Brenda Joyce by A Rose in the Storm Page B

did not note how her hands trembled, placing it on the bed beside his waist belt and dagger. The latter winked up at her.
    It was in easy reach.
    “Yer uncle will disavow ye as his blood if ye sleep here tonight. Then ye will need a champion.”
    She shook her head, pulling up her gown—a surcote—and removing it over her head. She heard him inhale. She did not turn, clad now in a thin cote and her chemise. “You do not know Buchan. I will be blamed for the loss of the castle, for allowing you in, for the deaths of everyone—I am afraid.” She was lying now—Buchan would not blame her for attempting to fight the great Wolf off.
    He did not answer her.
    What should she do next? she wondered. Continue to disrobe? If she removed her undergown, she would be wearing nothing but her shoes and her thigh-length chemise.
    “I willna spare the prisoners, Lady Margaret,” he said softly, from directly behind her. “If that is the reason ye have come.”
    She jumped, as he was so close now his breath feathered her ear—and he had taken a hold of her left wrist—but the movement caused her shoulders to hit his chest. His grasp on her wrist tightened, while he clasped her waist with his other hand.
    Her heart somersaulted wildly. What was he doing? She was in his arms. Yet wasn’t this what she wanted of him?
    Had he really just said that he would not spare her men? The intimate position they were in was making serious reflection impossible. Margaret could only feel his breath on her ear, his hard chest, rising and falling against her back, and the heat of his pelvis and loins.
    Her heart was pounding. Every nerve ending she had was taut. “Am I asking you to spare them?” she gasped hoarsely. “I am coming freely, my lord.”
    “Ye do not come freely. Ye despise me with yer every breath.” But he spoke in a harsh murmur, and his mouth now brushed her ear.
    She gasped, because a fire was racing along her arms, and up and down her legs. Did she desire the Wolf of Lochaber? For his arms were around her, and she could not think clearly, except to note how strong and muscular he was, and how warm she was becoming. “No,” she managed to answer. “I have come freely, my lord.”
    His hand on her waist tightened. “Ye think to ask me on the morrow for mercy for yer men. That is why ye seek me in my bed—not for any other reason. If ye stay with me, my answer willna change,” he warned. And his mouth was so close to her earlobe, she could feel his lips brushing her there as he spoke. It was almost a feathering kiss.
    She couldn’t breathe, much less move. An explosion of sparks accompanied his words, his breath. It was as if he had set her on fire, and that fire was racing through her entire body. She was aware of how aroused he was. There was no mistaking his condition. His body was hard and heated.
    What should she do? she wondered, with both panic and breathlessness.
    Alexander clasped her shoulders, pulling her back even more closely against him, and he kissed the side of her neck. Margaret felt the rush of deeper desire then. It was as if her abdomen had been hollowed out, and she felt faint with the expectation of pleasure.
    His hand slid from her shoulder to her breast and over it entirely, causing her erect nipples to tighten painfully. “So ye will stay, anyway?”
    She almost wanted to say yes! But how could she stay with him? What was she thinking? She was Lady Margaret Comyn, the great Earl of Buchan’s niece and ward—she was Mary MacDougall’s daughter! They were the worst of enemies! And he would hang her men tomorrow anyway.
    “I want to stay—I want to save my men,” she somehow breathed.
    “Ye canna save them.” He turned her around abruptly, so she was no longer in his embrace, and their gazes collided. His blue eyes smoldered with lust. She wondered what her own eyes looked like. “I wish ye were a bawd.”
    She hugged herself and stepped back breathlessly. What had just happened? She began to