When a Scot Ties the Knot (Castles Ever After #3)(33)

To her shy, adorable navel . . .

And further.

From far away, he heard himself murmuring in Gaelic. Words began tumbling from his lips, unbidden. Words he’d never spoken to any other woman in his life.

“Maddie a ghràdh. Mo chridhe. Mo bean.”

Maddie, darling. My heart. My wife.

Her fancies had started to addle his brain, too. What was she doing to him?

He spread the linen tight over her hips, revealing the dark triangle of shadow guarding her sex.

And then he bent to kiss her there.

She flinched and bucked, bashing him in the head with her knee.

Ouch.

With a low moan of pain, Logan rolled to the side, clutching his head.

He stared up at the bed’s wooden canopy, struggling for breath. Had he been wondering what she was doing to him? He knew what she was doing to him.

She was killing him.

That’s what she was doing to him.

“What . . .” She clutched the bedsheets to her chest. “What was . . . Why would you do . . . that?”

Why indeed.

“Because humans have more imagination than lobsters, mo chridhe. There’s more than one way to share pleasure.”

She was quiet for a long moment. “How many ways?”

He rolled onto his side to face her, skimming a single finger from her breastbone to her belly. “Here’s an idea. I’ll demonstrate them, and you keep count.”

This time her silence seemed endless.

“Perhaps another time, thank you.” She turned onto her side. Away from him.

And that was it, then. Wanting pulsed through his body, coiling and sparking with electric intensity. He didn’t dare put his trust in pillows or decency to contain it.

It would be another cold, restless night on the floor.



Chapter Ten

Maddie found it impossible to sleep.

Last night, the whisky and her overwhelmed emotions had left her too exhausted for anything else. Tonight, her body sizzled with unspent energy and frustrated desire.

Whenever she closed her eyes, she thought of his mouth on her.

There.

For that one, heated moment, it had felt good. More than good. A jolt of bliss had streaked through her. She still felt it lingering in the soles of her feet and at the juncture of her thighs.

Would he want a woman to put her mouth on him?

There?

Humans have more imagination than lobsters, he’d said. And yet Maddie—-who was human the last time she checked—-could not quite bend her imagination that far.

Of course, she might have had a better idea if she’d ever seen all of him in the flesh.

She turned onto her side and wriggled closer to the edge of the bed overlooking his pallet on the floor. The bed frame creaked. She froze for a moment. And when she heard nothing but his even breathing, she crept closer still, until she could peek down at him.

The dim glow of the banked fire revealed his figure slowly.

He lay on his side, shirtless, only partially covered by his thin, unbelted plaid. His back was to her. In the firelight, he looked cast in bronze. Except that bronze didn’t move, and his back seemed to be . . . convulsing?

At first she thought it merely a trick of the light. Then she had the sudden, mortifying thought that he was awake and laughing at her. But after blinking a few times, she understood what was happening.

He was shivering.

“Logan,” she whispered.

No answer.

She quietly lowered her feet to the floor and crept down to sit beside him.

“Logan?”

She laid a light touch to his shoulder. He wasn’t feverish. On the contrary, his skin was ice--cold. His entire body was racked with tremors, and he seemed to be murmuring something in his sleep.

She leaned closer to listen. Whatever he was saying, it seemed to be in Gaelic. The same word, again and again.

Nah--tray--me?

Judging by the violent way he was shivering, if she had to venture a guess, she would suppose nah--tray--me meant “cold” or “ice” or perhaps “look, a hallucinatory penguin.”

Oh, Logan.

Since her attempts to wake him hadn’t worked, Maddie turned her attention to warming him instead. She pulled the heavy quilt from her bed. Then she lay down behind him, drawing the quilt over them both.

Propping her head on one hand, she drew soothing caresses over the lines of his shoulders, neck, and back. She made gentle shushing noises. He didn’t wake, but gradually his shivers began to subside. The tension in his muscles uncoiled, and his body relaxed against hers. Skin to skin. The masculine, soapy scent of him filled her senses.

Her heart swelled. Tenderness unfurled in her chest like a wisp of smoke, spreading and permeating her entire body.

I dinna do cuddling, he’d said.

She nuzzled the velvety cropped hairs at the nape of his neck, smiling secretly to herself. Perhaps he didn’t do cuddling, but she did. She was excellent at it, apparently.

Madeline Eloise Gracechurch: Stealth Cuddler.

What Logan didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

But if she wasn’t careful, it just might tear her heart in two.

At the first sign of daylight, she rose and slipped into the adjoining chamber, where she dressed herself in a simple muslin frock. She inched her way down the spiraling steps and arrived in the high hall, which Logan’s men had turned into their temporary camp.