Bride For A Knight Page 0,89

she'd bedeviled him into stopping at the well. But she'd envisioned a slow and leisurely seduction. A candlelit supper on a plaid beneath the moon, the exchange of long hot-burning gazes and love words as they sipped wine and served each other bits of honey cake.

A tender wooing.

She knew, after all, that he had skilled and tender hands. Gentle hands.

But there was nothing gentle in the way those hands were now tugging at the latch of his sword belt.

"Are you not hungry?" She glanced at the wicker basket. "Do you not want to eat?"

He whipped off his belt and tossed it aside. "Och, aye, I am fair starving," he said, his boots following the belt and sword. "And you can be sure I intend to dine."

Aveline moistened her lips, everything her sister Maili had e'er told her about her husband ravishing her, flashing in bold and bawdy detail through her mind. Bold and exciting detail.

But she still had difficulty imagining such a thing. Even though she'd seen the act painted quite unmistakably on Kendrick's window shutters. Her heart began to thump. The very idea thrilled her. Already her breasts were tightening in anticipation and it was all she could do not to lift her arms and pull him down to her, beg him to fulfill the erotic wish that had been burning inside her ever since he'd first kissed her and she'd wondered what it would be like to have his lips touch her there.

And if Maili had spoken true, maybe even his tongue.

She shivered at the deliciousness of that possibility, but before she could encourage him, he stopped flashing his wicked-eyed smile and frowned.

"You are cold," he said, clearly misinterpreting her shiver.

"Nay, I am fine." She lifted her chin, trying to appear as un-cold as possible. Looking unconvinced, he dropped down beside her and slid an arm around her, drawing her close against him. "I won't have you uncomfortable," he said, stroking her hair. "We can ride on to Baldreagan now, going straight to Kendrick's chamber when we return. Though ... "

He let the words tail off and glanced over at the well and its tumbled outcropping, the stones gleaming white against the black pine wood rising so darkly behind them.

Even the ancient pagan altar stone, cracked, slanting, and half-covered with moss, shimmered bright in the moon glow.

"Though?" She followed his gaze, for one fleeting moment looking as if she, too, were not seeing just the stones and the well, but peering into a distant past. A long ago time when the old Celtic gods would have called this glade their own. At the thought, gooseflesh rose on Jamie's arms and the tiny hairs on his nape lifted. His senses alert, he raised a hand to rub the back of his neck, his gaze scanning the dark edge of the encircling trees.

Trees he could well imagine dressed in Druid mist - or bearing silent witness to the mysterious rites of the ancients.

Truth was, he almost believed they still held sway here. That they'd only slipped away for a few hours and would soon return, their fair voices in the music of the wind, their cautious, watching presence hidden in the soft blue haze that e'er cloaked the hills.

"Though you would rather stay here?" Aveline persisted, watching him closely, almost as if she felt it, too.

"To be sure, I meant to stay here ... a while," Jamie admitted, reaching to touch her hair again. "But I'll no' risk you catching a chill. See you, I - " He broke off again, shaking his head to clear it of nonsense.

But even after a few good head shakes and manly denial, the damp grass beneath the plaid still felt warmer than it possibly could and he'd wager all his meals for a year if he honestly couldn't detect a distinct humming deep in the ground beneath them.

He frowned.

His faery was smiling.

"Ach, lass," he blurted, rushing the words, "there is something strange here. A warmth and shimmering in the ground that canna be, but is. I'd hope whate'er it is would warm you as well, that it would keep us from noticing the night's cold if we - " He paused and blew out a frustrated breath. "But I saw you shiver - "

"I shivered because I want those things, too," she said, leaning into him, lighting kisses along his jaw, down his neck. "And I do feel the warmth. As a Highlander,

'tis only natural that you noticed it, too."

She pulled back then,