Page 56 of Wild Wicked Scot
“I know.” He hadn’t known it himself until after she was gone.
“Do you... Do you still feel the same?” she asked uncertainly.
Arran glanced at the chessboard. She could move her queen to his king now and hold him at checkmate. She could knock him from his throne, could send him sprawling off the board that was his life. He looked up again. “No, I donna feel the same. I donna trust you,leannan. Tell me, how can I trust you?”
He desperately wanted her to tell him that he could trust her. Tell him anything, tell him she had nothing to hide. But Margot didn’t say that. She sighed and rubbed her forehead as if she had a pain there. “I wouldn’t trust me, either,” she quietly admitted.
His heart sank, tumbling deeper into that abyss, carried on a storm of uncertainty and mistrust.
She suddenly stood up from the table, leaving her queen within striking distance of his king. “Onlyyoucan say if you will trust me,” she said as she moved around the table to him.
“And only you can say if you mean to leave me again,” he said curtly.
She sighed and ran her hand over the top of his head. She lifted her skirts, revealing her long, slender legs, and straddled his lap. Once more, Arran didn’t stop her—but he was keenly aware that she was trying to change the course of the conversation, using the only means at her disposal to best him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and said, “I don’t want to leave you again.” And she began to move on him.
He grabbed her hips in his hands to steady her. “That is no answer. Do you think I donna see what you are about, how you use your body to avoid answering me?”
“But Ihaveanswered you, as best I can,” she said sweetly, and kissed his temple. “Now I am trying to please you as best I can, in a way that you have taught me. Now I think of how it could have been between us had I stayed. I think of the children we might have already brought into this world, and I want to make it up to you. I want to begin fresh.” She kissed his cheek.“I don’t want to leave you again,”she whispered.
“It’s too late for this, Margot,” he said brusquely, and turned his head.
“It can never be too late—we are married.” She looped her arms loosely around his neck and moved seductively on him, arousing him, hardening him. “Think of it—we could sail to France and begin anew...just you and me.” She kissed his cheek.
“France!” he muttered as she took his face between her hands and kissed one eye, then the other.
“Wouldn’t it be lovely, to go away from Scotland and England, to someplace new? Where no one knows us?” she asked between kisses. “No one to trouble or inconvenience us?”
He wondered who troubled or inconvenienced them now, and this desire, expressed by a wife he scarcely knew now, pricked at his conscience. Arran’s head urged him to stop her, to understand what she meant, not to be fooled by pleasures of the flesh. But his flesh—Christ, tonight his flesh was much stronger in its need of her than his heart.
He would deal with her duplicity on the morrow.Tomorrow, tomorrow.
“We could sail on one of your ships,” she whispered.
There was something quite wrong with her wish to escape, but Arran didn’t want to think of it at that moment. He was in the abyss. “You’re nattering, woman,” he said, and suddenly grabbed her and stood up. He carried her to his bed, deposited her on it and moved over her. He could put his distrust of her on hold for one more night...but only one more night.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ITWASWONDERFUL, beautiful, extraordinary. There was something so delicious about the way Arran took command of her body, arousing her with kisses and caresses, his tongue lapping her into oblivion, his cock pressing her to a crisis so utterly shattering that she marveled she could find all the pieces of her and put them back together again. It was carnal bliss, wholesale ecstasy, and it left her feeling warm and adored and very lethargic.
But when the morning light began to filter in through the drapes, the questions about who this man was, about whoshewas now, began to slip back into her thoughts, and the bed felt less warm to her.
She had begun last night wanting only to gain his trust. But then, quite unexpectedly, they’d had perhaps the most honest conversation about their marriage they’d ever had, and a window had opened in Margot. Feelings she’d not expected had come in through that window, and she’d meant it when she’d said it could never be too late for them. She’d wanted to forget the strife between them and rebuild what she had torn down when she’d left. She wanted to believe that there was a path for them, that they could be happy.
And still, a tiny doubt crept into her thoughts. What if her father was right about him? What if he was right and she was wrong?
Margot pretended to be asleep when Arran rose. She lay on her side and listened to the sounds of him dressing and gathering his things. She kept her eyes closed when he leaned over the bed and kissed her shoulder.
“Good morning,” he murmured, and quit the room.
When he’d gone, she rolled onto her back and sighed to the canopy above the bed. What he’d said to her last night—that she was his first love—had pirouetted into her dreams, and she had awakened more than once in the night to assure herself that he was still there, that he had spoken those words to her. She thought about how he held her, as if she were his only love. She thought about what Mrs. Gowan had said of his demeanor after she’d left. She thought about all of this, and with a single tear slipping from the corner of her eye, she thought about how he said he didn’t feel the same any longer because he could not trust her.
For God’s sake, why would he?
He wasn’t wrong about her. He had every reason to be suspicious of her. Shehadbeen condescending when she’d first come to Balhaire; she could see that now with the clarity the past few years had given her. She hadn’t shown him much affection, in spite of having felt some for him. She’d been so determined to be wounded and indignant about the injustice her family had done to her that she’d never been able to nurture her feelings for him properly. And God knew she’d been damnably blind to his affection for her.
Her confusion about what to do was only growing. She’d never dreamed that her feelings and desire for him could be rekindled.
She didn’t want to know if he conspired with the French. She wanted to prove to her father that it was a lie.
