Page 16 of Laird of Secrets
“The road looks empty ahead, but best keep under that plaidie until we know for sure, Dougal,” Ranald said.
Dougal ducked under the plaid again, pulling it high over the girl’s head too.
“So your name is not Hector,” she teased.
“Hector MacGregor is my great-great-uncle, a hearty lad who claims he is nearly a hundred.”
“Hearty? How does he manage good health at his age?”
He chuckled. “Old Hector says the fairy magic keeps him young.”
“Fairy magic?” She tipped her head in interest.
“They do say the MacGregors of Kinloch know a few fairy secrets.”
“And do you?” she asked intently.
He shrugged. “More than some, less than others.”
“Fairy lore is very intriguing,” she murmured.
He found her intriguing, he wanted to say. The feel of her in his arms, his body stretched over hers, the plaid cocooning them in strange intimacy, the tension of touch and politeness, of fear and amusement. His thoughts were definitely not on fairies. Every jolt and lurch of the rolling cart brought him into contact with her, so that he felt increasingly on fire.
He was no boy to be aroused without control, nor one to take advantage of a woman for the mere pleasure of it. But by God, he found it difficult to endure her warm, firm body under his, her sweet breath upon his cheek, her heartbeat thrumming under his fingers. He wanted to pull her closer, taste her, caress her, please her.
Stop it, he told himself. He forced himself to focus, her interest at the moment as odd as anything else that was happening. “What do you want to know about fairies?”
“Oh, legends and...sightings. Have you ever seen a fairy?”
Dougal raised his brows, surprised. “Seen them? I have heard that some kinsmen have seen them. My own father—” He stopped.
“Your father has seen them?”
“He is no longer with us,” he answered abruptly. “Strange questions. I would expect you to be complaining about smugglers, or even asking about the glen and the school, not about fairies.”
“I would, but I am fascinated by fairy legends.”
In the murky shadows beneath the plaid, her eyes glimmered like stars, her breath was soft as a breeze. “I am looking at a fairy creature just now,” he murmured, “and she is the lovely queen of them all.”
“That is silliness. I am serious.”
So was he. Just when he should have pulled away, he felt her breath caress his cheek, his ear. A devastating plummet of desire went through him. The cart lurched then, pressing her body instantly to his, her cheek soft on his, her lips perilously close. Before he could draw back, he had kissed her.
Her lips softened, her mouth surrendered for a moment. Just for a moment. Then she pulled away. “Oh,” she breathed, “oh—”
She touched her mouth to his again, of her own accord, surprising him wholly. He groaned low in his throat and gave in to that caress, her body warm and tight in his arms, pulsing, heating, while the cart rumbled onward. Only he and the girl knew what the blanket hid, or how that kiss tumbled full into another as if some magic spell had taken hold of both of them.
He could not account for it, could barely think. He was not drunk. He was his usual sober and wary self, yet this happened. He was fully capable in mind and judgment, yet he was kissing this girl as if he had known her all his life, as if he had loved her forever, as if he was drunk indeed with the lovesickness.
It was like tasting the fairy whisky, or seeing the first bright burst of dawn—unexpected, miraculous, to be savored, a thing that could change a man if he let it.
The kiss renewed itself between them, and he touched his tongue to the soft, moist tip of hers, and pressed his body to hers, hard and ready. He felt her soft moan between his lips.
Sliding his hand along the curve of her hip and waist, sensing the heat of her body, he shaped her luscious curves with his palm. And then halted, fingers taut.
But her hands slid over his shoulders to his neck, her fingers threaded into the thickness of his hair. She wanted this. He did not know what to think, what to do. Slow, sweet, breaths warming, tender exploration—
Then the rumbling cart slowed, and Dougal pulled away, breathing fast, hard. She turned away too, ducked her head, curling on her side and away from him.
