Highland Thief by Alyson McLayne

Twenty-Two

Isobel shook out Kerr’s almost-dry plaid and carefully laid it on top of another plaid that she’d spread on the floor of the cave. She kneeled down, pleased with the softness of the makeshift bed, and then flattened out any ripples in the material.

She wanted everything to be as close to perfect as possible for Kerr’s return.

A small fire, encased in a ring of rocks, burned in the center of the cave, and she glanced around the enclosure, looking for something else to do. She’d already cleaned up the area as best she could and laid out her arisaid beside the fire to finish drying, as well as Kerr’s saddlebag, his sporran, and everything that had been inside them—including a hairbrush, which she would take advantage of later.

Outside, a horse nickered in greeting, and she rushed to the cave’s entrance. Fortunately, the sky was clear and the moon bright, and she easily made out Diabhla a few feet away, loosely tied to a tree outside the cave. Kerr’s large figure approached, carrying an impossibly big load of wood. The sight made her shiver, and that soft place between her legs swelled and tightened with need.

She couldn’t wait for him to come inside.

During their swim to shore, she’d been too frightened to think about anything except drowning, but after that had come long hours riding Diabhla, in which all she could think about was seducing her husband, especially when his big body had been pressed tightly behind her in the saddle. Although the sight of him jogging through the forest beside the stallion in his thin white shirt that fell midway down his thighs had been just as arousing…and inspiring.

She’d had so many ideas, she didn’t know where to start.

She quickly loosened the tie of her white linen shift so the neck fell open, and then fluffed out her tangled hair, hoping that the light from the fire would shine through the thin material and reveal a sight too tempting for him to resist.

She intended to become Lady MacAlister in more than name tonight.

He glanced up, and when he stumbled upon seeing her, she dipped her head to hide her smile. “Are you well?” she asked.

“Aye,” he said huskily. “I tripped on a rock. It’s been a long day.”

She stepped back as he drew near, dropping her lashes enough to be seductive. “Come in then. I’ve made our bed. You can lie down, and I’ll rub your brow.”

He stopped abruptly and turned to her, one eyebrow rising. “I’ve known you since you were two months old, Isobel MacKinnon, and I’ve ne’er heard such a tone from you. Or ever imagined you’d utter such words.”

She pouted, trying to make it look pretty.

His other eyebrow rose. “Or make a face like that!”

Her eyes narrowed, and her hands flew to her hips. He grinned. “That’s more like it.” Then he dumped the extra wood by the fire.

“Should I just take my shift off, then?” she asked, pleased to see his head jerk up and his grin disappear. She started to gather the material in her hands, raising the hem inch by inch, biting her lip to stop her satisfied smirk when his shirt quickly tented out in front of him.

“Nay!”

“Are you sure, husband dear?” She raised it over her knees and kept pulling.

His skin had flushed, and his eyes, fixed on her bare flesh, glittered in the firelight. “Isobel, wait…please.”

She pulled the material up another few inches, her thighs almost fully revealed now, and teased him with the darker depths hidden beneath. Just when it seemed as if she would pull the shift all the way up, she turned to their bed, put an extra swing in her hips as she walked toward it, and sat on the plaid. “I’ll wait, but only if you bring me the hairbrush and come sit with me.”

Kerr exhaled a long, pent-up breath and rubbed his hands over his face. “I doona think that’s a good idea. We’re both tired, and we canna wash before bed.”

“We were swimming earlier today.”

“And since then I’ve run through the forest, gathered up two loads of firewood, and been on a horse—you have too.”

Her eyes fell on the full flask hanging from his belt. They’d finished the ale on the trail when they’d eaten their meal of cheese and apples, and since then, he’d found water and filled it up. She’d wager he’d washed himself too. ’Twas in his nature.

She rose to her knees, lifted her hem again, and then ripped off a piece of linen from the bottom. She held out her arm toward him. “I’ll wash for you then, dearling. Please, pass me the water.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed. He tried to speak, but his voice cracked. He cleared it and then said, “You doona have to do that.”

“I want to. And then I can wash you.”

“Isobel,” he said, sounding pained. He lifted his gaze to the ceiling and muttered something beneath his breath before saying, “I’m hungry; we havenae had much to eat today.”

She barely held back her grin. “You can eat me.”

His gaze came crashing down, and he seemed to grow bigger, more intense, if that were possible. She used to be afraid of him when he got like this, but now she liked it. All that intensity and attention turned on her. And when he’d been fighting for their lives, she’d welcomed the extra fierceness.

“I doona think you know what that means,” he growled.

“I doona think you want me to know what that means,” she countered.

“Have you done it before?”

She laid the cloth down and sat back on her hip. “Come over here and I’ll tell you. I promise to stay on my side of the bed…for now.” He took a predatory step toward her, and she shivered, the muscles clenching down low in her belly.

Aye, she liked him like this a lot.

“And doona forget to bring me the brush.”

He picked it up and then trudged toward her. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her, that much was obvious—temptingly so—but he was fighting something within himself—a conflict he hadn’t had this morning when they’d almost tupped back at the cottage.

What has changed?

No doubt it had something to do with her almost getting killed. Or maybe her near-drowning. Or the danger they were riding into at his clan.

But none of that mattered. She would always win this battle because she had a secret weapon.

He loved her—he’d said the words, and he couldn’t take them back.

“What are you smiling like that for?” he asked as he released his belt and pulled his sword and scabbard over his head. He laid them beside the plaid, and then sat on the farthest edge before tossing her the brush.

“Like what?” she asked as she caught it, curious to know what she’d been projecting.

“You looked smug.”

“Smug?” She didn’t like the sound of that.

“Aye, but also excited and happy.”

That was better. She started working the bristles through her tangles. “I am excited. And happy. And perhaps also a wee bit smug.” She dropped her gaze to his cock, making such a large, long bulge under his shirt. She was tempted to crawl over there, lift up his shirt, and put her lips over it, but when she raised her gaze to his, he looked even more determined to keep his distance.

He drew up his feet and locked his arms around his knees. “Isobel, I doona think we should do this tonight.”

He’d said it firmly, a steel in his voice he rarely used with her, and it gave her pause. “Why not?” she asked, truly wanting to know. “You wanted to this morning.”

He sighed again. “Aye, but things have changed since then. Things have happened that have made me doubt—”

“Is this because you think you didn’t save me at the beach? Because you did. First, you doona know if you would have been killed or what would have happened before Siv and Eirik arrived. Second, the only reason Siv and Eirik came for us was because of the bond you created with Eirik. You did that by knowing whom to trust and being someone Eirik could trust. He respects you, Kerr. I heard what he said before he left. He thinks you’re a good man. As do I. I couldnae be more proud to call you my husband.”

He stared at her, unblinking, and when a tiny tremor moved through his lower lip, he firmed his mouth. “Thank you,” he said, sounding hoarse. “I hadnae looked at it like that, but…that wasn’t what I was going to say.”

“Oh. Well, what do you doubt, then? Is it me?” A sick feeling invaded her stomach, and she dropped her hands from her hair. “Is it because I’m impetuous at times? Do you no longer love me?”

“Nay, Izzy, it’s not that. It’s…” He pressed his lips together and then inhaled, as if he was trying to figure out what to say and how to say it. “Your life almost changed today—irrevocably. At the very least, you would have been taken prisoner, held captive, and then returned to Gavin. At the very worst… God’s blood, I doona even want to think about the worst that could have befallen you.”

“But it didn’t.” She reached out and squeezed his hand. “I’m here, Kerr, right beside you. Safe.”

“Aye, by the grace of God.”

“Doona you want to celebrate our aliveness?” She yearned to close the distance between them, but she knew this was important to him. He had to get the words out or they’d continue to eat away at him.

“Of course I do. Desperately.” He hesitated, and then moved closer toward her on the plaid. “I had two thoughts running through my head this morning when we were fighting for our lives. How much I love you, and how you’ve barely stepped into the woman I know you’re meant to be. I couldnae allow you to be taken from the world so young.”

Her throat tightened. “I couldnae be taken from you so young.”

“Nay, you’re bigger than me, Izzy. You light up the world. My family—”

“I doona care about your family.”

“You should.” He released her hand to shove his fingers through his hair, tugging sharply on the ends. “When we leave here tomorrow, we’ll ride all day, and arrive at the farm of a woman named Una MacAlister. Una lives on the edge of MacAlister land with her twin lads…who are my brothers.”

Her eyes widened. “How old are they?”

“Fourteen.”

“And their names?”

“Andrew—Andy for short—and Aulay.” He smiled, and the moroseness that had befallen him eased a little. “You’ll love them.”

She smiled back. “I’m sure I will. I canna wait to meet them.” But then her happiness faded as the darkness within him came back.

“Una was taken by my father—who was her laird and was supposed to protect her—as payment against her father’s debts. Her father had been injured before she was born, and they were verra poor.”

Isobel’s throat tightened, and she pressed her hand against it. “What do you mean he took her?”

“He sent his men to their home, dragged her from her parents, and brought her to the castle—where he hurt her and abused her in every way…for months.”

“Nay!” she cried. “How old was she?”

“Seventeen. A lass I’d known, played with my entire life. A lass my ma tried to protect—until she couldnae even protect herself.”

“But surely your people—”

“They did naught, Izzy. Naught when he took Una. Naught when he murdered my mother. Naught when he stole from them and abused them. They were frightened and beaten down.”

He huffed out a breath before continuing. “I know you’ve heard some of the stories, but you should know everything. I killed my father, Isobel. I killed my uncles and my cousins. I spared only one family member—my father’s youngest brother, Dùghlas. He had a gentle soul, and I couldnae bring myself to go after him. He’d already been torn to shreds by his family.”

She cupped his cheek and drew his head down until their foreheads touched, keeping connected to him, close to him. “You wouldnae have done those things if it hadn’t been necessary—to save your people, to save Una.”

“I saved her life, aye, but not her spirit. Her laddies did that. The things my father did to her damaged her body but also her soul. By the time I freed her, she was heavily pregnant and had a fresh scar running down one side of her face. He’d tortured her.”

He said the last angrily, his hands fisting. Isobel squeezed one of them. “What happened to her?”

“She refused to return to the village. By then, her parents were dead by my father’s hand, so the boys were born at the castle. When she was ready, she chose to isolate herself from the world at the farm. It was my mother’s farm, and now it belongs to her.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “And you still take care of her.”

“I help out as much as I can, and I do my best with Andy and Aulay, but it will ne’er be enough to make up for what my father, my family, did.”

“Do the lads know?”

“They know I’m their brother and their laird. And they know that someone cut their mother and I killed him for it. Soon, I’m sure, they’ll know that the man was my father—and theirs.”

Isobel sighed heavily, understanding how that knowledge would affect the lads. How angry they would be—maybe at their father, maybe at the world in general. She hoped they wouldn’t be angry at Kerr, and they would accept his help as they worked through their feelings—and directed their anger appropriately.

“This is the man who bore me, Isobel. This is the blood that runs through my veins. My father liked to break people. He chose his victims carefully. I canna believe he took Una to hurt her father—that poor soul wasn’t relevant to Madadh MacAlister in any way. And she was a pretty lass, but there were many pretty lasses in the village. Nay, he took her to hurt someone else. My mother, maybe. Or me.”

“Because she was a friend?”

“Aye. And because my ma often helped her family.” His voice thickened, and he cleared his throat. “The point I’m trying to make is…”

She waited, but when he didn’t continue, she put the brush down, cupped his other check, and kneeled right in front of him. “The point is that your father was a terrible man who did terrible things, and so somehow that means deep down you must be as terrible and not good enough to be my husband. Is that about right?”

He gripped her hands. “Think about it, Isobel. If someone told me my father was a demon made flesh, I would believe them. He lived to ruin people, to shred their bodies and their souls. And many in his family were the same. What if…”

“What if you’re the same?”

“Aye. Or my blood. What if I ruin our bairns, pollute their bodies with my bad blood? Why would you want to take that chance, take on the dark legacy of my family by becoming my wife when you are worth so much more? Isobel, you could be a queen. You could rule this country!”

“I doona want to rule this country. I want to rule our people beside you. I love you, Kerr MacAlister. As much as you love me. You’re no more polluted by your father’s blood than Andy and Aulay are.”

He dropped his head, shaking it in denial, but she held on tight. “They didn’t grow up with him,” he said. “They ne’er had to return to that castle year after year, not knowing if this would be the year he would stab me through the gut, or kill my horse, or hurt one of my friends. If this would be the year I couldnae protect my ma from him—only to have him kill her when I wasn’t even there.”

He sucked in a heavy, strangled breath that broke her heart, and she wrapped her arms around him, tears streaming down her face. His shoulders heaved, and she tightened her grip, desperate to take all that pain away, to mend the heart that surely must have shattered upon finding his mother dead. How could she piece it all back together?

If Madadh MacAlister were alive today, she would not rest until she’d killed him.

“Our bairns will be as good and kind and loud and annoying as you are, dearling. They will ne’er experience any of the things you described because your mother taught you how to love and be loved, and how to care for people and protect people. How to help others no matter how hard your own life. Their blood willna be tainted because yours hasn’t been tainted.”

They stayed like that for a while, and when she sensed the storm had passed, she brushed her fingers through his hair and nuzzled the side of his neck. “If it makes you feel any better, you must know that I willna be dissuaded tonight. Verily, my love, you doona have a choice. I hold all the weapons, and I will only accept your surrender. ’Tis no point in fighting against it.”

He huffed out a laugh, and then raised his arms and squeezed them around her body. “The bairns will be loud, but with you as their mother, they’ll also be crafty and cunning. I’ll ne’er have a moment’s peace, avoiding their traps and tricks. Not to mention the unwitting suitors our daughters will bamboozle. I’ll die in my grave an old man at forty.”

She snorted. “Our daughters will be too young for suitors when you’re forty.” Then she leaned back and picked up the hairbrush. “Turn around.”

He raised a brow quizzically but did as she asked, sitting with his back toward her. She moved closer, still on her knees, and spread her legs so his spine rested against her. Then she raised the brush and gently pulled it through his hair, running her hand down the locks after the brush.

Neither of them spoke as she moved around his head, brushing from his brow to the tips of his hair that hung to his shoulders. The rhythm of the movement and the softness of the strands under her hands lulled her and helped ease the need she had to comfort him. Especially when he leaned more heavily against her.

She thought he might have fallen asleep, but then he said, “My mother used to brush my hair. No one has done it for me since she died.”

“I will do it for you every night before we go to bed.”

“Every night?”

“Aye.”

“And what if I want to do other things?”

She smiled and pressed more closely behind him, her lips soft against his ear. “Then you’ll have to wait.”

“All right. But doona tell my brothers. I wouldnae hear the end of it.”

She snorted. “I wager they’d tell their wives, and then find themselves at the end of a brush in no time…and asking for it.”

She put the hairbrush down and moved backward on her knees. “Lie down.”

He did, slowly, those dark eyes looking up at her, glued to her face. She leaned down and kissed him, a simple, soft press of their mouths, and then she rose, walked to the fire, and put another log on top.

The wood started to crackle, and the flames whooshed. Turning to him, she grasped her long shift, raised it over her body, and tossed it onto the plaid beside his knees.

A loud exhale blew through his lips, and his gaze drifted over her naked body and back up to her face. “You look like an angel, Isobel. My angel.” He grasped his cock through the material. “What you do to me, love. I’m afraid I’ll lose my seed just by looking at you.” His voice had deepened, sounding more like a growl, and she shivered.

She walked toward him slowly, feeling as powerful and womanly as she’d ever felt. His hips rolled upward as she neared, and a groan rumbled from his chest. Reaching down, he grasped his shirt at the backs of his thighs, lifted his arse, and pulled it up.

“Nay,” she said, and he hesitated. “I want to do it.”

He lowered back down, that huge muscled body still covered at the front—a present she wanted to unwrap. In this moment, he was so beautiful to her—the dark intensity of his eyes, and the thick almost-black silkiness of his hair, the strong planes of his face, and full lips.

“Anything for you, Izzy. I am yours.”

Her heart stuttered, and she stretched her hand out to him. He raised his arm and they linked their fingers together, palm to palm. Then she stepped over his thighs, her legs spreading wide, and she stayed that way, her very center exposed and open to him.

It made her heart race and wetness gather between her legs.

She wanted him to look at her, to be aroused by her.

He dropped his gaze, and she watched, fascinated, as his body changed—a pulse fluttered in his throat, his eyes darkened, a tinge of red spread up his chest and over his neck and cheeks, his lips parted and flushed, looking fuller than before, wetter. His breathing had increased, too, and his chest rose and fell quickly, sometimes jerkily, as the muscles in his belly clenched.

A forbidden, wicked desire infused every inch of her, and she moved her hand to the front of her stomach and rested it below her breasts. Then she slid her palm down her body. He groaned when her fingers pushed through the curls below, the hair slick from her own arousal, and stroked over the hidden nub, sending a pleasurable jolt through her body that made her gasp and her hips jerk forward.

Kerr gripped her thigh in support. His other hand, still holding hers, squeezed tight. “God’s blood, Isobel,” he said hoarsely. “Come down so I can taste you.”

She smiled and shook her head, loving this powerful feeling that flared within her. It turned her body languid, yet burned her up from the inside at the same time. She kept pushing downward, her fingers spreading her swollen flesh. Closing her eyes, she sighed, feeling intoxicated as she hovered over her entrance. It pulsed with an ache that begged to be filled.

When she opened her eyes, the look on his face as he watched her was pure torture…and she loved it.

“I told you I was hungry, Isobel,” he growled, and then he tugged her off balance. She fell forward into his hands with a surprised cry. He held her up by the hips, his gaze glued to hers, and that wicked smile she’d shown him moments ago transferred to his face. “You said that I could eat you.”

She balanced her hands on his chest, shocked but excited too. So excited.

Lowering her down until her knees rested beside his ears, those big hands slipped behind her arse and guided her forward. When his mouth opened wide over all that swollen, aching flesh, every thought in her head shattered.

“Ooooh!” she groaned as he devoured her.

His tongue, heavy and soft, drew up through her folds to the nub at the top, and when he touched it, rubbed against it, the breath shuddered from her lungs in a desperate squeak, only to have him slide back down and start again.

Before long, she’d picked up his rhythm and rocked her hips against him in time with the strokes of his tongue, sliding back as he swept forward, and thrusting forward as he slid back, harder and faster until she felt ready to burst.

“Oh, dear God, dear God!” she chanted, her mind spinning out of control, her body completely at his mercy. He was relentless, holding her in place, using the flat of his tongue up the center and the tip around the nub.

When he actually pushed within her, she lost her mind and began to shake, her pelvis jutting against him as a whimper broke from her throat.

Then she screamed, long and hard, as she reached that pinnacle and fractured into a thousand pieces, jerking and thrashing against him. His fingers dug into the flesh of her hips and thighs as he held her tight, not letting her come down from the peak, driving her upward again.

She fisted her hands in his hair, sobbing from the pleasure, from the intensity that was almost too much.

She tugged on the strands. “Kerr! Please!”

Suddenly, he sat up and raised his knees so she was wedged between his thighs and abdomen.

“Lift my shirt, Izzy.”

Her mind was in a fog, and it took everything she had to comprehend what he was asking. Her body still shook, and that ache—the one he’d driven her up to a second time—had not yet been assuaged.

“My shirt!” he ordered again, hoarsely, almost desperately, and this time she released his hair and dragged her hands down his body to his waist, grasped the material and pulled it up.

He groaned as he shifted his hips and lowered her down. The blunt, round head of his cock pushed through her folds, and she easily slid over the tip. It felt incredible, the growing pressure exactly where she needed it, the feeling of being stretched and filled making her moan.

“Support yourself, Izzy,” he groaned. “On your knees and go slowly, dearling. I doona want you hurt.”

She didn’t listen and rocked her hips roughly until she felt a sudden pinching pain as she slid over him. “Oh,” she gasped, and tried to pull away.

“Nay, Izzy. Doona retreat.” His hand on her waist kept her in place. “Please. I’m barely inside you.”

He released his hand and gently brushed the hair back from her face, his eyes, dark and wild, intent on hers. “Your body will accommodate mine.”

Then he released his other hand from beneath her and palmed her breast, squeezing her turgid nipple between his thumb and finger. She gasped and slipped down a little farther, her flesh giving way. It did hurt, and she sucked in a breath, but it also felt…satisfying, and like she wanted to be connected at the very root of him, joined as closely to him as possible.

She wanted to envelope him all the way inside her body.

Her head dropped back and she closed her eyes, circling her pelvis over him until she was all the way down. “I’m all right, now. My God, Kerr, it feels so good!” Her voice came out deeper and rougher as the carnality of the moment intensified.

He gripped his shirt and lifted it over his head, using it to wipe his face at the same time. Then he tossed it to the side. She stroked her hands up his chest, driving her fingers through the crisp hair and then over his shoulders.

Cupping the back of her head, he nuzzled her neck. “Ne’er in my life have I had so much pleasure or been so happy as I am right now.”

“’Twill only get better. Kiss me, Kerr.”

He pulled her forward slowly and fused their mouths together. Closing her eyes, she breathed out, licked her tongue between his lips, and then gently rocked her hips, allowing her body to soften as she took the weight off her knees.

The fit was tight as she settled around him, but it no longer pinched, and when he was fully lodged inside her body, she nipped his lip and undulated against him, rubbing the tips of her breasts through all that crisp hair.

He responded with a groan and deepened the kiss, his head angling, his tongue hot in her mouth.

She couldn’t get close enough, and when she lifted her arms around his neck and pulled him tightly against her, he wrapped his arms around her back. They held each other, skin to skin, their bodies thrusting synchronously, their lips melded together.

He broke off the kiss and heaved in a gasp of air, one hand dropping to her arse and squeezing. “Izzy, I canna last much longer.”

Lowering his knees a little, he laid her back along his thighs, one hand on her breast, the other squeezing between their bodies. “Does that feel good?” he asked as he circled his thumb over her nub.

She almost laughed at the question, but instead a deep moan came unbidden from her throat. “Aye,” she finally breathed out, the single word all that she could manage. The tension in her body had built so quickly that she couldn’t keep a thought in her head.

His thrusts increased, and he sucked her other breast into the hot cavern of his mouth. First one, then the other, the rhythmic pull against his tongue matching the rhythm of their bodies down below.

Her legs wrapped around his arse, and she dug her heels into him as that rhythm roughened, hardened. She threw her head back, and he grabbed her hips to control her movements.

A keening broke from her throat, rending the air, and then she came apart, her body shaking as powerful waves of pleasure washed over her, stealing her breath.

Right on her heels, Kerr roared and jerked against her. “Isobel!”

She wrapped herself around him, loving this man more than she’d ever thought possible. He held her so tightly she could barely breathe, but she didn’t care, as he continued to whisper her name, his body rigid, his muscles contracted—before he collapsed backward onto the plaid—like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

He loosened his hold with a heavy exhale and cupped the back of her head against his chest, still sucking in air, his heart pounding beneath her ear.

Finally, he puffed out a slower breath that ruffled her hair. He let his arm at her waist fall to the side, while his fingers gently massaged her scalp.

“Lady MacAlister,” he huffed. “’Tis possible you woke the whole of the Highlands with your screaming.” And now he was the one who sounded smug. And she loved it.

When she didn’t respond, he asked, “Naught to say, my love?”

She inhaled a few more times until she had enough air to speak. Still, she had to do so in bursts. “If I had known what I was missing all these years, Laird MacAlister, I would ne’er have tried to dump you in manure.”