Read Online Torn Between Two Highlanders by Laurel Adams - Free Book Online Page B

in her life.
    “We all want it,” Malcolm said to calm her.
    Davy nodded, “The only question is which one of us you will give the honor of taking your maidenhead.”
    Malcolm’s grim face twitched at that—the semblance of a smirk—as if he were certain that he would be the one to have the honor. And Davy smirked back, making her realize that these two spoke to one another without words, each of them cooperating to execute a battle plan upon the map of her body.
    And she was happy to give them the victory, because she was overcome with a lust that made her quake. They were erasing her terrorized memories of men crowding around her, brutalizing her. Replacing them with new memories and sensations of delight. In truth, she flowered under their attentions into an utter wanton—the kind of woman she’d been taught to think poorly of. But she couldn’t stop to care. No, she wouldn’t have stopped. Not for anything but Malcolm, who shifted his hips against her side so that she could feel the glorious length of his hardness.
    But in doing so, he grimaced against the pain.
    He wasn’t healed enough, yet. And though it gratified her that he so obviously wanted her—that both men breathed hard in her ears with desire—she could not live with herself if she ever did Malcolm harm.
    He wasn’t healed enough yet for riding a horse, much less riding a woman.
    He needed his strength, and she would not take it from him.
    “Enough,” she whispered, regretfully. “Enough.”
    They stopped. Both of them. As if she’d uttered a magic spell. And the power they had given her over them, and over herself, was so heady she wondered a moment if she truly was a witch.
    “Is something wrong?” Davy asked, panting near her ear.
    “Nothing whatsoever,” she said, her voice dreamy and far away. “It is only that I’m frightened.” Frightened that the injured man would open his sutures and start to bleed again, she meant. Frightened that he would endure pain for her part. But she could see the two men didn’t take it that way.
    “You mustn’t be afraid,” Malcolm said.
    Davy insisted, “We wouldn’t hurt you, lass. Only give you pleasure.”
    “Even the first time?” Arabella asked. “I’m told—I’ve heard…”
    Davy, who had claimed never to have had a virgin girl, shrugged helplessly. It was Malcolm, who had been a husband, who nodded. “ Och , aye. There is pain the first time. But it fades quickly and turns to sweetness.”
    She wasn’t afraid of the pain of breaking her maidenhead. Given the way the men made her feel, she didn’t doubt Malcolm in the slightest when he said it would fade quickly to sweetness. She wanted that sweetness, truly she did. But she was sure he was already in pain, and that it was not sweet at all.
    “I’d like some time to muster my courage,” she said. “If—if that would not enrage you both too much.”
    Davy laughed. “Aye, right. It’s rage I feel swelling in my balls. Lass, any man who wouldn’t wait for you to muster your courage is a man without any of his own.”
    She felt something for him then. Something well beyond the heat of lust. And then felt it again when Malcolm nodded solemnly, rolling onto to his back. She hated to let them withdraw from her, but it was the right decision.
    Malcolm said, “Put my claymore in the bed. Down the middle, to keep us separate and guard her virtue.”
    The virtue she wanted so badly to surrender? No, she thought. It’s his virtue he wants to guard. For no matter how warmly she felt for Malcolm, she knew one thing for a certain. He might want her. He might kiss her. He might finger her most intimate places and plot to couple with her in carnal bliss.
    But he didn’t want to hold her; not as a man holds a woman he loves.
    And he clearly feared that he might.
    ~~~
    She slept so long the next morning, she didn’t hear the rooster crow. Or perhaps it was that she couldn’t hear the rooster crow, considering the world was quiet and