She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer. Her lips whispered over his jaw and then to his ear where she kissed and nibbled at the lobe, playful and yet sinfully sweet.
Her actions were unpracticed and yet he found it endearing that she sought to show him her affection and perhaps her love. He could only hope, for it was the worst sort of hell to imagine that she wouldn’t return his feelings. She simply had to love him. He could entertain no alternative.
Closing his eyes, he buried his face in her hair, letting her surround him, hold him. He didn’t trust this sudden overwhelming emotion. It was overpowering. Beyond simple lust. Beyond the pleasure of a beautiful woman’s body. His heart was captured and it was a helpless, wondrous feeling.
“I love you,” he whispered into her hair, knowing she wouldn’t hear, but wanting to test the words on his lips. “I love you,” he said again when he realized how easily they came.
He covered her completely, but it was she who held him in her tiny hands. She who possessed him, not the other way around.
His release was powerful, so much more intense than ever before. It came from a place much deeper inside him. His entire body drew up and he plunged deeper, harder until she tightened around him.
She went liquid around him, soft and satiny, and he thrust again, this time his satisfaction roaring through him like a storm. He held her so tightly, he feared he was hurting her and yet he couldn’t let go.
He wanted to be inside her so deeply that they could never be separated, so that when they were apart, she would remember this moment when they were inseparable.
When they were one.
He relaxed onto her body, his loins still quivering with the last vestiges of his release. He rested there a moment, savoring the feel of her flesh imprinted on his. After a moment, he shifted to the side, bearing her with him, their legs tangled, their bodies still connected in the most intimate way possible.
She murmured something against his neck, but the roaring in his ears had yet to subside enough that he could make out what she said. He stroked her hair, down her back to cup her bu**ocks, holding her tightly against him so their link would not be severed.
It was a few moments later that he realized she was sound asleep, her head nestled underneath his chin, her mouth resting over his heartbeat. He smiled, more content than he’d ever been in his existence.
Her hand rested on her side and he reached to twine their fingers, fully intending to pull her arm over his side. When he touched her palm, he frowned and then lifted his head as he held up her hand in the dim light of the glowing candles.
Her palm and even the pads of her hand and fingers were ravaged. They were red, and there were still traces of dried blood where the skin had been broken. He turned it so he could better see and then swore when he saw the evidence of broken blisters.
Anger boiled through his veins, replacing his earlier contentment with rage. No more would he tolerate this, no matter Rorie’s arguments. Eveline would come to no harm, his clan be damned. If they could not see the treasure that had been bestowed on their clan, then they were all fools and he would suffer no fools. No longer.
This matter would come to an end the very next day.
CHAPTER 32
Eveline woke with a start and for a moment was so disoriented, she couldn’t gain her bearings. Then she smiled because she was snuggled tightly against her husband and his arm was thrown possessively over her body.
She closed her eyes and inhaled his scent. After the few days she’d had, she’d desperately needed what he’d given her the night before. Tenderness. Loving. His actions had shown her more than words ever could, that he valued her. That she meant something more than a wife he was forced into marriage with.
Perhaps one day … She sighed wistfully. Perhaps one day she would even gain his love. Oh to be able to hear those words. Really hear them. The idea sent an ache straight to her heart that nearly overpowered her.
She hadn’t spent a lot of time dwelling on the fact that she’d lost her hearing. In the beginning, she’d done plenty of moping and had even wondered if it was God’s punishment for her sins. But as time had gone on, she’d accepted that she’d never hear again. She’d never be normal and she’d never hear the things she’d taken for granted before. Music. Her mother’s voice. Her brothers’ teasing. And the rumble of her father’s voice, full of patience for his free-spirited daughter.
But now she’d give anything to be able to hear words of love from her husband. If not love, affection. She wanted to be able to hear the things she saw in his eyes and felt when he touched her.
He might never grow to truly love her as her father loved her mother, but perhaps that kind of love didn’t exist freely. She knew from hearing earlier accounts from her mother, that it hadn’t always been so between her and Eveline’s father. Theirs had been an arranged marriage, as so many were, and at first, neither had any liking for the suit.
But over time, they’d grown to love each other as fiercely as two people can love, and Eveline had grown up the beneficiary of that love and devotion. She wanted it for herself. She wanted it with a ferocity that she couldn’t even articulate. It was why she’d been so adamant that she’d never marry Ian McHugh, because she’d known without a doubt that he was not a man who’d ever treat her well, much less regard her with any love or affection.
It was her mother’s story of growing to love her father and his eventual love for her that gave Eveline hope that she too might find a love like theirs with her Montgomery warrior.
Fanciful, aye, she was that, but she’d set her mind to gaining acceptance from his clan. From him. And she wouldn’t rest until she had it. If it took cleaning the keep from top to bottom and tearing her hands until they were rough and callused, then she’d do it without regret.