Midnight Honor

a shockingly huge protrusion of flesh that was already jutting thick between her thighs.
    His tongue swept her mouth and probed deep on each thrust, reducing her cries to strangled gasps. When he shifted, cursing the trews that proved a stronger deterrent than her frustrated cries, she renewed her struggles and this time, the heel of her hand caught him high on the wounded shoulder, causing him to jerk back with a roar of pain.
    For the moment it took his senses to clear, he glared down at her, his lips drawn back in a primal snarl. The long golden locks of his hair had fallen forward, the ends tickling her cheek, the denser mass near the scalp throwing up more shadows to mask his face from the light, but there was enough to see his expression turn from rapine lust to blinking confusion.
    “Annie? Ye're real, then?”
    “Of course I'm real, you great oaf. Heave off me!”
    “Christ,” he gasped, easing back. “Christ, Annie … I'msorry. I didna ken … I mean, I thought ye were … For the love o' God, what's that stench?”
    “I am afraid the stench is of your own making,” she said, glancing pointedly at the blackened flesh over his wound. Glistening under the shiny layer of unguent Gillies had applied to ward off infection, the smell was similar to that of rotted fish.
    He released her at once and, seeing how further disturbed the covers had become, snatched them hastily above his waist. Anne wriggled free. With her mouth still wet and pulsing with the taste of him, she scrambled clumsily off the bed and retreated to a safe distance. There she attempted to cover her embarrassment by tugging her clothes back into order.
    John rolled onto his back and gazed around the room in further bewilderment. “This is ma bedroom, is it no'?”
    Anne cast an acerbic eye around the piles of clothing thrown hither and yon, the half-full slop jar at the side of the bed, the globs of congealed wax on the table where oil and a good scrubbing stone had rarely ventured. “It would appear so.”
    “What the devil are ye doin' here? What time is it?”
    “It is past four in the afternoon, and I've come from Drummuir House to return a favor.”
    “A favor?”
    Something glimmered briefly in his eyes and Anne quashed it with a frown. “Not that kind of favor, blast you. Sober yourself! I've come to return the favor of the warning you gave me last night.”
    He scratched a hand through his hair, leaving a bright plume standing straight up over his right eye. “Warning? Wait, wait. Turn yer back, lass, an' give me a chance to find ma claythes.”
    She saw his kilt draped over a chair and tossed it to him before she headed for the door. “When you're decent, come down the stairs and I'll bandage your shoulder proper. In the meantime, you might want to give your head—and something else as well—a soak in cold water.”
    A muffled Gaelic curse, graphic enough to make her smile, followed Annie as she descended the stairs. Gillies was there, bending over the fire. Two other clansmen lurked in thecorner with Donuil MacKintosh, the young man sent by the dowager to escort Anne to Dunmaglass. Outside, the yard bristled with more clansmen. Taking no chances this time, there were men in the forest and up on the hillside; the outer ring of sentries had been expanded far beyond the steep and rocky nipples of Garbhal Beg and Garbhal Mor to provide ample warning of anyone approaching the glen.
    “Will ye take an ale, m'lady?” Gillies asked, straightening when she came into the room.
    “I will. But only if you stop calling me ‘my lady.’ The way you say it, I want to look over my shoulder and see who has come into the room.”
    Gillies reddened and grinned. “Aye. I'll do that.”
    “Annie,” she prompted.
    “Aye,” he murmured. “Annie.”
    Jamie Farquharson held out his own tankard. “I'll take another dram, if ye're tippin' the crock. Ma throat's dry as a dusty fart.”
    “Then you'd best have coffee, if that's what I smell boiling over the fire. And you'd best get it while you have the chance, for I've a mind the laird of the house will be needing the entire kettle before he can make a proper count of his fingers.”
    “A pox on coffee,” came MacGillivray's bellicose voice from the bottom of the stairs. “I'll have an ale as well.”
    He strode into the room, his footsteps heavy and dragging, one eye closed, the other glowing red with burst veins.
    Anne took up a tin cup and ladled steaming black coffee out of the