Chapter 2: The Laird's Wager
The walk back to Castle MacRae was a silent funeral procession. Torin walked ahead, his back a rigid plate of mail and suppressed fury. Ailsa stumbled in the middle, her legs still weak, the ghost of Callum’s possession a slick, shameful memory between her thighs. Callum brought up the rear, his presence a palpable heat at her back, a laird’s guard and a claimant’s assertion all at once. The mist had swallowed the clearing whole behind them.
The Great Hall was a roar of light and life that hit Ailsa like a wall. Firelight danced on polished drinking horns, the laughter of clansmen was coarse and comfortable, a hound gnawed a bone by the hearth. It was a world that had continued, blissfully ignorant of the fracture in its heart. They entered the din, and a few men called out to Torin, shock and joy on their faces. He acknowledged them with a grim nod, not breaking stride toward the high table.
His hand closed around Ailsa’s wrist, not painfully, but with a finality that brooked no argument. He pulled her toward the raised dais where the laird’s chair sat, draped in wolf pelts. Callum followed, his expression unreadable.
“Sit,” Torin said to her, his voice low. It wasn’t a request. She sank onto the furs, the coarse hair tickling her bare calves beneath her skirts. The two brothers stood before her, a united front for the hall, a seething divide in the small space between them.
Torin leaned down, pouring three cups of usquebaugh from the decanter on the table. The sharp, peaty smell cut through the hall’s aromas. He handed one to Callum, one to Ailsa, and kept one for himself. He didn’t drink. His eyes, over the rim of his cup, were on his brother.
“A wager,” Torin said, the word barely audible beneath the hall’s clamor.
Callum’s blue eyes narrowed. “Speak.”
“You both claim a right. She claims a heart divided. So we let the flesh decide.” Torin’s voice was terrifyingly calm, the calm of a man who has burnt past rage into something colder. “A blindfold. We take turns. We use hands, mouths, whatever we fucking please. She makes no sound to guide us. No names. At the end… she says which touch made her feel most. Which one made her forget her own gods-damned name. The winner keeps her. The loser walks away.”
Ailsa’s stomach lurched. “Torin, no, you can’t—”
“I can,” he cut in, his gaze slicing to her. “You forfeited the right to can’t when you spread your legs for him in the woods.” The crudeness was a weapon, aimed to wound. It hit its mark. She flinched.
Callum studied his brother. A slow, dangerous smile touched his lips. “You would gamble your wife on your skill at pleasing her? You who have been gone for months?”
“I know her,” Torin shot back. “You know only what she feels like in stolen moments. This is no raid, brother. This is a siege. And I will win back what’s mine.”
The challenge hung in the air, thick as the peat smoke. Callum finally gave a single, curt nod. “So be it.”
It happened with a frightening, efficient speed. Torin pulled a dark silk sash from his own tunic, the one he used to tie back his hair. He didn’t look at Ailsa as he came behind her and wrapped it over her eyes, knotting it tightly at the back of her head. The world vanished into dense, suffocating black. Sound magnified: the crackle of the fire, the distant thump of a tankard, the ragged sound of her own breathing.
She felt calloused hands—Torin’s—guide her from the chair, laying her back down onto the thick layers of fur on the dais. The prickling softness was everywhere. She was exposed, invisible, completely at their mercy.
“Who first?” Callum’s voice came from her right.
“You claimed her last,” Torin’s voice came, closer, from her left. A tremor of something—not just anger—in it. “You go first. Let’s see what you taught her.”
Silence. Then, the touch.
It was not gentle. It was a claim. A large, warm hand slid up her calf, pushing her skirt to her waist in one rough movement. The cool hall air hit her bare thighs, her sex. A thumb, blunt and demanding, pressed against her, finding the wetness that still lingered from the forest. A low groan from Callum. “Already soaked for it. Slut.”
The word, in his deep brogue, sent a shock of heat through her shame. She bit her lip, hard.
His mouth was on her then, but not where she expected. His teeth grazed the inside of her thigh, a sharp, possessive nip before his tongue soothed the sting. He was mapping her, using his mouth with a brutal artistry that Torin never had. Torin’s lovemaking had been passionate, earnest. This was a study in conquest. Callum’s tongue laved a broad stripe up her slit, and her hips jerked off the furs.
“Keep still,” he growled against her flesh, his breath hot. He pushed her legs wider, hooking them over his shoulders. Then he ate her with a single-minded intensity that blurred her thoughts. His tongue was everywhere—flicking her clit, plunging inside her, circling and teasing until she was a writhing, silent mess, her fists tangled in fur. He was trying to break her composure quickly, to make her scream and win the wager in the first move.
She was close, teetering on a frantic edge, when he pulled away. The sudden absence was a physical pain. She heard the rustle of his clothes, the low rasp of his belt. Then the blunt, fat head of his cock was nudging against her, slick with her own wetness.
“This is what you want, isn’t it?” he murmured, not waiting for an answer. He pushed inside with one long, relentless stroke, filling her utterly, the stretch a breathtaking fullness she had come to crave. He fucked her with a powerful, driving rhythm, each thrust grinding the base of him against her sensitive flesh. The furs scraped her back. His hands gripped her hips hard enough to bruise. He leaned down, his beard scratching her chest, his mouth at her ear. “You’re his wife. But this cunt is mine. It fucking weeps for me. Tell me I’m wrong.”
She couldn’t. She was drowning in it, the raw, decadent feel of him, the obscene, wet sounds of their joining. Her breath came in ragged hitches. A scream built in her throat. She swallowed it, tasting usquebaugh and desperation.
He pistoned into her, faster, harder, his control slipping. “Come for me,” he commanded, a harsh whisper. “Come on his brother’s cock. Let him hear it.”
The wave broke, a violent, shuddering climax that ripped through her, clenching around him. She arched, a choked gasp tearing from her lips, but she held the scream, biting down on her own knuckle. Callum groaned, a sound of pure triumph, and followed her over, his own release pulsing hot deep inside her. He collapsed atop her for a moment, heavy and spent, before pulling out.
The sense of loss was immediate. Emptiness. Cool air. The smell of sex and sweat.
She heard him move away, breathing heavily. Then Torin’s voice, tight and strained. “My turn.”
His touch was different. Softer, but vibrating with a tempest of emotion. His fingers, trembling slightly, traced the paths Callum had just owned. They brushed over the bites on her thigh, smeared through the wetness his brother had left behind. A pained sound escaped him.
Then his mouth was on her. Not with Callum’s strategic assault, but with a hungry, aching sorrow. He kissed her inner thigh as if begging forgiveness. His tongue delved into her, and she could taste herself and the salty, distinct tang of Callum’s seed. Torin moaned, a sound of deep, visceral anguish, but he didn’t stop. He lapped at her, cleaning her, reclaiming her with a desperate intimacy that shattered her heart anew. This wasn’t just a competition. This was a sacrament, or a desecration. She couldn’t tell.
He worshipped her with his mouth until she was trembling on the edge again, her body betraying her, responding to his familiar, grieving touch. He moved up her body, his weight settling over her, different from Callum’s. He was leaner, his scars familiar under her seeking hands. He was still clothed. His cock, hard and straining against his trews, pressed against her thigh.
“Ailsa,” he breathed her name, a broken prayer against her lips. It was the first time he’d said it like that since his return. He kissed her, deep and searching, and she kissed him back, tears soaking the blindfold.
He freed himself and pushed into her. The feeling was home and havoc. He filled her differently, a perfect, known fit. He moved not with Callum’s dominating power, but with a raw, heartbreaking need, each thrust a question. Do you still feel me? Do you remember this? Is this still ours?
She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him deeper, answering with her body. This was Torin. Her husband. The man she’d wept for. The guilt and the love collided, fueling a fiercer, more terrifying peak. It built from a deeper place, a wrenching surrender. She clutched at his back, her nails digging in.
“Look at me,” he pleaded, forgetting the rules, his voice raw.
But the blindfold stayed. She was in darkness, being loved by a ghost, while the memory of another man’s possession still throbbed within her. It was too much. The second climax tore through her, silent but cataclysmic, a convulsive storm that shook her to the core. She sobbed into his shoulder, a silent, ragged thing. He stiffened, burying his face in her neck, and spilled inside her with a shuddering groan that was more pain than pleasure.
He lay atop her, spent, his breath hot and damp on her skin. The world sharpened back into focus: the distant hall noises, the fire’s crackle, the smell of their mingled sweat and sex.