Saved by the Highlander by Emily Tilton

Fiona upon her belly, the same way Lord Roderick had had the scullery maid—and the same way the outlaw had nearly had Alice herself. Then, without knowing how she might possibly push away the terrible, lovely vision, she imagined Niall after her strapping, when her cunny had to suddenly become so warm, doing the same thing to her… fucking her the way she now understood husbands fucked their wives, outlaws fucked their victims, and loathsome noblemen fucked scullery maids.
    At last, after Fergus and Fiona had finished their lovemaking and drifted off into a peaceful sleep that Alice envied more than she could possibly have expressed, the worst part of all began: the thinking about the outlaw, Lord Roderick, and above all about the chief of Clan Alpin. The longing for things that Alice knew could never be, and were, besides, wicked and wanton and lustful. It had been so few days since the time when she had been able to dismiss entirely what she had seen Lord Roderick doing with the scullery maid in the park. Beyond proving that he was unworthy of her, that incident had left her mind almost unruffled.
    Now, however, after what had happened on the road, and after the spanking and the strapping, and after knowing Niall MacAlpin for a true gentleman, to lie awake alone seemed positive torture. Only a week before she had never thought she might yearn to lie beside a man, and now if she found sleep at all it seemed filled with shameful visions of what the man who made her lie beside him demanded of her, in her cunny and even in her bottom.
    Thus, when she decided to walk far into the hills, ten days after her arrival in the village, she could never afterward say whether she intended Niall to catch her. She told Fiona that she would walk to the sheepfolds, and although she did walk in that direction, she knew that even when she had told the kindly woman where she would go, she had already intended to go further. She told herself that she wanted to see what lay beyond the hills to the north. She knew that one thing situated in that direction happened to be Lormoran, and so one of the falsehoods she told herself was that she merely wished to see whether she might catch a glimpse of the place where she was to have been wed. Sure, her self-deceiving mind said, those hills are part of the village, and I shall not go too far, if I climb to their top.
    Alice was standing atop one of the crags to the north of the village when she heard Niall’s voice behind her. “My lady,” he said, and Alice knew instantly that her backside had come into grave danger, from the grimness of his tone. She whirled about to see his handsome, though wrathful face, and felt herself go weak in the knees, but she stood her ground as he climbed the last few feet to stand with her at the top of the hill. He said nothing more for a long moment, perhaps trying to catch both his breath and his composure. The look of anger in his face made her heart beat very fast, but still she glared up at him, for what else could she do? Certainly she could not say what she knew with complete certainty in that instant: that she had come up there in order that she might give Niall a reason to punish her.
    “My lady,” he finally said. “You have disobeyed me in coming here.”
    “N-no… I…”
    “You told Fiona that you would walk to the sheepfolds. Even if I supposed that perhaps you were daft enough to think that this crag, which marches on the demesnes of the man who tried to kill you, were part of my village, your failure to abide by your word to her proves you reckless and disobedient.” His breath caught; he seemed magnificent in his severity with her, which, as if now that he had found her the heat of his anger was receding, seemed to Alice to show a care for her that she had not taken of herself.
    She started to cry. “I am sorry, sir.”
    “I am very glad to hear it, my lady, but I am sure you can guess that it is not sufficient. Fiona will strap you when we