The Highlander's Harlot (Sword and Thistle Book 1) Read online

  Feeling the pull of attraction between us, I dared to ask. “After what you just did to me, can you really wish I’d been born a lad?”

  “T’would have made you less vulnerable to men. Men like me.” Staring hard into my eyes, he clenched his teeth. “I should’ve never let you go.”

  “No,” I agreed. “You shouldn’t have. I wanted to stay with you.”

  He grimaced. “I meant that I should never have risked your coming to harm.”

  “You couldn’t have known the Donalds would be there.”

  “No. But it’ll haunt me that I wasn’t the one who fought them off. That it was Ian’s sword that defended you, not mine.”

  “His sword is your sword, my laird,” I said softly. “He’s yours and I’m yours. Everything and everyone in this castle is yours. If only you would accept it. I’d happily be whatever it is you need me to be.”

  “My whore?” he asked, a touch of anger in his voice. Defiance, even. “My harlot? Because that’s how I’d treat you. That’s what I’d want you to be. When I give myself over to the carnal act, I’m not the man you know. I’m not a good man, then.”

  “I don’t care,” I said, bravely. Recklessly.

  “You should care!”

  “But I don’t. Not as long as you’re the same man after. Because you’re a good man. A good laird. And I want you desperately.”

  He looked stricken. “You haven’t the first idea what you’re saying, lass. Maybe someday, when you have a bit of experience with men, if you still think—”

  “I don’t want to live in shame and ruin for anyone else’s lusts but yours. If you won’t take my maidenhead, I won’t be giving it or selling it to anyone else. I—I’ll join a nunnery.”

  He scowled. “Which is exactly where you should be. You’d be safe in a nunnery.”

  “But no one will ever touch me there, or make me feel like you did just now,” I whispered, inching closer to him, capturing his strong leg between mine. Squeezing it. “Tell me why it excites you to strike a lass with your belt.” Though he was so much bigger and stronger than me, he recoiled as if in retreat before an army. I had to hold him with all my strength. “Please tell me?”

  Swallowing, he said, “It’s play. I like to see the red stripes on a pretty bottom. Like to know a lass feels low and subservient to me. Like to hear her cry out, knowing she’ll wear my mark for days and know that she’s mine every time she sits down.”

  “But you do no real harm to her?”

  He scowled. “Are you asking if I’d take pleasure in beating a woman with my fist and leaving a bruise on her face like the one you’re sporting, the answer is no. But I’ve slapped a woman who asked me to do it, and she enjoyed my doing so.”

  My eyes widened. “So there are women who enjoy it.”

  His nostrils flared. “Of course! But not women like you.”

  “How do you know if you won’t try me? And plainly, you want to try me. Your member is straining for the want of it, my laird, and it can’t be healthy to deny yourself as you have been. I am offering relief.”

  He seemed stunned. Both by my frank discussion of his sexual need, and by the insistent, shameless offer. “You’re a madwoman if you think I’d add to your pain today, after what you suffered.”

  Though he wouldn’t be convinced, still I smiled softly. “Tomorrow, then.”

  “You’re the relentless, lass!” He laughed, then stroked my jawline softly where it ached. “I’ll tell you what you can do to please me tomorrow.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You can prove to me that you really can make the best pie of any woman in the clan. If we’re lucky, you can serve it to your sister in welcome when my warriors recover her. If we’re unlucky, well, the baking of it will take your mind off your troubles.”

  ~~~

  “A pie,” I said, bitterly. “The laird is drilling his men in the courtyard preparing for a possible siege, and he wants me to bake him a pie.”

  Brenna seemed horrified—but not for the reason I was. “The cook will throw fits to have a woman of your ilk in her kitchen!”

  “Well I can’t very well bake a pie in my chambers, can I? You’ll just have to tell the cook that it’s the laird’s command.”

  Brenna bit her lower lip. “You don’t understand. The only person more powerful in a castle than the laird is the cook. All the men know that if you anger her, everything will be over salted for a week. I made her furious once and got a dead mouse in my rations the next day. You don’t want to anger the cook!”

  Hm. It sounded very much as if I didn’t want to anger the cook. “What if—what if she doesn’t know who I am?”

  Brenna sighed. “Everyone in the castle knows who you are.”

  “By reputation. But if I wore a maid’s dress and apron…”

  Brenna’s eyes lit up. “Oh, aye. But if I tell her you’re a new girl, she’ll have you scrubbing pots. There’s only one way to get you into the kitchens without a fuss, and that’s if she wants to prove to you that she’s a better cook.”

  And so Brenna carried the rumor back to the kitchen that I’d boasted I could bake a better pie and by afternoon, the huffy cook was ready to meet my challenge. Side by side we chopped root vegetables and stew meat and spices; I marveled at how many spices the kitchen had in its pantry that I didn’t have at my father’s cottage and began to worry my boast was in vain. But my secret ingredient wasn’t a spice, but a splash of milk and flour that made the gravy creamy inside the pastry. And I knew now to make a crust with lard that would flake tenderly off the fork.

  I kneaded dough. I crimped it. I brushed it with egg-white. I stood sentinel at the hearth to watch the dough rise. And just as mine turned golden—perfectly puffed, and I pulled it out of the oven, we heard news from a herald in the courtyard.

  “It’s your sister!” Brenna breathed.

  “She’s here?” I asked, hastily wiping flour onto my apron.

  “No, but they have her. Davy and Malcom captured her back. They’re holed up somewhere until the danger is passed, but they sent back a lad to let us know that she’s safe.”

  Arabella is safe, I thought, nearly wilting at the knees. Not that I trusted Davy or Malcolm to treat her with anything like respect, but they wouldn’t let her come to real harm. Of that much, I was sure.

  The laird burst into the kitchen, and servants scattered in surprise and fear. All but the cook, who stood there by her pie, hands on her hips. “My laird.”

  His eyes were only for me. “You’ve heard the news?”

  “Oh, aye!” I said, wanting to throw my arms about his neck, but not sure if I could. He relieved me of the need to do so by wrapping his arms around my waist, and kissing me full on the mouth as if I were his woman. As if I were more than that…

  The cook cleared her throat.

  The laird looked up, spotted both pies cooling on the rack, and gave a feral smile. “Ah, now which one is Heather’s?”

  “No, you don’t,” groused the cook, with astonishing insolence. Brenna must have been right about her power here in the castle. “You can taste ‘em both and then tell us which one you like best. Then we’ll see that it’s mine you have a taste for.”

  The laird took a fork, prodded the shell of the cook’s pie, and made an approving noise. Then, digging into it, he brought a piping hot bite to his mouth. “Tasty,” he said, closing his eyes with pleasure. And I began to worry he’d prefer hers to mine. “Very very tasty.”

  Then he turned to my pie, and I noted the way it flaked on his fork. Noted too that it didn’t drip when he raised it to his lips, for my filling was thick and velvety, with savory stew meat and a hint of berry. One bite and he nearly sang. “Och, aye. This is a pie.”

  Brenna excitedly clapped her hands for me, earning her a scowl from the cook. But I beamed, delighted. “It’s mine.”

  “Is it now?” the laird said, taking another bite. “Now it’s mine.”

  We all laughed as he wolfed half of
it down.

  When he was finished, the cook slapped down her wooden spoon. “Let me taste that.” And when she did, her eyes fluttered closed as she savored the taste and texture. “Hmph,” she said. But when she opened her eyes again, she raised a brow at me. “It’s good. Very good. Might be the best meat pie I’ve ever tasted, which means you’ve missed your calling, girl.”

  “My calling,” I said, defiantly, “Is to please the laird.”

  “And please me, you did, Heather.”

  With that, he placed a smooch on my cheek, then strode out of the kitchens to help prepare for battle. It was remarkable that he could maintain his cheerful confidence when a war might be coming. He projected the notion that he would defend us all, that there was no need for any of us to fear, and though I believed in his quiet confidence, I wished Davy and Malcolm had returned.

  First, because I wanted my sister near.

  But second, because I felt as if he needed his best and most loyal warriors near him. Even Ian wouldn’t be as strong at his side, having taken a wound to defend me. And I wished there was something—anything—that I could do to help.

  Dressed in a simple shift, fastened with a blue bow, I found him before supper in his library, which he had turned into war room, with writings of defense strategies strewn across the tables. But he was sitting there alone, simply staring at nothing, so I dared to interrupt. “I want to give myself to you tonight,” I said.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “Now isn’t the time.”

  “It is. I remember what you said about how it makes you feel to take a woman the way you please You said it gives you strength. It makes you feel as if you have the power you need to protect this castle and this clan. That it gives you the confidence to fend off rivals and be the laird. It feeds something in you that’s always hungry without it. I think that’s why you asked me to cook for you. I think you are hungry. But it isn’t food that is going to sate you.”

  “Heather!” he said, harshly. “We’ve discussed this.”

  “No, we haven’t. You’ve told me that I should be afraid of you. You told me that how you would treat me if you were to let yourself loose. And you told me that I didn’t want it; that I shouldn’t want it. But you never asked for my consent, and I am giving it.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “I want to be your whore,” I said, the word echoing off the walls. “If that’s what I must be to touch you. To be on my knees for you, swallowing your seed. To enjoy your body. To be enjoyed. Then that’s what I want. I can be brave. I can be shameless. I can be anything you want me to be.”

  “The last time you provoked me this way, you came away from it with welts upon your pretty ass!”

  “Aye,” I said. “And then, just after waking, I looked at them in the mirror. Saw your mark upon my body. Felt within myself such a quivering, such a need, that I had to touch myself. Not that I knew how to give myself pleasure—I needed you for that. But you keep awakening this need in me, this hunger of my own, and then refusing to satisfy it! Which is why I’m not scared of you or your belt, only scared that you will never accept everything I want to give you. Even my shame. Especially that.”

  He went red, as if I’d put a torch to him. And that torch was desire. Sexual hunger. He nearly leapt up from the table to grab me. But somehow he restrained himself, his fingers grasping the edge. His teeth clenching. “I’ll grab you roughly.”

  I lifted my chin at the challenge. “And I’ll whimper with pleasure.”

  “I’ll demand your complete obedience.”

  “I’ll give it.”

  “I’ll call you names,” he added, narrowing his eyes.

  “I will treasure each one.”

  Rising from the table, he put his palms flat on it. “I’ll let my men watch.”

  I swallowed, remembering how it had been the first time, when he tore my dress to bare my breasts to his warriors. But this time, this time, it wouldn’t be for show. This time it would be real. But instead of revulsion, I felt a surge of aroused pride at the thought of anyone seeing me under my laird, where I longed to be. “Let them watch.”

  His eyebrows went up. “And if I want to share you with them?”

  My heart thumped dully in my chest as I considered that. I didn’t want anyone but him. But if I had to endure the hands of other men in order to have him, to strengthen him, to be for him what he was for me…a safe harbor…then I would do it. “I am yours to take, or to give away, my laird.”

  ~~~

  Ian Macrae.

  Why did it have to be the scowling, surly, Ian that the laird summoned to witness my surrender to him that night? My only consolation was that the wounded warrior seemed to wish he was just about anywhere but in his laird’s bedchambers. Holding his bandaged ribs, Ian lowered into a chair, as sour as I’d ever seen him.

  “You think I’m the devil with women?” the laird asked, confronting his cousin while I stood there. “And aye, I might be, Ian. But you’re going to see for yourself how it is truly before you decide to blacken my name again.”

  Ian shot me a look of accusation, as if I’d betrayed him. And I supposed that I had, telling the laird what he’d said. But now we both stood to be disciplined for it, didn’t we?

  “Do you want to kneel for me, lass?” the laird asked.

  And strangely, the question sent a thrill through me. I did want to kneel for him. Even with Ian watching. And it was so much sexier now than it had been the first time. I told myself that Ian simply didn’t matter. He was no more to me than if my laird had said he wanted to take me in nature so the birds could watch.

  I knelt and the laird raised my arms up and lifted my shift over my body so that I was naked—completely naked—before the two men. Then he took a belt from his wardrobe, and I knew he would strike me. The leather came down with a crack on my bottom. Then another, and another. He wasn’t nearly as savage with it as the first time, but it made me cry out. And yet, I smothered my cries because I didn’t want Ian to think this was some manner of abuse. Because it wasn’t. I wanted these lashes. I wanted to take these lashes for my laird. And every bit of the sting brought the blood to my nether parts, arousing me beyond reason.

  “Good,” the laird said with a hint of praise in his voice, though his hands stroked me softly as if I were a troubled animal—a mount that was coming under his control. And yet, I sensed his craving was for more than pain. He wanted my shame. “Now crawl to the bed and open your legs. Touch your cunt.”

  Cunt. I knew the vulgar word, and it struck me hard. But it also made me tingle between my legs to be spoken to this way. More than that, the thought of touching myself for him made me wet. Even wetter, somehow, that Ian was watching.

  My stomach trembled with need as I crawled to the bed in obedience. I lay down on my stomach and spread my legs, reaching behind me to trace trembling fingers between my legs. As I lay there, my fingers feeling the slippery wetness of my arousal, the laird stopped me. “I’d thought to take you for the first time on your hands and knees with your ass whipped like this, though that would rob you of the memory of how you were first taken. And I want you to remember. I want you to see my features as I fuck your virgin pussy. So you will turn over, and you will keep your eyes open, and you will see me. You will look into my eyes when I do it, and you will never forget.”

  Then he grabbed me by the nape of the neck, my hair twisted in his fist. “Understand what I’m saying, Heather. I’ll take your virginity this evening, but that’s not enough to sate me. I want you to be a whore. More, I want you to earn the title of whore. To crave it. To wear it proudly. To call yourself it. To make sure every other person in this castle knows you for it. My. Whore. I shall not be sated until you are that.”

  His words battered down on me like cold rain. The word whore kept slapping against my face harder than the Donald’s had struck me. Harder than the belt he’d lashed me with. The shame danced on my skin and prickled like nothing I’d ever felt. That I should earn my
fallen reputation? As if I were somehow beneath it now? I’d been a good respectable girl. And a bit ago, I’d been a good daughter who had offered herself for her family. But now, I only wanted to be his. I reddened but took it into myself. Glad to sacrifice it to him. Glad to feel so alive, so strangely freed. “I want to be your whore,” I said savagely. “But I don’t know how to earn it.”

  “You’re not expected to know what you haven’t been taught. Tonight, my requirement for you is simple. If you want this, you will open your thighs and beg me to fuck you. I’ll tie you down if you’d like that better—but if you struggle, it won’t be pleasant. I’m used to breaking animals and I intend to break you the same way.”

  I looked up at him wanting only to be broken. “I won't struggle.”

  Beyond the intensity of the state he was working himself into, I could still see that he looked pleased, and feral, and proud. “I’m going to fuck you, and then I'm going to spill my seed onto you, and we'll see what bastard you may breed. Now, turn over for me.”

  I quietly turned, my awareness of Ian’s stare now acute. I couldn't look at him. So I lay back, and spread my thighs, the dark curls damp on my mound bare for both men to see. Ian swallowed, looking away as if he didn’t want to feel the arousal that he plainly did.

  But it was then that the laird’s eyes seemed to soften. Maybe it was my posture. Maybe it was the surrender in my eyes. Maybe it was my obedience. Whatever it was, he ran his finger gently down my cheek and tenderly caressed my side. “I know I've been hard on you . . . but sacrifices must be painful, otherwise, they are not sacrifices.”

  I just shook my head with an impatient, aroused moan as his hands drifted down my body and plucked at my nipples. “Do you like that you’re being watched?”

  “It shames me,” I admitted, not knowing whether I liked it or not. My body was responding, but my mind was reeling.

  “And it should,” Ian said, fists clenched, as if he couldn’t decide whether he should stand up and go, or if he should beg leave to join us upon the bed.