“I won’t. I’ll wait as long as you need.”
“I need you, lass.”
“I am yours.” She joined him on the cloak, speaking the truth she’d carried in her heart for two years. “I always have been,” she said, trembling, but not from the cold. It was the strength of the love inside her, the swell of emotion that overwhelmed her. “I’d vowed never to love another, not to-”
He took her face in his hands, kissing her long and deep. When he finally pulled back, he grinned. “So I hoped! But you are shivering.” He glanced up at the curtain of light, its ends whirling right above them. “I am sorry the night is so cold, though-”
“I love the cold.” She did, was even proud of her winter-hardiness, a gift from her Viking mother, she was sure. “It’s not the chill air making me tremble. It is you. You keep me more than warm. Indeed, I am almost roasting.”
To her astonishment, Gunnar laughed and slapped his knee. “By Thor!” he roared, grabbing her and kissing her again. “You are indeed mine, beyond all doubt. Though I’ve known it all these years,” he added, something in his tone prickling her skin.
She blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Ach, it’s a clan legend.” He turned to her, his eyes glinting in the beautiful light. “‘Tis the reason I came up here two years ago, dressed like a Viking warlord or god, wearing my cloak. I’d hoped to honor an ancient pair of wolves – the very ones who gave their coats to make this cloak.”
“What does the cloak have to do with us?” she asked. “Or with Odin’s Flame?”
“Everything, if you trust in the old ways,” he told her, touching the cloak now, stroking the pelt. “See you, in long ago days when my ancestors lived in the far north, a beautiful silver wolf pair shared their lands. They were Skuli and his mate, Tova. They weren’t tamed, but nearly so, and they were greatly loved by my clan. In winter, they were allowed in the hall for warmth. This kindness, Skuli and Tova rewarded with loyalty. They fiercely guarded our borders, warning of danger, and fighting beside us in battle.
“The chieftain at the time loved them more than his dogs, or so the legend claims.” He paused, pulling her into his arms, settling her against him. “He made certain that no one hunted them, and that they could live a long and happy life.
“When they finally succumbed to age, leaving this world within hours of each other, their spirits came to the chieftain in a dream. They asked him to remember them by making a cloak from their pelts. They wanted the honor of warming any MacLeod who wore their fur. Or so our clan bards claim.
“The cloak has been passed through the family for centuries.” He raised a hand, lifting a snowflake from her cheek. “We believe the cloak’s magic is true for it never loses its luster, and keeps us ever warm and dry, even when spread on frozen ground. That you should feel its warmth…” He glanced at her skirts, a smile tugging at his lips. “That your snow-dampened skirts are now dry…”
He looked at her, waiting.
Katla’s heart beat wildly. “You believe I am meant for you?”
He nodded. “I knew it the last time we were here. Though” – he drew her close – “I’d have wanted you anyway, with or without approval from Skuli and Tova.”
“Oh!” She touched a hand to his cheek, threaded her fingers through his hair. “It is a beautiful legend, and-” She couldn’t finish, the words lodging in her throat. “I will honor Skuli and Tova,” she finally managed, her voice hitching. “I will wrap them in my heart and wish them well, wherever they might be.”
“They could be here, just the other side of the winter fire.”
Katla glanced at the whirling light. “Does your legend say so?”
“It does.” He took her hand again, twining their fingers. “The wolves are said to visit Odin’s Flame on nights when the sky catches fire. Bards claim they are then reminded of their old home in the frozen north. For loyal as they were, they followed my people to Scotland, staying true even in spirit.”
Katla dashed at her cheek. “So you came here two years ago to see them?”
“I did,” he admitted, using the edge of his thumb to wipe another tear from her face. “It is said that wearing their cloak on Odin’s Flame will draw them. And that when they see a MacLeod so garbed, they know they are still loved and remembered.”
“And I was raised to believe you were barbarians.”
“I can be one – at times!” Laughing, he leaned in to nuzzle her neck, nipping the sensitive skin beneath her ear. “I will tell you what else I am.” Drawing back, he pushed up on his knees and reached for her cloak, untying its laces. “I am the man who loves you.
“I also want you, badly.” He opened her cloak, set his fingers to work on the fastenings of her bodice. “Will you lie with me again, Katla? Now, this night, here-”
“Aye!” She let her joy speak, not shaming her passion. “Whatever you desire – you know I want you. That I have missed you so, waiting for your return.”
“Well, then.” A corner of his mouth quirked up as he freed her breasts and palmed them, rubbed his thumbs round and round her nipples. “Precious lass, you take my breath. You are even more lovely than in my dreams.”
She gave him her brightest smile, not caring if tear tracks stained her face, if her mussed hair let her look like a banshee, nor if he noticed the roughness of her fingers.
None of that mattered.
All that did was that they were here, together, and nothing would part them again.
Chapter 15
Katla shifted on the silver fur cloak and reached to touch Gunnar’s cheek, skimming a finger across his lips, along his bearded jaw. “Do you know there were days, so very many, when I longed just to see your smile again?”
“I am sorry, lass.” He was. He knew how she’d felt for he’d also suffered. “I ne’er meant to grieve you.”
Just once,” she said, touching the corner of his mouth. “A last smile was all I wanted. I’d have clutched the memory to my heart, letting it warm me in your absence.”
“I didnae mean to be gone so long.” He took her face between his hands. Her words, the sheen of tears in her eyes would have brought him to his knees if he wasn’t already kneeling.
“Katla,” he spoke her name with all the love in his heart, the endless yearning he’d felt for her. “There wasn’t a moment I didn’t think of you. At sea, I saw us dancing in the roll of the waves, remembered how we whirled and leapt beneath the winter fire.” He glanced up at those flames now, almost hating himself for the time he’d had to stay away from her. Turning back to her, he kissed her forehead, rested his finger against one of her chill-tightened nipples. “In the salt spray that would flash along my ship’s hull, I’d recall the thrill of first seeing you, how certain I’d been to have finally found the woman I’d never tire of, would want forever.
“When seabirds cried, I’d imagine you calling to me, would hear your voice across the miles.” He kissed the swells of her breasts, filled his hands with their smooth, round fullness. “In every sunrise, I thought of the joy of your laughter. Of a night when the wind howled and the darkness seemed unending, I’d will you into my arms, reliving every moment we’d shared. I knew that I’d have nae peace until I found you again.”
“Now you have.”
“Aye, praise all the gods.”
“I thank them, too, for I have learned that you do not just have a silver wolf cloak.” She smiled at him, her eyes shining. “Your tongue is also silver.”
“My tongue is no’ silver – it is yours.” Lifting her breasts, he rained kisses across her soft skin, swirled his tongue over one deliciously puckered crest and then the other. “My tongue,” he continued, glancing up at her, “wants nothing more than to explore every blessed inch of you.”
“O-o-oh!” Her eyes widened and her breasts rose against him, proving her own desire. “I have dreamt of your pleasuring skills, forgetting none of them,” she said, her voice husky, her unashamed carnality rousing him fiercely.
She leaned back on her elbows then, the posture causing her breasts to rise, tormenting and tantalizing him. “At times, I feared I would go mad with the aching for you. I craved everything we did together that night.
“I felt needy, bereft, and wicked!” She tilted her chin and looked at him. “If I had it to do again, I would change naught. The greater shame would have been to have missed our passion. But” – her eyes glittered, and she blinked a few times – “I did suffer, thereafter. And I still have a need for you.
“I burn with it,” she declared, so delightfully bold.
“We will slake that need now, for I am plagued by the same fever.” Hoping he could restrain himself, not wanting to fall over her like a rutting stag, he slid her cloak and gown off her shoulders, forcing himself to hold her gaze as he drew the material ever lower until it bunched about her hips.
Above them the winter fire weaved and crackled, seeming to leap faster, almost as if a host of colorful light-gods had come to dance around them, urging them on…
He looked down at her – half clothed, half not, her glossy raven hair spilling about her shoulders and tumbling across the silver fur of his cloak, winter fire playing across her skin – and he knew that if he could waken to such a sight all his given days, he’d die a grateful and happy man.
“Precious lass, do you ken what you do to me?” His heart swelled, his blood roared, and his desire… Words failed him. He could hardly think, only feel. “You are so beautiful.”
“I say that is you!” She opened her arms to him, enchanting him so easily. “I have seen you again as the Lord of Winter. Now I would have the man.”
“You do have me.” Not taking his gaze from her, he stood and tore off the tunic he’d worn under his mailed shirt. Casting it aside, he quickly removed his remaining clothes until nothing touched him but cold wind and the fringe of the light-curtain.
And, of course, Katla’s appreciative gaze.
“Dinnae look at me that way,” he warned, dropping back down beside her. “It has been too long.”
“Then lie with me.”
“I will. Bare skin to bare skin until the light fades.” He drew a sharp breath, his entire body tightening as she lifted her hips, inviting him to free her from the constraints of her clothes.
He did so gladly, his heart thundering as he pulled the bunched material down her legs.
She was naked beneath. And she made no move to cover herself, simply looked up at him with her great, shining eyes. The love he saw there, and her eagerness to lie with him, made him so hard that he could scarce breathe.
Stretching out beside her, he wrapped his arms about her, drawing her close. “I have ne’er loved another woman,” he told her, almost spilling when she turned onto her side, hooking her leg over his thigh. Her soft womanly heat slid against him, making him forget everything except how much he needed her, how ravenous she made him. “You are unlike any lass I have e’er known. A woman of passion, spirited, wild hearted-”
“All women have a fire inside them.” She ran her hands across his shoulders, threaded her fingers in his hair. “The pity is that so many smother the flames,” she said, gripping his face suddenly and pulling him to her for a deep, open-mouthed kiss. A bold, hungry kiss, full of swirling, thrusting tongues, shared breath, and a fierceness that verged on desperation.
“I am not like others,” she declared when she finally pulled away. “I am not afraid to live – to love.” Her lips curved in a siren’s smile, a wicked light entering her eyes. “I would rather wither and dry up like a crone than share my passion with any other man. I have saved myself for you. You are the one I want, the only lover-”
“Katla.” He pulled her to him, locking his arms around her as he kissed her brow, her nose and cheek, her chin, then the curve of her neck, her shoulder. “I told you I am yours,” he reminded her, kissing her again. “Have you forgotten how much I missed you? Did you no’ hear me?”
“Then why didn’t you return sooner?” She touched his beard, trailing her fingers back and forth along his jaw. “Was the lure of the sea so strong?”
Gunnar frowned.
He wanted no more secrets between them. But he’d not wanted to breach this one until, well…
Until his damned manly bits weren’t so iron-hard that he feared the cold might snap him in two.
So he did the only thing he could and sat up. Gathering Katla into his arms, he settled her on his lap, pulling a generous fold of his silver wolf cloak over them. Its magic would warm them for the length of his tale – a truth he had to tell her.
“I do love the sea,” he began, gently rubbing her shoulders, the top swells of her breasts. “But sailing my ship wasn’t the reason I stayed away so long.”
She stiffened. “Did you meet another woman?”
He laughed, he couldn’t help himself.
“Now I ken you dinnae listen! There is nae other woman, and ne’er will be. No’ in all my days, nae matter where I might go.” He kissed the top of her head, inhaled the fresh scent of her hair. “There could ne’er be anyone like you, my heart. You cannae be rid of me, so I’m right glad you want me.”
“I do. But-”
He pressed two fingers to her lips. “I was away to visit my father.”
“Oh, Gunnar.” She relaxed at once, leaning into him. “I am so sorry. I should have known being at sea would let you feel close to him. Or” – her voice softened, all sympathy – “did you learn of his grave and journey there?”
“Neither.” He took her hand and brought it to his lips, kissing her fingers. “I visited him on his farm in Iceland.”
Her eyes rounded. “He lives?”
“Aye.” He smiled, the memory of his father’s happiness making it impossible not to. “He is well, and happily married to a wonderful woman.”
~ * ~
“But everyone knows he is dead.”
Katla stared at him, confused. “He fell from a cliff. You accused your uncle of pushing him over its edge. People still speak of your fury. They say-”
“That I left Druimbegan in anger, and so I did.” He glanced up at the whirling curtain of light, pulled a hand down over his face. “Odin must’ve prodded me, and I’ll be aye grateful. Had I no’ gone, I’d have done something I’d regret all my living days – I’d have killed my uncle, an innocent man.”
“I still don’t understand.” Katla drew his cloak more closely about her, welcoming its toasty warmth. “If your father is in Iceland, however would you know to seek him in such a faraway place? Iceland hovers on the edge of the world, or so men say.”
“They speak true. Rarely have I seen anywhere so desolate, or so magnificent.” He stroked her hair as he spoke, the tenderness of his touch melting her. “‘Tis a wild, frozen land where the rolling iron-gray sea crashes on the rocks, and sheer ice-black cliffs soar to the heavens. The winter fire is at home there. And so is my father, no longer a laird, but content to run his lady wife’s farm.
“She is Bergthora, and the reason I made the journey.” He smiled, his eyes warming in a way that made her heart flutter.
“Berg-who?”
“Bergthora,” he repeated. “She is the sister of an Icelandic sea trader. She was my father’s lover for years, after he lost my mother. They’d meet whene’er she came along to Scotland on her brother’s merchant ship. I sailed to her home in Fljotshlid to tell her of my father’s passing.
“He greeted me at her door.” He shook his head, chuckling. “I nigh keeled over from the shock.”
“But how-”
“The ‘cliff fall’ plan was crafted by my father and my uncle,” he told her, winding a length of her hair around his fingers. “They did it because of my father’s great love for Bergthora.” He released her hair and cupped her chin. “Nae man dare ken a word of this. You mustn’t e’er speak of it.
“No’ to anyone.”
“I won’t.” She wouldn’t.
But she was curious. So she urged him to tell
her the whole story, and he did. When he finished, she dashed at her eyes, sure she’d never heard anything so romantic.
“So your father gave up everything?”
“He did, aye.” He reached beneath the silver wolf cloak and found her hand, bringing it to his lips to drop kisses to her wrist, then up along the sensitive skin of her inner arm. When he reached her elbow, he slanted a look at her. “He has nae regrets for he says he gained so much more.”
“You believe him?”
“I do.” His smile flashed again. “He and Bergthora were made for each other. You should see his swagger, how she glows. Seeing their joy together is something I will remember with gladness for the rest of my life. It also made me want to speed back to Skye, to explain myself to you – telling you about Ross, and why I left you after hearing your name.
“My cousin was a threat even then,” he said, his smile fading. “He would’ve gone after you, especially as our clans were feuding so hotly at the time. Then, watching my father and Bergthora, I knew I had to have you, that somehow, someway, I’d make things right for us – and that I’d let nothing stop me.
“But then…” He leaned back on the cloak, drawing her down with him. “A force greater than any man thwarted me,” he told her, lowering his head to kiss her shoulder. “Just days before I’d hoped to leave Fljotshlid, a terrible sea storm nearly destroyed the Solan, my ship. A hole was gouged into her side, and the mast cracked, splintering some of the rowing benches when it fell. My men and I could’ve made repairs and been on our way, had we been anywhere but Iceland. Nae trees grow there. Leastways, none large enough to provide the wood we needed to fix the damage.”
“So you were stuck there?” Katla touched his shoulder, trailed her fingers down to the hard muscles of his chest to lightly stroke his chest hair.
“We were, aye.” He tensed beneath her caress, hissing in a tight breath. “We had to wait until a trading ship came from Ireland with a cargo of wood. It was a long while, and-”
Captured Hearts and Stolen Kisses Page 57