Page 77 of When a Highlander Loses His Heart
“Are we enemies, then?” he asked, moving toward her with a predatory look in his eyes.
Her heartbeat ticked up a notch, and her body heated, despite the cold water they were in. “It certainly seems so as of late, Husband.”
A pained look settled on his face as he glided toward her and came directly in front of her. “A Dia, Isobel. It was nae ever my intention to make ye feel as if we are enemies. I just need ye to accept how things must be between us and nae push for more.”
Her heart was thudding like a drum as she felt all that could be hinged on this moment. If he could deny his desire and his heart even as she saw it burning brightly in his eyes, she feared the time to flee, to grasp at her last hope, was at hand. Sadness pressed down at the thought.
“Kiss me,” she said impetuously. “I dunnae believe ye truly want what ye ask for, but I will ken the truth from yer kiss.”
“A kiss will tell ye the truth?” he asked, his disbelief evident in his tone.
She nodded as he closed the little distance between them and gave her a quick kiss on the lips that made her want to scream her frustration. “Nay,” she said and wrapped her arms around his neck, forcing him to keep her afloat. “A real kiss,” she taunted huskily, pressing her body against his.
Chapter Twenty-One
With his wife’s sweet, delectable body pressed so torturously against him, Graham was certain the ache of yearning denied would kill him. He had to prove to her once and for all that he would never lose control and fully unleash his passion again. He gently pushed her back against the skiff and set his hands on either side of her to grip the boat. “Keep hold of me,” he commanded.
He brought his lips to hers as he had dreamed of every night for the last week, and he swept a feathery kiss across her mouth. Her shivery response and soft mewling sigh was like an expert blow to his will. He felt the vibration of the hit to his bones, yet he pushed forward, determined to prove to her that this would be how it was between them. He slid his tongue against the seam of her lips, and his groin tightened immediately. She parted her lips to welcome him inside her. His head screamed at him to retreat, but his body sought her like she was the one thing that could keep him alive.
He slid his tongue inside her hot mouth, and as he did, one of her hands came to his groin and brushed against his hard staff, and all the discipline he thought he had gained disappeared, leaving in its absence nothing but a fiery, raw, aching need that demanded fulfillment. He could not think of anything but tasting her, touching her, pleasuring her. His frenzied hands moved of their own volition to her breasts, and he rubbed the hardened buds until she was whimpering.
He brought his hand low in the water between them, and he pulled her undergarments down and then kicked off his own. As desire denied rushed through his veins to awaken him from the stupor not caressing her had left him in, he parted her legs with his knees, slid one hand under her bottom to hoist her upon his staff, and gripped the skiff with the other. He took her with an intensity of emotion that frightened him, one that he did not have the ability to control. This need for her was more than physical. Every time she matched each of his thrusts by pushing her hips to meet his and then met each of his guttural cries with moans of pleasure, he understood with more clarity that the yearning that gnawed at him for her was in his heart as well as his body. He could not get close enough to her or hold her tight enough. Driven by a force he did not wholly understand, he slid into her body with long strokes. Water lapped around them and her upper back smacked against the skiff.
Inside him a great force built. It felt as if it would splinter his bones, and then it was as if hot liquid was pouring through his veins as his body tightened and his seed poured into her. He shuddered violently until it was all he could do to keep them afloat, and when her body tightened around his staff and she screamed her own release, he knew the pleasure that overcame him in that moment would be the greatest he’d ever know. He pressed his head against her thundering heart, and as her hand came to his head and she moved her fingers gently through his hair, he felt love and loss at once.
Helovedher. He could not deny it to himself any longer, but the love that he had been unable to hold back, just like the passion he could not control when he touched her, only served to make him certain he had failed. He was still weak. He’d always be weak as long as she was near him, despite how much he trained. And in that weakness he would lose her, either by his own mistake or when she finally saw him clearly.
“I love ye, Graham,” she whispered as she wrapped her legs around him.
Slowly, he untangled her legs and set her hand to the skiff where he knew she would hold on. “I’m going to go to Brigid alone,” he said in response, seeing now the only option he had.
Her mouth dropped open, and her eyes widened. “What do ye mean?”
“Ye will be safe here. I will go to Brigid alone, claim the castle, and make it a MacLeod stronghold. Yer grandmother will see that it was safest for ye to remain here at Dunvegan. Live here.”
The tears that sprang to her eyes made him suck in a ragged breath to keep from recanting his words.
“Ye intend to live separately from me?” she whispered, the torture in her voice shredding him like no sharp blade ever could.
He nodded. “Aye,” he responded. “I told ye how it had to be. Ye kinnae accept it, and I kinnae—” He broke his words off, not wanting to say out loud what he was certain she knew. He could not control himself when it came to her. He could not contain the desire, the need, or the longing she sparked in him. The only way to bridle it was to put distance between them, and then surely time would reduce the heat she created in him with a look, with a smile, or by simply being near.
Without waiting for her response, he lifted her into the skiff and climbed in after her, only to realize the skiff had water in the bottom of it, indicating a leak. He glanced toward the land in the distance and back to the water in the skiff. He was not worried. They had been out here for some time, and with such little water in the boat, he knew the leak was slow.
She nodded but did not say more. Instead, she turned her back to him and wrapped her arms around her waist. She looked small, fragile, and defeated. Pain twisted around his heart and squeezed. He’d done this to her. He’d hurt her when all he had wanted to do was to protect her from himself.
Isobel could not get away from Graham quickly enough. She left him to pull the boat out of the water on his own, and then she scrambled up the seagate stairs, falling to her knees at the top in her haste to escape him. Struggling to her feet, she brushed her cut hands against her skirt, and rushed blindly into the castle and to her bedchamber. She closed the door, stumbled to the bed, and curled into a small ball. He had rejected her utterly. She had offered all her love, and the truth was, he simply did not want it. A small part of her mind whispered that she was being unreasonable, that it was his fear and not her, but she rejected those words. He did not want her. He likely never had, and she had fooled herself. She could not even hate him as much as she would like because he had told her from the beginning that he would never give her his love, and she had stubbornly refused to believe it.
She had no hope left. Fleeing would not make him realize he loved her because he planned to leave her. Fleeing now meant finality for her hopes.
She let the tears loose that she had struggled to contain, and they coursed hot and quick down her cheeks. She cried until her head pounded, and her nose was stopped. She cried until she was certain there were no more tears in her, and then she slept the deep, deathlike sleep of the brokenhearted.
Graham was aware that a dull noise filled the great hall but not of the actual words being spoken. He was aware of the sharp ache in his gut and chest, too, but he was most aware that Isobel had chosen not to come to the great hall for supper, and her absence made each breath painful. Feeling Lachlan’s eyes upon him, he pushed food around his plate to seem as if he were eating, and he prayed to Christ that his brother did not ask him what ailed him. Iain already knew of Graham’s plan to leave for Brigid tomorrow without Isobel. He had needed Iain’s blessing and assurance that he would guard Isobel with his life. Iain had not said much when Graham had told him his intentions, but he had not needed to.
Graham had seen the disapproval in Iain’s eyes and heard it in his voice. He knew his brother had told Marion though she had not made mention. She just glared at him when he entered the hall, and he felt the angry heat of her scowl even now.
“What is the matter with ye?” Lachlan asked just as Rhona leaned over Graham’s shoulder to pour him more wine. Graham clenched his teeth both on his irritation that Lachlan was asking at all and on his brother’s bad timing. He did not want the other women believing Isobel was not wanted by him.
Graham lifted his goblet to purchase a moment to answer, but when Marion slammed her goblet down, he knew he’d made an error.
