Page 53 of This Heart of Mine (O’Malley Saga #4)

“So here she is,”

the woman declared in a deep voice. “Welcome home, m’lady!”

Then she curtsied.

Alex smiled at the woman. “Velvet, this is Morag Geddes.”

Velvet looked closely at the cook and, suddenly seeing the resemblance, asked, “Are you Dugald’s mother?”

“I am,”

came the reply, “and my son tells me that we both owe ye a great debt of gratitude, for ye saved the life of my only grandson.”

“But how could you know that already?”

demanded Velvet, astounded.

Morag Geddes laughed. “There’s nae witchcraft about it, m’lady. Dugald rode on ahead of the main party to prepare me for the wonderful surprise. He says the lad is the spit of him. Is it true, then?”

“Aye,”

said Velvet, smiling, “and he’s a fine little boy, too.”

“Well, then,”

replied the big woman, “perhaps I’ll take to the English girl my son’s wed wi’.”

“I’ve known Pansy all my life,”

Velvet said, hiding her smile, “and I am certain that you’ll like her, but, more important, she loves Dugald.”

“ ’Tis something to be said for that,”

replied Morag.

The kitchens smelled wonderful, reminding Velvet that she was very hungry, but nothing would do until Alex had showed her the upper level with their quarters. “I had the countess’s apartments redone before I first came to England to fetch ye,”

he said, his voice holding an almost boyish note, anxious and seeking her approval.

“I’m sure they will be lovely,”

she said in reply, but secretly she wished he had not presumed to do such a thing without even knowing her first. When, however, she went through the door into her chambers, she was stunned and delighted.

It was not a large apartment, but both rooms overlooked the gardens below and a view west-southwest over the mountains. Each room had a large fireplace: the one in the dayroom flanked by carved stone dogs, the one in her bedchamber guarded by two winged angels. In both rooms wooden floors had been laid over the stone, and upon the floors were beautiful, thick, wool India rugs of acceptable quality. With a pang of remembrance, Velvet felt her feet sink into the carpet, and she wondered where he had obtained them and when but she did not ask. She never would.

The dayroom’s main window was bowed, and there was a window seat within it. The drapes and the upholstery were coral-colored velvet sewn with threads of gold. There was a lovely rectangular table of polished oak in the center of the room, and upon it sat a blue and white porcelain bowl filled with heather. Two carved chairs with their plump cushions were before the fireplace, one on each side. At one wall there was an oak sideboard with carved legs, its polished top reflecting the candlelight from the twin candelabra on either end of it. At another wall stood a tall, two-door oaken chest. The walls were paneled, and the ceiling was of coffered oak. Above the fireplace was a magnificent tapestry depicting a handsome hunter closing in with his dogs on a big stag. There was something familiar about the man.

“The tapestry was worked by my grandmother, Alexandra Gordon. She did it in the two years that she knew King James V. It is his face ye see on the hunter.”

“Were these her rooms, Alex?”

“Aye. ’Tis said the king used to visit her here.”

“That’s very romantic,”

Velvet mused, “and I love the room, Alex!”

“Come and see the rest of yer apartments, lass,”

he invited.

To Velvet’s further delight her bedchamber was as lovely as the dayroom. Here, however, the draperies were of peacock blue velvet. There was a fine, big bed with hangings on silver rings that could be pulled around to enclose it. Upon the bed was a coverlet of red fox. There was a candlestand on one side of the bed and a large carved oak chest against one wall. The bowed window, the mate to the one in the dayroom, also had a window seat, and beside it was a round table containing a pewter bowl of late roses. Above the fireplace was a second tapestry, this one showing a seated pair of lovers embracing upon a hillside.

Velvet looked up at it. “Surely the lady Alexandra didn’t do that tapestry as well as the one in my dayroom?”

“My mother did this tapestry,”

he replied. “These were her rooms also from the time she married my father. She worked the piece early in their marriage. She found the story of my grandmother a very romantic, if sad one. The lovers are supposed to be James and Alexandra. Two years after I was born my mother lost a set of twins and was ill for some months afterwards. She had a great deal of time upon her hands, and she spent a good bit of it designing and weaving the tapestry.”

He slipped his arms about his wife and drew her back against him. “I dinna want to think of past lovers, lass,”

he murmured in her ear. His hands slid up to cup both her breasts. “Ye’re so damned tempting, Velvet Gordon.”

She tingled deliciously beneath his seductive fondlings, but then she sighed and said, “I’m hungry, Alex!”

and tried to squirm away.

“So am 1,”

he answered, holding her fast. Then he turned her so that she faced him and, looking down at her, said softly, “I want to make love to ye, my bonny wife.”

His fingers undid her clothing as he spoke. “We are home at last, my beautiful Velvet. Home! I have dreamed of this moment for more than two years, lass! Dreamed of our being here, together, in this room.”

His lips brushed her temple, and her silk shirt slipped to the rug. He had already managed to remove her jerkin and belt.

Velvet’s eyes closed unbidden as a lovely languorous feeling filled her veins. She could feel his hands undoing her chemisette, and then her breasts were bared. His head dipped to take a soft nipple in his warm mouth. She murmured softly, a pleased little sound that encouraged his boldness, and her hands stroked his head. Food was forgotten as hunger for another pleasure swept over her. She helped him to remove her lower garments, and then nude, she began to undress him.

Passion devoured him as she teasingly unbuttoned his silken shirt. He could feel himself hardening as her soft fingertips feathered themselves over his broad chest. Her touch was almost painful, so intense was his desire to possess her. He couldn’t wait for her, and with an impatient snort he almost tore the rest of his clothes off.

With a smile Velvet took his hand and drew him over so that they could see themselves reflected in the tall, silver-edged pier glass. “Are we not beautiful, my wild Highland husband?”

she whispered as they stared at their naked forms in the mirror.

They were turned sideway, his arms about her waist. Her lovely full breasts pushed provocatively against his furred chest, and the rounds of her bottom were temptingly exciting to his eye. When she slipped her hand between their pressed bellies to catch him in her grasp, he groaned aloud; but she paid him little heed, caressing his length instead with a gentle, teasing touch that sent bursts of blazing desire flaming into his body and brain.

“Dear God, lass!”

he managed to say through gritted teeth. “Ye’re driving me wild!”

“Am I?”

she teased him. “I love it when you grow so hard in my hand, Alex.”

Standing on her tiptoes, she bit his ear, whispering into it, “And I love it when you push yourself deep into me, my darling. You want to now, don’t you?”

she taunted him.

“What a vixen ye are,”

he said softly, and, sweeping her up, he moved swiftly to deposit her upon the bed. For a short moment he was startled by her creamy beauty upon the fox fur, and then he lowered himself down to join her. “A wicked, wanton vixen, my wild Highland wife; a vixen in need of taming.”

Her emerald eyes glittered at him, and her little tongue swirled over her lips, moistening them. “Are you man enough to tame me, Alex?”

A lazy smile traveled all the way to his amber-gold eyes. “Aye, lass,”

he said slowly. “I think I’m more than man enough.”

He bent and kissed each of her breasts in turn. Then, sliding between her thighs, he surprised her by pulling her legs up and over his shoulders while his head found its way to her secret treasure.

Velvet felt her breath catch in her throat, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe at all as she felt his tongue on her flesh. Slowly he licked the quivering insides of her satiny thighs. His tongue ran along the crease between each leg and her plump, pink Venus mont, traveling across the top of that temptation, finding its way to the moist cleft that hid even more secret delights. Shameless, she eagerly awaited his touch, her breath coming in short gasps, her fingers kneading the back of his neck. When at last his tongue found that sensitive little jewel, it was as if a fireball had burst within her. The pleasure was both unbearable and seemingly unending. She whimpered with pure bliss as his mouth wreaked havoc upon her tender body.

The first wave of rapture washed over her, and she cried his name in her wild passion. He raised his head slightly, a small smile upon his face, then returning to his sweet toil, he brought her to a second and third peak before drawing himself back up to find her mouth.

Her lips parted yearningly beneath his, and, filling her mouth with his tongue, he caressed hers for a long moment before drawing away and whispering softly, “That’s how ye taste, my darling!”

Then he pushed himself slowly into her warm and waiting body.

Velvet almost cried aloud as she felt his bigness filling her, so full that she couldn’t believe her young body would be able to contain and satisfy him. “Ah, my love!”

she finally sobbed, and knew in that moment that she was his once more. In her secret heart she called her “farewell”

to Akbar. She would never allow what they had had together to haunt her relationship with Alex again. That time was over!

“Look at me!”

His voice was fierce and demanding.

Her eyes opened, and he could see that they were filled with her passion for him, and her love. “Tame me, my wild Highland husband!”

she challenged him.

Slowly he began to move on her, and then his tempo increased as he thrust faster and deeper, deeper and faster, into her burning sheath. He could feel her fingernails raking down his straining back, digging into his shoulders as he fanned the fires of her wild desires. Finally he could bear no more. “Ah, lass!”

he cried aloud, “ ’tis ye who’ve conquered me!”

But Velvet didn’t hear his confession, for he had taken her to the heights of their love, and then she plummeted down into a whirlpool of passion, sated.

In the village the following morning the goodwives gathered outside the kirk after morning prayer and gossiped with glee at the stories already coming down from the castle of how the earl had taken his wife to bed last night before they had even eaten dinner, that Morag Geddes’s good meal had gone uneaten altogether!

“There’ll be an heir for BrocCairn within the year,”

said Jean Lawrie, chuckling, “and that’s certain!”

“Aye,”

the other women agreed, pleased.

“But how will the English witch take this news?”

asked a young girl.

“Humph! She’s nae a witch even if some silly gooses believe it. If she’s a witch, then why did Lord Alex desert her for his bride? She has no power, girl,”

Jean Lawrie scolded.

“When she’s willing to admit the truth, Alanna Wythe will return to England.”

“I hope the earl will nae let her take her bairn. Poor wee girlie. She doesna hae an easy time wi’ a mother who’s nae really a mother to her at all,”

said another older woman.

Alanna Wythe heard it all, hidden in the shadows of the church she would not enter. Her anger was a black and bitter one. How she hated Velvet! If that woman had only stayed where she was, Alanna told herself, Alex would have eventually married her, and she, Alanna Wythe, would have been the countess of BrocCairn, not that red-haired bitch! They will pay for my pain, both of them, Alanna vowed. She didn’t know how she was going to punish them, but she would indeed see that they suffered. She slipped silently away from the hurtful words of the women of Broc Ailien and hurried back to her own cottage where her daughter had awakened to find herself alone and was now wailing fearfully. Irritably Alanna slapped the baby.

“Be quiet, Sibby!”

she snapped, but the child only howled louder. Annoyed, Alanna pulled her blouse down and pushed a nipple into her daughter’s mouth. That at least would quiet the brat for the time being. She had been trying to wean Sibby for several weeks now. Her breasts were going to be ruined if she continued to allow the brat to keep tugging and sucking on them every day. God, how she hated children! She had only had Sibby in order to bind Alex to her. Even there she had been disappointed, for the baby turned out to be a girl and not the hoped-for son. No matter, she thought. He did have a certain weakness for the child, and that had certainly bettered her position with him even though his wife had returned.

She heard the back door to her cottage open and close, and she looked up, curious. A man stood in the shadows a moment, watching her nurse the child. Sibby had fallen back asleep against her mother’s breast, and carefully Alanna returned her to her cot before she whirled and hissed at the intruder, “Are you mad to come here in daylight? What if one of those village biddies saw you?”

“Well, they didn’t,”

he said. “I was careful, Alanna. Very careful. Besides, I needed to get out of the house this morning. I needed to see ye.”

“What has happened?”

She was instantly wary. This big fool of a man could ruin everything with his lack of caution.

“Bella started at me, demanding an accounting of the monies I received when I sold the cattle Alex gave us. I could hardly let her know I spent some of that gold now, could I, Alanna?”

“What did you tell her, Ian?”

“Nothing,”

he said with a smirk. “Instead I took my good and wise brother-in-law’s advice on how to handle my wife.”

“What did you do?”

She was very worried now.

“I took a stick and beat her bottom until she begged me for mercy, reminding her all the while that ’twas I who was master of Grantholm. God’s cock, how she howled and struggled! If I’d known that beating Bella was so pleasant I’d hae done it years ago.”

“You fool!”

Alanna spat at him. “If she tells her brother, then Alex will ask those same questions. Couldn’t you have just lied to her?”

“She’ll nae go to Alex,”

Ian said with certainty. “It excited me so to beat her that when I finished I couldn’t help fucking her. She’ll nae sit or walk for several days, Alanna, and by that time she’ll hae decided to say nothing. She won’t want her brother and his wife to know what happened. Annabella is a proud little bitch.”

He licked his lips, and his eyes glazed with the memory of his recent victory. Alanna could see that he was still quite hot with lust, for his cock thrust itself out against his red and green kilt. She marveled to herself that she had somehow managed to find the biggest cock she’d ever seen, in this damned Highland backwater, in this barbaric so-called country. It was Ian Grant’s only redeeming feature, for he hadn’t a brain in his head. She suspected it was his monster cock that had won him the hand of the fair Annabella Gordon. She somehow didn’t think Alex’s sister still relished her bargain.

“Alanna,”

he murmured hungrily to her, and came forward to turn her around and bend her over the cottage table. Tossing her skirts over her head, he thrust into her without any preliminaries. She grunted softly at his entry, but accepted his bigness as his hands fumbled to find her breasts, large breasts for such a tiny girl. He thrust with practiced regularity into her, and Alanna let the pleasure wash over her. When he had finished, her earlier irritation had been dispelled. Ian Grant knew enough about his one talent to know that the woman must also be satisfied if he was to be totally fulfilled.

Alanna straightened herself up and smoothed her skirts. Ian grinned down at her. “You’re a good fuck,” he said.

“Don’t be seen leaving here,”

she said coldly.

“I’ll be back tonight,”

he said smugly. “Jesu, I canna ever remember being so hot for a woman even after I’ve just had two.”

Then with a chuckle he was quickly gone the way he came.

“Fool!”

she muttered after him, but she knew she’d welcome him back that night.