Winter Heat Read online

  “Stop it!” Rising onto her knees behind him, she slid her arms around him, and it was his turn to freeze. “You silly, foolish man. Stop apologizing.”

  She slid around his torso to settle on his lap, wrapping her legs around him, and he couldn’t avert the surge of arousal her touch elicited. She framed his face in her hands and pulled it down to hers. She kissed him on the lips. “That was exactly what I wanted. What I needed.”

  “I hurt you,” he said stubbornly.

  She kissed his nose. “No, Logan.” She brushed her lips over his eyebrows. “No. You gave me pleasure.” She pressed her mouth against his forehead. “So much pleasure.”

  “I came inside you,” he said, unable to keep the self-condemnation from his voice.

  She touched her forehead to his. “I know,” she whispered. “I’m sorry for that.”

  “It’s my fault.”

  “No, it’s mine. I pushed you. If I am with child, it is my own doing. It’s not your fault.”

  “I will stay with you until we know.”

  “That’s not necessary. I know you are in a hurry to get home. If there is a child, I can care for it. My clan will help. No one would turn me or the babe away.”

  “Nevertheless, I will remain until we know. And if there is a child, I will take you north with me.”

  She pressed her lips to his jaw. “Let’s not think about it anymore. There’s no point agonizing over a remote possibility.”

  He pushed his fingers against his temples. Her words hit him like slaps in the chest. Of course she didn’t want to discuss leaving her clan to come home with him. The truth shouldn’t surprise him. She was a MacDonald, and these mountains were her home, not the flat wildlands of the northernmost part of Scotland. It was ludicrous to expect her to leave everything she’d ever known for a mere stranger she’d been trapped with in an abandoned cottage.

  Further, she was the MacDonald laird’s cousin, and he doubted that MacDonald would sacrifice his kinswoman to a man from so far who possessed comparatively little. A match between Logan and Maggie would do nothing for her clan.

  Groaning to himself, he wrapped his arms around her and crushed her against him, burying his face in her hair. “I’m a brute.”

  “Aye.” She pressed her cheek against his chest. “And that’s just how I want you to be. If you were any other way, I wouldn’t—” She broke off abruptly, and he cocked his head in question. Glancing up at him, she gave him a half smile. “I wouldn’t like you nearly as much as I do. I feel utterly secure with you.”

  Confused as hell, he frowned. She made no sense. “How could you say you feel secure with me when I treated you no better than that Munroe bastard?”

  She went stiff in his arms, and fire flared in her blue eyes. “You’re nothing like Innes Munroe. Nothing!”

  “I was rough with you, as he was. And worse, I took it further.”

  “No, Logan!” She pounded a little fist against his chest, and he looked down at it in surprise. “You were rough, but it was . . . it was . . . exquisite roughness. It was perfect.” She made a grating noise of aggravation. Her hands flew upward, and she took hold of his shoulders and tried to shake him. “Listen to me.”

  He stared at her, perplexed. She was so . . . He didn’t know. He just knew he’d never met a woman like her. Never met a woman who made him feel.

  “I have never really desired roughness . . . but just now, with you, I wanted it. And I was right. . . . It felt . . . well, I’ve never felt anything like it. I’ve never gone . . . felt . . . that explosion . . . that peak . . .” Her voice dwindled, and she looked away, frustrated, her lips so taut they turned pale.

  He widened his eyes in amazement. She’d never experienced an orgasm before. He couldn’t prevent the male satisfaction that flooded through him at that admission. He gathered her tight against him, fighting the prideful grin doing its best to split his face.

  “It’s never felt so . . . good,” she finally said on a sigh. She reached up to touch his face. “Now do you understand?”

  “Aye.” He pressed his lips into her hair. “But it still doesn’t change the fact that I might have given you a child.”

  She leaned against him, her cheek against his chest, and they sat in comfortable silence for a while. Logan ran his hands up and down her spine, allowing the odd feeling of contentment to flow through him.

  Finally, she took a deep breath. “When I was married to Duneghall, I prayed for a babe.”

  “Did you?” he murmured.

  “In our fifth month of marriage, I discovered I was with child.”

  Logan fought the stiffening of his muscles as some emotion he couldn’t decipher clawed at his chest.

  “But,” she continued, “I lost the babe a few weeks later. And then, before the midwife said I was healthy enough to try again, Duneghall was killed.”

  A sudden, hot burst of possessiveness nearly overwhelmed him. He wished she’d never been married. He hated that another man had her first. If he’d known her then, he never would have allowed it.

  He slammed the lid on those roiling emotions as quickly as they’d flared within him. Those were thoughts he shouldn’t be having. He and Maggie were from different clans from different regions. They led separate lives. He couldn’t let his feelings for her stand in the way of the responsibility that had been his sole focus since he watched his brother die.

  He wasn’t even certain she felt anything but a temporary carnal attraction toward him.

  He laid her on the bed and tucked the covers around her. Vulnerability softened her oval face and his heart tightened. Leaning over her slight form, he stroked her cheek with the back of his finger. “I’m sorry you lost a child.”

  She gazed up at him with shining eyes. “I still feel sad sometimes, but it was long ago.”

  He glanced back at the hearth, remembering it was Christmas Eve. “I should stoke the fire.”

  “Aye.” She smiled. “We must keep the elves away.”

  As he stacked another block of peat on the dwindling flames, she asked, “Why haven’t you married?”

  He shrugged. “I never felt compelled to. My brother was the heir, and he married young.”

  “Does he have sons?”

  “No. Three daughters.”

  “So you were his heir, and his holdings are now yours.”

  He nodded. Logan had always coveted his independence. He’d never wished for his brother’s many responsibilities, but now that they were his, he wouldn’t shirk them.

  He turned back to Maggie. There was a chance that she could be carrying his heir. Yet another newfound responsibility, but not one he wished away, he realized with no small measure of surprise.

  He wanted her beside him. He never felt so right as he did with Maggie MacDonald.

  He hesitated, staring at her flushed cheeks, the contrast of her black hair against her pale skin. She roused him in every way. He wanted to lie beside her, and yet . . .

  “Come to bed,” she said quietly.

  “You don’t wish me to sleep on the floor tonight?”

  “No.”

  He moved onto the bed and turned on his back, staring at the ceiling with his hands clasped behind his head.

  “You were so cold that first night after you awoke,” he murmured.

  “Aye, I was.”

  “After you fell asleep . . .”

  She lay very still, waiting for him to continue.

  “I lay beside you for a while. I couldn’t let you suffer,” he said. “Not even in sleep.” He turned to her, and when he saw the understanding in her expression, relief washed through him.

  “I needed your warmth, but I was too proud and too afraid to admit to it.”

  He turned back to face the ceiling beams, staring up at the wisps of smoke gathering in the thatch.

  “I dreamed about it, you know,” she murmured.

  “Did you?”

  “Aye. I dreamed that someone was near, keeping me safe and warm. It felt so
right, in my dreams. In life, though . . . well, I spurn such closeness, even from people I know. I’m accustomed to being on my own, you see.”

  “As am I.”

  “Nevertheless . . .” Her voice dwindled and she tried again. “I find I like the feeling of you lying beside me. It’s . . . comfortable.”

  “Aye,” he agreed.

  “It feels safe.” She made a small noise of confusion. “It’s an odd feeling.”

  He gazed up at the ceiling in complete understanding. “Aye.” They lapsed into a companionable silence, comfortable and warm, the lengths of their bodies touching lightly as they lay side by side.

  “Did you love your husband?”

  Logan frowned, wondering where the hell that question had come from, and why he’d asked it. He didn’t even want to know the damned answer. He gave himself a mental smack on the forehead and spoke in a tight voice. “Forgive me. You don’t have to respond.”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I did love him, but I was very young. I think of love differently now.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Nineteen when he died. Eighteen when we married.”

  “Ah.” That made her about twenty-f our. Five years younger than he was.

  “I’ve changed since then, I suppose.” She laughed softly. “I never imagined I could enjoy roughness in a man . . . but you’re rough all over, and I like it in you.”

  He cut a sidelong glance at her. “Is that so?”

  “Duneghall was very kind and tender with me, always . . . But perhaps that’s why I never . . .”

  Her flush flared crimson in the firelight, and it was beautiful. He pressed his lips to where the red slashed over her cheekbone.

  “Bonny Maggie,” he said against her skin.

  Something—a hint of mischief, perhaps—flickered in her eyes, and she turned the conversation around abruptly. “What about you? Have you taken many lovers?”

  “Er . . .” He pulled back. “That is not something most women wish to know.”

  “I do.”

  “Not so many, and none . . . none I would have married.”

  She turned to face him, her brows drawn together in confusion. “Why not?”

  Because they weren’t you. Banishing that thought, he shrugged. “They didn’t want commitment from me, nor did I wish for it from them. They were lasses to warm a man on a cold night . . . not to spend a lifetime with.”

  “I see.” She looked thoughtful.

  It was difficult to keep from touching her. Whenever she was close, his fingers itched to feel her skin against his own.

  “You make me feel so . . . different.”

  He cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

  “Different from how anyone has ever made me feel.” She paused. “Special.”

  She was special. The most special, precious thing he’d ever seen. Raising his hand, he fingered one of her soft curls, then brought it to his lips and kissed it. He pulled it straight and released it, fascinated by how it bounced back. She watched him, her lips tilted in a soft smile.

  Tenderly, he touched her plump bottom lip with his fingertip. He trailed his hand across her red-splashed cheekbone and down her nose, marveling at how it turned up slightly at the end. Then he gently traced her bruised eye and her arched, dark eyebrows. Finally he pressed his lips to the freckle between her brows.

  She lay passively, studying him, the expression in her blue eyes unfathomable. He continued his exploration with his lips, moving around her hairline to her rounded jaw and then over the soft, silky skin of her neck. As he slid his lips over her collarbones, brushing over the scab between them, her hand tangled in his hair.

  He moved on, allowing his eyes to drift closed, glorying in the taste and scent of her. She smelled fresh, like the forest after a rain, and she tasted like sweet cream. His lips drifted lower, and he opened his eyes as his mouth grazed the side of her breast. The pale round globes flushed wherever he touched them, and he touched them all over. Kissed them and loved them before closing his mouth over the taut berry of one of her nipples.

  Gasping and shuddering beneath him, she whispered, “Logan, oh . . .”

  He nipped gently, grazing his teeth over the peak, and she squealed. Suddenly tense all over, Logan raised his head to look at her. “Did I hurt—?”

  Growling at him, she yanked his head back to her breast. “More,” she demanded.

  He gave her more. He worshipped her breasts, licked them, teased, nipped, and suckled until she writhed beneath him, groaning his name over and over.

  He slid his hand between her legs and was gratified to feel her slick and ready.

  “Turn over,” he said hoarsely.

  She flipped onto her belly, and his breath caught at the sight of her backside. Her spine dipped just above her curved pale buttocks, its top marked by two deep dimples. Her legs were slender, shapely, perfect. He ran his hands down her back, over her rounded arse, down the backs of her thighs, reveling in the smooth, supple texture of her skin. And then he followed his movements with his lips.

  She trembled everywhere he touched her, as though the sensitivity of her skin had heightened a thousandfold.

  He couldn’t get enough of her. He could touch her like this forever. But his cock had grander ideas. It was stiff as steel, and at its base, a tumultuous ache had begun to boil up from his balls.

  “On your knees,” he rasped.

  Again, she obeyed him immediately, rising on legs that shook like a newborn foal’s, her pale skin flushed all over, as pink and soft as a peach. He bent over her, moved aside her hair, and kissed her neck as he thrust home.

  Sweet heat wrapped around his cock, squeezing him so tightly, he had to grind his teeth and curl his fists into the blankets to keep from coming as soon as he was fully seated inside her.

  “Ah, Maggie,” he ground out. In response she arched her back and wiggled, driving him even deeper.

  Instinct took over. He took her, deep and hard. Heat traveled through his extremities, deep, boiling through him, exerting a pressure so intense he had to close his eyes. Rearing up, he wrapped his hands around her waist and yanked her against him with every thrust. She helped him, slamming her weight back so they joined so intimately he couldn’t tell where she ended and he began.

  “Logan,” she cried. Her back arched, and after the next drive he made into her, she stilled and then began to shake. A sobbing noise emerged from her, but her shake transferred to him in gut-wrenching spasms that made him shudder all over. His entire being centered in the pulsing pole between his legs and then exploded, flooding her with his soul, with his life.

  When it finally began to subside, they both went boneless. She slid to her stomach, and he fell over her, only at the last second shifting as some part of him remembered not to crush her with his weight.

  Sometime later, Maggie sighed and wiggled her bottom.

  “Uncomfortable?” Logan sounded nearly unconscious.

  “No,” she murmured. “Just wanted to look at you a while.”

  He shifted to allow her to move, and she turned to her side to gaze at him in the flickering firelight. Outside the cottage, the wind made something flap against the stone exterior of the cottage, making a rattling noise.

  “When do you think the storm will end?”

  “Can’t storm all winter. A day or two longer most likely.”

  “Then what?” she whispered. Emotion thinned her voice, and she realized she didn’t want to leave this place. She didn’t want to leave him. She didn’t want him to leave her.

  He paused for a long moment. Finally he answered, in a voice as low and thin as her own, “Then I will take you home.”

  Chapter Six

  They delayed longer than they should have, Maggie knew. It had been a full twenty-f our hours since the last snowfall. They’d been at Innes Munroe’s cottage for nearly a week now— the last four days spent almost solely in bed talking and making love until both of them were sore and langu
id, drunk with pleasure.

  Two days before Hogmanay, the sun shone high and bright in the sky. Maggie stood in the doorway, staring out at the springlike scene. Melting snow dripped from the eaves, each drop twinkling like a gem in the glare of the sun.

  Logan came up behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. She glanced back at him.

  “We must go down the mountain today,” he said quietly. “Your family will be worried for you. They’ll be searching.”

  She raised her hand to cover one of his. “I don’t want to go.”

  “Nor do I. But we have families. We have duties. Both of us.”

  “Aye,” she agreed. Yet his duties far outweighed her own.

  Logan had said he’d take her north with him, but that was only out of duty should she be carrying his child. That was no longer a possibility, for her lack of pregnancy had been confirmed this morning by the onset of her flux.

  Not once had Logan suggested she travel north with him because he wanted her. It was foolish to hope that he would ask her to go with him. He had a family to care for and lands to govern. Maggie knew he liked her, but perhaps he saw her as a distraction from his new responsibilities. Nevertheless, a large part of her craved to hear him say he wanted her at his side.

  He was an honorable man, a just man, and he simply intended to see her home safe before leaving to shoulder the burden of his new duties. She couldn’t fault him for that, and she had no right to demand anything of him.

  She was the laird’s cousin, but she belonged to no one, and she hadn’t wanted to . . . until now. Her friends and neighbors had called Maggie daft for preferring to be alone over marrying again. But she’d been repulsed by the idea, for she knew no one who struck her as remotely marriageable, so she had stretched her mourning for Duneghall for as long as she could.

  She traced her fingers over Logan’s thick, long ones. The thought of separating from him forever terrified her, but he did need to return to his sister-i n-l aw, his nieces, and his tenants. And because she wasn’t carrying his child, he would leave her. Soon.

  Sighing, she shut the door, turned, and wrapped her arms around him.