Chapter Thirteen

Logan should have pulled away. They needed to seek shelter.

But he couldn’t bring himself to let her go.

The rain had plastered her frock to her skin, leaving little to his imagination. He saw all of her, in perfect contour—­her pale skin, her puckered nipples, the blue tint to her quivering lips. She was vulnerable and trembling.

She needed warmth.

And he needed this.

To hold her. Guard her. Feel her pounding heart pressed close to his and know she was alive.

Because, though he would die before he’d admit it, he’d been frightened for a moment there, when she’d been caught in the mire.

He’d drawn her close to reassure himself. He’d kissed her because she’d seemed to want him to.

But now his shy, timid bride was kissing him, and he’d lost control of everything.

Her fingers sifted through his damp hair. Her sweet, tentative tongue stroked his. The longing pierced him to the core. He felt faint with it.

He tightened his grip in the back of her dress, pulling her body flush against his. She sighed into the kiss, wriggling closer still. Her belly brushed over the ridge of his cock. A tremor moved through his thigh muscle.

God, he wanted her.

This was madness. They were both caked with peat and mud below the waist. There was no way he could take her virtue here, on the ground in the rain and cold.

But he couldn’t bear the growing tension anymore. His cock throbbed in vain, trapped beneath the wet woolen folds of his plaid. He was desperate for some kind of contact. Resistance. Touch. Heat.

He had to take control.

In a swift motion, he rolled her onto her back, wedging himself between her thighs. When his cock finally found the friction it craved, he groaned with pleasure.

She cried out in pain.

Logan pulled onto his elbows immediately. He searched her startled expression. “What’s the matter? You’re hurt.”

“It’s just my leg. I . . . I wrenched it coming out of the mire.”

Jesus. She’d been wounded all this time? And here he’d been mauling her on the hillside as if she were a lamb and he were the last Highland wolf.

“Dinna be worried. I’ll have you back to the castle at once.”

He loosened the extra folds of tartan draped over his shoulder. Tucking her close to his chest, he wrapped the plaid around Maddie’s body to warm her.

Then he hefted her into his arms.

“I hope you know, you’re ruining your chances in the bedroom,” she said. “It’s impossible to despise you when you keep kissing me like that and sweeping me off my feet every day.”

He set his jaw grimly. “You can learn to hate me again tomorrow. You’re not walking anywhere today.”

When they arrived back at the castle, wet and muddy and chilled through, Logan began barking orders before he’d even set Maddie down.

He directed Becky to bring blankets.

Cook was ordered to start heating water for a bath.

And he insisted that Munro, his field surgeon, have a look at Maddie’s leg.

“It’s nothing,” she assured the surgeon once she’d been wrapped in an old quilt and deposited on the chaise longue in her bedchamber. “I’ve only wrenched it. I was stupid enough to step in a bog.”

Munro wiped the mud from her limb and gingerly turned her foot this way and that, testing. “The swelling is mild. It doesna look serious.”

“That’s what I tried to tell Logan. But he doesn’t listen to me.”

“If you wanted to walk on it now, I wouldna stop you.”

She nodded. “I’m sure you sent soldiers back into the fray with far worse.”

“But you are no soldier.” His graying eyebrows rose. “If your injury is delicate yet, I could tell the captain you need some rest. And that he needs to keep the honeymoon waiting for a few days.”

Yes.

This was just the stroke of luck she needed. She’d take any excuse to hold Logan at bay for a few more days.

“Now that you mention it, my knee is quite tender. I do think the rest would do me good.”

Maddie smiled to herself as the surgeon packed up his examination bag. Logan was not going to be happy with her, but he was the one who’d insisted on a doctor’s opinion. He couldn’t ignore medical advice.

As the surgeon unrolled the cuff of his sleeve, she glimpsed a gnarled, misshapen scar on his right forearm.

She winced. “What happened there?”

“Oh, that? A bayonet. It’s not as bad as it looks. It would have healed better, but you know what they say. The cobbler’s children run barefooted, and the field surgeon goes without proper stitching.”