Midnight Honor

MacBean curled up on the floor in front of the hearth fire, his plaid wrapped around his shoulders, the prodigious depth of his snores indicating he had not been sleeping long. Following the skirmish with the English soldiers, it had been his duty to escort Fearchar Farquharson deeper into the hills and to settle him with a strong guard of clansmen. Jamie Farquharson had returned to Dunmaglass with Gillies and was stretched out beside him on the hearth, his plaid likewise pulled over his head.
    Before the whisky had taken hold of MacGillivray's senses, he had ordered Gillies to thrust the blade of a knife into the fire and heat it red hot. When the steel was glowing and the bottle of whisky was empty, John had gripped the side of the table and ordered Jamie to hold his arms. He had snarled at MacBean to do it right the first time, for he had his hand on his sword, a fine pistol on his hip, and he would not hesitate to use them on the two fools if they blundered.
    The smell of burning skin and sizzling blood had set every iron-hard muscle to trembling, every nerve screaming, but the pain had been mercifully brief before he had slumped forward into a drunken stupor.
    Now he was hearing the whispers. They overlapped and seemed to echo within themselves, the words becoming a muddle of shushes and wheeshts and soft feminine sighs. He remained very still, afraid to open his eyes lest he find himself suspended on white clouds with heaven above and the fires of hell below and a flock of serious-minded seraphs debating whither he be sent, up or down.
    Something icy cool touched his forehead and he opened his eyes a slit, relieved to see no bright lights, no diaphanous wings hovering over him. The whispering had stopped as well, but he sensed he was not quite in the clear yet, for there was a lingering specter standing by the side of the bed. For half an eternity, he just stared. If it wasn't an angel then it was something sent by the devil: a wee spookie his mother used to call them, a vision of something you dreamed about so long or wanted so badly that the devil used it to torment your soul.
    His own personal chimera was just standing there looking down at him. Her face was a pale oval in the lamplight, her hair spilled around her shoulders in a shimmer of flames. She wore a white shirt and men's trews, and he could see where her breasts pushed softly against the cambric, unhindered by any foolish whalebone garments.
    If it was a vision, it was real enough to tempt his hand upward. And when his hand encountered solid flesh, he could no more control the desire to pull her down beside him than he could the need to draw her beneath him and sink his flesh into her until the vision faded and disappeared.
    Anne gasped when she felt MacGillivray's hand close around her wrist. Having been assured by Gillies MacBean that he was still sleeping his way through a heavy fog of whisky, she had remained behind a moment, intending only to straighten the covers he had thrown off and perhaps take a cloth to the beads of moisture that gleamed on his brow. She had felt no signs of fever when she touched his skin, but standing this close to the bed she hadseen what the shadows and disheveled covers had shielded from the view she'd had inside the doorway.
    His entire left side was exposed in a magnificent display of strength and sinewed power, from his shoulder down the extraordinary length of his body to his toes. His chest might have been chiseled out of solid granite, his arms and shoulders of oak. His legs were furred with hair as blond as that on his head, with tufts of copper sprouting at his armpits, thicker and darker at his groin. Nesting there was evidence that the rumors she'd heard about his prowess had more than a little foundation in fact. And there was where her gaze stalled and her breath stopped, for even as she watched, his flesh began to stir and grow.
    When his fingers curled around her wrist, she was sufficiently off balance to offer no resistance as she was pulled forward and down onto the bed beside him. The startled cry that formed in her throat was smothered when his mouth crushed over hers, and no sooner did she part her lips to attempt another cry, than his tongue launched an instant, lusty invasion. She tried to twist free, but he was already rolling on top of her, trapping her legs beneath his, and trying to push against him was like trying to push a mountain out of the way—one with determined hands, hot lips, and