Moon Craving

However, after one bite of the hard roll and chewing it for what seemed forever, she placed it aside. “I’ll just save this for the morning.”

“I will provide you with food to break your morning fast.” He looked downright growly.

“I’m full.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure?”

“I’m not a warrior. I don’t need that much.”

“I’ll not have you wasting away, wife.”

She felt a blush climb her cheeks at his verbal claim to her. “I won’t.”

“You are small.”

“Are Highlander women so much larger, then?” Emily hadn’t mentioned such a thing in her letters.

“Nay, but you are fragile.” He said the last word with a twist of his mouth.

Ah, the weakness thing again. “Emily is no bigger than me, and she’s doing just fine among your brethren.”

“She lives among the Balmoral.”

“Same thing.”

“No, it is not.” He frowned fiercely. “We are the Sinclair, they are Balmoral.”

“Are there no Chrechte among them?” she asked, trying to understand her new husband’s point.

Perhaps he thought the fiercer warriors a danger to her. Though that didn’t make much sense to her either, but then much of the way men thought didn’t.

“The Balmoral is Chrechte.”

“Emily’s husband?”

“Aye.”

“There, you see? I will do fine.” She might be afflicted, but that had only made her stronger, not encouraged weakness.

Though only Emily had ever acknowledged such.

“You think to compare me to the Balmoral?”

She decided she would be best served with one of the shrugs so popular with the Highland warriors.

He shook his head as if unable to believe her. “You are a Sinclair now, you will not forget that.”

“Trust me, I’m not likely to.” She was deaf, not daft.

“It is time to sleep.”

“Finally,” she muttered as she turned and attempted to find a spot to lie on that would not put her body into contact with his.

He had no such compunction. As he stripped his plaid and shirt from his body, he made no effort to avoid brushing her side with first an arm and then his leg.

“Are we on Sinclair land then?” she asked with a squeak she could not be sure had enough volume to be heard.

He turned to stare at her. “Nay.”

“But . . .”

“Undress. You’ll not sleep all twisted up in your plaid.”

“I . . .”

He blew out an impatient breath. “You may remove your plaid under the furs to protect your modesty.”

He should have thought of that before hopelessly compromising it by getting wholly naked in front of her. She’d never seen a man’s body before, and she found it both frighteningly repelling and inexplicably fascinating.

He made no move to cover himself as she stared at him in helpless curiosity. In fact, the part he should have covered and that she should definitely not have been looking at began to grow. She remembered he’d mentioned such a phenomenon that morning, when explaining the marriage bed. But she had not understood what he meant. Now, she did.

Oh dear, did she understand. It was quite amazing and entirely mortifying. Especially since she could not seem to look away.

“That’s . . .” She licked her lips and swallowed. “Does it get bigger?” She was unable to stop herself from asking.

“Keep looking at it like a kitten ready to lap up cream and it will.”

She jolted at his words. “I . . . I wasn’t. Not thinking of licking.” Licking? Was he truly serious? He looked so, not a flicker of amusement anywhere in his expression. But licking?

He’d told her they might do that. Taste each other in such intimacy. She’d thought he must surely be exaggerating, playing on her ignorance. Clearly, he hadn’t been. Oh, my.

Did he expect her to do that now?

He reached for her.

Surprisingly, she did not faint again. And showing a complete lack of self-preservation, she made no move to run screaming from the tent.

His face a mask over some emotion so fierce, the very blankness alluding to it, he untied her belt. She grabbed it and stared at him, unable to voice a question or complaint.

He said nothing. No words of comfort, no demand she not impede him.

Was the fire burning in his blue gaze lust? A man’s desire for a woman was not something she had any experience with. Though Jolenta had told her stories, implying the whole time that Abigail would never have to worry about such a thing.

Isn’t that what they’d all thought, Abigail herself included?

Sybil had not come right out and said she did not think Talorc would want Abigail, but she’d implied it well enough. And yet, isn’t that what Abigail saw in his eyes right now?

“Do you want me?” she asked, once again showing her self-protection skills were at a very low ebb.

But she truly needed to know.

“Yes.”

“But I’m English.” Shut up, Abigail. She’d spoken more to her husband in the past day than she often did in a week. Surely she could stop talking. But words just kept popping out of her.

“I will not claim you now,” he said, ignoring her last comment.

Then why did he wish to undress her? This question she managed to keep to herself. Barely.

He tugged at her belt and, of their own volition, her fingers released it. For surely she would not have done so on purpose. He pulled it away and began undoing the pleats of her plaid. Shock and a strange stirring in her belly held her immobile as he removed the blue, green and black fabric from her body.

When he finished, he knelt there, unmoving. Unsmiling. Silent, but his gaze spoke volumes could she interpret the messages there. Her blouse barely reached her thighs and her shift only a few inches beyond that, but at least she was not as naked as he. That was something. So, why did she feel as if he could see right through it?

Suddenly, she remembered that the furs they knelt on were for more than cushioning her body from the hard ground. They would afford protection from the incendiary heat of his gaze.

When she scooted to get under the furs, he stopped her with a hand on her naked calf. “Do the English sleep in their clothes, then?”

She shook her head mutely.

He began to tug at the hem of her blouse.

She grabbed it and held it in place. “You said I could undress under the furs.”

He looked like he would argue, but after a few seconds he nodded. “Do it.”

She clambered under the fur, forcefully keeping her eyes away from the stiff member between his legs. Flesh that had indeed grown to truly intimidating proportions. Within seconds, he had joined her, showing her supposed reprieve to be a false hope. She could even feel his naked leg touching her own under the soft furs.

She would have moved away, but he put that stone-hard arm that had kept her safely on his horse for so many hours around her waist and tugged her close to him. “Let’s get rid of this now.”

She was so lost in nerves she could barely read his lips as he spoke, much less make sense of the words.