Page 1 of The Scot Beds His Wife
PROLOGUE
Ravencroft Keep, Wester Ross, Scotland
The boy they called Thorne lost his virginity at almost sixteen years of age. He’d lost his innocence long before that. So young, in fact, it never occurred to him to miss it.
It was the night his father had bought the bawd Tessa McGrath and brought her to Ravencroft Keep. He’d not have been the first man to purchase a prostitute for the purpose of turning his boys into men. But Thorne had been too young to guess, at the time, that Hamish Mackenzie never intended for his sons to learn to be lovers.
Only monsters, like himself.
The lass had been famous in the Highlands for specializing in the darker side of eroticism, but when she’d accepted the proposition of the Laird Mackenzie, she’d not realized the fathomless depths of his cruelty.
She’d thoughtfully brought her own satchel of playthings. Soft whips, buttery-leather straps for binding or lashing, and other creative and clever devices that even arandy boy of Thorne’s age couldn’t imagine the applications thereof.
He’d tried, as he’d stood next to his elder brothers and looked on in petrified fascination as his father had tied the purring, naked whore to the bed. He’d glanced up at Liam and Hamish, looking for cues as to how he should feel or what to expect.
Hamish the younger, his father’s bastard namesake, had a predatory gleam in his onyx eyes. A malevolent anticipation that puzzled and confused Thorne. He knew that Hamish was no virgin. At twenty, the man had already boasted of a great deal of conquests, willing and otherwise.
Liam, the Ravencroft heir, barely spared the naked woman a glance. He, instead, regarded their father with a grim sort of misgiving. Liam had been born in the middle of Hamish and Thorne, but his mother was Laird Mackenzie’s first wife. The one who died.
The one everyone said their father had killed.
Thorne’s gaze bounced between Liam and the Laird. Their features almost identical. Long hair as black as a raven’s wing. Midnight eyes. Hard, brutal features. He was surprised to note that Liam was almost as tall as Father now. To Thorne’s reckoning, they stood as big as one of the oaks lording over Inverthorne Forest. He didn’t know if Liam had a woman… or women. They didn’t speak much anymore. But Thorne loved his brother with all the gentle ferocity his young body could contain.
Liam was brave. He was strong and stern and protective. Sometimes, when Thorne had been very young, Liam had shown him where to hide when the Laird had been on one of his violent rampages. He’d taken a few lashes or blows that had rightly belonged to Thorne.
And for that, he’d forever love his brother. No matter what.
Thorne wasn’t small enough to fit in the nooks and crannies of Ravencroft anymore, which was why he now sought refuge in the outdoors whenever possible.
Tessa McGrath had been lovely that night. Lithe, with smooth, pale skin and intriguing beauty marks in places he’d never really glimpsed before, but had always fantasized about seeing. The underside of her generous breast. The inside of her thigh. Right above the soft tuft of hair between her legs.
The whore had aroused him. Excited him. She’d writhed and begged, she’d said the things ladies only did in his fantasies, butout loud.
He’d have to tell his closest mate, Callum, about this tomorrow, he thought. The stable master’s boy was a year or two younger than he, but they had spent years romping about Wester Ross and galloping their horses over Gresham Peak to the freedom of the Erradale Moors. Lately, they’d taken to pinching a bit of fragrant tobacco from Callum’s father’s tin, and smoking it behind the Rosses’ cattle pastures. They’d watch the waves bash against the black cliffs, and laugh at the antics of fluffy red Highland calves while speculating at length on just this very thing.
What a naked woman looked like. What she’d feel like. What they someday wanted to do to her. Or what they hoped she’d do to them. They’d spy on Mrs. Ross. A pretty, young, dark-haired lass with sparkling blue eyes and a way to her walk that endlessly enticed them both. She was a strong and shapely woman, with a laugh that carried over the moors and drew answering smiles from the boys. Though she was a cattle rancher’s wife, she always dressed like a fine lady.
On a particularly sunny day, they’d peeked over one of the craggy stones at the base of Gresham Peak in openmouthed stupefaction as James Ross had tupped his prettywife against the barn in front of God and all the cattle. With her dress on and everything, much to the disappointment of the boys, as the particulars of the act had been hidden in endless petticoats. The entire affair had been fast and loud and the couple had sighed and laughed afterward.
“I could marry a woman like that,” Callum announced in his brash Irish brogue.
“Aye,” Thorne had readily agreed. Though he wasn’t so sure… maybe he wanted a woman more like his own mother. Soft-spoken, elegant, and unfailingly kind. Mrs. Ross sometimes yelled at her husband, and once, they’d seen her throw a shoe at him.
Hit him right in the arse.
What kind of woman did something like that?
His mother wouldne-ver.
His father would certainly kill her if she so much as raised her voice to him, let alone her shoe.
God, but he despised his father. Almost as much as he feared him.
Why couldn’t he have been born to people like the Rosses? Simple, happy people. Wealthy in land and holdings, or so he heard tell, but not noble in the least. They lived in their own verdant kingdom, one Thorne visited as often as he could escape his own.
Well, the next time he and Callum slipped away, he’d get to boast that he’d become a man this night. That he’d done all the things they’d held in the scope of their boyish conjecture. And other things, besides.
Sometimes he hated Callum. Envied him his gruff but fair and kind father and endless days of freedom to hunt and haver like a bloody savage. Thorne had been an earl since his seventh year, as his mother’s uncle had died, and he’d been the next male heir in the St. James line. Inverthorne Keep to the north belonged to him now, though his father claimed it in trust and held it as his troth.
