Tomorrow, though, she'd need to dress in her best, if their act was to be convincing. She looked forward to the pretense. “I wish we really were a wealthy lord and lady. Not in search of slaves, of course. ” The thought brought her mind to an inevitable place, a place she'd gone to innumerable times before: her, married to Cormac, a half-dozen children between them.
It was Cormac's own fault, mentioning his sister's notions of marriage as he had. Marjorie wavered, but she had a question she simply had to ask. And although she knew the real truth of the matter, she had to know if he'd face that truth, if he'd answer her honestly.
“Do you ever think what might have happened if… well… if Aidan were still here? Do you think… Cormac, would we have wed, you think?”
The only response was his muted snore breaking through the silence.
He woke that night, his heart pounding. The memory of Aidan's scream echoed in his skull. It was a dream he hadn't had in a while, but he supposed all this talk of saving Davie had brought it back.
It had taken him hours to fall asleep, in truth. Marjorie had been going places in her mind that pained him, and so he'd feigned sleep in order to find some measure of peace.
But peace had been long in coming.
Sharing a room with her had been a critical error. The place was entirely too small. When he'd opened the door to see the lone mattress, dark thoughts spilled into his mind in a crazy rush. The mere sound of that mattress giving beneath her weight had been enough to pull the blood to his groin, hardening him to the point of distraction. Rolling Marjorie onto that bed was all he could think of. Pinning her beneath him, kissing her as he had on the beach. Only next time, he wouldn't stop kissing her.
Next time, he'd push the cloak from her shoulders, shuck the bodice from her breasts. Would she giggle and be playful, or would desire simmer in her eyes?
He sat up in the darkness and wiped the sweat from his brow and tried to wipe the dream from where it lingered in his mind. He was a boy again, stuck in blackness, hearing Aidan's terrified cries.
“Cormac?” Marjorie's voice was such a familiar thing, but she spoke now in a drowsy whisper. It was a novel sound, tinged husky and mellow. “Cormac, are you all right?”
He looked up at her. The moon had risen full and high, and it shone in their room, casting a white light on the side of her face, down the side of her body.
Desire ripped through him.
No, I am not all right.
She'd forsaken her Aberdeen finery for the day, dressing instead in a simple arisaid. He sucked in a breath.
She'd somehow managed to remove all that tartan wool in the night. His eyes roved down her body. The blanket clung close to her legs, and he realized she'd stripped her layers of petticoats as well. And her bodice, too.
He swallowed hard. Marjorie lay there, staring openly down at him, wearing only her sark and the moonlight.
Desire tore through him at the sight of her, but so, too, did fear — fear for his very soul. Because he'd never stopped caring for her. Only now he was a man, with a man's needs. “Cormac?” she asked again.
“Good night, Ree,” he said, his voice tight. “Get some sleep. ”
Chapter 15
Marjorie fell back asleep almost at once. But Cormac had tossed and turned with the sleep of the damned, as though he were off to face the hangman in the morning instead of the Aberdeen quays.
Finally, he rose to look at her. Her bare arm stretched across the bed, silvery in the moonlight. It was lean, pale like ivory, and it mesmerized him. For all her posturing, she was so delicate, so vulnerable.
He longed to touch her, to feel the velvet of her skin under his fingers. He could stroke that arm. He'd draw his hand to her shoulder where he'd pull her blanket down, reveal the rest of her. He could climb into the bed, pull the blanket over them both. Beneath the bedding, she was barely clad…
He clamped his eyes shut.
He needed to remain focused, on his guard, which meant not imagining her naked body beneath gauzy linen. It meant not kissing her, not dreaming of holding her close in bed.
Gathering his wits, Cormac wandered to the window, estimating dawn was still over an hour away. Marjorie's breathing was slow and even, so quiet he needed to strain to hear. He'd let her rest a while longer.
He shut his eyes and leaned his head against the windowpane, tilting it to catch the light of the setting moon on his cheek. He recalled the madness that had accosted him earlier, just th
ere at the window. Like a fool, he'd gone to stand behind Marjorie. The mere feel of her before him, jiggling and grunting to unlatch the damned glass, had him yearning and ravenous, like some cursed rutting beast.
And then she'd pinched herself and sucked her thumb into her mouth, and the look of her rounded lips had been so erotic, it'd been all he could do not to pull her tight to him and grind his base flesh into her backside. Later, too, she'd licked her food from her hand like some sort of wild, carnal creature. Just a mouth, merely her fingers, and yet the sight of each had his thoughts spiraling to dark places where her tongue played along his flesh.
The young girl he'd once adored had grown into this spirited, impassioned woman, this sensual woman. And she was driving him mad, igniting desires he thought he'd doused long ago.