Juliette Miller - [Clan MacKenzie 02] Page 16

  I had some idea about how to offer him such a thing, but, in fact I was entirely inexperienced. I thought of Maisie’s advice to me, before I’d left her this morning. Tease him. Use your body.

  Clearly, the lack of resolution on his part had implanted a layer of tension into Kade’s manner. He climbed off me and reached for the weapons he had discarded. I couldn’t help noticing the swollen bulge of his immense, roaring arousal as he hastily refastened his belts.

  Show yourself. Men simply cannot resist once they see you. “Husband,” I said, sitting up, and making no move to close the sides of my gown. The women of my family had been blessed, as it were, with abundant curves. And I was no exception, despite my slightly slimmer figure. My full breasts still felt ripe and swollen from the play of his mouth and his hands. I touched myself, as he had done, fingering my nipples, teasing them once again into tight buds.

  Kade regarded me warily, but his guardedness was undermined by a glazed hunger that he was visibly attempting to control. “Holy mother of God, lass,” he said, turning his eyes away with a quick jerk of his head. “I’ve a vow to keep to you. Cover yourself or you’ll find me breaking my word for the very first time in my life. And if that happens, there’s no telling what kind of debauchery you’re in for.”

  Instead of instilling fear, as his words might have only days ago, they emboldened me by his obvious—and quite rampant—desire. “I thought I might do something for you,” I said.

  “Nay,” he replied gruffly. “’Tis not about me. When the time is right, you can have your way with me. As it is, we’ve work to attend to. You’re coming with me. Make yourself presentable.”

  A man likes it when a woman takes control. It was with a sense of competitive spirit that I made my decision; I didn’t want Kade to be tempted by my sister’s advances, even if he said he wasn’t, when I should be the one tempting him. I moved closer to him, which he seemed not to notice, so embroiled he was with his own irritability and the task of refitting all his many weapons into their correct placements.

  I reached for one of his hands with both of mine. At my touch, he froze. As I moved closer, my beaded nipple brushed against the flat metallic plane of one of his knives, causing me to shiver with a light sigh. If I was afraid that he might try to ward me off or reject me altogether, it was a fleeting concern. The fabric of my dress had fallen off my shoulders. My breasts were pushed up lightly against him. Without intention, I licked my parted lips in a silent invitation, and his eyes watched the movement with a stricken, beguiled glint.

  Use your hands. And your mouth.

  “’Tis not fair, husband.”

  “What’s not fair?” he said shortly, as though trying to hold off the question and annoyed that curiosity had got the better of him.

  I held his hand and gently pulled it to me, placing his palm on my bare breast. He allowed this, but his look had turned stormy. I felt doubly vulnerable half-naked before him, offering myself to his force and his fury. Yet his refusal and the reasons behind it lit something within me, giving me a new resolve. I kissed a line along his bristled jaw toward his mouth, but he turned his face away. He exhaled in a long, tortured breath. His hand curved around the rounded shape of my breast, and I held it there.

  He exhaled in a light groan.

  “That you inspired in me such a...rush,” I replied, “And took nothing for yourself.”

  “Trust me, wife,” he said. “You pleasure me more than you know. Just seeing you is enough. Nothing could equal you. Just...tasting you—” The admission seemed to jolt some inner sanctum within him. Abruptly, he curled his hand around mine, removing his touch from my skin.

  Undeterred, I placed my unoccupied palm on the solid surface of his upper thigh, resting it on the hard leather of his trews. “I wouldn’t have thought you to be such a sweet talker upon our first acquaintance,” I said.

  He stopped the exploration of my fingers, taking my hand in his own much larger one and removing it from his leg. “Nay, that was obvious by the look on your face. Which is precisely why I made the oath—which I can assure you I’m beginning to severely regret. I told you, one month. Cease this now. I’m a man of discipline and control, but I’m not a saint. Don’t start something you can’t finish.”

  “I can finish it,” I said softly. The effects of my husband’s reverence and desire were inspiring every brazen inclination I might ever have possessed. I hardly recognized myself as I said to him, “Taste more of me, husband. You promised you would.” The sultry memory of our first kiss in the night garden and his whispered farewell only fortified my resolve. My fantasy had become my reality: him.

  His voice was quiet and husky. “I have never wanted anything as much as I want to spend the next week locked away in this turret with my flawless, spirited wife, tasting every inch of your perfection, again and again. And I am reaching the limits of my restraint.”

  I touched my mouth to his, teasing him with tiny licks and bites, testing the very restraint he spoke of. Kade groaned again, a low, savage sound, and I could sense the brimming surge of his surrender was close at hand. He fought it, allowing me to kiss him while remaining entirely motionless, save the willing parting of his lips. I didn’t know how far he would allow me to take him, or what limits he had set upon himself with his promises to ease my fear, but I intended to find out.

  But before I could, a commotion shattered our privacy. A cacophony of heavy footsteps could be heard in the chambers below us. Soldiers’ footsteps, I guessed, and many of them. The hostile voice of my father yelled, “Where is she?” Behind the familiar flare of fear, I felt a fleeting flash of anger at the interruption. Didn’t my father and his soldiers have anything better to do than keep endless tabs on me and my wayward whereabouts?

  Kade grabbed all of his weapons, slinging them into place. And I hurriedly buttoned up the front of my gown. My husband gave me an intense, brusque command: “Stay behind me.”

  With all the poise of a seasoned, confident warrior who had every faith in his own ability, he strapped his sword belt around his waist, securing it. Then he motioned for me to follow him. We descended the small stone spiral staircase to find my father, Aleck, Hugh and two other officers whose names I knew to be Callum and Rupert.

  Four against one. My father and I hardly constituted threats to anyone, but I couldn’t help cataloging the size, the strength and the combined arsenal of my father’s four guards and compare them with my husband’s. Kade was legendary for his war skills, aye, but could he outmatch all four of them?

  “To what do we owe this honor, Laird Morrison?” my husband said pleasantly, but his question was underlaid with a contempt I hoped only I could detect; Kade, clearly, had little respect for the man whose leadership he was now in line to inherit. “We were just surveying our new chambers. Is there something you require of us?”

  “This room is not available,” my father said gruffly. Then, with the barest edge of emotion, he said, “’Tis the chambers of my late wife and is not to be disturbed.” He turned to me. “You know this, yet you insist on going out of your way to soil her memory with your disobedience. Yet again.”

  Always before, in my youth and at my most vulnerable, my father’s words had sounded like wisdom that shone a light on all my inadequacies. Now I could see it for the madness it was. “I am not soiling her memory, Father. I’m honoring it. Eighteen years have passed since her death. We will use this room, and restore it to its finest.”

  “How dare you defy me!” my father bellowed, swaying slightly with the effort. “Men, bring her with us. She will receive her penalty belowstairs, and this time, do it properly, lest she once again forgets her place.”

  Out of habit, I froze, my blood turning to ice in my veins. It was a familiar feeling and one that renewed all the angst my husband had somehow managed to displace.

  But Kade was with me now, standing in all his radiance, between me and my aggressors. In a slow, deliberate challenge, he slid his largest sword from its scabba
rd and held it up. “At the risk of gaining even more of your disapproval, laird, you must be even further down the road to madness than it appears if you think there is any chance whatsoever of you and your thugs laying so much as a finger on my wife.”

  “Your wife,” countered my father, “is my daughter and my charge. As laird of this keep, I will carry out her punishment as I see fit. Now stand aside, Mackenzie, before you live to regret your defiance.”

  Kade’s low chuckle was not one of humor but of utter malice. He pulled a second sword free of its sheath with his left hand. In answer, Aleck and Hugh raised their own swords.

  “I will not be stepping aside, laird,” Kade replied. “You will have to kill me to get past me, and I daresay I’ll take at least you and several of your men with me. And who will lead your struggling army then?”

  “Alternative arrangements have been discussed,” Aleck commented, to which my father momentarily gave him a questioning glance. Aleck took no notice. “You are not the only officer who is fit to lead this army into the future, Mackenzie.”

  “Nay,” agreed Kade. “Credentials, skill and discipline aside, I am, however, the only officer who links your clan definitively with the Mackenzie army, an alliance you sorely need. Think on it, Laird Morrison. If you kill me, you will very decisively break your alliance with not only the Mackenzie clan, but also those of the Munro and Stuart clans. Can you afford to be so cavalier about my death? Over a dusty turret that has been unused for eighteen years? ’Tis in the best interests of everyone if you leave me and my wife to our private chambers, and allow me to do as I’ve promised—assist in the revival of your army and your keep.”

  The murky hatred in Aleck’s eyes as he watched my husband unnerved me. I knew him well enough to see that there was jaunty yet sinister confidence to him that had once been lacking, and something about this realization didn’t sit well. I was afraid of the thoughts going on behind his black, shining eyes. “Perhaps we can explore other alliances,” Aleck said darkly. And there it was. Or was it? An admission? Was Aleck the traitor, plotting with Campbell to reignite the rebellion from here within our own walls? Had his ambition driven him to treachery of this magnitude? Aye, I believed him capable of it. I wanted to point this possibility out to Kade, but I knew I had no need to do so: my husband’s weapons rose higher, his stance becoming more hostile. He looked as though he might strike at any moment.

  My father, however, appeared not to notice either way. He was clearly exhausted by this entire confrontation, too absorbed in his own accumulating ailments to argue further. Perhaps he realized Kade was right. It was also abundantly clear that Kade was not bluffing; if my father followed through on his threat, he and at least several men would very likely be killed, a possibility that seemed to undermine my father’s anger. He coughed several times and when he wiped his mouth, bloodstains tinted the back of his hand. “So be it. Do not expect me to bend so easily to all your requests, Mackenzie.” He turned and addressed Aleck and Hugh. “Men, escort me to the barracks so I may take a drink.”

  With that, and a final combative glare from Aleck, the men took their leave.

  * * *

  WEAK WITH RELIEF, I watched my husband. He sheathed his swords into their scabbards and turned to face me. He reached to finger a golden end strand of my hair. “See?” Kade said. “I swore to you the protection of my body and my sword. ’Tis my duty and my honor. You have nothing to fear now.”

  Still stunned not only by the reverberating effects of our near conflict but also by the weight of my gratitude, I looked up at Kade’s face. The glaze of aggression clung to him, but under it, from the very heart of his emotion, I could read there his sincerity. “Thank you, husband,” I said, entwining his fingers with my own.

  Just then, my stomach made a little growling sound. Kade grinned lightly. “When’s the last time you ate something, wife?”

  “This morning. Some stale bread.”

  “Let’s go down to the kitchens and find some supper. While we’re at it, we can have a chat with the kitchen staff.”

  Still holding his hand, I followed him down the corridor to the staircase, along the back entrance and into the kitchen, where the staff were seated in a very similar position to the one I’d found them in earlier this morning. Kade paused for a brief moment, taking in their position, their obvious leisure, the state of the kitchens. The sight of them did nothing to cool the lingering volatility my father and his men had introduced. I remembered, too, that my husband had other reasons perhaps to feel...unfulfilled.

  “Ladies,” Kade said, approaching them and pulling up a tall stool to half sit on it. Despite the layered turmoil behind his expression, his manner was calm and engaging.

  With his long hair dark and windblown yet somehow still glossy, his muscled bulk still stained by the blood of animals he’d killed, and his eyes like a pair of gleaming stolen coins, the women stared at him with a mixture of curiosity and awe. “You know,” Kade began, “I asked my wife to give a few simple instructions this morning, just before I went out to the barracks to see if I could find a handful of men to accompany me on a day’s hunting trip. If you can believe it, that’s all I was able to find, a handful. Five men out of hundreds volunteered. Five men. Have you any idea what the rest of the men were so busily engaged with?” he asked them, pausing, awaiting their reaction. They stared at him guardedly. “Nay?” he prodded. “No idea whatsoever?”

  Isla obliged with a slow, wide-eyed shake of her head.

  “Well,” Kade said, “let me tell you what they were doing. They were sleeping, well past sunrise, despite the fact that they’re living in relative squalor, the state of their weapons is disgraceful and there are scarcely enough swords to go around. If we were to get invaded this very day—which is not beyond the realm of possibility—we’d be done for. And if my information on the momentum of at least one of several Highlands rebellions currently brewing is correct—and I have every reason to believe it is—we’d have some serious trouble on our hands.

  “So this is the situation I find myself in, if you can imagine,” Kade continued, with overexaggerated pleasantness. “Attempting, unsuccessfully, to deploy several hunting parties. But the men are tired, they say. They were up late into the night with their revelries. And their swords are not sharpened, I’m told. In fact, it appears to me—and I consider myself somewhat of an expert in this area—not a single sword’s been sharpened for possibly weeks, maybe even months.”

  He speared Isla with a glare of conspiratorial outrage, as though not satisfied by her level of disgust at his pronouncement. “Months,” he repeated. “’Tis inexcusable, to be sure. A soldier’s pride is his sword, you see. His honor depends on it. His very life depends on it.” He paused again, as though allowing his words to adequately sink in. He focused on one of the women, a cook whose name I knew to be Jinty. Her rounded cheeks had gone pink with the attention. “Tell me, then,” he said. “When an army of ill-equipped, underskilled warriors such as these is challenged on the battlefield, what do you think the chances of actually winning that battle might be?”

  Kade waited for their input, and when none came, he repeated his question. “Come on, give me an answer. What do you think? Do you think they would win?”

  A smaller, more timid member of the kitchen staff replied with an earnest “Nay?”

  He gave her an intense, congratulatory look. “You’re exactly right, lass. They—we—would not win. There’s not a chance in hell that those men out there would last five minutes on a battlefield against the likes of Campbell and his ruffians—ruffians, by the way, who are growing increasingly lethal, because they’re highly dedicated to their cause, as unwarranted as that cause may be. And do you know what would happen to likes of such dedicated staff as yourselves if we were, say, to be overrun by Campbell’s very big, brutal men, with their lust for revenge and their lack of honor? Have you any idea?” When no reply came from the women, Kade said, more softly, “Aye, it doesn’t bear thinking
about. ’Tis too disturbing, to be sure, to contemplate.”

  It was clear that my husband had a long list of frustrations to deal with, and that the accumulation was getting to him. I had never heard him speak so much, or with such careless abandon. It was true, however, that he had the undivided attention of all in attendance. And he seemed to be coming around to his point.

  “So,” he continued, “what I couldn’t understand is why all these men were sleeping late on this fine morning when there’s clearly plenty of work to be done. And when I explained to them—and why I should have to, I’ve no idea, they’re grown men, after all—do you know what their response to this was?”

  The women, riveted, gave him multiple encouraging shakes of their head in unison and made small, chorusing noises of empathy, wanting now to know where he was going with all this. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t repeat their words in front of respectable ladies such as yourselves, but I can assure you that they weren’t jumping up to agree with me. As you can imagine, since their refusal to comply with my requests makes our collective situation even more dire with each passing day, I was less than pleased by their response. I can also tell you that it put me in a bit of a mood—as I’m sure you’ll understand.”

  Kade took a moment to calm himself, and the women allowed him this, waiting patiently for him to continue.

  “By this time, however,” he said, somewhat more composedly, “the hour was getting later and the deer tend to scatter when the sun warms up, so I and my five—five—men took our leave, and managed to kill ourselves a bounty of seven does and two young stags. So we were able to return earlier than I’d originally thought we might, and I’ve commissioned several of the very same five men—who I plan on rewarding with the choicest selection of cuts from these deer, along with a promotion as soon as I step up—to butcher the meat and bring it to you fine ladies to prepare for the contingent of the army who has agreed to rise early on the morrow and begin dedicating themselves to the considerable amount of work we have cut out for us.”