Page 57 of Hard-Hearted Highlander
His eyes moved over her cheeks, her nose. Her lips. “What would you have me do, then? Forget? Convince myself it never happened? Or worse, that it didna matter?”
Those were questions she’d asked herself. Could she forget? No. Could she pick herself up and go on? She thought she had. “I would have you stop living in the grip of your grief. To live for the future and not what is gone.”
He sighed wearily, as if he’d been so advised before, as if this suggestion were so obvious as to be tedious now. But Bernadette could not let her words hang between them now like the poor man who’d swung on this tree. “You’re not the only man to have lost someone dear to you, or to have suffered a great tragedy, Mackenzie. These things have happened, but you survived them, and if you mean to honor those you lost, you must strive to live, mustn’t you?”
“You think it is as easy as that, do you?”
“I know, from personal experience, that it is exceedingly difficult.”
“Aye, and what experience is that?”
Bernadette didn’t really care to tell him why, or anyone for that matter—but in this moment, standing under this tree, she wanted to assure this wounded man that he was not alone with the pain of his loss. “There is a reason I am a lady’s maid instead of mistress of my own home. I am the daughter of a wealthy man, and I might have made a very good match. But I ruined my father’s life, and he ruined mine.”
She had Mackenzie’s attention. He turned away from the tree to her. “How?”
He was examining her so closely that she could feel color flood her cheeks. She’d not spoken of her tragedy in so long and it felt thick in her throat. “I fell in love with a man my father did not want for me,” she said stiffly. “We...eloped,” she said, avoiding his gaze, and tried to swallow down her shame. “My father sent men after us, and they caught us a few days after we’d taken our vows.” She looked sheepishly at him, and for once, he did not return an impassive gaze. He looked almost pained for her.
“You needna say more, Bernadette.”
“We were, ah...we were at an inn in Penrith, very near the border of Scotland, when we were caught. Those men had bribed the innkeeper to divulge our presence. They burst into the room.” She was shaking, and grabbed the skirt of her gown to keep from it.
“Donna say more, please,” he begged her, and caressed her back.
But Bernadette couldn’t stop. “They took Albert away.” She was startled that after all this time the memory could still cause her voice to catch and her tears to well. She’d never told anyone other than her sister what happened to her and Albert at that inn. “They took him,” she said again, her voice softer. “They impressed him onto a ship. I didn’t know what had become of him, not until a few months later, when my aunt told me that he’d been lost at sea.” Her voice quavered, and she tried, in vain, to swallow down her emotions.
He muttered something in Gaelic and shook his head. “He was lost at sea and I—” She caught a sob in her throat. “I never saw him or spoke to him again after that awful morning in Penrith. My father had our marriage annulled, and I was to pretend as if it had never happened. So you see, you are not the only to have suffered a devastating loss. My loss was just as deeply felt.” She hastily wiped a single tear from beneath her eye. “We are more unlike than either of us knew. The difference between us is that I’ve refused to allow my grief to claim me for all eternity.”
Mackenzie said nothing for a long moment.
Bernadette wanted to flee now that she’d said it, to mourn Albert and the loss of their child again, in spite of all that she’d just said. Her tragedy had never left her. The pain had never really gone away. But she had somehow managed to get on with her life.
“Aye,leannan,you’re right,” he said. “I live in the grip of my grief. From the moment I realized Seona was gone, I resigned myself to the idea I’d never feel alive again. I didna want to feel alive again. I’ve wanted death, I have,” he admitted.
Bernadette shook her head, disturbed by his admission.
“But in these last few days,” he said, turning his gaze to her, “I’ve felt a wee bit of me sputter to life.”
There was something different about his eyes, she realized. There was a light in them that had not been there before. “Have you?”
“Aye, I have,” he said, and put his arm around her waist, drawing her closer. “I donna know how,” he said, his gaze falling to her mouth. “I know only that I’ve been challenged in a way I’ve no’ been challenged before, and it has caused my blood to rise.”
The way he was looking at her now filled her with a potent desire. “Mine, too,” she admitted.
He pulled her into his arms to kiss her. Sensual delirium quickly overtook Bernadette, pushing aside all rational thought. He lifted his hand to her face, touched his finger to the corner of her mouth as he kissed her. What she did was wrong, and every moment she remained in his arms, she harmed Avaline further, but Bernadette could not make herself stop. She couldn’t fathom how much her body and her heart wanted his touch. She’d already fallen, had plummeted into that vat of desire, and had wrapped her hand around his wrist, holding tightly so that she wouldn’t float away.
Somehow, they were on the ground beneath that tree of sorrow, and he pressed his body and the evidence of his desire against her. Something very deep and primal stirred inside of Bernadette, and as he cupped her breast, squeezing it, she ran her hands over his shoulders, up the hard, muscular planes of his chest. His tongue tangled with hers, his hands stroked her body, his fingers sought the hem of her gown.
A heavy sensation of pleasure, not unlike the feeling she imagined of being swept under by a tide, was rolling and spinning through her. Mackenzie’s touch had submerged her into a pool of desire; she was sinking deeper, sinking well below the surface of her awareness and her morals.
He lifted his head, his breathing as uneven and hard as hers. His stormy gray eyes took her in, the intensity of his scrutiny searing, making her feel slightly feverish. Bernadette lost all sense—she was so desperate to touch him, to feel him, that she threw her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her, kissing him as ardently, as passionately, as he’d kissed her.
He made a sound of surprise, but he rolled with her, so now she was lying on top of him, his head firmly in her grasp. He caressed her as he kissed her, then rolled again, putting her on her back once more. He groped for her gown, dragging it up and slipping his hand beneath it, to the bare skin of her leg. Bernadette began to pant as his hand made a slow, torturous trek up her leg, to the fleshy inside of her thigh, and then slid in between her legs. The tide of pleasure was quick to crash through her as he stroked her. Bernadette responded with the force of pent-up desire, harbored and subdued for years, now breaking free.
Somehow, her hair came loose, tumbling down her shoulders in unruly waves. She pressed shamelessly against his hand, her core fluttering with the escalating tension. She nipped at his lips, kissed his neck, his mouth, his cheek, racing toward that moment of oblivion. When her release came, when she could no longer keep her desires tethered to her, she cried out.
His breath was hot on her skin, his mouth wet on her breast as a rolling sea of sensation rocked through her, numbing Bernadette’s thoughts to everything but the feeling of his hands and his mouth and his breath on her skin.
When she could at last open her eyes, he was staring down at her. The storm still raged in his eyes, but it was a different sort of storm than she’d seen in him before—it was desire she saw raging in him now. “Diah,lass, go from me now,” he said gruffly, and rolled away from her. “I want to touch you, all of you, feel myself inside you.”
