Her thighs were apart just far enough for his hand to slide between them and touch her delicate folds if he wanted to.
His hand itched to do just that, but his senses told him the soldier would be there soon.
He sighed soundlessly and then spoke. 'Someone is coming.'
She'd been floating with her eyes closed upon his instruction, but now they flew open and she tried to sit up. Because she was in the water, she started to sink instead, of course, and he had to grab her to keep her face from going under.
She spluttered and latched onto his shoulders with urgent fingers. 'Where? Who?' She frantically looked around the clearing. 'I don't see anyone.'
'He will be here in a few seconds.'
'I suppose you can hear him,' she said sarcastically.
'Yes.'
She frowned and shook her head. 'It makes no sense and I don't know why, but I believe you.'
'I do not lie.'
'I need my clothes.' When he didn't move fast enough to suit her, she tried to shake him. 'Now, before he gets here.'
He was in complete agreement, but it still took him a moment to force his muscles to obey the command to leave the water. Now that he wasn't focused on teaching her to swim, his need for her was taking precedence over his common sense. His wolf wanted to touch and taste her delectable naked curves.
'Lachlan!'
The wolf would have to wait along with his wholly human need. Using the speed of his inner beast, he carried her to the shore, and then threw his plaid around her like a blanket. The soldier was approaching at a run and would break through the concealing trees in a few seconds. She grabbed the edges of the plaid, making sure it covered her. It was not a woman's plaid and though he was much bigger than she was, a good portion of her legs was still exposed.
He shoved her shift and tunic at her. 'Go over there and dress.' He pointed to a dense clump of bushes that would hide her from even a werewolf's gaze, though the man approaching was only human.
Lachlan didn't need to be in wolf form to pick up Ulf's scent at this distance. His senses were superior even in his human body, but not quite as good as when he changed.
Emily had grabbed her clothes and disappeared behind the bushes. 'You are going to meet your soldier naked?' she called.
'It is my brother.'
His plaid landed on the ground a foot or so from the bushes. 'Get dressed.'
'A captive does not give a laird orders,' he instructed her.
'This one does.'
He almost laughed at her impudence. He knew no other woman like her… femwolf or human. He had just picked up the plaid when Ulf came into the clearing.
He was scowling. There was nothing new in that. His brother smiled less frequently than he did, but the look of accusation in his eyes irritated Lachlan. Ulf believed his family position gave him the right to question his laird, and Lachlan often humored him. It was not his brother's fault he had not been born werewolf.
He had pitied his older brother since the year came for Ulf's first change and it did not happen. Their father had been disappointed; their mother had been relieved and Ulf had learned that unlike what he had believed since childhood, he would not one day rule the Balmorals. There had been signs that his brother was fully human all along, but their father had ignored them, insisting his sons were both wolves.
He had been wrong. Only one had carried the ability to change and it had been Lachlan. From the week after his first full moon as a werewolf, he had been trained to take over the clan one day. Ulf had never protested. It would have done no good. A human could not survive a challenge by a werewolf and Lachlan would have challenged Ulf's leadership if he had tried to assert it. For the good of the clan.
His entire life had been lived toward that greater good and he was not about to forget his responsibilities now.
'Where is she?' Ulf demanded by way of greeting.
Lachlan could hear Emily pause in her struggle to tug her clothing on. She'd also stopped breathing, as if waiting to hear how Lachlan answered.
He nodded toward the bushes with his head while he secured his plaid.
Ulf's scowl grew more pronounced. 'What is she doing over there? You're wet. You were naked when I arrived. Have you taken to tumbling your enemy's castoffs in the water? I thought you only indulged in that sort of thing with femwolves.'
Lachlan knocked his brother to the ground with a hard shove. 'Guard your tongue.'
Ulf had the grace to look chagrined when he realized what he had said. Emily was no more aware than most of the humans in the Highlands of the wolf nature inhabiting some of their clanspeople. Ulf knew the penalty of betraying the Chrechte's secrets to those who should not know.
Death. And being the laird's brother would not save him.
Lachlan did not know what Emily would do if she knew the pack's secret, but she was human and that meant they did not take the chance.
Then, to cover both Ulf's blunder and his own correction, he said, 'She is no one's castoff, as I have told you.'
Emily muttered something about arrogant men poking their noses into business that was not theirs and he had no doubts she could hear every word he and his brother spoke.
Ulf showed no evidence of hearing her low-voiced grumbling as he climbed to his feet. 'Yet she does belong to your enemy.'
'He refused her.' Lachlan was bloody weary of discussing the Sinclair laird.
'And you plan to keep her in his place?' Ulf asked with derisive bite.
'No.' Lachlan did not understand his brother's derision.
Emily was human, but so was Ulf. She was not the other laird's castoff and if Lachlan chose to keep her, he could not see what objection Ulf might raise. Unless he, too, was concerned about Lachlan's children being born wolf.
Ulf, better than anyone, knew the price paid when a child born to a Chrechte and a human took human form instead of a wolf's. Their race did not reproduce easily, but to do so and not pass on the gifts of the Chrechte was a tragedy.
'You are giving a great imitation of a man governed by his lust rather than his head.' Ulf's criticism stung because it was so close to the truth.
Lachlan was too proud to admit such a thing though. 'I grow weary of your harping, brother. You sound like a fretful old woman.'
'Better than a man at the mercy of his beast.'
Lachlan usually let comments like that slide, but enough was enough. His brother needed reining in. 'Be careful I do not unleash my beast on you,' he said with chilling bite.
Ulf winced, but quickly controlled his features. His strength in the face of even a Chrechte's threat impressed Lachlan. He had always admired his human brother and while he had pitied Ulf's inability to make the change, he'd never made the mistake of thinking the older man was weak for what he was.
Not wanting to risk Emily hearing anything more that might betray his secrets, he led his brother far from the bushes she was now simply hiding behind. She'd finished dressing but had not come out, and he didn't know if it was because she was embarrassed or because she didn't like his brother, or both.
He stopped a good thirty feet away. 'Say what you came here to say.'
Ulf's hands fisted at his sides. 'First tell me honestly if you have plans to marry the woman.'
'You should know better than that. I will not marry a human.'
'Not even a clanswoman?' Ulf asked.
'Nay.'
'You're worried the Chrechte's secrets will be revealed.'
'That is part of it.' Intermating always carried such a risk. There had been a time when it had been expressly
