The Laird’s Runaway Bride (Charmed by the Sassenachs #1)

Chapter 19

19

As Arran and Amelia lay beside each other in their bed, she breathed a sigh of relief.

When they had taken her, she had been fearful that she would never find herself in this place again. That she would never, as long as she lived, feel such comfort in this man’s arms again. But now she was here, she knew she should have had all the faith in the world that he would come for her. She would never doubt him again, not as long as she lived, and, as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close, a small smile curled up her lips.

His arms were snaked around her like a vine, as they had been from the moment the two of them had been alone together once more. Mairead had insisted on drawing her a bath and allowing her to wash and change before she settled in for the night, apparently horrified by the news that one of their own—Effie—had turned against her and shared news of her with the MacAllan clan.

But now, with his face pressed into her hair and the sound of his slow, steady breathing against her ear, she felt at peace. Even more so than she had before. She had felt, for a moment in time, what it would have been like to be pulled from his arms, and she never wanted to go through it again, not as long as she lived.

“Did you think I had left you?” she asked him softly, finally, as she lifted her head from his chest and looked into his eyes. He hesitated for a moment.

“Aye,” he confessed, at last, his gaze sliding away from her. “But no’ because of anything you’ve done. Because…”

He trailed off, but she was sure she already knew where his mind was going.

“Because of your mother?”

He stared at her for a moment, frowning.

“Did someone tell ye?”

She shook her head.

“No, nobody’s said anything to me about her,” she replied. “Nothing that I believe, anyway.”

“Effie? Did she tell ye something?”

She hesitated, but then, deciding that honesty was the best policy between them, nodded.

“Yes. She told me that… that your mother was an Englishwoman, and that she fled the Keep one day. And that you had all the English people and outsiders in the land slaughtered in your rage at her.”

He snorted with amusement.

“Is that what she told ye, aye?”

She nodded.

“Well, she got some of it right,” he admitted. “She was an Englishwoman. And she fled the Keep, a long time ago.”

She smoothed a hand over his chest.

“I’m so sorry…”

He shook his head.

“Dinnae be,” he replied gruffly. “She… she was probably right to do it. She and my father, ye see, they were an arranged marriage. She was sealed to him to secure a deal between their families, I dinnae think she ever truly cared for him.”

She shivered at the thought. To be trapped in a marriage to someone you didn’t care for… It was a fate that she had come perilously close to enduring herself, and one that she was relieved she seemed to have escaped.

“But she cared fer me,” he continued. “She’d always tell me that. And she took good care of me when I was a wean. I’m grateful to her for that. But as soon as my father died, when I was fifteen, and the run of the Keep fell to me… she left.”

Silence hung in the air between them. She could hear the pain in his voice, and it ached deep in her soul to hear him hurting so badly. She wished she could reach within him, lift some of this weight from his shoulders, but she knew it was not so simple. At least, she hoped, talking about it might go some way to salving his pain.

“Why did she do that?” she wondered aloud. He shook his head.

“I dinnae ken,” he admitted with a slight laugh. “I never had a chance to ask her, after all. But if I had tae guess…”

He paused for a moment, considering it. It was clear that he had done all he could to keep from pondering this question, perhaps because it would have been too painful to consider, after all he had been through.

“She was finally free,” he replied simply. “She had done her duty by my father, by me, and she wanted to live some life of her own.”

Her heart caught in her throat at the sound of his words. Freedom… It was something that she had come to treasure in her time here, but she could only imagine how oppressive this place must have seemed if it had been a prison instead of a pasture.

“Did you never think of looking for her?”

He sighed heavily.

“Aye. I thought of it a lot, especially in those early days, soon after she left. But I was so busy with the Keep, with my people, I hadnae found a chance to go after her. And, by the time I did… I decided that she deserved her freedom. Whatever she had found out there, it was clearly better than what she’d had here. And who was I to go after her and prove her wrong?”

She reached up to stroke his face softly. She could see a furrow in his brow. All at once, he looked older than he had before, the weight of all of this pressing on him.

“That’s very kind of you,” she murmured, and he managed a small smile.

“Aye, and I managed to do it without slaughtering every Englishman in the country,” he chuckled. “No matter what Effie might have told ye.”

She managed a slightly shaky laugh as well.

“And you still keep her portrait outside your study?”

“I want to remember her like that,” he explained softly. “As my mother. The woman who cared for me, who raised me. The woman who taught me so many of the stories that I keep in there.”

She smiled.

“I hope we’ll be able to pass them on to our children, one day,” she remarked, a little shyly. Though the two of them had not much discussed the possibility of having children, it was only a matter of time, especially now they were back together.

“Bairns, aye?” he mused out loud, a grin spreading wider across his face as he pulled her closer. “You think we’ll be having bairns soon?”

“I think we should set about trying,” she flirted back, a little playful. He chuckled, as he lowered his mouth to hers. As she snuggled against him, losing herself to the sweetness of his embrace, she knew that this was where she belonged; at his side, in his arms. With the man she loved.

He pulled her against him, her back to his stomach, and pressed his hips against her. Even now, he was thick with desire for her, and the warmth of his touch shuddered pleasure all the way through her body. She gasped, reaching back to run her fingers over his neck, as he planted a kiss against her shoulder, pulling down her dress to expose an inch or two of bare skin.

The feel of his mouth against her flesh was alchemic, sending a throb of want through her whole body. His hands slid down to her skirts, pulling them up over her hip, and reaching beneath to draw down her underthings. His hand groped hungrily for those parts of her body that had been hidden, the parts of her that existed for only him. As his hand moved with a practiced ease between her legs, she found her thighs parting, her body warming and softening at his touch.

“Please…” she murmured to him. She didn’t need to tell him what it was she wanted from him, no, he knew that already, and, as he slowly slipped his kilt off and drew his manhood into his hand. Her sex tingled with anticipation.

He did not make her wait long for the satisfaction she so craved. A moment later, he planted himself at her warm, willing entrance, and eased himself into her with one, smooth stroke. Her fingers clenched at the covers before her as his hand slid to her belly, pulling her back against him, their bodies flush against one another.

She could hear his hungry breath in her ear as he began to move inside of her, his tongue tracing briefly over her lobe and down the side of her neck. She squeezed her eyes shut, drinking in every moment of sensation, every second of this closeness that they shared, the very same closeness she had been terrified that she would lose and never get a chance to experience again.

But she would. She had. She would have him as often as she wanted, this man who pleased her in ways no other had, in ways no other could. His mouth pressed to the throbbing vein in her neck as he grasped her hip and moved into her in long, deep strokes, filling her to the point where there was no room for anything else but how good he felt, the pleasure that was swelling in her breast and moving through her to consume every part of her…

And it was like that, in his arms, that she reached her release at last. Her body pressed to his, her hips nestled against him as the pleasure tried to find some way to express itself. He grazed his teeth against her neck, a reminder of the wild man that hid beneath his loving exterior, and, with one more thrust, she felt him crest inside of her, stilling himself there as he savored the moment.

He made no move to pull back as the two of them panted to catch their breath. He reached around to draw her lips to his, and she kissed him, almost frantic, but, as she felt his tongue slip into her mouth, she began to soften and relax.

Because she was safe here with him. She was where she belonged. In the arms of the man who loved her.

With her husband. Once and for all.