The MacNaughton Bride (16 page)

Because of her exceedingly
embarrassing chat with Jenny,
Aislinn
had a
reasonable idea of what to expect, but she refused to participate in any way,
and simply lay there, letting him do what he would.
 
Now he would finally find out what kind of a woman he’d
married.

Kell
pushed and pushed, a sweat breaking out on his forehead.
 
Something was blocking his way.
 
He was big, but it shouldn’t have been
so hard for her to accommodate him.
 
Finally, he leaned back and pulled her legs up onto his shoulder,
leaning every bit of his weight onto his aching member.
 
That leverage alone should have had him
cozily wrapped up in her in seconds.
 
She let him in, eventually, but not until he felt that telltale, slow
ripping of her maiden barrier before she swallowed him to the hilt.

Aislinn
groaned through the lip she had bitten, swearing that she wouldn’t give him the
satisfaction of making her cry out or beg yet again tonight, no matter what he
did, no matter how much she wanted to.
 
And once he was inside her, stretching her and hurting her that much
more, there was nothing that she wanted so much as to roll onto her side in a
ball and cry her eyes out.
 
If this
was what was going to happen to her at his will any evening during the rest of
her life with him, she thought she might give herself to the Church instead, or
run away to America – something.
 
She couldn’t bear this ever again; it was too painful and downright
humiliating.

It was as if someone had
thrown a bucket of ice water over
Kell
.
 
He’d never sobered up so completely or
so fast in his life.
 
She hadn’t
been lying.
 
She was a virgin.
 
Her maid had been telling him the truth
that
Aislinn
hadn’t known anything about it.
 
She was a virgin.
 
No man had had her but him.

A virgin.
 
He wanted to pull out.
 
He wanted to apologize and beg her
forgiveness. He wanted to bang his head against the wall in penance.
 
But the bald truth was that his
genitals were committed to the act he’d begun, and they weren’t about to let
him back out.
 
But he did stop and
look down at her, his face contorted with the effort not to plunge in and out
of her with complete abandon.
 
Aislinn’s
eyes were closed tightly, tears leaking out of
the sides.
 
She had such a hold on
that lip with her teeth that he could see that she had broken the skin.

Kell
leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.
 
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, drawing back slowly, making her
groan slightly.
 
He couldn’t help
it.
 
He needed her.
 
He would have preferred if things had
been different – much different – but he couldn’t fix that
now.
 
At least his body was so
wrapped up in her that it only took him a few strokes to lose himself in her
completely.
 
Of course, she
wouldn’t know that that was embarrassingly quick, and he was thankful for at
least that.

When he was done, he rolled
off her as quickly as he could, not wanting to prolong her misery.
 
He thought she might get up and away
from him as soon as she could, but she simply lay there, unmoving.
 
It was almost worse than having to get
up and chase her down as he’d thought he’d have to.
 
Not moving, not saying a thing said volumes to him.
 
She might as well be yelling at him
that she was right and he was wrong.
 
That she was as innocent as the day she was born, and he’d been as nasty
to her as he could in thinking that she was a woman of loose morals –
imprisoning her, shaming her in front of his relatives and the townsfolk . . .

A horrid thought struck
him.
 
If he’d been wrong about her
innocence, he wondered if he’d been wrong in spanking her about being
late.
 
“Why were you late tonight?”
he asked, feeling like it was going to be an answer he really didn’t want to
hear, but had to anyway, like a tongue that always sought out an aching tooth.

“Old Mr. Kendall died
tonight.
 
There was nothing I could
do for him.
 
I stayed with his wife
and daughter as long as I dared.”

Kell
sighed.
 
Every foot he put with her
was wrong.
 
Well, it was never too
soon to try to make amends.
 
“I’m
sorry.
 
I didn’t realize.”

“I know what you thought,”
she answered in a matter of fact voice that drove shards of shame and guilt
into his heart.

“I was wrong about that,
too,” he braved his way right to the heart of the matter, not wanting it to
fester between them.
 
Kell
rolled over towards her, wanting to touch her, but
feeling strongly that that wasn’t the right thing to do just yet.
 
“I’m sorry.
 
I should have believed you like my brothers did.
 
I just found the evidence so damning .
. . “

She just shrugged.
 
That was it.
 
That was all the response he got.
 
A delicate shrug.
 
He thought it was a pretty big issue, but apparently she didn’t share his
opinion.
 
She got up, sucking in
her breath when she moved herself upright on the bed – no doubt several
parts of her were reminding her of his presence.

“Are you done?” she asked
in the same cold, clinical tone she’d been using, reaching behind her to remove
her shredded chemise as she brought a nightgown out of the armoire.
 

Kell
felt as if he’d been hit right in the chest with a huge log.
 
He didn’t know why he was having that
kind of a reaction – she wasn’t being nasty or ranting or raving, which
she had every right to do, as far as he was concerned.
 
But this . . . withdrawal . . .he
didn’t know how to deal with it.
 
Everyone he knew confronted things head on – he and his brothers
were renowned for their loud arguments, usually conducted at the local pub,
especially when they were younger.
 
She was acting as if nothing of any import had happened.
 
He’d apologized.
 
There were few people – alive or
dead – who had ever heard him say he was sorry.
 
Apparently she didn’t appreciate how unusual that was.

He realized how
self-absorbed that sounded, and knew that it was more likely that he’d hurt her
more than she was willing to deal with at this point, and the problem was he
didn’t know what to do to make it up to her.
 
This wasn’t the kind of thing that an apology –
however rare – was going to smooth over.

But he wanted to make
things better between them.
 
Much
better, as soon as possible.
 
But
he wasn’t going to dignify her question with an answer.
 
Instead, he got up and began to
disrobe.
 
Aislinn
did her best to ignore him, but when he started to take his clothes off, she
knew she had to draw the line.

“Shouldn’t you be doing
that in your own room?” she hinted broadly, moving to put her hand on the
doorknob.
 

A small, almost regretful
smile touched his lips that she was so eager to get rid of him.
 
“I am.
 
This is my room.”

Her eyebrow shot up, but
she didn’t waste any time in gathering some of her own clothes into a small
bundle and returning to the door.
 
But
Kell
had beat her to it, blocking it with
his body.
 
Aislinn
stood with her hands on her hips.
 
“Get away from the door.
 
If
you’re sleeping here, then I’m sleeping somewhere else.”

“No.”
 
It was a deceptively soft word, but she
knew that her idea of slipping out of the room to an unused guest room wasn’t
going to happen as long as he was standing in front of the door.
 
He was too damned big for her to push
past or move.
 
She wasn’t going
anywhere until he decided to let her.
 
As usual.

Sighing, she moved towards
the window and the chaise lounge she’d had Arthur move in for her, setting
herself up there instead, with one of the extra pillows and her robe to keep
her warm.
 
Kell
snickered a little at her creativity, but wasn’t about to let this stand.
 
He wanted her in bed with him, not
across the room near the drafty windows.
 
So, after she was off her guard and had settled down, however
uncomfortably,
Kell
got up and picked her up –
robe and pillow and all, placing her carefully back down on her side of their
bed.

“What do you think you’re
doing?” she asked indignantly, trying to get up again.

“Putting you where you
belong.
 
In our bed.”
 
He lay atop her so that she could
barley breathe, much less move.

“Get off me, you big oaf!”

He just smiled down at her
benevolently.
 
“No.
 
I want you right here, and as you may
have noticed, I get what I want.”

Aislinn
rolled her eyes and puffed out a breath – she could no longer draw a deep
one.
 
“Would you please get off me
so that I can breathe?”

Kell
moved just a little to one side, but not enough so that it would be easy for
her to wiggle out from under him, and leaned his head on his palm.
 
“I know we got off on the wrong foot
because of me and I’m sorry.
 
But I
want us to get past that.
 
Neither
of us is going to sleep anywhere from now on except right here.
 
Eventually, I hope you’ll forgive
me.
 
In the mean time, I know
there’s no way for me to really make it up to you, but I imagine there are some
changes you’ve probably wanted to make around the place, and I just want you to
know that you can do anything you like – improve your office or tools or
plants or whatever, paint or redecorate or anything.
 
If you want new furniture, I’d be glad to accompany you on a
trip to Edinburgh to pick out whatever your heart desires.”

“Thank you,” she said, her
eyes remaining closed.
 
Her lack of
enthusiasm was goading, but he persevered.

A thought struck him of a
surprise he could give her tomorrow, without even having to leave the house,
but he decided to save that for tomorrow.
 
“And despite what you must now think of what goes on between a man and a
woman, I promise you it will be different next time – I won’t be in my
cups and it won’t hurt you, I promise.”

Her lips twitched in what
he interpreted as a purely sarcastic manner, but she said nothing.

“I do know how to make it
very pleasant for you,
Aislinn
.
 
And I will.”
 
Kell
reached for her and pulled
her against him into the spoon position, brushing his hands through her hair in
a manner that he hoped she would find soothing.
 
This was going to be very hard for him.
 
He’d never had to do much to get a
woman, and his lovemaking had always been his ticket to keeping those he
wanted.
 
He prided himself on being
able to pleasure even the most reluctant of women.
 
But when it was the most important, he’d lost his head, as
well as the trust of the most important woman in his life.

But he would do whatever he
needed to do to make it right between them.
 
He still clung to the hope that they might have as good a
relationship as his parents had had.
 
It wasn’t too much to ask for, he hoped.

The next morning, she had
slipped out of bed before him, and when
Kell
awoke he
was alone.
 
She had spent the night
in his arms, even if she was asleep through most of it.
 
He took it as a good sign that she
really hadn’t struggled much when he pulled her against him – but then,
maybe that was a bad sign because she was just giving up.
 
Kell
wanted
to punch something – anything – but mainly himself.
 
She hadn’t done anything wrong –
in fact, despite the way he was treating her, she went ahead and did something
wonderful in taking care of the people around him even though he didn’t make it
easy to do.