Page 39 of Tempting the Highland Devil
“You’re bonnie,” Arran blurted without control. “Ye are perfect.”
Her eyes melted against his when she parted her legs open again. Her lips held the breathless whisper of hidden desires, and she reached out to touch him.
Yvaine’s fingers skidded over his jaw and over his eyes before she touched his hair. He tightened the reins of his control because tonight he intended to show her what it was like to be desired.
Slowly, with painstaking gentleness, he took her nipple in his mouth, suckled and caressed to make her relax further on his bedding. He had never allowed himself to nurse the thought of having her in his bed. Now that she was here, Arran was certain he would never want to let her go.
He kissed her cleavage, kneaded both golden globes of her breasts, then continued down her body to the curves of her hips. When he began kissing the inner corners of her thighs, she quivered on the bed, and her finger dove into his hair.
Arran absorbed all of her, loving the feminine scent of her essence and her taste. She came apart in his arms as he kissed and licked her to climax. Yvaine clutched the sheets and rocked her hips into his mouth with reckless abandoned.
Her cries filled the air, and the edginess of her gasps made it more intense. When he kissed her thighs again, she trembled, and he pulled himself up to take her lips one last time.
Arran rolled over to the side of the bed and brought her close to his body, so she lay there panting. Neither of them spoke for a while after that, and when she tried to speak, he patted her back and whispered. “Savor the moment.”
Arran wanted to keep them in his bed forever. He did not allow any other thought into his mind. He forgot all about his worries and his past. For that night, he allowed himself to live in the moment of what having Yvaine by his side would be like.
It was a bliss he had always known he would never experience, but now, he wasn’t so sure he could live without it anymore.
* * *
Arran left her sleeping in his chamber and headed for his study when his man-at-arms came to find him.
“It is an ungodly hour, James,” he complained gruffly while rubbing the back of his neck and searching for a bottle of whiskey on the study shelves.
Arran had not been in here in ages. The last time he stood in this study with his father, they had argued about his plans to attack Duncan’s castle. Recalling that his father had been the villain in his best friend’s story always made him tense with anger.
I had the chance to stop him many times, but I failed to do so.It was why he blamed himself for all that happened in the past. His father’s sins were unforgivable. Arran knew that.
“Matters like this dinnae wait for dawn, me laird,” James said to him. “I have tried my best to handle the crisis in the villages in yer absence, but now that ye have returned, it is better ye…”
“I told ye, James. I wish to live as if I am nay here,” Arran answered him when he found the bottle he was searching for. He turned to meet James’ disapproving look. “Dinnae look at me that way. Ye ken as well as I do that the people here dinnae consider me their laird. They ken ye and…”
“They dinnae ken ye, and that is why they dinnae consider ye their laird. I am nay their laird. Ye are!”
Arran stiffened as James raised his tone a notch. “Did ye just yell at me?” He blinked from shock. No one dared speak to him this way—except Yvaine and her brother, of course. Arran usually went unopposed, and his man-at-arms certainly never scolded him in the past.
James immediately lowered his chin then bowed his head. “I apologize, me laird,” he murmured.
“Nay,” Arran spoke up as he walked to James. He thrust the whisky he held forward and added. “I appreciate that ye speak candidly.”
James slowly looked up at him again then arched a brow. “Can I speak freely, me laird?”
“Call me Arran,” Arran replied, still holding out the whisky to James. When James hesitated, he nudged it in his direction. “Have yerself a drink.”
James accepted the bottle with a nod then drank deeply from it.
“The people want their laird. I understand that ye might nay ken what to do, but I am here to assist ye. It is my duty to make sure that ye make the right choices and do the right thin’.
“The villagers suffer, me laird. The other Highland clans refuse to trade with us, many of the farmers cannae sell their farm produce to the castle because ye are nay here, and the others believe that ye a dimwit and so willnae show yer face in front of them.”
Arran laughed at the mention of dimwit. He had not considered that his people would care this much about his absence.
“What do ye think I should do then?” Arran asked James before sitting on a settee. “Me faither ruled for many years in the most terrible way. Many of these people already believe I am just like him, a mad laird who wants naythin’ but power. I dinnae want to be like him, and so I have decided nay to involve myself in these activities. I hope that ye understand that.”
“But—”
“I willnae change me mind on this. The villagers are better off without a laird like me.”
