Her Highness and the Highlander: A Princess Brides Romance (33 page)

Dazed, she tunneled her fingers into his hair and stroked his head in encouragement.
Far too soon he moved to the other breast, leaving the first wet and aching as he
paid homage to its twin.

But he wasn’t satisfied.

Reaching down, he yanked the skirt of her dress up so that it bunched around her waist.
“Spread your legs,” he said against her breast.

Shaking, she moved to comply but didn’t find it as easy as it should have been, balanced
as she was on her toes. But then she didn’t need to try anymore as he slid an arm
under her buttocks to support her. At the same moment he pushed two fingers full and
deep inside her.

He pumped, keeping her pinned against the wall.

A long, helpless moan trailed from her throat.

“That’s right,” he said, stroking inside her aching core. “I want you good and wet.”

And she was, soaking his hand where she literally hung in his arms.

His mouth returned to her breast, drawing firmly in a rhythm that mirrored his strokes
below. He kept up his movements, determined and unrelenting.

“Claim your pleasure for me, lass,” he demanded. “Now.”

And she did, shaking apart inside his grasp.

Again, she expected him to carry her to the bed.

Instead, he reached under his kilt, tore open his drawers and pushed inside her in
one long, firm thrust. She felt deliciously impaled, completely filled.

But she realized she’d mistaken matters once again as he
took hold of her hips, spreading her thighs even wider as he lifted her high. He pumped
hard, each subsequent stroke taking him impossibly deep until she knew he could bury
himself no deeper.

Wrapping her arms around his shoulders, her legs around his waist, she bent her head
and kissed him, dazed and gasping as their tongues tangled and their bodies yearned.
The wall shook at her back, or maybe it was the earth as it shifted off its very axis.

Then she climaxed, quaking from head to foot as she cried out violently, the sound
of her ecstasy caught inside his mouth.

She soared, replete with bliss.

He stroked faster, then faster still until he found his own completion, his pleasure
a rough moan in her ear.

But even as reality began to steal back, he held her, his shaft planted firmly inside
her as if he couldn’t bear the inevitable separation.

Suddenly he captured her face in one hand and claimed her mouth with rapacious, inescapable
need. “You’re mine, lass. No matter what happens, doona ever forget that. You belong
to me.”

Easing her away from the wall, he stripped off her clothes, then his own.

She was too shaky to walk, so he lifted her into his arms and finally carried her
to the bed. Laying her down on the fresh sheets, he eased over her, then into her,
making sure they didn’t part again until morning.

A
week later, Mercedes gazed out the window of the coach-and-four, watching Daniel
as he rode alongside, mounted on a sturdy bay gelding. He looked fierce and strong,
every inch the battle-trained soldier. He’d returned his daggers to their proper places
and not only added a pistol to his belt but slung a rifle across his back as well.
With so much weaponry on display, she couldn’t imagine that any but the most determined
miscreant would dare stage an attack.

Actually, she wasn’t convinced she was in danger anymore, wondering if by thwarting
the three men who had tried to kidnap her, Daniel had put an end to the attempts entirely.
But he said they shouldn’t assume she was safe or relax their vigilance. And so he
had taken to riding next to the coach where he could protect her more effectively.

She sighed, supposing he was right. Still, she wished he was inside the coach with
her. The new coachman and footman they had hired in Edinburgh were armed, so it wouldn’t
be as if she would be left unguarded if Daniel joined her inside the vehicle.

But in spite of his promise to keep her well entertained
on the journey south—a promise to which she had blushingly been looking forward—he
had left her almost completely alone over the past several days, Robbie her only companion.

Not that her canine friend wasn’t fine company, she decided, as she studied him where
he lay on the seat across from her, his furry chin pillowed on his outstretched paws,
but he wasn’t much for conversation. Otherwise, there wasn’t a great deal to do except
sleep or read, and with the constant swaying of the coach, one could while away only
so many hours reading before growing weary of the endeavor.

Actually “weary” perfectly described the past week, which had proven long and tiresome,
both mentally and physically. Daniel was pressing them all hard to complete the journey
in as short a time as possible, saying he wanted her off the coaching lanes and in
a safe, defensible, permanent location.

She knew he was only concerned about her welfare and preoccupied with the effort of
keeping her safe. Yet try as she might to tell herself everything between her and
Daniel was good, she couldn’t help sensing a distance in him, a remoteness that she
could not seem to breach.

She’d imagined after their wildly impassioned night together after the attack that
everything would return to normal. She’d expected to wake the next morning to find
Daniel grinning down at her, a seductive, knowing twinkle in his moss green eyes.

Instead, she’d awakened alone, the maid helping her to bathe and dress, while she
and Robbie later shared a silent breakfast. She hadn’t seen Daniel at all until he’d
come to escort her down to the curricle for the last day’s ride into Edinburgh.

Since then, they had fallen into a pattern of long days of travel, followed by quiet,
early dinners, then bed.

He slept with her each night and they always made love, but she couldn’t help noticing
a peculiar hesitancy in him. It
was as if he was trying to resist her but couldn’t, as though he was driven to be
with her, even though he knew he should not.

When they made love, she sensed a desperation in him, a ravenous hunger of which he
could not seem to get enough. Some nights he took her over and over again, driving
them both to the brink, so that she could do nothing afterward but sink into an exhausted,
dreamless slumber, held in the blissful comfort of his arms.

She couldn’t explain it, not even to herself, but it was as if he were storing up
the moments between them, saving the intimacy and the pleasure; as if he thought everything
between them would soon be coming to an end.

The idea gave her chills, left her feeling a bit sick, so she brushed it aside.

They were married, she assured herself. She was his wife. They would always be together.
For where else would he go when he was meant to be by her side?

So they traveled on, day by day, night by night. She could have pressed him for answers,
she supposed, but she told herself that now wasn’t the time. He was just worried,
that was all. And she was simply anxious yet excited to introduce him to her friends
and settle into their new life together.

Daniel shifted in the saddle, searching for a more comfortable spot after miles of
riding. Mercedes rode in the coach next to him, her lovely profile visible through
the small square window. From what he could tell, she was observing the passing scenery,
the fertile green English fields that stretched out around them.

They’d long since left Scotland behind. London was now only a little over a day away—the
last of the trip nearly finished. His stomach clenched at the thought, for as hard
as he’d been pushing them to reach the city, he had no true desire to arrive there.

He’d acknowledged—how could he not, given the
evidence?—that Mercedes was precisely who she claimed to be.

A royal princess.

Yet some small part of him did not want to believe, still held out the hope, however
unlikely, that she was no more than an ordinary personage rather than a young woman
whose rank was so impossibly far above his own. So utterly out of his reach.

He supposed that was why he’d been content to assume she was “confused” about her
identity, to believe what seemed more reasonable under the circumstances rather than
admitting the truth that had been literally staring at him out of a pair of beautiful
brown eyes.

In all the time they had been together, he had never caught her in a lie for one specific
reason—she had not been lying. Now that he’d had time to reconsider things through
a mirror of the truth, the facts seemed obvious. How else could she have given him
such elaborate and detailed descriptions of her life as a princess unless she was
a princess? How else could she have maintained such consistent details if she were
just dreaming up a fiction? He’d chosen to ignore the refinement of her speech and
manners, the excellence of her education, and the thousand and one other little things
that had all pointed to someone of exalted birth.

His hand moved to the miniature in his pocket.

As illogical, improbable, and impossible as it might seem, it would appear he had
married a princess—even if he hadn’t been willing to admit the truth to himself at
the time.

Clearly her family would not be pleased with the match; of that he had no doubt. As
for her friends, he would wait to find out exactly how cold their reception was once
he and Mercedes reached London. As for himself, he just did not know.

Some men would have gloried to discover they had married royalty, not minding the
inevitable disgrace it would invite. But he was no fortune hunter. He was a man of
honor and didn’t like knowing that he would be regarded
as an encroaching opportunist, the veriest blackguard, regardless of the circumstances
of his and Mercedes’s marriage.

But his pride would be nothing were it not for the cruel fact that he had so little
to offer her—only a meager house on a small patch of land, a modest income that was
probably less than her annual pin money, and a view of a castle and a disgraced title
that were no longer his to claim.

How could he condemn her to the only kind of life he could offer when she was entitled
to so much more?

Yet she was his wife, their union more than amply consummated. Even now she might
be carrying his child.

With the idea in mind that she might not yet have conceived, he’d tried to stay away
from her.

Of course he’d failed, dismally.

Just a touch, a kiss, and he’d been lost.

Where she was concerned, he could not seem to deny himself. Were he honest, he knew
he really hadn’t wanted to. These past few days would have been like a kind of death
if he had stayed away, a torment he could not bear. He needed her, wanting her with
a depth he was only now beginning to understand, even as he prepared himself to face
the black uncertainty to come.

He studied her where she sat in the coach, memorizing each beautiful feature, every
gentle expression and rapt look. She was everything he wanted and everything he knew
he should not have.

He loved her, knew why he’d married her even when he’d thought her to be lost, troubled,
and alone. What he couldn’t understand now was why she had married him, knowing full
well how little he could give her.

Love was the easy answer, the only answer. He knew she loved him—or
thought
she did at least.

And that’s what worried him the most: the fear that once she resumed her old life
and was once again surrounded by familiar places and beloved people, she would realize
her emotions for him had not been as strong as she’d imagined. That
she would come to see their time together as nothing more than a dream from which
she had awakened and now wished to forget.

If that day came and she regretted their marriage, he did not know what he would do.

When that day came, he wasn’t sure he would have the strength to do what he must—for
her or himself.

L
ondon rose around them the following day as they drove into the city, the burgeoning
metropolis rife with the scents, sounds, and sights of its human inhabitants.

For once, Daniel joined her inside the coach, attired in his dress kilt, the dark
green and black one he had worn to their wedding. This time, however, he’d removed
the Scots pine twig and silver badge from his bonnet. When she’d seen him tuck both
away in his valise that morning, she’d decided not to comment. Neither had she remarked
on his choice of garment since he clearly wanted to look his best, though to her eyes
he always looked magnificent.

As for herself, she put on the nicest of her gowns, none of which were at all fashionable.
But that hardly mattered under the circumstances and would only lend flavor to the
tale she had to tell.

As they drove through the city toward Mayfair, her excitement grew. She could scarcely
wait to see Emma and Ariadne again and tell them everything that had happened. Neither
could she wait to introduce Daniel to them, although the closer the moment came, the
more nervous she began to feel about it. Not because she worried they wouldn’t like
him—of
course they would like him—but because she was turning up on their doorstep married
without being able to give them so much as a hint of the impending news.

She could imagine their shocked expressions and what they would say when they discovered
that she, Mercedes, the traditionalist, had thrown caution to the wind and been married
in a small, unplanned ceremony to the man she loved. The impetuousness of her actions
was so unlike her that she suspected she would have to tell them twice before they
agreed to believe her.

She looked at Daniel, an excited smile on her face. “We’re nearly there.”

He turned his gaze away from the wide streets and large, elegant town houses passing
by outside the coach window, his expression anything but excited. He looked resigned,
like a man going to his own funeral.

Reaching out, she took his hand. “Don’t worry, you’ll like my friends and they’ll
be delighted to offer us their hospitality.”