Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [347]
“Don’t be an idiot! What are you doing here?”
“I told you—looking for you.”
He took her by the shoulders, then, and kissed her, hard. Fear, anger, and the sheer relief of finding her were fused at once into a solid bolt of desire, and he found he was shaking with it. So was she. She was clinging to him, shaking in his arms.
“It’s all right,” he whispered to her. He buried his mouth in her hair. “It’s all right, I’m here. I’ll take care of you.”
She jerked upright, out of his arms.
“All right?” she cried. “How can you say that? For God’s sake, you’re here!”
There was no mistaking the horror in her voice. He grabbed her by the arm.
“And where the hell else should I be, with you tearing off into fucking nowhere and risking your bloody neck, and—why the hell did you do it?!”
“I’m looking for my parents. What else would I be doing here?”
“I know that, for God’s sake! I mean why in hell did you not tell me what you meant to do?”
She jerked her arm out of his grasp and gave him a healthy shove in the chest that all but sent him staggering.
“Because you wouldn’t have let me go, that’s why! You’d have tried to stop me, and—”
“Damn right I would! God, I’d have locked you in a room, or tied you hand and foot! Of all the flea-brained notions—”
She hit him, a full-palmed slap that caught him hard across the cheekbone.
“Shut up!”
“Bloody woman! D’ye expect me to let you go off into—into nothing, and I sit at home twiddling my thumbs while you’re having your womb paraded on a pike in the marketplace? What sort of man d’ye think I am?”
He felt her movement rather than saw it, and grabbed her wrist before she could slap him again.
“I’m in no mood for that, girl! Hit me once more, and by Christ, I will do you violence!”
She folded her other hand into a fist and punched him in the belly, quick as a striking snake.
He wanted to hit her back. Instead, he grabbed her, and with a handful of her hair wrapped round his fist, kissed her as hard as he could.
She squirmed and struggled against him, making strangled noises, but he didn’t stop. Then she was kissing him back, and they sank to their knees together. Her arms came round his neck as he bore her down beneath him to the leaf-matted ground beneath the tree. Then she was crying in his arms, choking and gasping, tears running down her face as she clutched him.
“Why?” she sobbed. “Why did you have to follow me? Didn’t you realize? Now what are we going to do!”
“Do? Do about what?” He couldn’t tell whether she was crying from anger or fear—both, he thought.
She stared up at him through strands of tangled hair.
“Getting back! You have to have somebody to go to—somebody you care for. You’re the only person I love at that end—or you were! How am I going to get back, if you’re here? And how will you get back, if I’m here?”
He stopped dead, fear and anger both forgotten, and his hands clamped tight on her wrists to stop her hitting him again.
“That’s why? That’s why you wouldn’t tell me? Because you love me? Jesus Christ!”
He let go of her wrists and lay on top of her instead. He grabbed her face with both hands and tried to kiss her again. She gave a sudden snap of her hips, swung her legs up on either side, and scissored him neatly across the back, crushing his ribs.
He rolled, breaking the hold, and brought her with him, ending on his back, with her on top. He got a hand in her hair and drew her face down to his, panting.
“Stop,” he said. “Christ, what is this, a wrestling match?”
“Let go of my hair.” She shook her head, trying to dislodge his grip. “I hate having my hair pulled.”
He let go of her hair, and slid his hand up the length of her neck, fingers curled round the slender nape, a thumb resting on the pulse in her throat. It was going like a trip-hammer; so was his.
“Right, how are ye on being choked?”
“Don’t like it.”
“Neither do I. Get your arm off my neck, aye?”
Very slowly, her weight eased back. He still felt short of breath, but not from being choked. He didn’t want to let go of her neck. Not from fear