Trapped with the Devil of the Highlands (Falling for Highland Villains #3)

Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

“This is hopeless.” Paisley wrestled with the mountain of coverlets and blankets that she had hoped would weigh her down into the realm of sleep.

No such luck.

Untangling herself, sweaty and frustrated, she sat on the edge of the bed for a moment and looked around the unfamiliar room. The fire had died down to nothing, allowing the whistling wind outside to slip past the defenses of shutters and thin glass. Her breath plumed in the frigid air, and she grabbed one of the blankets she had discarded, wrapping it tightly around herself.

I would have been warmer out in the woods…

She might have slept better, too, if a strategically placed tree bough had deigned to knock her out for a while.

In her blanket cloak, she hissed at the cold touch of the floor against the soles of her bare feet, tiptoeing to the fire to try and stoke it back to life. If anything, she made it worse, the blackened logs crumbling in on themselves, the ash smothering what was left of the embers.

“Kitchens,” she muttered. “This castle must have kitchens. Kitchens are always warm.”

Snatching up another blanket for good measure, she abandoned the unfamiliar bedchamber that kept denying her rest and slipped out into thick silence.

I managed to fall asleep at the inn. So, why nae here?

The question perplexed her overtired mind as she padded down a shadow-steeped corridor, her right hand fumbling for the door to the endless spiral of staircases. She knew it was somewhere nearby, but everything looked twice as disorienting in the barely torchlit dark.

Finally finding the narrow doorway, she pushed it open slowly, nerves grating at the faint shriek of old hinges. She paused, but no one came, no one called out, giving her the confidence to sneak into the stairwell.

He never said I was a prisoner.

Tightly gripping the rope that hung from rusty rings like a banister until her knuckles were bone white in the meager torchlight, she prayed to the heavens for surefootedness. Falling and breaking her neck at a castle so far from her parents was not part of her grand plan, though the notion did have a hint of divine punishment.

“Thank ye. Mercy, thank ye,” she whispered, reaching what she assumed was the last step, since there was nothing but a door ahead of her.

She pushed it open and yelped as she was nearly yanked out with it, a fierce wind slamming the door against the stone walls.

I went the wrong way. I went the wrong way, but I cannae climb those stairs again.

She groaned and poked her head out of the doorway, squinting against the lashing gusts that tossed tiny grains of rock at her face. Being so high up in the mountains, she wondered if the winds were ever gentle.

The scudding clouds sailed past the moon, allowing silvery light to cascade down onto the unknown territory she had not yet wandered into. A heavenly light, illuminating a scene she could not have anticipated—a beautiful garden, sheltered by a natural curve of rock, tucked between the mountain and the walls of the castle.

“What is this place?” she whispered, ignoring the wind that flapped her blankets, and walking into the peace and serenity of that perfect secret garden.

If ever there was somewhere that could grant prayer and calm reflection to help her navigate her situation with Camden, this was it.

Ye’re a tricky thorn to remove.

Camden pulled himself out of the icy waters of the corrie loch, high up in the mountains above his home—a lake formed in the absence of the glacier that had once existed there. He had hoped the shock of the cold water and the exertion of swimming back and forth would rid him of thoughts of the little nun, but the quietude had only invited more thoughts of her into his head.

I could be warm in her bed, exertin’ meself in a way that’d tire us both into the most blissful sleep.

The thought undid any success the cold water had made in tempering his desire for the woman he could not have.

He closed his eyes and let his mind run wild; he was far away from the castle, so it was not as if such thoughts would lead him to her bedchamber. What was the harm in a little fantasy, when the water and the swimming had not worked?

He lay back on the blanket he had laid out on the smooth rock that bordered the loch and draped an arm over his bare stomach, reclining naked beneath the moonlight.

Paisley came to him in an instant, emerging from the loch like a selkie who had shed her seal skin. Water dripped from her bare body, droplets glinting like jewels on her moon-pale flesh, her approaching footsteps leaving wet prints on the rock.

“Why are ye always asleep when I want to touch ye?” she purred, her green eyes hungry with desire.

Camden smirked at the detail in his daydream, fully aware that the sheltered nun would never say such a thing in real life.

“Maybe I’m just pretendin’ so ye’ll come closer. Maybe I’m lurin’ ye in,” he replied in his imagination. “After all that swimmin’, ye must be cold as anythin’. Why nae sit yerself down somewhere warm?”

Voluptuous hips swayed, ripe breasts bouncing slightly, firm thighs and soft stomach rippling with each step. His eyes savored the glorious vision of her. He had some idea of what she would like if she would but let him peel away her garments, and his mind filled in what he did not know.

“I dinnae see anywhere warm to sit,” she replied, standing over him.

She swept her fiery hair over her shoulders, the long, curly locks tumbling down her breasts. Toying with him, permitting only glimpses of plump flesh and erect nipples that he longed to draw into the heat of his mouth. He groaned in the back of his throat.

“Ye dinnae ken what ye’re doin’ to me,” he said huskily.

She chuckled. “Aye, I do. I can see it for meself.”

“And ye’ll nae put me out of me misery?”

“That depends,” she replied, slowly sinking down to her knees.

“On what?”

She slid one leg over his hips and followed the motion until she straddled him, her hands braced against his chest. Leaning down, her vibrant red hair tickled his bare skin, flooding his senses with the sweet scent of her as she bent all the way to his ear.

“On how badly ye want me,” she whispered.

He grabbed her hips, pulling her forward, imagining the glide of her slick heat against his hardened manhood. It was more than he could bear, the fantasy of her leading him to take himself in hand.

“I’m still nae convinced ye want me,” Paisley moaned into his ear as he pictured her rocking back and forth over his length, pleasuring herself as much as she pleasured him.

He enjoyed anticipation as much as the next man, but this was his fantasy; he did not have to deliciously torture himself any more than necessary.

His breath grew ragged beneath the moonlight, imagining her catching him on her forward stroke and sinking down onto him with a shuddering sigh…

Rather than stoke his fantasy to its inevitable conclusion, he stopped and sat up, shaking his head.

“What am I doin’?” He swept a hand through his wet hair and got up, putting on his clothes.

He had not fantasized like that since he was a lad, and he rarely needed to tend to himself when carnal desire overwhelmed him. It was beneath him, in many ways—the behavior of an inexperienced youth, not a seasoned Laird. Damn the wee nun for making him feel like this.

Of course, it’d be a nun to have this effect on me. Well played, God. Some way to prove yer existence…

Slinging his quiver and bow over his shoulder, he headed for home, keeping his eyes peeled for any night creatures that might be stalking the tufts of woodland higher up the mountain. But he was distracted, his mind still at the loch’s edge, lamenting the impossible.

A month and she’ll be gone. A month and I’ll be free to take any number of lasses to me bed. Mayhap at the same time.

The thought did not stir him as it might have done before. He wondered if the frosty water of the loch, paired with the bite of the night wind chilling his damp skin, had worked a little too well at cooling his loins.

“And how are ye on this bitter evenin’?” Paisley asked a trellis of snow-white clematis and a border of light purple asters, the blooms barely swayed by the wind in their sheltered domain.

“Ye’re very beautiful,” she said, gently touching the petals. “Has anyone told ye that of late? It’s vital that ye ken, so ye can bloom even more prettily.”

One of the nuns at the convent had once told her that talking to plants of any kind would encourage them to grow big and strong. Paisley had thought the nun was teasing her at first, until she saw the same nun’s raspberry bushes bulge and sag with the weight of abundant fruit in the summertime, like they wanted to pay the nun back for her kind words.

“They’re all livin’ beings, lass,” the nun had said with a smile. “All God’s creations. Where would any of us be without some encouragement?”

The next year, Paisley had whispered and sung lullabies to her patch of rosemary and lavender. The herbs had flourished, and she had learned a valuable lesson: not everything that seemed ridiculous was ridiculous.

But this is, is it nae? Me bein’ here, waitin’ for Laird Cairn to tell me what it is that he actually needs from me, and why it’ll take a month, while me parents are miles and miles away.

She sighed and sank back on her haunches. “If ye were here, Cecilia, ye’d ken what to do.” She paused, heart heavy with the thought of her best friend. “I hope ye’re safe. I hope ye made it further than me. I hope ye’re well on yer way to Morris lands, and I pray that nay trouble finds ye.”

The patter of skittering stone catapulted that heavy heart straight up into her throat, her head whipping around. She squinted at where she thought the sound had come from, but the clouds took that opportunity to drift across the moon, muting the only light she had to see by.

“Is someone there?” she whispered.

It was a question that she did not want to be answered. Not in that uneasy darkness, in a corner of Scotland she did not know, among strangers who had no reason to help her.

Paisley scrambled to her feet, her blanket cloak flapping like great bat wings as the garden lost its charm. She needed to get inside, return to her bedchamber, and once the reassuring daylight slipped in through the windows, she would demand an audience with Camden. This time, she would not leave his presence again until she knew, without a doubt, what it was that he wanted from her. Rather, why she was here at all, so far from her parents.

Reaching the door that would take her to that faraway room of sanctuary, a startled gasp shuddered out of her as a voice growled in the dark behind her, “What’s a wee thing like ye doin’ out alone at this time of night?” A low whistle followed the words. “And dressed so scantily, too.”