“Uist, m’annsachd,” he whispered. He waited a moment, allowed her body time to adapt to him, then slowly, carefully, began to move inside her, sliding and plunging, sliding and plunging.
The sensation was astoundingly lurid and beautiful all at once, a strangely pleasurable pain, and when Anna began to move to meet his thrusts, Grif moaned into her flesh, his breath hot. She could feel her body tighten around him, drawing him in, just as she could feel the strength of his desire growing and the power of his body.
But then his strokes began to take on a new urgency, and she met him in perfect harmony as his body bucked beneath her. He slipped his hand between their bodies and began to stroke her in time to the stroking inside her. The fires began to build in her again, raging, white hot, and she realized she was whimpering with the sensational mix of pleasure and pain. Then, suddenly, she felt an overwhelming wave of fire flash through her and cried out.
Grif cried out, too, with one last powerful surge inside her, and she could feel his member convulsing, spilling into her, his life’s blood to hers. Panting, he collapsed onto her, his face in her hair. He gathered her in his arms and rolled to his side, holding her tightly to him, until he had caught his breath.
“I love ye, Anna,” he said at long last. “Diah, but I love ye.”
She smiled into the curve of his shoulder. “I love you, Grif.”
In the privacy of that room, their desire for one another sated for the time being, they lay naked together in candlelight, their bodies entwined, and on a bed of primrose and bluebell, watching the flames at the hearth slowly die, naming their future children, in complete peace.
And when Anna fell asleep in Grif’s arms, her lashes dark against her sun-drenched skin, he recalled what he’d once seen on a tombstone: “Here lie Leslie MacBeth and his loving wife, Aileen, together in conjugal felicity in death as in life.”
At the time Grif had thought it a rather odd thing to put on one’s tombstone. But tonight he prayed with all his might for conjugal felicity with the woman beside him, in life and into death.
Thirty
T he next morning’s light, bright and warm, streamed in the small window of their room at the inn. Grif had already arisen, was washed and dressed when Anna awoke. She sat up, stretched her arms high above her head, and yawned with pleasure. “My husband,” she said, smiling prettily.
“Wife,” he responded, grinning like a happy man as he walked around to the side of the bed to kiss her.
“You’ve risen so soon,” she pouted, her arms around his neck. “I had rather hoped you would show me again,” she said, smiling wickedly.
He was only a man, and he laughed as she tugged at his neckcloth, at last untying it himself in the interest of obliging his bride. It wasn’t until a maid knocked on the door that he extracted himself from the bed and her and reluctantly rose.
Grif dressed quickly. “I’d best find MacAlister,” he said, and kissed the top of her head. “We should press on, mo ghraidh, as soon as ye are bathed and dressed.”
She fell back against the pillows, looking marvelously sated. “I don’t ever want to leave here.”
“Aye, but we must. We’ve no money, lass,” he said, unable to resist the urge to kiss her again. “I’ll have a bath sent up and come for ye after a time, aye?”
“Very well,” she said, twirling a length of hair around her finger. “But go now, will you, so that you may soon come back to me.”
He laughed, kissed her once more, and grabbing up his hat, walked out the door.
He found the innkeeper and inquired after Hugh. The innkeeper, still flush from what Grif assured him was a successful wedding supper, seemed confused by Grif’s question. “Yer man, milord? Oh no, he didna keep here. We had only the one room, aye?”
That surprised Grif—he’d assumed Hugh had taken a room here. “Then where might he have gone?”
The innkeeper shrugged. “There’s a small public inn at the end of the high street,” he said. “Perhaps he’s there.”
Grif started in that direction, but paused and looked over his shoulder at the innkeeper. “Might there be gaming in the village? Somewhere a lad might find a bit of sport?”
The innkeeper shook his head. “Perhaps a game now and then at the smithy, milord,” he said, “but no’ more.”
The other inn, then. Grif walked on, ignoring the knot of discomfort in his belly. It was ridiculous to believe something had happened. What would Hugh have done with Miss Brody? If the Queen’s Head Inn had no rooms, of course he’d gone to the smaller inn.
He walked down the main village thoroughfare to the opposite end of the village, where the other, smaller inn was located. The innkeeper at this rather sordid establishment, a woman, grimaced when he asked after Hugh.
“Aye, I know of him. A friend of yers, is he?”
“Aye,” Grif said.
“Then ye be the same bad ilk!”
“I beg yer pardon?” Grif asked, taken aback.
“Yer friend and his Irish whore left without paying!” she spat.