Maddie found it impossible to sleep.
Last night, the whisky and her overwhelmed emotions had left her too exhausted for anything else. Tonight, her body sizzled with unspent energy and frustrated desire.
Whenever she closed her eyes, she thought of his mouth on her.
There.
For that one, heated moment, it had felt good. More than good. A jolt of bliss had streaked through her. She still felt it lingering in the soles of her feet and at the juncture of her thighs.
Would he want a woman to put her mouth on him?
There?
Humans have more imagination than lobsters, he’d said. And yet Maddie—-who was human the last time she checked—-could not quite bend her imagination that far.
Of course, she might have had a better idea if she’d ever seen all of him in the flesh.
She turned onto her side and wriggled closer to the edge of the bed overlooking his pallet on the floor. The bed frame creaked. She froze for a moment. And when she heard nothing but his even breathing, she crept closer still, until she could peek down at him.
The dim glow of the banked fire revealed his figure slowly.
He lay on his side, shirtless, only partially covered by his thin, unbelted plaid. His back was to her. In the firelight, he looked cast in bronze. Except that bronze didn’t move, and his back seemed to be . . . convulsing?
At first she thought it merely a trick of the light. Then she had the sudden, mortifying thought that he was awake and laughing at her. But after blinking a few times, she understood what was happening.
He was shivering.
“Logan,” she whispered.
No answer.
She quietly lowered her feet to the floor and crept down to sit beside him.
“Logan?”
She laid a light touch to his shoulder. He wasn’t feverish. On the contrary, his skin was ice--cold. His entire body was racked with tremors, and he seemed to be murmuring something in his sleep.
She leaned closer to listen. Whatever he was saying, it seemed to be in Gaelic. The same word, again and again.
Nah--tray--me?
Judging by the violent way he was shivering, if she had to venture a guess, she would suppose nah--tray--me meant “cold” or “ice” or perhaps “look, a hallucinatory penguin.”
Oh, Logan.
Since her attempts to wake him hadn’t worked, Maddie turned her attention to warming him instead. She pulled the heavy quilt from her bed. Then she lay down behind him, drawing the quilt over them both.
Propping her head on one hand, she drew soothing caresses over the lines of his shoulders, neck, and back. She made gentle shushing noises. He didn’t wake, but gradually his shivers began to subside. The tension in his muscles uncoiled, and his body relaxed against hers. Skin to skin. The masculine, soapy scent of him filled her senses.
Her heart swelled. Tenderness unfurled in her chest like a wisp of smoke, spreading and permeating her entire body.
I dinna do cuddling, he’d said.
She nuzzled the velvety cropped hairs at the nape of his neck, smiling secretly to herself. Perhaps he didn’t do cuddling, but she did. She was excellent at it, apparently.
Madeline Eloise Gracechurch: Stealth Cuddler.
What Logan didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
But if she wasn’t careful, it just might tear her heart in two.
At the first sign of daylight, she rose and slipped into the adjoining chamber, where she dressed herself in a simple muslin frock. She inched her way down the spiraling steps and arrived in the high hall, which Logan’s men had turned into their temporary camp.
There she stood, blinking, waiting for her eyes to adjust, and willing her heart to stop pounding in her ears.
Come along, then. Where are you?
Her gaze went to the corner, where the men’s belongings had been heaped.
There.
Maddie hugged the perimeter of the room, treading on the balls of her slipper--clad feet until she reached the heap of baggage.
Whether they were in a sporran, a saddlebag, or a knapsack . . . Those incriminating letters had to be here somewhere, and she was going to find them.
She plucked a canvas haversack from the corner and opened it, gingerly poking through the contents. When she found nothing remarkable inside, she moved on to investigate the next. And then to a third.
The contents were humble, and much the same in each. A spare shirt or two, a pair of woolen fingerless gloves, a boar--bristle scrubbing brush, a pair of dice. Nothing much of note.
Until her finger found the sharp end of a needle.
To her credit, Maddie managed not to cry out. But the bag slipped from her grasp, hitting the stone floor with a light thud.
She went absolutely still and turned a wary glance over the hall of snoring Scotsmen. None of them seemed to have heard. The men remained unmoving lumps of plaid huddled under their tartans.
Apparently, the men wore their plaids as kilts by day and then used the same for bedding by night.
She wrinkled her nose. When did they wash the things?
When did they wash themselves?