“Because I promised you honesty a long time ago,” I said. “And if honesty turns out to be a double-edged sword, I think the wounds are usually worth it.”
“Did Frank think that?”
I inhaled, very slowly, and held the breath until I saw spots at the corners of my eyes.
“You’d have to ask him that,” I said, very precisely. “This is about you and me.”
“And his lordship.”
I lost the temper I’d been holding.
“What the bloody hell do you want me to say? That I wish I hadn’t slept with John?”
“Do ye?”
“Actually,” I said, through my teeth, “given the situation, or what I thought the situation was …”
He was no more than a tall black shape against the night, but I saw him turn sharply toward me.
“If ye say no, Sassenach, I may do something I’ll regret, so dinna say it, aye?”
“What’s wrong with you? You forgave me, you said so—”
“No, I didn’t. I said I’d love ye forever, and I will, but—”
“You can’t love somebody if you won’t bloody forgive them!”
“I forgive you,” he said.
“How fucking dare you?” I shouted, turning on him with clenched fists.
“What’s wrong wi’ you?” He made a grab for my arm, but I jerked away from him. “First ye’re angry because I didna say I forgave ye and now ye’re outraged because I did?”
“Because I didn’t do anything wrong to start with, you fatheaded arsehole, and you know it! How dare you try to forgive me for something I didn’t do?”
“Ye did do it!”
“I didn’t! You think I was unfaithful to you, and I. Bloody. Wasn’t!”
I was shrieking loudly enough to drown out the crickets, and shaking with rage.
There was a long moment of silence, in which the crickets cautiously tuned up again. Jamie turned to the fence and gripped the top rail and shook it violently, making the wood creak. He might be speaking Gaelic, but whatever he was saying sounded like an enraged wolf.
I stood still, panting. The night was warm and humid, and sweat was beginning to bloom on my body. I ripped off my shawl and threw it over the fence. I could hear Jamie breathing, too, fast and deep, but he was standing still now, gripping the fence rail with his shoulders stiff, head bent.
“Ye want to ken what’s wrong wi’ me?” he asked at last. His voice was pitched low, but it wasn’t calm. He straightened up, looming in the moonlight.
“I swear to myself I will put … this … thing … out o’ my head, and mostly I manage. But then that sodomite sends me a letter, out o’ the blue—just as though it never happened! And it’s all back again.” His voice shook and he stopped for a second, shaking his head violently, as though to clear it.
“And when I think of it, and then I see you … I want to have ye, then and there. Ye rouse me, whether ye’re slicing cucumbers or bathing naked in the creek wi’ your hair loose. I want ye bad, Sassenach. But he’s there in my head, and if—if—” Lost for words, he smashed a fist down on the fence rail and I felt the wood tremble by my shoulder.
“If I canna stand the notion that you and he were fucking me behind my back, how do ye think I can stand to think that you and I are sharing a bed wi’ him in it?”
I would have hammered the fence myself, save for knowing it would hurt. Instead, I rubbed my hands hard over my face and dug my fingers into my scalp, scattering hairpins. I stood there, huffing.
“We’re not,” I said, in a tone of complete certainty. “We’re not, because I’m not. I have never, not for one second, thought of anyone but you when I’ve been in your bed. And I ought to be really offended at the notion that you do, but—”
“I don’t.” He gulped air, and took me by the arms. “I don’t, Claire. It’s only that I’m afraid I might.”
I felt dizzy from hyperventilation and put my own hands flat on his chest to steady myself, and smelled the sudden pungent musk of his body, the waves of it an acrid hot ghost surrounding us. I did rouse him.
“I tell you what,” I said at last, and lifted my head to look at him. It was full dark now, but my eyes were well-enough adapted as to see his face, his eyes searching mine. “I tell you what,” I said again, and swallowed. “You—leave that to me.”
He trembled slightly; it might have been a buried laugh.
“Ye think highly of yourself, Sassenach,” he said, his voice husky. “Ye think a warm place to stick my cock’s enough to make me forget?”
I stared at him.
“What on earth do you mean by that, you—” Words failed me, and I jerked loose, flapping my arms in bewildered frustration. “Why would you say something like that? You know it isn’t true!”
He scratched his jaw; I could hear the whiskers rasp.
“No, it isn’t,” he agreed. “I was just tryin’ to think of something offensive enough to say as to make ye strike me.”
I actually did laugh, though more from surprise than real humor.
“Don’t tempt me. Why do you want me to hit you?”
He rocked back on his heels and looked me over, slowly, from undone hair to battered moccasins. And back.
“Well, in about ten seconds, I mean to lay ye on your back in the grass, lift your skirts, and address ye wi’ a certain amount of forcefulness. I thought I’d feel better about doing that if ye provoked me first.”
“Me … provoke you?”
I stood stock-still for three of those seconds, blood thundering in my ears and pulsing through my fingers. Then I walked toward him.
“Seven,” I said.
“Six,” and I reached for the neck of his shirt.
“Five … Four …” I yanked it down, said, “Three,” rather loudly, leaned forward, and bit his nipple. Not a teasing love-bite, either.
He yelped, jerked back, grabbed me, and with a big hand gripping the back of my head pushed my face into his. Our mouths collided messily, and stayed that way, open, voracious, amorous, seeking as much as kissing, lips, ears, noses, tongues, and teeth, hands groping and snatching and pulling and rubbing. I found his cock and rubbed it hard through his breeches and he made a deep growling sound and grasped my buttocks and then we were in the grass in a tangle of knees and limbs and rumpled clothes and hot flesh bared to the starry sky.
It seemed to last a long time, though it couldn’t have. I came back to myself slowly, reverberations passing through me in a slow, pleasant throb. Provocation. Forsooth.
He was lying on his back next to me, face turned to the moon, eyes closed, and breathing like one rescued from the sea. His right hand was still between my thighs and I was curled beside him, the whorls of his ear, beautiful as a seashell, a few inches from my mouth.
“Have we got that out of our system, do you think?” I said drowsily.
“Our?” His right hand twitched, but he didn’t pull it away.
“Our.”
He sighed deeply and turned his head toward me, opening his eyes.
“We have.” He smiled a little and closed his eyes again, his chest rising and falling under my hand. I could feel his nipple through his shirt, small and still hard against my palm.