Grace lost her train of thought.

“What about it?” he repeated, sliding his hand between her breasts and pulling her against him.

“Have you ever actually spanked a woman?” she asked, trying to wiggle away from him so her brain would keep functioning.

He let go of her breasts and slid his hand over her slightly protruding belly, pulling her against him and thrusting his hips forward.

“No,” he said, his voice lazy, his lips brushing her ear.

She turned to see the glint in his dark, heavy-lidded eyes. “So it’s all been bluster?”

“No,” he repeated, kissing her lips.

She turned completely around until she was facing him and gave him a good scowl to let him know she wasn’t going to be distracted. “You can’t spank a woman today,” she told him. “You can’t even threaten to.”

He lifted his head to look down on her. “Not even if she’s needing it?”

Her throat tightened. But she was careful not to shout at him. Not with her brothers within earshot.

“Needing it?” she repeated.

“Aye,” he said, the slash of his grin showing his teeth. “Sometimes it’s the only way to end the argument.”

Grace forced herself to take a calming breath. He was teasing her. He had to be. “Did your father spank your mother?”

Her question surprised him, and his grin vanished. “No,” he said, shaking his head. He suddenly smiled again. “I remember he tried to once.”

He rolled onto his back and laced his fingers behind his head, staring up at the sky. Finding herself deprived of his heat, Grace cuddled against him, laid her head on his chest, and wrapped her arms around him.

“She hid his sword,” Grey told her, his chest rising with a chuckle. “She didn’t want him to go out reeving that night, saying she’d had a premonition that he might not come back.”

Grace lifted her head to look at him. “Did he go?”

“Honest to God,” he said, shaking his head at the memory. “Mama stood firm and wouldn’t give up her hiding place. And Da wasn’t about to leave without his sword.”

“So he spanked her?” she asked, indignant. The woman had been trying to save her husband’s life, and he had spanked her for it?

“He tried.” Grey turned to look at her. “He actually sat down and told Mama to lay herself across his knees.”

“And did she?”

“Aye,” he said, looking back up at the stars, his white teeth gleaming in the moonlight as he grinned. “She walked over and lay on his lap and just stayed there, not saying a word. And Da lifted his hand in the air.”

Grace closed her eyes. She could see it all in her mind, a giant warlord with a paw as big as a bear’s, about to hit a defenseless woman in anger. “Did she cry?” she asked in a whisper.

Grey suddenly rolled over and pinned her beneath him, brushing the hair from her face, lacing his fingers through her curls, and anchoring her in place.

“Da lowered his arm,” he continued, “but gently, until he was cupping her bottom. Without saying a word, he picked Mama up and carried her upstairs. They didn’t come down the rest of the night.”

“He didn’t do it,” she said. “And neither will you.”

“I’ll never hurt you, Grace,” he whispered, his lips mere inches from hers. “I’d cut my arm off first.”

“Good answer, MacKeage,” she said, trying to lift her face up to kiss him.

He wouldn’t let go of her hair. “That doesn’t give you license to be reckless with my temper, lass,” he warned, his eyes glinting with the promise of some other form of retribution.

Grace sighed as deeply as she could, considering she had two hundred pounds of hot, sexy forged steel sprawled on top of her. She had resigned herself to the fact, months ago, that she had fallen in love with a man who saw the world through the eyes of an ancient. She would never change him; you can’t change the soul of a warrior.

She could, however, at least enjoy trying.

Grace stretched her arms over her head and wiggled beneath him, hugging him with her knees and lifting her hips against his. His eyes darkened, and his breath caught in the back of his throat.

“Don’t do that,” he hissed, rolling to the side, his breathing suddenly labored. “If you don’t want a bloody brawl to break out, you’ll remember your brothers are not ten feet away.”

Grace sighed again, more freely now that he wasn’t on top of her, keeping her smile to herself. She had a weapon much more effective than his hollow threat to spank her. She mimicked Grey’s posture by placing her hands behind her head and looked up at the stars.

“We’ll bring our children up here every summer,” she said.

“Aye. I’ll build us a cabin on West Shoulder,” he told her, his voice sounding strained as he fought the passion she had awakened in his body.

“No. I want them to learn to live in God’s shelter, not man’s. Will you teach them to hunt and fish and run through the forests like you do? And handle a sword? A smaller one,” she added, remembering the weight of his.

“Damn right I will.”

She wondered what his answer would be if he knew he was having daughters. Grace was unable to keep the question to herself any longer. She needed to know he wouldn’t be disappointed.

“Would you be upset if this baby’s a girl?” she asked.

“You’re wanting a daughter?”

“Of course I do. Every mother wants a daughter. I’m not living in an all-male household for the rest of my life. I have six brothers,” she reminded him.

“Okay,” he murmured. He laid his hand on her rounding belly. “If you need this one to be a girl, that’s fine, lass.”

Well, that was also the right answer, for now. But she would wait a few more years yet before telling Grey that none of his children would ever be able to lift his sword.

Chapter Twenty-five

Seven Sutters, four MacKeages, two MacBains, and Father Daar were all standing on the edge of the meadow high up on TarStone Mountain at daybreak.

Grace couldn’t stop smiling, partly because she was so happy to be surrounded by family and friends and to be marrying a Superman, but also because that Superman couldn’t stop staring at Father Daar’s new cane long enough to repeat his vows.

“Where did that come from?” were the first words out of Grey’s mouth when the priest had arrived with the aid of a new, smaller cherrywood cane.

“I made it,” Father Daar had said, his wrinkled face lit with amusement.

“I bought you a new cane four months ago,” Grey had snapped at the grinning priest. “Where is it?”

“I used it for kindling. It was uncomfortable in my hand.”

Grace had gone up and touched Daar’s new cane, admiring it. It hadn’t hummed or felt warm, it had only felt smooth and delicate. “It’s very pretty,” she had told him. She’d darted Grey a reassuring smile. “It’s not as large as your old one.”

The old priest had held it up and fingered the one lonely burl in the wood at the top of the cane. “No, it’s not. But then, it’s so new, you see,” he’d told her, a twinkle in his clear blue eyes, “that it hasn’t been properly broken in yet.”

She’d been satisfied with his answer, but apparently her almost-husband was not. It was his turn to declare his love and pledge himself to her, but he wasn’t paying attention.

“You’ve changed your mind, then?” she asked, tugging on his sleeve.

“About what?”

“Marrying me.”

He looked startled. “Of course not.”

“Then say ‘I do.’”

“Do what?” he asked, glancing back at Daar’s cane.

She walked away, heading down the mountain.

That got his attention.

Grey ran after her. “Wait. Where are you going? I thought we were getting married.”

“I’ve been trying to marry you for the last ten minutes.”

“We’ve started?” he asked, whipping his head around to look back at the assembly of people staring at them.

“It’s not a staff, Grey. It’s just a new cane. It probably can’t even heat a can of soup.”

“I don’t want anyone having the power to separate us,” he told her, his gaze filled with desperate anxiety.