Page 59 of The Scot Beds His Wife
Verbally. And now… physically.
It occurred to him to resent her. In fact, he had at first, for the sole reason that she’d kept Erradale from him. Now his motivation for umbrage had just become a great deal stronger. It wasn’t that he no longer desired Erradale; he did. More than ever. But now he desired something else.
Someone else.
And this yearning certainly complicated things. Convoluted his intentions. It made him analyze his own needs. Question everything he knew about himself.
Such as, why should he be more distressed over the near loss of hisobstacle,Alison Ross, than the loss of hisdesire,Erradale?
She’d said that her demise would remove his last impediment to claiming Erradale as his own, and he’d objectively acknowledged the veracity of her statement.
But the moment he’d thought her lost to him, the moment he’d tried to wake her with no success, all thoughts of Erradale had vanished like wisps of vapor before the sun.
All that had mattered was that she survived. Because without her, Erradale would be… empty. Like his bed.
Like his heart.
As he stared down into Alison’s eyes the color of the summer sky, both anxious and unfocused by the opium syrup Eammon had administered to her, the well of fathomless emptiness inside him seemed to abate.
She was awake, and despite everything, it felt like a miracle.
The bullet that had torn into her calf had been little more than a flesh wound. Callum had bound it on the roadside while Gavin had winched a tourniquet below her knee that lasted through the frantic ride back to Inverthorne.
It had been the cold that had almost taken her, and Gavin had warmed her by using the oldest and most effective method he knew.
Body heat.
It had taken him all of three seconds to consider his options in that regard, as he’d held her unresponsive body against him while Eammon quickly and expertly sterilized and stitched her leg.
Drawing a hot bath would take too long, and a fresh wound rarely fared well in tepid water. Infection was a risk he wasn’t willing to take.
So he’d ignored Callum’s protests, and Eammon’s raised eyebrows, and swept her up the spiral staircase to Inverthorne’s tower. He made short work of stripping his cloak and her night rail off her. That accomplished, he divested himself of his clothing, and climbed into bed.
Relief seemed too insubstantial a word for the all-encompassing feeling that had taken him once she’d begun to shiver and struggle. After what seemed like an eternity, she’d exhausted her strength, and instead of fighting his hold, she’d relaxed into it. Instinct drove her naked flesh against his, seeking the heat he provided.
Which had aroused, for lack of a better word, another persistent dilemma.
Gavin had always been a clever liar, but he’d never truly been able to deceive himself. He’d known that he wanted Alison Ross for some time now. But it wasn’t until he had her here in his bed, soft, pliant, and tantalizingly nude, thathe realized just how desperate his carnal need for her had become.
He wanted her beside him. Beneath him. Above him.
He wanted her in his bed… in his arms… for longer than just one night.
All he had to do was figure out how to convince her to remain.
It wasn’t that he was by any means grateful that she’d been attacked, that she’d been in danger, but he was never one to let an opportunity pass him by.
He smudged at her tears with his thumb. Thinking that it was certainly difficult to maintain his wits when they leaked from her eyes in soft rivulets of pain. Instead of kissing them away, as was his first instinct, he capitulated to better sense, driven by the confusion and fear he read in her rare, unguarded expression.
It was the look of a fox caught in a snare laid out for rabbits.
He watched her grope around for fabrications made less accessible in her mind by the opium tincture and exhaustion.
When it became obvious that she wasn’t going to answer his question about her attackers, he changed tactics.
“How do ye fare, lass?” he murmured gently, surprised by how much he really wanted to know. “Does yer leg pain ye overmuch?”
Wordlessly, she shook her head.
