The Recruit (Highland Guard #6)(92)

He held her there until she moaned. Until she thought her body would come apart just from the sheer force of him inside her. He filled her completely. Deeply. And then he sent her flying. Pounding into her with long, deep strokes that were every bit as frantic and hard as the cries of pleasure he tore from her.

It was rough. It was frenzied. It was lust in its most raw and primitive form. Her body was still spasming when she heard the hard grunt of his own pleasure a moment before a rush of heat pulsed through her.

But like a violent storm, when it was over, there was only destruction in its desolate wake. The room was painfully quiet. He pulled out of her and a blast of cold swept over her exposed skin. She was still bent over and supporting herself on the wall; otherwise she would have stumbled.

She stood, immediately grasping the front of her dress, which she’d just realized had been ripped apart at the bodice. Her skirts dropped back over her bare bottom, but the damp chill between her legs was a brutal reminder of what had just happened.

Shame washed over her. How could she have let him do that to her? And worse, how could she have liked it?

She wobbled, and he reached out to catch hold of her arm. “Jesus, Mary, I’m—”

“Thank you,” she said, forcing her eyes to his, when all she wanted to do was collapse in a ball and cry. Protect youself. “That was exactly what I wanted. The woman in the barn was right. You are every bit as good as they say.”

She thought he flinched. But perhaps it was only the flicker of firelight. His eyes burned into hers with something raw. Something that made her throat hurt and chest burn.

She wanted to take the words back, but it was too late. He turned on his heel and left, the door slamming definitively behind him.

He never looked back.

If he had, he would have seen her slide to the floor in a pool of horror and despair. If he had, he might have guessed the truth. He’d given her exactly what she wanted—lust without a hint of tenderness—but it wasn’t what she wanted at all.

What have I done?

Kenneth stayed away for as long as he could. He volunteered for anything and everything that would take him from the castle. Scouting missions, escort duties—hell, even helping to repair a wall at a nearby castle that had been damaged in an attack by Bruce’s raiders.

But if he thought that absenting himself from the castle would take an edge off the dangerous emotions clamoring inside him, he was wrong. No mission, no task, no amount of physical labor could make him forget what had happened. Nothing could penetrate the black rage that hovered around him like a dark, forbidding cloud. He was a man on the edge, and he knew it.

He’d lost his temper. He’d wanted to force her to acknowledge there was something between them, but all he’d succeeded in doing was proving her right.

Maybe MacKay was right. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this. How much longer before he did something rash? The mission that he’d hoped would establish his place in the Guard wasn’t turning out as he’d planned. He wasn’t impressing anyone. Sticking close to Percy had yielded little information of value, he hadn’t been able to confirm the castles the English would use on their campaign, his hopes of turning his wife and her son voluntarily to Bruce were dwindling, he hadn’t lifted a weapon in combat in weeks, and the steely control he’d fought so hard for was deserting him.

Sangfroid! Hell, he’d settle for anything below boiling right now.

It wasn’t until a week had passed that he trusted himself to return. It turned out a week was not long enough.

He’d barely had a chance to wash the dust and grime from him when he walked across the yard from the sea-gate (a cold swim in the River Tweed had seemed preferable to a warm bath in his chamber) and saw something that set off every instinct in his body to fight—and he had a hell of a lot of them.

Felton was in the yard practicing with some of his men. “Again!” he shouted.

Percy’s champion knight appeared to be demonstrating some swordsmanship techniques, but the unfortunate target of this lesson was David Strathbogie.

The young Earl of Atholl was on his knees, apparently having been knocked down. From the amount of dirt on the lad’s armor and the difficulty he seemed to be having in dragging himself to his feet, it probably hadn’t been the first time.

Perhaps it was because Kenneth had been the one to drag himself out of the dirt more times than he wanted to remember, but seeing Felton humiliate the lad struck every raw nerve, going against every ingrained sense of fairness in his body.

David managed to get himself upright, but Felton came at him again, shouting orders at him to get his sword up, to defend himself like a man, before knocking him back down with a complicated and highly skilled set of swings of his sword. Moves that no green squire could hope to defend against.

Kenneth’s blood boiled. He clenched his fists again and again at his sides. This was a lesson all right. A lesson in humiliation. Felton was purposefully making the lad look bad in front of the other men.

“Get up and fight,” Felton said, with a nudge of his sword in the boy’s side. “We aren’t finished.”

Red swam before his eyes. Kenneth could almost taste the lad’s humiliation and feel the sharp sting of his young pride. Before he could stop himself, he pulled his sword from his scabbard—in a moment of sanity using his left hand, as he was still claiming his injury prevented him from fighting full force—and strode forward, bursting through the circle of men. All he could see was Felton’s sword, pointed at the lad. With one sharp flick of his blade, Kenneth sent the knight’s sword sailing from his hand.