“C arrying me up three floors on that winding staircase was very impressive.”
“’Tis my hope to impress ye in many ways, m’love . ” Grant shouldered open the door to their bedchamber and lowered Jessa’s feet to the floor, watching her closely for any additional signs of weakness. She still had a paleness about her, and while it was rightly so after all she had been through, it worried him. The wily lass could be injured somehow and determined to hide it.
“How in the world?” She turned in a slow arc, pointing at the turned-down bed, the table laid with an assortment of fruits, cheeses, breads, and bottles of wine, and the long, low dresser piled high with fresh linens, a quartet of basins, and their wide-bellied, steaming pitchers. “How did they do all this so quickly? And not only that—how did we not pass them in the stairwell?”
“I have often thought the women of this keep in league with the Fae. What with the way they make things appear—and disappear if they so wish it. And I feel sure Mairwen lent her magic to their aid this day.” He gently brought her closer and lifted her face to his. “I dinna care how they did it. What I care about is ye. I find yer coloring worrying.”
“I’m fine.” But her eyelids drooped as if she could barely keep them open. Then she wrinkled her nose. “The smell of smoke is making my stomach churn, though. Would they be upset if we stripped down and tossed our clothes out in the hall?”
Her suggestion nearly undid him. The perfection of her in his arms, as he carried her to the bedchamber, had hardened him to the readiness of a rutting stag. “I shall be upset if we dinna strip down.”
With a coy look and keeping her gaze locked with his, she tugged on her stays’ front lacings. Then she tugged again and growled. “Seriously?” Glaring down at the front of her corset and using both hands, she picked at the knotted ties. “Did she mean for me to wear this thing until it rotted off?”
“Here, now. Let me.” He wouldn’t tell her he was quite experienced with removing a lady’s underpinnings. Feckin’ hell. The front ties refused to yield. “Let me try the back ones. Surely they’re not so knotted. ’Tis as though the wetness and filth bound them and made them one.”
Jessa laughed as she turned. “Kind of like us.”
“Aye, lass.” He swallowed hard, finding this newfound sense of completeness, the strong contentment centering his very core, both strange and wonderful. He resettled his stance, aching with the lusty need to complete the spiritual binding with a physical joining as well. “Bloody hell—enough!” He pulled his sgian dubh from his right boot and severed the ties that refused to give.
“Well, that was effective.” Jessa peeled off the grubby thing, held it by two fingers, and carried it to the door. “I don’t want to nasty up the rug, so I’m starting our pile one thing at a time.” She nodded at his boots. “You might want to do those first.”
“Ye are a rare woman, m’lady.” He started to sit on the bench at the end of the bed to remove his boots but halted when she made the same sound his mother used to make when warning him he had better stop whatever he was doing or she would tan his wee arse for him. “How am I supposed to remove my boots if I canna sit?”
“Lean on a wall or hold on to something,” she said. “Your backside is even filthier than your front.” She tugged her overskirt around, unfastened it, then stepped out of it and added it to the pile in the hallway. “And why am I a rare woman? Is that good or bad?”
“Most women would not consider this a verra romantic path to their first loving with their new husband.”
She went still, and both her brows arched high behind the curtain of messy curls she kept shoving out of her eyes. “Husband?”
“Aye.” Her tone and expression worried him. “We married in the old way, lass. With the binding oath.” He held to the bedpost, toed the heel of his boot, and worked it off his foot. “Ye knew ye were marrying me, aye? Ye told me ye were willing.”
She avoided his gaze by concentrating on untying her bum roll and petticoats. She tipped a nervous shrug without looking up. “I knew it—I guess. Hearing it out loud for the first time kind of startled me.”
He carried his boots to the door, set them in the hall, then returned to her and took her by the shoulders, forcing her to look up at him. “Are ye already regretting it?” he asked softly, dreading her answer.
Her sad smile worried him even more, but then she barely shook her head and touched his cheek. “No. I do not regret it. But it is a change. A ginormous change. And I have never handled change well.”
He wasn’t familiar with the word ginormous , but he caught the gist of all it encompassed. “I dinna wish ye to change yer mind or regret choosing me over everything ye have ever known.” He wiped at a smudge of soot high on her cheek and made it worse with grime from his thumb. “Know that I am aware of yer sacrifice, m’love. Know that I am not only honored but touched beyond words and will spend the rest of my days showing ye.”
“I know it,” she barely whispered, then patted him on the chest. “Now let me go so I can shed the rest of these smelly layers.”
He leaned closer and nibbled at the salty sweetness of her throat. “I could always kiss ye out of them.”
A humming purr escaped her as she unbuckled his belt and let it drop. His kilt followed. “As long as we don’t get too carried away before we wash. We can’t get in bed like this.”
“More room on the floor, anyway,” he said as he slipped a hand down the front of her chemise and palmed the bountiful fullness of her breast.
“I smell like a smoked ham.” She ripped away what was left of his tattered shirt and tossed it aside.
“I love smoked ham.” He took hold of her chemise by the neckline, rent it in two, and threw it down.
“Grant!”
“Ye tore mine off—lore a’mighty, lass.” The lusciousness of her curves robbed him of the ability to speak. All he could think of, all he could fathom, was sinking into her and never leaving again. Her skin shone like cream, freckled as if the gods had dusted her with sweet spices to lead his gaze from her face to her dusky pink nipples and lower still to the delicate vee of reddish curls at the juncture of her thighs. He wet his lips, starving for the taste of her, but when he reached to pull her close, she shook a finger and backed away.
“We should wash first. You don’t want to get soot and mud all over your nice rug, the bed, or any of your cushions, do you? We’re filthy.”
“I’m filthy with need, woman. I dinna give a rat’s arse about the furnishings.”
And the way she kept trying to cover herself with her hands and arms as she backed away from him inflamed him even more.
“I can bear this no longer.” He closed in on her, backed her to the wall, then lifted her and pinned her against it. With her wrists in one hand above her head, he cupped her fine round arse in the other and set to the task of sampling her wondrous breasts. With the tip of his tongue, he teased a trail around her nipple before suckling it deep and hard. Easily keeping her pinned between him and the wall and keeping her wrists held firmly above her head, he adjusted his cupping of her delectable arse so his fingertips grazed back and forth across the sweet wetness awaiting him between her thighs.
He knew he should take his time and meant to do so—truly, he did. But a greediness took him over. Silently, he swore he would worship her body all the rest of his days as he shifted his hold to her legs and buried himself inside her with a shuddering groan.
“Yes,” she hissed through clenched teeth, digging her nails into his shoulders.
“Forgive me, love, but I had to have ye.” He drew out, then rammed in again, her wet heat daring him to pound into her until they both were senseless. Another shudder rippled through him as he struggled for control. Heaven help him. He didn’t want to spill himself like a lad with his first woman. His precious Jessa would find her pleasure first, or he would die in the trying.
“Give it to me,” she ordered, tightening her legs around him. “We’ll take our time next time. I’m on the edge. Just push me over it before I die.”
Grant had heard the stories about the intensity of the claiming. He’d laughed and dismissed it as a myth or exaggeration on the part of the Defenders, hoping to find their fated mates. This was no feckin’ myth or an exaggeration. This was an all-consuming hunger, an insatiable need to hear her delighted cries in harmony with his roars as they reached inexplicable bliss. He pounded harder, rocking into her with the primeval urgency of an ancient being marking his mate as his own.
She screamed and arched against him, her ecstasy clenching around him, pulling him in deeper to join her.
He gladly joined, unleashing a tremendous growl as he buried himself and held fast, exploding with a power that shook through him with even more strength than the tremor of the earth during the earlier attack.
Still pinned between him and the wall, Jessa let her head fall back while gasping to catch her breath. “I have never…”
He kissed the curve of her shoulder and nibbled his way up the side of her neck. “Have never what, m’love?”
Combing her fingers into his hair and guiding his kisses along her neck, she hummed a purring sigh. “No word comes to mind to describe what I just felt.”
“Good.”
She giggled, making the ripple of her hot wetness encourage his cock to harden again as soon as possible. “Now we smell like microwaved smoked ham.”
“What is microwaved ?”
“Reheated.”
He rocked into her, flexing as he quickly recovered and was ready to go again. “I like that word. Reheated.”
“Me too,” she said, then pulled him in for a slow, deep kiss. When she gently freed him of it, she delighted him with a loving smile. “This is—perfect.”
“I am right where I belong, m’love. With ye. Inside ye. Beside ye.” He kept his thrusts slow and steady while holding her gaze with his. “Always and forever.”
“Always and forever,” she repeated softly while closing her eyes.
He increased his pace, moving faster, harder. “Lore a’mighty—I may knock this wall down this time.”
She flexed her hands, then dug her fingers into his shoulders again. “Do it, now. I dare you.”
He hooked her legs over his arms and pounded, careening them both toward rapture once again. His muscles knotted with the fervor, burning with excitement and expectancy. He hammered harder, melding their bodies into one.
She cried out even louder than the first time, clutching two handfuls of what was left of his singed hair and pulling as she rocked with wave after wave of pleasure.
“Mine!” he bellowed with a last thrust that emptied him. With her legs still hooked over his arms, he locked his knees to keep from collapsing and rested his forehead against the wall above her shoulder. “Griselda is right,” he said between gasps to catch his breath.
“About what?” Jessa asked, her voice hoarse from her shouts of delight.
“Ye are a goddess.”
She hummed a lazy chuckle, vibrating with amusement. “We really do need to convince her otherwise.”
“A problem for another time.” He kissed her shoulder, pushed them both away from the wall, then carried her over to the long dresser and set her on it beside the basins. “But for now, I shall wash ye and worship ye for the goddess that ye are.”
She leaned back, barely propped herself upright, then cast a glance back over her shoulder. “Grant.”
“Aye?” He wet a cloth and rubbed a fresh bar of Mrs. Robeson’s best rose petal soap until the suds boiled over his hands. But when he went to lather his lady love, her scowl stopped him. “What is it?”
“This window is open.”
“Aye. Fresh air is good for a body.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “There are quite a few people gathered down there. All smiles and staring up at the window.”
“Good. That means there must be little damage to the keep, and no one injured.”
“It also means they probably heard us. You were loud.”
He couldn’t resist a grin. “Ye were nay too quiet yerself, m’love.”
“You know what I mean.”
With a slow, seductive walking of his fingers down her leg, he lifted her foot and started washing her toes. “A clan is most happy when their laird is happy. Would ye deny them that pleasure?” He ran the sudsy cloth up her calf, massaging her fine, thick legs that weren’t the spindly sticks of a prim woman afraid to enjoy a stroll through the glen. Nay, Jessa was perfect, and she was his.
“I can’t carry on a logical argument when you’re doing that.” She shifted in place as he rinsed the cloth in the basin and wiped the suds from her silky leg.
“Good. I shall store that for future reference. And now for the other leg.” After washing her arms and legs, he changed out the water, dumping the old water into a bucket beside the dresser and filling the basin with fresh. He wet another cloth and ever so gently washed her face, moving in close and standing between her knees to pepper a trail of kisses along her jawline and throat as he washed her. “They say ye can tell when a fair woman has enjoyed her loving by the richness of her blush.”
“Then I should be fire engine red.” She rested her arms on his shoulders and cradled him, leaning forward and purring like a happy wee beastie as he embraced her and washed her back.
He would try to remember to ask what a fire engine was later. “And now I shall place ye on the bed and wash the best of ye that I saved for last.”
“But I haven’t washed you yet. You’re still all sooty.”
“I’ll not be getting on the bed with ye, m’love. I intend to worship my goddess fully and then tend to my own washing afterward.” He pulled her into his arms, thrilled when she wrapped her legs around his waist and locked her heels at the small of his back. Moving over to the bed, he gently lowered her onto it, placing her crossways of the large, overstuffed tick made up with fresh linens. After fetching the basin and a pitcher of water, he stood there at the side of the bed and stared. “Ye are a goddess, Jessa,” he said. “Not just because of yer loveliness but because of the way ye’ve touched my heart.”
She swiped a hand across her eyes as tears overflowed. “You’ve done the same for me,” she whispered, then reached for him. “I don’t care about the sheets. Come here.”
“Nay, my love. Not until I’ve worshiped ye as ye deserve.” Not that he didn’t long to lower himself into her embrace and never rise again—but he wished to do this for her, to worship her.
The brilliance of her red hair was splayed across the bedclothes, and her eyes were even greener with her tears. Her fair skin was flushed with a mouth-watering rosiness that renewed his hunger. With a cloth in each hand, he washed her breasts until they gleamed with a tempting slipperiness. After wiping them clean of suds, he tasted her nipples, laving them with his tongue and treating them to sucking pulls until she squirmed and arched beneath him.
“I’m clean,” she said. “Come here.”
“Not yet, my precious one.” While keeping his gaze locked with hers, he ran the rinsing cloth down between her legs and slowly massaged her, loving how her breath quickened and she bucked into his touch. “I’ll not use soap here, for I want to taste yer true essence.”
“You are a cruel man, Mr. MacAlester.” Her breathlessness fueled his need to give her even more. “You know what I need,” she said, fixing him with a look that nearly undid him.
He went to his knees, hooked her legs over his shoulders, and feasted, licking and sucking, until the level of her moans encouraged him to grant her relief with his fingers. He’d promised not to join her in the bed until he washed, and he meant to keep his word—even though it was about to kill him.
“And now I will wash,” he said, his voice sounding strained even to him, as he returned to the cabinet and added water to the second basin.
“No,” she said from behind him. “Now, I will wash you.” She cleaned his face, shoulders, arms, and back, torturing him by trailing her nipples and the warm softness of her lush curves against him while sprinkling kisses across the dampness of his clean skin. When she dropped to her knees and washed his legs, he held his breath and stared straight ahead, knowing she intended to torment him with the same deliciousness that he had tormented her. He groaned and curled his toes as she washed his length, then took it into her mouth while palming his bollocks. The harder she sucked, the tighter he clenched his fists to keep from burying his hands in her hair and using her mouth with abandon.
“I must have ye!” He caught her up, tossed her onto the bed, then covered her with his body. Her wicked smile not only gave him pause, but dared him to take her and make her cries of pleasure echo through the entirety of the keep. “Lore, woman, I will never get enough of ye.”
“Good. Now, show me.”
He drove into her, determined to prove to the lady that he meant every word.
* * *
Jessa sat on the wide windowsill, hugging her knees and staring into the darkness. With no light other than the moon and the lone candle on the mantel, she hadn’t been able to find any clothes of her own, so she’d settled for one of Grant’s shirts she’d come across in the wardrobe. With its sleeves rolled up past her elbows and its length hitting her below the knees, it served the purpose just as well as one of those old-fashioned nightgowns—no, not nightgowns, but shifts. She had to get this century’s language straight.
This century. She nearly choked on that. Here she was, barely twenty-four hours into the eighteenth century and already married and more perfectly consummated than she had ever been in her life, and without the protection of a condom or any other means of birth control. Allowing herself a dismal sigh, she tried to calculate exactly where she was in her cycle. Raised as a go-to-church-on-Christmas-and-Easter-only Catholic, she had a vague understanding of the rhythm method but understood quite clearly its unreliability. That’s just what she needed. To get pregnant immediately in a time when giving birth was as dangerous as playing with an armed hand grenade, maybe even more so.
A low, mumbling groan from the bed pulled her from her muddled thoughts. She glanced over at the shadowy form of the massive Highlander sprawled across the tangled sheets. Damn, she loved him even though she didn’t understand how it could be possible to love someone this hard after just a day.
Fated mates, several had said. According to Mairwen, the mates met, joined, and loved each other in every incarnation. Maybe that was why love had happened so hard and fast. Their souls had recognized one another, known each other throughout eternity. She’d also said that those who didn’t find each other in any particular incarnation were doomed to a lifetime of feeling as though something was missing.
She chewed on her bottom lip as her inner demons pelted her with insecurities. Was this new love strong enough to endure the eighteenth century? Was it strong enough to last through all that this era threatened? What if Morrigan returned? Better yet, what the hell was Morrigan? Would that thing eventually go after Emily, too?
“Jessa?” His voice rasped with an endearingly soft sleepiness, calling to her on an unfathomable level. It was as though her heart heard him before her ears did.
“Over here,” she said, wishing he had stayed asleep. She couldn’t even make sense to herself. How could she make sense to him?
“Come back to bed, love. I miss ye.”
Propping her chin on her arms, she turned her attention back to the dark, velvety blue of the night sky. “I’ll be there in a minute. Try to go back to sleep. You said you needed to catch up, remember?”
The bedclothes rustled, making her close her eyes and listen for his feet thudding on the floor. A moment later, he gently touched her shoulder. “Dinna leave, Jessa,” he said with a quiet earnestness. “Please.”
She turned to deny that she would do such a thing, but the words caught in her throat. Even though she had not admitted it to herself, he had said exactly what she was subconsciously considering. Her heart shifted with a decisive thump. No matter what century she found herself in, she couldn’t survive without him. “I won’t leave, but I also won’t promise that I’ll be easy to live with while I try to adjust to this time in history.”
He gave her a lopsided grin. “And ye think I shall be easy to live with?”
She returned his grin. “Probably not.”
“Yer Emily is still here.” He moved through the room, his body a large, shimmering ghostliness in the moonlight. The deep, hollow pop of a cork told her he’d gone to the table for wine. “While ye slept, I slipped out and discovered Sawny at his post in the hallway. He said Mairwen promised they wouldna leave until ye had time to settle things with Mistress Emily.”
While she found that somewhat reassuring, she also wondered about the servant at his post comment. “And where exactly is Sawny’s post?”
“Mrs. Robeson has him sleep beside our bedchamber door in case we need anything with haste.”
“That is terrible.” Not only because the boy would overhear everything, but also because it couldn’t be comfortable on the floor. “You need to tell Mrs. Robeson not to do that to that poor kid.”
He shook his head as he offered her a glass of wine. “She’ll not listen. Mrs. Robeson does as she pleases.”
“She’s the housekeeper, right?” Jessa tried a small sip of the wine and decided it was bearable.
“Aye.”
“And you’re the laird, right?”
He blew out a huffing sigh. “Aye.”
“You see where I’m going here?”
“I see I shall be speaking with Mrs. Robeson about Sawny ever sleeping in the hallway again.”
“Not only is it creepy, it’s not fair to Sawny.” Jessa took a deeper sip, then set the glass aside. “Was there not any drinking water left in the pitcher?”
“Water is water, lass. It all comes from the wellhouse.”
“Right.” She hugged her knees tighter and rested her head on her arms.
A moment later, he nudged her. “Yer water, m’lady. Shall I tell Sawny to fetch ye some coffee?”
“Is he still out there?”
“Aye, the lad knows better than to cross Mrs. Robeson.”
Jessa rolled her eyes and made a mental note to have a word with the well-meaning housekeeper. She accepted the glass of water. “Thank you. And no, don’t bother anyone about coffee. I’m sure they need their rest after the attack.”
“No one was injured. Henry confirmed it. The only damage was minor between the west watchtower and the skirting wall. The MacAlester ancestors built this keep to last.” He dragged a chair over and poured his nakedness into it with the self-assuredness of an elite cover model who commanded nothing less than seven figures per photo shoot.
“Were you naked when you walked out of here?” She had to ask, since he seemed so comfortable in his bare state.
He snorted. “I covered m’self, wife. I am not a beast.” Then he suggestively waggled a brow. “Unless ye wish me to be?”
She couldn’t believe she was saying this, but she made a T sign with her hands. “Time out for a little while. My mind goes into overdrive late at night, and I have to sort through things, or I have nightmares—no matter how wonderfully exhausted you make me.”
“Overdrive?” he repeated carefully.
“I have a whole bunch of thoughts and worries all at once, and they tangle up in knots until I work them out and shut them away in their neat little boxes.”
“I see.”
He didn’t, but she didn’t expect him to, not when she didn’t fully understand it about herself. Emily’s psychiatrist mother had told her it was from childhood trauma. Spending her first eight years of life in a household where her drug-addict mother ran through men like water ran through a sieve had scarred her. Her nightly thought sorting was a coping mechanism she had never quite learned how to let go of, even after years of free therapy from Emily’s mom.
“What’s happening in Scotland in 1785? Current events?” she asked to change the subject.
“Happening?”
She nodded. “I don’t remember my history classes as well as I should, considering how much that degree cost me in student loans.” Now, there was a silver lining to time travel. She was now debt free. “I remember a war where England did unspeakable things to Scotland.”
Grant’s expression hardened. “The last Jacobite uprising in ’45. Bonnie Prince Charlie failed.”
“So that was forty years ago.” She rubbed her forehead, wishing that would help her remember. “The Clearances. I remember a little bit about the Clearances because I had to do a paper on how so many lost their land. That’s when hordes of Scots emigrated to the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to survive. That happens soon. Entire clans were forcibly removed from the Highlands and the surrounding islands so greedy landlords could make more money off sheep and whatever other commerce.” A shudder of dread rippled across her. Holy crap—what if Clan MacAlester lost its land? “That’s not going to happen to us, is it?”
“I am the Earl of Suddie. The landlord of these lands.” His voice had become a low, rumbling growl, and his hands tightened into fists. “As long as I pay our taxes, we are safe. What else do ye know of what is coming?”
“About Scotland’s history? Nothing, I’m afraid. I only remembered the part about the Clearances because if I didn’t do well on that paper, I would’ve failed the class.” She hated that she knew nothing more. History no longer seemed a bunch of dry, meaningless names and dates that needed to be memorized to pass a course. It was people. People who loved, laughed, and died. People who suffered and fought to survive. “I’m sorry.” She felt as if she had failed him.
He pushed up from the chair and held out his hand. “Do not apologize, my love. Together, we will conquer whatever is ahead. I swear it. Now, come to bed. I need to hold ye.”
She slid her hand into his, very much needing that too. Once safely nestled in the crook of his arm, her head pillowed in the dip of his shoulder, a calmness filled her, a sense that somehow, everything would be all right. What a strange sensation, but she gladly accepted it and held on tight. She would worry about tomorrow’s problems tomorrow. Not a usual course of action for her, but during this great upheaval in her life, maybe it was time to make some changes for the better.