Ian feared for his health.
Sìleas was driving him near witless with lust. It could not be good for a man to want a woman this much without satisfaction. Collecting the kisses he said she owed him only made the torture worse.
He lay awake at night imagining her creamy skin in the moonlight. Every time he heard her voice in the next room or caught a glimpse of her across the yard, he hoped she had come to seek him out, to tell him she was ready.
He imagined her walking toward him, slowly, with her hips swaying and a sparkle in her eyes. Then she would rest the flat of her hands on his chest and say, “I’ve made up my mind. I want ye in my bed, Ian MacDonald.”
Ian shook his head and set down his hammer before he did damage to himself. Every time he backed her into a corner to steal a kiss, someone would come in and distract her. A few times he got his hand on her breast—ach, he was hard just thinking of that—but no further.
He could not take much more of this.
And he didn’t have time to waste. With Samhain just over a fortnight away, they needed to do something dramatic. He had discussed it with Connor and Duncan when he went to get them from the cave that day at Teàrlag’s. All of them agreed that the best way to sway their clansman into backing Connor was to take Knock Castle.
To justify attacking the MacKinnons, Ian needed to remove any question as to his right to Knock Castle as Sìleas’s husband. Of course, they could take the castle without a rightful claim—it was done all the time—but that would draw the Crown into the dispute. Connor and the MacDonalds didn’t need that kind of trouble on top of what they already had.
Which meant Ian needed to consummate his marriage. Bed his bride. ’Twas fortunate, indeed, that the needs of the clan matched his own precisely.
Everything was arranged. Ian had convinced his mother and Niall that taking his father out on a sail around Seal Island would do them all good. Of course, Alex had no trouble persuading Dina to disappear with him for the afternoon.
Finally, Ian would have Sìleas alone.
He found her in the kitchen. She was leaning over the worktable, pressing an oat mixture into the bottom of a flat pan. He sucked in his breath as he imagined lying on that table and having her work over him. She looked fetching with her hair pinned up, save for a few loose tendrils curling down her neck and the sides of her face.
“Smells good,” he said. The kitchen was warm and smelled of oats and honey.
She started at the sound of his voice and looked up, wide-eyed. “I didn’t hear ye come in.”
“What’s that you’re making?”
“A treat for your da,” she said with a smile. “He has a sweet tooth, ye know. And I’ll have some left over to take to Annie up the road. She’s just had a new babe.”
Ian rolled up his sleeves and came around the table to stand beside her. “I used to help my mother in the kitchen.”
She gave him a sideways glance. “I’m sure you were a verra big help to her.”
“Ach, I’m hurt ye don’t believe me,” he said. “Come, I’ll show ye how good I am.”
She raised her eyebrows, showing him she suspected he wasn’t just talking about his cooking skills.
He wasn’t.
She dipped a wooden spoon into the honey jar and dribbled honey over the oat mixture.
“Dina was supposed to be helping me.” She gave the wooden spoon a hard whack against the side of the pan. “There it’s done.”
“Ye won’t be seeing Dina this afternoon,” Ian said, taking the spoon from her to lick the honey off. “She and Alex are… keeping each other company.”
Her hands stilled, and her cheeks turned a couple of shades of red. “So that’s the way of it.”
Ian was pleased for the opportunity to warn her off Alex. “I hope Dina doesn’t expect to be the only one.”
“I hope Alex doesn’t, either.”
He laughed, then added for good measure, “Alex is not the sort of man to stay in one woman’s bed.”
“I don’t think ye are in a position to criticize Alex, when ye can hardly claim to have been living the life of a saint yourself.” Sìleas picked up the pan and slapped it down so hard the table rattled. “That helps settle the mixture. I’ll wait to cook it ’til they’re home.”
Ian leaned into her. “I’m living a monk’s life now, if that’s any comfort to ye.”
“Ach, such a sacrifice,” she said, as she moved ingredients around on the table for no purpose he could discern. “What has it been, all of a week?”
He moved behind her and took a firm hold of her hips. Ah, she felt good against him.
“A week seems a verra long time,” he said as he nuzzled her neck, “when every moment of it I’m wishing I had ye naked.”
He kissed the side of her neck and felt her pulse racing beneath his lips. She drew in a sharp breath when he pressed his throbbing erection against her buttocks.
“I’d love to lay ye back on the table here,” he said, as he ran his hands up her arms.
“Shhh! Someone might come in and hear ye.” She sounded scandalized, but she shivered at his touch.
“No one else is at home,” he said, nipping at her earlobe. “ ’Tis just you and me.”
Her breathing changed when he slipped his hands around her ribs and stroked the underside of her breasts with his thumbs.
“I’m thinking that the first time I make love to ye ought to be in our marriage bed,” he said. “But if ye say here on the table, I’m a willing man.”
Sìleas wiped her hands on her apron and made a show of pushing at his forearms. “Let me go now.”
This was no serious resistance. When Sìleas told him no and meant it, she hit him with a skillet and stood over him with a blade in her hand.
He blew on the back of her neck and was rewarded when a “mmmm” escaped her lips. Her skin was soft and creamy as fresh butter and smelled of cinnamon and honey. Needing to taste her, he ran his tongue along her skin above the edge of her gown.
He cupped the soft fullness of her breasts and had to squeeze his eyes shut against the surge of lust that filled him. Oh, God, how he wanted her.
When he found her nipples, she made a low sound in the back of her throat that drove him mad—and he was determined to hear it again. As he rolled her nipples between his thumbs and fingers, she dropped her head back against his shoulder, and her breath came fast and shallow.
He tried to catch his own breath. She was like soft wax in his hands now, hot and molding to his touch. This time she was going to let him get under her skirts, he knew it. Heaven help him, he was going to explode right here if she kept moving against him like that.
It was time to take his wife upstairs. At last. Just as he was about to lift her off her feet to carry her up, he noticed a mark on her neck.
It was a white line, barely visible. A scar.
He ran a finger over it. “What’s this from?”
She went rigid. When she tried to jerk away from him, he held her in place.
“How did ye get this?”
“ ’Tis nothing,” she said. “Let me go, I mean it now.”
He pushed the edge of her gown down an inch or two for a better look. The scar continued down her back, out of sight.
She turned around in his arms and rested her palms on his chest. Looking up at him from under her lashes, she said, “I want ye to kiss me.”
His gaze locked on her full, parted lips, and he was sorely tempted. But why was she so desperate to divert him? When she slid her hands up around his neck and leaned against him, it was damned hard to resist her.
He brushed her soft cheek with his thumb. “What is it that ye don’t want me to know?”
She pressed her lips into a thin line and narrowed her eyes. Her brief game of seductress was over. A shame, that. But something here didn’t sit right with him.
Each time he had kissed her, things had gone well—very well—until the moment he began unfastening buttons or hooks. As he thought about that, it came to him that this was the first time he’d seen her with her hair up.
“Ye can cooperate or no,” he said, “but I’m going to have a look.”
Her bottom lip trembled. Saints above, what was this about? Sìleas never cried. Even when she was a child of six and her father forgot her places, leaving her to find her own way home, she hadn’t shed a tear.
He kissed the side of her face and gently turned her around.
“Don’t,” she said in a small voice, but he could tell she had given up expecting him to concede.
His fingers felt big and clumsy as he unfastened the tiny hooks. When he had them undone to her waist, he pushed the gown off her shoulders. The chemise she wore beneath it dipped low enough in the back for him to see what she was hiding.
Rage took him like a storm, pounding in his ears and making his hands shake. He reached around her to slam his fist on the table. “I’ll kill him. I swear, I will kill whoever did this to you.”
She was weeping silently, but he was so filled with violence that he was afraid to put his hands on her.
“Who did this to ye?” he asked. “Ye must tell me.”
She wiped her face with her hand. “Who do ye think? My step-da.”
“Ach, Sìl, why didn’t ye tell me?” He wanted to throw his head back and howl in his outrage. She had still been a child when Murdoc did this. “If I’d known he was hurting ye, I would have done something.”
But he should have known. He had always been her protector, and this had happened under his nose.
“When did he do this?” He strained to soften his voice, knowing anger was not what she needed from him now, but it was hard when his body still pulsed with it.
She took a shaky breath. “Mostly Murdoc didn’t trouble himself with me. As ye know, he expected my mother to give him a son who would inherit Knock Castle.”
Sìleas’s mother had lost several babes before they reached a year. And Ian had no idea how many miscarriages the poor woman had.
“After she died losing that last baby, Murdoc got it into his head that he could keep my lands by wedding me to his son Angus. He gave me no peace after that. When I told him I would never marry a MacKinnon, let alone that disgusting son of his, he tried to beat me into agreeing to it.”
Ian clenched his jaw until it ached to keep from shouting curses. Years ago, Angus MacKinnon had nearly caused a clan war by raping a woman from Ian’s mother’s clan, Clan Ranald. The matter had been settled with a hefty payment, but hard feelings remained—as did rumors of Angus’s penchant for violence.
“But ye know how stubborn I am,” Sìleas said, glancing over her shoulder to give him a bittersweet smile. “In the end, Murdoc locked me in my bedchamber and sent for Angus.”
“And that was the day I found ye?” Ian asked, though he already knew the bitter truth.
She nodded. “Murdoc didn’t know about the tunnel.”
Christ, forgive me. All this time, he had blamed Sìleas for their forced wedding. He thought she’d caused it through some girlish foolishness that had gone farther than she expected. He’d had no notion she was in serious trouble that day.
But then, he hadn’t made much effort to find out, either.
She covered her face and said in a choked whisper, “I knew ye would find me disgusting again once ye saw it.”
“God help me, Sìl, how can ye say that?” He turned her around and pulled her against his chest. “Please tell me ye don’t think so little of me.”
He held her tight and kissed her hair until she ceased to weep. Then he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the stairs.
Sometimes words were not enough.