She set the freshly laundered linens down on a rock and stood to face him, blinking into the sunlight as the glare from his weapons and the bits of steel riveted into his black leather cotun glared in her eyes. But he was dazzling even without the armor, as she was sure he well knew.
He stood no more than a foot away, and her body betrayed her, flushing with awareness. Did he have to smell so good? And be built like a battering ram? How was she supposed to think when all she could smell was warm skin, tinged with the faint scent of spice from his soap, and all she could think about was how strong his arms felt wrapped around her and how hard his chest had been against her breasts?
“Didn’t you hear me calling you?” he demanded angrily.
Her gaze locked on his. At least this time he did not turn away. The pang in her chest had diminished but had not completely gone away. She told herself that his prickly behavior and avoidance after kissing her didn’t hurt.
“I think the entire island heard you calling me,” she replied blithely.
His blue eyes glinted with all the warmth of the cold steel, two-handed great sword strapped to his back—nothing like the hot, bone-melting look in his eyes when he’d kissed her.
She would not think of it. But her gaze dropped to his lips, and she remembered all too well the heated sensations wrought by that too-perfect mouth on hers.
She’d never dreamed a kiss could be like that. That the pull of desire could be so strong. That she could want so desperately from every corner of her being.
His mouth had been so soft and warm, seducing her with every skillful stroke of his lips and tongue. He’d tasted of darkness, of whisky, and of wicked, untold pleasures.
The force of her reaction to him had stunned her. She’d thought herself immune to cravings of the flesh. But she’d never felt like that before. Never had her senses so overwhelmed her. One taste and she’d been drunk with desire. She’d found herself responding. Kissing him back. Sinking into his embrace. Melting against him. Wanting to get even closer. Too aware of the hard press of his manhood against her bottom. And when his hand had cupped her breast …
She shuddered, recalling how easily she’d fallen prey to his seductive trap. What could she have been thinking?
Angry with herself for remembering what she’d vowed to forget—as he’d so easily done—she didn’t bother hiding her impatience. “Is there something you wanted? I’m busy.”
His eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. “I’m sure you are. Is there a reason I’ve returned to find my men not practicing as I instructed but sitting in the caves by the fire half-naked?”
She couldn’t stop herself from giving a careless shrug, even though she knew it would only rile him further. “I don’t know. I suggested they practice with swords later and swim instead, hoping they’d clean up a bit.”
He looked ready to explode. Really, she shouldn’t take such pleasure in it.
“You ordered my men to swim?”
“Suggested,” she corrected in her most officious voice. “It seemed the most efficient thing to do. I noticed their linens were soiled and offered to wash them. I’m afraid there wasn’t much I could do with the woolens other than brush them out.”
The men wore a wide variety of garments from the varying influences in the Western Isles, including the traditional belted leinte, plaids, and cotuns of the Gael, Norse hose and colorful tunics, and knightly vestments like linen braies and wool—or in the finer garments, leather—chausses. Only Thomas wore a habergeon shirt and chausses of mail, but the captain’s black leather cotun and chausses plated with pieces of steel were every bit as fine. Obviously, piracy was a lucrative occupation.
“There is the first half,” she said, indicating the stack on the rock. “The rest will be done by later this afternoon.”
She ran her gaze down him and gave a sharp sniff in the air, inhaling his heady masculine scent. She wrinkled up her nose as if the scent was unpleasant, though it was anything but. “If you wish to add your linens to the pile, I will see them returned to you.”
His face grew so dark, she almost regretted needling him. Almost. But after the way he’d turned her into a soupy mess and then acted as if the kiss had never happened, she would get her pleasure where she could.
The kiss that had left her reeling was nothing to him. Something he’d undoubtedly done hundreds of times with countless other women. Even now he stood there oblivious and unaffected while her body fought the visceral memories of his touch.
His reaction—or lack thereof—was exactly the reason to stay away from him. He never took anything seriously, and nothing penetrated that affable shell. Around everyone but her, that is.
She was acting like a fool even thinking about it. He’d kissed her only because he felt sorry for her. If being thought of as pathetic wasn’t humiliating enough, how quickly she’d succumbed was much worse. Apparently her resistance to his handsome face did not extend to his talented mouth.
It was nothing, she told herself. He couldn’t have made that more clear. A woman who thought differently—who put too much store in a single kiss—was only looking for disappointment and heartbreak.
She had no intention of following her mother’s tragedy. If she gave her heart to a man, it wouldn’t be to someone who would throw it away. Her father had loved too freely to limit his heart to one, not unlike the man before her. But why was she even thinking about this? Love was not for her.
He peered down at the stack of linens. “You did all this by yourself?”
She tried to prevent the heat from rising to her cheeks—unsuccessfully. “A few of the village women offered to help.” When they saw what difficulty she was having, they’d taken pity on her.
His jaw locked and his lips turned white. “Let me see your hands.”
She tossed her head the way she knew he hated, hoping to distract him, and reached down to retrieve the linens. “I need to get these back—”
He’d removed his bandages and when his hand locked on her wrist, she gasped at the contact. Her skin buzzed as if she’d been struck with tiny bolts of lightning.
“Your hands, Ellie,” he growled in a low voice that sent shivers down her spine. “Now.”
Her lips pressed together. He was nothing but a big bully. She tried to jerk her hand away, but he forced her palm open and uttered a crude expletive.
“It’s nothing,” she said, jerking her hand away. “And you shouldn’t use language like that. It indicates a weak mind.”
If she’d hoped her disciplinary tone would distract him, it didn’t.
“God’s wounds, what were you doing? They’re raw and blistered like you soaked them in lye and then pounded them on rocks.”
She lifted her chin, too embarrassed to point out that she’d overestimated the amount of lye in the water tenfold until Meg corrected her. It was all his fault anyway. “You were the one who told me to help out.” She jabbed his chest with her finger, but it was like trying to dent granite. “So stop complaining when I do.”
He looked down at her hand, and she hastily removed it from his chest.
“I didn’t intend for you to be a scullery maid. I’d wager you never washed linens in your life.”
Her cheeks flamed. “What difference does it make? I saw something that needed to be done and I did it.” Admittedly, with some help.
An ominous tic appeared below his jaw. The sign of temper fascinated her—a small crack in the careless facade.
“Well, you won’t do it again. Your days as a laundress are over.”
“Why? What difference does it make to you?”
His jaw hardened as if he didn’t like her questioning him. The man was far too used to getting what he wanted. She’d wager he could count on one hand the times he’d been told “no” in his life.
“Because I’m responsible for getting you home in one piece, and I won’t have you claiming that I forced you to do hard labor.”
She knew she was playing with fire, but she couldn??
?t help laughing. “I thought Vikings liked to take thralls.” His eyes flared, but before he could respond she added, “Why do you care what anyone thinks? You are a pirate.”
She dared him to disagree with her. He might look like a pirate, but he certainly didn’t act like one—or at least the way she thought a pirate should act. Pirates were ruthless and immoral—plundering scourges of the sea—not good-humored rogues who rescued captives (twice), promised to return them, and then became concerned when their hands were a little chapped and raw.
Something about this wasn’t right. But what else could he have been doing in that cave? And why was he running from the English?
He met the challenge in her gaze with an angry glare and took a step closer, almost as if he knew how much having six and a half feet of strapping warrior looming over her would rattle her.
“Having doubts, Ellie?” Lady Elyne, she almost corrected. Only her family called her Ellie, and she still wasn’t used to hearing the intimacy in his deep, husky voice. “I thought we’d decided all this?”
She fought the urge to step back. Why did he have to be so tall? And who had shoulders that broad and arms that muscled? Forged in battle …? She didn’t think so. He’d probably purposefully made himself look so strong just to make women weak-kneed and woozy.
She was forced to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. “We did—I did,” she corrected. Hating how he managed to fluster her, she took a steadying breath. “You just seem to have an unusual streak of nobility for a pirate. And why did one of the village fishermen call you taoiseach?” It was another word for chieftain.
If she hadn’t been watching him so closely, she would have missed the hard glint in his eye before he shrouded it with a lazy grin.
“Let me guess, old Magnus? He forgets his own name most of the time.” He paused. “I think I know what this sudden change of heart is about.”
She arched a brow. “You do?”
He nodded. “Aye.” His gaze slid to her mouth, and heat poured through her like a draught of molten fire. “I think you are wondering how you could enjoy the kiss of a pirate.”
Angry splotches of color fired on her cheeks. “I didn’t enjoy—”
The look he gave her stopped her protest cold. One more word and she had no doubt he had every intention of proving her wrong.
She flushed hotter, and he continued, “So you’ve convinced yourself I must be something else.”
Shame washed over her. Was he right? Was that kiss clouding her vision, making her see what she wanted to see?
Nay! There was more to him, she was sure of it. If he didn’t seem like a pirate, then Thomas seemed like even less of one. She’d been surrounded by knights her entire life, and Thomas was steeped to the eyebrows in the knightly code.
Hawk—what was his real name anyway?—was just trying to distract her with his closeness. It was working. She was close enough to see the rough stubble of his beard shadowing the hard lines of his jaw, the thin lines etched around his eyes from smiling and long days in the sun, the dark V of skin just visible above the opening of his cotun, and the soft, sensual curve of his incredible mouth only inches from hers.
Her gaze lingered on that mouth.
She realized that he’d gone very still, every muscle in his body rigid. Their eyes met. She startled, taken aback by the raw intensity of his gaze. He was looking at her as if …
As if he was holding himself back by a very thin rope. But from what? From throttling her? Nay, he was angry, but there was something else that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Something hot and intense. Something that made her feel strange—restless—as though her skin suddenly didn’t fit right. The private place between her legs started to tingle again.
Embarrassed by her body’s reaction, she dropped her gaze.
He clenched and re-clenched his fists at his side, as if he were trying to get control. It must have worked. “No more washing clothes or taking charge of anything else, for that matter. I will see to my men.”
Her gaze snapped back up. Was that what this was about? Was he angry because she’d encroached on his territory? She was only trying to help.
“Fine. Next time your men can run around in filthy, soiled clothing and lead the English right to you with the stench. What do I care? You can languish with all the other criminals in an English dungeon till doomsday.”
His eyes narrowed as if he wanted to argue, but he apparently thought better of it. He flashed that devastating grin, once again the affable, devil-may-care rogue. For once she didn’t mind. He was safer that way.
“See,” he drawled, blue eyes twinkling, “it’s not so hard to be reasonable.”
She gave a very unladylike snort. “Not that you would know anything about reasonable,” she said under her breath.
“What was that, Ellie? I couldn’t hear you.”
“Nothing,” she said mulishly. “What, pray tell, am I supposed to do while I wait for that unknown day when you will finally deign to take me home?”
He shrugged and started to walk away. “You’re a smart lass. I’m sure you’ll think of something. Thomas is feeling better; why don’t you order him around for a while?”
“I don’t order—” She stopped, gritting her teeth. It wasn’t worth the effort to protest. He was impossible.
Now it was she who was clenching her fists as she watched him stroll away—whistling, drat him!
One of these days she would see that arrogant, irresistible grin wiped right off that too-handsome face. And then maybe she would discover what he was hiding.
Two days after his exchange with Ellie in the garden, Erik was still whistling as he ambled up the path toward Meg’s small holding—not to check on the lass, he assured himself, but to see how Randolph was faring.
With Randolph taking ill, Erik had no choice but to bide his time on Spoon rather than join Bruce on Islay. But after so many months of being on the run, Erik wasn’t used to staying in one place for so long and was feeling strangely restless—or at least that was the reason he gave himself.
He’d heard surprisingly little from the occupants of the longhouse. Not that he was complaining. Nay, he was thrilled that the little termagant had finally seen reason and had stopped interfering with his men and challenging him at every opportunity.
He’d been busy enough as it was, monitoring the galley of English soldiers who’d put in on the isle yesterday to question some of the islanders about a hawk ship. Fortunately, they’d landed on the southern end of the island and had done no more than a cursory search of the area. They’d left with plenty of threats, but nothing else.
Aye, he had every reason to be pleased. Not only were the English safely away and the lass finally doing his bidding, but he was still teeming with the rush of exhilaration that always followed a successful mission.
Hell, he was feeling magnanimous enough to concede that he just might have overreacted a bit to her laundering of his men’s clothes. The stench in the cave had improved. But he’d been furious to return from a scouting mission on the other side of the island to find his men hiding in the cave bare-arsed and shamefaced. The bossy little nursemaid had bullied some of the most fearsome warriors in Christendom—his warriors—into handing over their clothes, and he’d bloody well had enough of her interfering.
She was a captive, for Christ’s sake—even if not a typical one—and she should start acting like one. A little submissive would be good … for a start.
But Ellie didn’t act the way she should at all. That was the problem. Maybe if she did, then he would stop thinking about her.
It was crazy. A skinny, nondescript nursemaid was not the type of woman for him to waste any time thinking about—no matter how hot her innocent kiss fired his blood.
He wouldn’t consider marrying someone who would not enhance the wealth and prestige of his clan, and the type of women he chose to bed weren’t maids and were … well, prettier—and with much larger breasts. Despite her luminous skin, unusual
-colored eyes, sooty long lashes, and enticing little nipples that beaded in his hand so tantalizingly, she hardly qualified on either count.
But when he’d held that firm little mound of flesh in his hand … it hadn’t felt like he was missing anything. Actually, it had felt incredible. But that didn’t mean he was interested.
Which didn’t explain why he’d been damn close to kissing her again in the garden. It seemed all he had to do was get within ten feet of her and his body jumped to attention. It was ridiculous, not to mention damn uncomfortable.
Not that it concerned him any. After nearly an entire week without a woman, he was probably just showing signs of deprivation. An oversight that would be easy to remedy. Perhaps after he checked on Randolph, he would join the others at the village alehouse after all.
With that happy thought to add to the others, he crossed the grassy hillock, burnished from the winter cold, and frowned, surprised to see that Duncan wasn’t at his post.
He’d ordered his kinsman to watch over her, not so much to prevent her from escaping—she wouldn’t get very far—but to ensure that nothing happened to her if she tried. She wouldn’t walk off any cliffs on his watch. As long as she was in his care, she was his responsibility. A responsibility he’d decided to delegate to his cousin after that kiss.
But his troublesome guest—and his equally troublesome thoughts—would soon be behind him. Though there was still a sizable English presence in the area, Erik had been chased by the English bastards enough times to know that they would eventually give up. And if they didn’t, well, he could get around them when he needed to. There was still plenty of time before he needed to meet the McQuillans to take them to Rathlin.
In the meantime, he’d found a way to get a message to Bruce. With his cousin Angus Og MacDonald’s castle at Dunaverty located just two miles from Spoon, it was the obvious choice—not to mention the quickest and most direct. Ironically, Dunaverty was the same castle that Erik had led Bruce away from four months ago. Though it was currently occupied by the English, his cousin still had men inside. He knew that if he could get a message to Angus Og, he would find a way to get it to Bruce.