#DailyLines #MOBY #WrittenINMyOWNHeartsBLOOD #Book8 #OutMARCH25th #burning #theheatofthenight


_It’s nay her fault_, he thought fiercely. _She’s done me nay wrong_. They’d thought him dead—Marsali had told him so, and told him that Lord John had wed Claire in haste following the news of Jamie’s death, in order to protect not only her, but Fergus and Marsali as well from imminent arrest.

_Aye, and then he took her to his bed_! The knuckles of his left hand twinged as he curled his fist. “_Never hit them in the face, lad_,” Dougal had told him that a lifetime ago, as they watched a knock-down fight between two of Colum’s men in the courtyard at Leoch. “_Hit them in the soft parts_.”

They’d hit _him_ in the soft parts.

“Nay her fault,” he muttered under his breath, turning restlessly into his pillow. What the bloody _hell_ had happened, though? How had they done it—why?

He felt as though he was fevered, his mind dazed with the waves of heat that throbbed over his body. And like the half-glimpsed things in fever-dreams, he saw her naked flesh, pale and shimmering with sweat in the humid night, slick under John Grey’s hand…

His back felt as though someone had laid a hot girdle on it. With a deep growl of exasperation, he turned onto his side again and fumbled at the bandages holding the scalding plaster to his skin, at last wriggling out of its torrid embrace. He dropped it on the floor and flung back the quilt that covered him, seeking the relief of cool air on body and mind.

But the cabin was filled to the rooftree with the fuggy warmth of fire and sleeping bodies and the heat that flamed over him seemed to have rooted itself between his legs. He clenched his fists in the bedclothes, trying not to writhe, trying to calm his mind.

“Lord, let me stand aside from this,” he whispered in Gaidhlig. “Grant me mercy and forgiveness. Grant me understanding!”

Reply · Report Post