Page 53 of A Two-Faced Laird
“Now, apologise to the lady please,” Aidan ordered.
Davison bowed to Edina, who was leaning on Mairi. “I am sorry, Mistress,” he said, looking at the floor.
“Thank you.”
Edina turned to leave with Mairi, but they were intercepted by Aidan, who stood in front of the door with his legs spread out and his elbows on his hips. Despite his aggressive stance, he was gazing at Edina anxiously.
“Are you all right, Edina?” he asked. “Did he hurt you?”
“I am fine,” she replied stiffly. “Can you please get out of our way?”
Aidan hesitated for a moment, then stepped sideways to allow them to pass. That was when he suddenly winced and raised his hand to look at it. There was blood running from one of his knuckles, and the others were badly grazed, with bare flesh showing through the skin.
Immediately, Edina went to his aid. She had mended so many of the school children’s skinned knuckles and knees that she had become something of an amateur healer. She inspected the wounds and frowned.
“I don’t know what his head is made of, but it is not flesh and bone,” she said grimly.
“I hit my hand on a chair after striking his head,” Aidan confessed. “Stupid of me.”
He shook his head, sighing.
Edina took his hand tenderly in her own, avoiding the injured parts.
“Come with me and I will try to patch it up,” she said. “You hurt yourself defending me, so the least I can do is help you.”
She began to walk along the street towards her house.
“Where are you taking me? To the healer?” Aidan was puzzled.
“She is at the ceilidh,” Edina told him. “You can come to my house. I have a few remedies there. I am always patching up the children.”
“You love them, do you not?” he asked.
Suddenly, a well of tenderness opened inside Aidan as he visualised Edina with the children. That was the moment that he realised he would be totally miserable if they did not end up together.
When they went inside, Edina lit a lamp and Aidan looked around the cottage. It was small, but it had a cosy, homely feel about it that he loved. Edina quickly set light to the wood in the grate, then turned to him and inspected his hand.
Her touch was not as soft as it used to be, he thought. She had been doing much more manual labour, like cutting her own firewood, than she ever had before. Yet, he loved her carefulness, the gentleness with which she cleaned his flesh then applied the soothing salve to his bloodied hand before bandaging it.
“May I have a glass of wine?” he asked when she was finished. “It might help with the pain.”
This was, of course, a complete fiction and a very flimsy excuse for him to linger, but Edina humoured him and poured a glass, yet did not sit with him to drink it. Mairi had gone back to the ceilidh, so she took out a broom and began to brush the floor—anything to distract herself from his presence.
He looked so massive in the small space, and the atmosphere was soon filled with his tough masculinity as opposed to the gentle feminine presence it usually contained. It was as though a giant stallion had stepped into a stable full of young mares.
Edina began to walk past him to reach the other side of the room, but suddenly, she was jolted sideways and found herself on Aidan’s lap as he reached out to pull her to him. For a few seconds, she stared into his light-brown eyes, then he cupped his hands around the back of her head and drew her lips to his.
They had kissed many times, but this was the sweetest, tenderest one they had ever shared, and as Aidan tightened his embrace around her, she melted into his body and sighed into his mouth. Being with him again was utter paradise; he felt the same, and moaned his satisfaction as he moved his hand to her breast, kneading her soft flesh.
When they drew apart, Aidan smiled at her.
“I love you,” he said huskily. “I will always love you, Edina. You have become my reason for living, and I cannot even think of being with anyone else. I will tell Fenella as gently as I can, that I am not going to marry her. I think she has been somehow intercepting your letters to me, and I do not wish to have that kind of dishonesty in my wife. She is not for me: you are. Will you marry me?”
For a moment, she gazed at him, stupefied, then she cried, “Oh, yes, Aidan!”
Edina hugged him, and they shared another kiss, this one searing and passionate, and it took only another moment before she was sitting astride him, riding his manhood. He thrust into her fast and fiercely, driving her up to the peak of ecstasy when she saw stars in front of her eyes, and screamed her pleasure so loudly that once again he silenced her with a kiss.
Aidan drew out of her just before he climaxed and spilled his seed onto the chair, then Edina stood up, and bent down to kiss him before moving away to find a cloth to clean him with.
