Sometime in our third encounter, I arched tightly against him and cried out. He drew back at once, startled and apologetic.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didna mean to hurt ye."
"You didn't." I stretched languorously, feeling dreamily wonderful.
"Are you sure?" he said, inspecting me for damage. Suddenly it dawned on me that a few of the finer points had likely been left out of his hasty education at the hands of Murtagh and Rupert.
"Does it happen every time?" he asked, fascinated, once I had enlightened him. I felt rather like the Wife of Bath, or a Japanese geisha. I had never envisioned myself as an instructress in the arts of love, but I had to admit to myself that the role held certain attractions.
"No, not every time," I said, amused. "Only if the man is a good lover."
"Oh." His ears turned faintly pink. I was slightly alarmed to see the look of frank interest being replaced with one of growing determination.
"Will you tell me what I should do next time?" he asked.
"You don't need to do anything special," I assured him. "Just go slowly and pay attention. Why wait, though? You're still ready."
He was surprised. "You don't need to wait? I canna do it again right away after—"
"Well, women are different."
"Aye, I noticed," he muttered.
He circled my wrist with thumb and index finger. "It's just… you're so small; I'm afraid I'm going to hurt you."
"You are not going to hurt me," I said impatiently. "And if you did, I wouldn't mind." Seeing puzzled incomprehension on his face, I decided to show him what I meant.
"What are you doing?" he asked, shocked.
"Just what it looks like. Hold still." After a few moments, I began to use my teeth, pressing progressively harder until he drew in his breath with a sharp hiss. I stopped.
"Did I hurt you?" I asked.
"Yes. A little." He sounded half-strangled.
"Do you want me to stop?"
"No!"
I went on, being deliberately rough, until he suddenly convulsed, with a groan that sounded as though I had torn his heart out by the roots. He lay back, quivering and breathing heavily. He muttered something in Gaelic, eyes closed.
"What did you say?"
"I said," he answered, opening his eyes, "I thought my heart was going to burst."
I grinned, pleased with myself. "Oh, Murtagh and company didn't tell you about that, either?"
"Aye, they did. That was one of the things I didn't believe."
I laughed. "In that case, maybe you'd better not tell me what else they told you. Do you see what I meant, though, about not minding if you're rough?"
"Aye." He drew a deep breath and blew it out slowly. "If I did that to you, would it feel the same?"
"Well, you know," I said, slowly, "I don't really know." I had been doing my best to keep my thoughts of Frank at bay, feeling that there should really be no more than two people in a marriage bed, regardless of how they got there. Jamie was very different from Frank, both in body and mind, but there are in fact only a limited number of ways in which two bodies can meet, and we had not yet established that territory of intimacy in which the act of love takes on infinite variety. The echoes of the flesh were unavoidable, but there were a few territories still unexplored.
Jamie's brows were tilted in an expression of mocking threat. "Oh, so there's something you don't know? Well, we'll find out then, won't we? As soon as I've the strength for it." He closed his eyes again. "Next week, sometime."
I woke in the hours before dawn, shivering and rigid with terror. I could not recall the dream that woke me, but the abrupt plunge into reality was equally frightening. It had been possible to forget my situation for a time the night before, lost in the pleasures of newfound intimacy. Now I was alone, next to a sleeping stranger with whom my life was inextricably linked, adrift in a place filled with unseen threat.
I must have made some sound of distress, for there was a sudden upheaval of bedclothes as the stranger in my bed vaulted to the floor with the heart-stopping suddenness of a pheasant rising underfoot. He came to rest in a crouch near the door of the chamber, barely visible in the pre-dawn light.
Pausing to listen carefully at the door, he made a rapid inspection of the room, gliding soundlessly from door to window to bed. The angle of his arm told me that he held a weapon of some sort, though I could not see what it was in the darkness. Sitting down next to me, satisfied that all was secure, he slid the knife or whatever it was back into its hiding place above the headboard.