Captured by a Laird by Margaret Mallory

He really was quite handsome. Not that it made any difference.
    “Alison is a bonny name,” he said, edging closer to her. “It suits ye.”
    “Thank you,” she said, her voice coming out high.
    He was so close now that she felt his breath on her cheek and the heat of his body all along her side. The waiting, not knowing how horrid the act would make her feel, was difficult to bear. Her throat was so tight she could not swallow.
    “I want to please ye,” he said.
    She sucked in her breath as he brushed a loose strand of hair from her cheek.
    “It would please me to be done with it,” she said when she could bear the tension no longer. “Just do what you’re going to do to me and let me leave.”
    He lifted his head from the pillow. “Do to ye?”
    In the long silence that followed, her nerves were so taut she felt as if she might snap in two.
    “Do to ye?” he said again, but this time his tone was teasing. “If ye wish me to pleasure ye first, I’m happy to oblige.”
    She was going to ask what he meant, but the words died in her throat when he whispered in her ear, “ Exceedingly happy to oblige.”
    She could barely think with his warm breath tickling her ear—and then his tongue! The man was far too unpredictable. She clutched the bedclothes as he kissed her temple, the side of her face, and the sensitive spot below her ear. Strange how a murderous man’s touch could be so gentle, almost tender.
    What game was he playing? She feared he would lure her into letting down her guard so that she would be unprepared when he began his assault in earnest.
     
    ***
    David had gone to a great deal of effort to make a fearsome reputation for himself. Until now, it had never been a detriment with the lasses. Plenty of women were drawn to danger, judging by how many showed up in his bed uninvited.
    He sighed inwardly as he looked at Alison’s white knuckles gripping the bedclothes. Clearly, his bride was not one of those lasses who found his darkness intriguing.
    Why did it trouble him so much that she feared him, nay, loathed the very sight of him? He told himself he merely wanted a peaceful home and a ready bed partner. Yet as he looked into his bride’s pale face, an unfamiliar tenderness swept over him—and it worried him.
    He set that concern aside to deal with the problem at hand.
    He had never set out to seduce a woman before. He did not have time to waste chasing women. If a lass was not interested enough to come to him, he had not bothered with her. But Alison was his wife, and he was determined to break down her barriers and make her want him. The question was, how to begin?
    A memory came to him from when he was Will’s age, shortly after his father remarried. He was passing his father’s chamber and heard his new stepmother’s laugh coming from inside. Curious as to why she was there in the middle of the afternoon, a time his father usually spent training his men, David pressed his face to the crack in the door. He was amazed to see his warrior father, laird of his clan, running a comb through his wife’s hair as if he were a servant. She sat on a stool with his father standing behind her, and she was smiling at whatever his father was saying. When his father paused to kiss the top of her head, she leaned back against his chest and ran her hand up his thigh.
    David’s heart had lurched as he watched the intimate scene, and he felt disloyal for the longing their warm affection stirred in him. Even at ten, he had known with utter certainty that such a scene had never occurred between his father and his own mother.
    After Will and Robbie were born, they were enveloped in the warm bond between their parents. Though David would die for his brothers, he had never been part of that tight circle. He did not resent being on the outside—at least, he hadn’t since he was Will’s age. It kept him strong and focused, unlike his father, who had lost his strength to a woman, like Samson under Delilah’s