The Chieftain's Feud by Frances Housden Page A

with thoughts fashioned in dreams of what their life together could be.
    Early on, as the first months passed without sight of Jamie, she had wondered what would happen if one day he arrived to rescue her. Later, she had prayed he never made the attempt, for any assault on the Buchan Keep could mean Jamie’s end, his death, at her family’s hands.
    The feel of him in her hand swamped her with memories of how it had been between the two of them. She had had no other man yet could imagine naught so perfect as the feel of Jamie moving inside her. To her dismay, her questioning his love had almost spoiled her chance of discovering if Jamie’s lovemaking would always lift her to the heights of passion. “I’m sorry about earlier. That was fear talking, fear that you wouldnae want me back, had found someone else…” She let the question hidden in her words fade away.
    Nervous that she had spoiled their reunion, Eve felt tempted to make a silly jest, but before the thought could take shape on her lips, Jamie’s hot breath scorched her ear in a rough growl of amazement that she could slur his honour. “I ne’er looked at another lass, ne’er thought of such a thing. Frae the moment we met, all other women are but a shadow of yer beauty in my eyes, the need you engender inside me is like a conflagration. To even imagine being with another lass would unman me, make such an event impossible. All that has filled my mind is your bonnie face, the touch of your lips and the feel of your body pulsing around my prick as you cleave to me. It hurts that you should believe me capable of other.”
    He dipped his head till their foreheads met and his breaths, short and sweet as if in desperation, beaded like wee kisses against her lips. “I confess that my imagination hasn’t always been filled with sunshine, that a grey heaviness filled my mind every time I remembered you leaving, the way it did when my mother ne’er came back after promising me she would when I was a wee lad. I admit that I raged against fate for taking you away frae me. Ye have nae notion how I often contemplated killing yer father and brothers … and Hadron, ach what plans I had for him.”
    Eve heard him out without any feelings of astonishment. He wanted to kill her father. He might have to before the day was out. More difficult to believe was his assertion that he hadnae looked at another lass frae the day she left. Eve always had her priorities in the right order and said simply, “My father is probably on his way here. By now he will have dragged my destination out of Gillian, my maid. She’s not strong enough to withstand him.”
    She drew a breath of air that tasted of both her and Jamie and, filled with the need that shimmered between them, she made her confession. “It pains me to reveal that my father and clansmen would have arrived at the McArthur’s gate whether or not I was hiding here. It’s yer father and his friends he has a grudge against, and instead of lying here abed, we should be warning them of what foul deeds are about to happen.”
    “I had nary a doubt in my mind that he hated us, but ’twas only yesterday that my sister revealed the reason; my father has always refused to discuss the feud with me.”
    “Tell me, what started this terrible feud that has parted us for all yon months. What did yer sister say? Tell me, please, Jamie,” she begged, afraid of what unthinkable insult in their parent’s pasts could have led to such enmity. He felt her quiver with anger in his arms. “Why do families pass down hate and loathing as their children’s inheritance?”
    “Hmph,” Jamie expelled a short, sharp breath of derision. “To ken that would surely make me omnipotent. Unfortunately, I’m only a man my darlin’, with nae more notion of how the human mind works than you have. As for the cause of it, that can wait, as I wouldnae upset ye more than ye are already.”
    “Is it that bad?”
    “Nae, but mayhap it’s a skerrick too