?” She lifted her head just before her lips found him, and he caught the gleam of wicked light in her eyes.

“By God, woman!”

“You promised I could taste you.”

“And so you did. I recall—I most surely do recall…”

“You did no’ say I could taste you but once.”

How could he hope to reason with her, while the warm cavern of her mouth enfolded him? “Aye, well,” he succumbed, “far be it from me to interfere wi’ your wishes.”

She made an avid sound, half greed and half appreciation, just before she began to caress him with her tongue. Diarmad promptly forgot who he was, where he lay, and that he had ever possessed any objective other than this. He might happily die in the next moment, so long as he had the attentions of Mara MacIvor first.

And how had she come by such a clever tongue? Not just clever—that did not do it justice. But coaxing, seducing…

Loving.

But nay, that could not be. What they did here, they did for the sake of pleasure and the passion that existed between them. Wracking, unimaginable passion.

The heat of her mouth and the fervent abrasions of her tongue brought him to the brink almost immediately. He reached down to cradle her head between his palms and tried to draw her up.

“Nay, lass. ’Tis enough.”

“It is no’ enough.” The very sound of her voice, husky with her arousal, made his cock jerk uncontrollably.

Desperate, he told her, “But I will come there, inside your lovely mouth.”

“Aye, and I will take whatever you want to give me, Diarmad Ramsay.”

The power of her passion, combined with his, lifted and further enflamed him. He wanted, och, aye, he wanted. And when she closed her mouth on him again he succumbed to the desire, buried his hands in her hair, and bucked his hips into her, setting up a driven, unstoppable rhythm. She met him eagerly, her tongue a blaze of welcome, and he climaxed in a wave of heat that took the last of his sanity.

Surely he could die now, melted in bliss. But nay, for Mara came crawling up his body, her breasts stroking him all the way, and licked her lips.

“Just as braw as before. Want to taste?”

As he had last night, before he took her for the first time, she pressed her mouth to his. Wicked lass. Och, such a wicked, wonderful lass.

****

“We maun move on away from here,” Diarmad said, pulling hard on the strings of what common sense remained to him. “We dare not linger long.”

He looked down at the naked woman who sprawled at his feet. Devoid of modesty, she reached her arms above her head and stretched, which caused her breasts to peak enticingly.

“But ’tis still dark,” she pointed out.

So it was—if just barely—and he could yet feel the sensation of her mouth on him. How would he ever banish that from his mind?

Did he want to?

“Aye, but the sun will be up very soon, and we need cover to be awa’.”

“Aye so.” She scrambled to her feet; utterly helpless, he watched. Her hair tumbled down her back like the mane of a pony as she turned and gathered her clothing; her smooth bottom made a potent temptation.

Diarmad fought hard to keep his mind on the matter at hand. “I ha’ been trying to figure out just where we are. Can you tell?”

She paused with her garments in her arms and turned her head to look at him. “I have a fair idea. We got turned round after we were captured, but I figure we must be some distance south of Lairg.”

That fitted with Diarmad’s reckoning. “I do no’ doubt you are right.”

“We are also in a bit of a predicament as befits the task before us. We are meant to lay a trail and lead the hounds away from the Prince, yet how can we do that now? I do no’ think we dare.”

“Nay,” Diarmad agreed grimly. “’Tis made the more complicated by the fact that we do no’ ken what has happened to your adored Charles Edward. Has he been caught? If so, our task has been rendered pointless. If not and he is awa’ to France—well, we likewise risk ourselves for naught.”

Mara stiffened with indignation. “He is no’ my ‘adored’ Charles Edward.”

“Are you certain?” Diarmad did not know why he pressed the matter, save that a terrible thought had just that moment filtered into his mind. Had Mara MacIvor loved him so thoroughly and so well merely because she pretended he was the Prince? Would she treat Charles Edward the same if she could?

The very notion prodded him like a spear to the gut. He scowled at Mara. “Never mind that now. Hurry, lass, and let us be awa’.”

They moved off into the gloom of the morning as soon as Mara had gathered their few belongings, all the harmony achieved during last night’s intimacies flown. First they bickered over which direction to take; Mara insisted they head due north as they had originally been bidden. Diarmad, who thought northwest a better course, at last tired of the argument and gave Mara her way for the moment. After that, they rode in near silence.

Last night’s rain lingered, turned soft as mist. It sparkled on the manes of the horses and on Mara’s hair. Riding behind her, Diarmad could not help but admire the warm color of her wild locks as the day strengthened around them. At last the rain clouds lifted, and they found themselves all at once atop a rise.

A great sweep of light arced over the land below. Diarmad drew his horse up, and Mara followed suit.

Ah, and his heart clenched at the sheer beauty of it: wild hills just beginning to green with new bracken and the long bowl of a loch glittering like the water-jewels on Mara MacIvor’s hair. The land cradled the water as a mother might her child, and the sky over-reaching all made a soft blanket, moving as the sky so often did in such weather in two directions—one flying east and the other west, with the pure light between.

Diarmad narrowed his eyes against the sudden brightness and felt his spirit take flight with those clouds.

He had undertaken this task for the sake of his father’s honor—out of love, aye, for William Ramsay. Now another sort of love touched him, that of place, deeply rooted and as eternal as the rock.

Would he be willing to die for this bonny place? Och, aye.

“It is so beautiful,” Mara breathed, and he felt kinship with her flare, oversetting their disharmony. Turning his eyes to her, he saw that with her undisciplined hair and stormy eyes she was just as bonny as this place.

Did she hold him as deeply?

“Aye,” he whispered.

“I almost forgot why we are doing all this: for the Prince, aye, but for this most of all.” Mara tossed a look at him. “We maun fight in any way we can.”

Diarmad nodded as like-minded devotion flared between them. How could this strong and ancient place be held under English rule? That and naught else made the reason so many had died at Culloden.

Mara smiled suddenly. “And I think I know where we be.”

He lifted his brows.

“I believe that is Loch Morie. And, awa’ over there, Loch Glass. My father brought me here once. If I am right, there should be a wee clachan on the north shore of Loch Morie where we can beg some provisions and perhaps seek word of the Prince.”

“What of our pursuers?” Diarmad glanced behind and saw only the height from which they had just descended, all rock and scree without so much as a trail. “Do you think they will track us into the village?”

Mara shrugged, and her eyes met his. “I think we have no choice but to take the chance. And those who come after us must give up eventually.”

Diarmad did not see either Archibald or MacNeal surrendering his anger easily, but he did not say so.

“Lead on, then,” he said. Given a woman like Mara MacIvor, a man sometimes just had to let her have her head.