“Leannan . . .”
He carried pleasure with his thrusts and ecstasy with his movements, and the sensations combined, warped, realigned. Still Iain plunged, pulled back out, plunged again. Over and over and over until the combination of wonders collided into such rapture, Tira’s mouth opened in another burst of amazement and joy. She felt him lifting from her on both arms, gifting her more view of glistening male nakedness, rippled with muscle and taut with seeming agony. She couldn’t keep from such splendor and ran her fingers about him as he arched upward, keeping his loins deep into hers. The skin she touched darkened, flushing as he sent the longest, most visceral groan into existence all about and over them. It reverberated in waves as he ran out of air and ended with soblike noise. The sound raised bumps along her skin and brought tears that flooded her eyes. Tira blinked rapidly, and when that didn’t work, she shoved a hand across her eyes to keep her sight fixed on the beauty that was Iain as he held himself taut, trembling in place as his body pulsed deep within her.
“Oh . . . sweet.”
He didn’t finish the whisper but he didn’t need to. If it was even a small measure of what he’d given her to feel, it was heaven, amazement, absolute divinity. The cabin darkened oddly, as if time passed and the lamp was low on fuel. The dark about her vision kept intruding, too. That just wasn’t fair! She wanted this experience. She wanted to experience and see it and memorize it, so it would be forever hers . . . all of it. That’s why she was wide-eyed and watching as he shook his head atop his shoulders before lowering his chin to look down at her, displaying what could only be blood on his lips and chin, and the sharp tips of canine fangs. And then everything went dark.
Chapter Ten
“That word . . . leannan. It means sweet. Or sweetheart . . . or just heart.”
Iain forced his head to roll toward her, basked in what little light the lamp still projected. Her green eyes were darker, the lashes fuller and more lush, or something, while the dark red shade of her lips was spliced by the tips of sharp canines. She looked amazing, feline and erotic. She blinked, putting a shine to those eyes as she watched him from atop his right arm. Her head was cradled just above his bent elbow, numbing his arm all the way to his fingers. Iain licked dry, chapped lips and shuddered with chill. He’d rarely been as weak and fatigued, useless as a newly birthed bairn and twice as defenseless.
“Aye,” he whispered.
“How do I know that?”
“I . . . gifted it . . . to you.”
The words were spliced with weak pants of breath. Iain searched with his free hand for cover; the bed sheet, his feile-breacan, hell, even her silk gown would assist with muting some of this frailty! His fingers found nothing useful; even the muslin beneath them felt melded into position despite his tugging. And it was his fault. He’d had to open a slit on his wrist and share fluid with her. He had to! She was dying even as he’d done it, forcing his tainted lifeblood through her lips, draining him as it changed her. He’d never changed another human before. He hadn’t known when to stop her, and then he hadn’t the strength. He was in luck that she’d done it, apparently sated as she moved . . . rolling from him to rest atop his elbow. Where she’d stayed.
All of it happened what seemed hours ago, while he paced his heart and measured his breathing, and worked at rest. Using the time to will strength into his body to regenerate what little fluid she’d left him. So he wouldn’t take any of it back.
“Gifted? How? And with what?”
She was getting annoyed with him. It sounded in her voice. What he wouldn’t give for one drunken sailor! Iain huffed a breath of amusement, rolling his lips with it. He’d be forced to use the livestock in the hold long before they reached the coastline below MacAvee Hall. He’d already be there if he hadn’t wasted time existing, reliving each and every bit of fulfillment he’d experienced with her. He still might visit the hold . . . if there were any hours left afore dawn and if he had the strength to reach it.
“Iain?”
“I’m listening,” he replied.
“I didn’t ask if you were listening. I asked for an explanation of this gift.”
She lifted her head, giving him the sting of renewed feeling in the limb, although it was slow moving with every shallow thump of pulse left him. He needed rest, recuperation, blood . . . anything other than interrogation and truths. There was a decided trip of his heart as she went to her knees beside him to look down at him, every portion of her exuding sensuality and pleasure. She reeked of wanton abandonment and sexual satisfaction. Nothing seemed hidden despite the shielding of her hair. He’d known she was his mate, he just hadn’t thought through what that meant. He licked his lips again, but it did nothing for the dryness.
“Iain, I don’t understand. Help me.”
“My sire . . . dinna’ raise a fool,” he replied.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Only a fool . . . tussles with . . . an armed woman.”
“Armed?”
Puzzlement shaped her eyes into narrowed slits, the lashes shielding their beautiful green color.
“Aye.” He licked his lips again and got the same dry feeling.
“I don’t even have my clothes.”
She crossed her arms before her, as if that worked better at concealment than the thick curtain of her hair. And she blushed. Color suffused her skin, sending Iain into such a vast chasm of need that he jerked with the task of reining it. It was too soon. She wasn’t ready. He still hadn’t told her—
“What is it, Iain? Iain?”
Soft whispers filtered over him, accompanied by the feel of her hands, roving his chest, shoulders, belly . . . her fingers sliding along flesh that craved the touch. Despite everything, Iain felt his groin stirring, taking the fluid he needed just because she was near.
“Tira.” The name was ground through clenched teeth and sounded it.
“You’re very handsome, Iain. Manly. I—”
She pulled her lower lip into her mouth and held it with her teeth, putting spikes on view. Iain watched them lengthen with trepidation, pulling in and tightening everything on his frame to endure whatever she deigned to do to him.
“Truly beautiful.”
“Men . . . are na’ beautiful, leannan.”
“Oh, but you are. No wonder the women go crazed around you.”
She’d changed to the Gaelic tongue, making the words more erotic and stimulating. His senses assimilated it while her fingers continued driving him mad.
“Or . . . perhaps it’s how truly masculine you are. Large. Oh my. Hard. And I’m new to this.”
His ears were abuzz with light-headedness, while everything male on him was getting primed and prepared and readied. She might be a novice, but he was already in severe trouble.
“Lass . . . you must . . . stop.”
“It’s my wedding night, Iain.”
“I’m na’ certain . . . I can perform . . . again.”
“This part seems certain.”
Iain groaned as she wrapped both hands about him, earning a full twinge into her palms and a groan of torment from his parched throat. He felt his own teeth lengthening as the beast within stretched, exhibiting its power and its thirst. He barely heard her next words.
“I mean . . . I don’t truly know, but I think—”
“You ever hear of the Black Death?” Iain interrupted her, the words strangled and brutal sounding.
Her hands stopped. He waited one heartbeat before she answered, and since it was stuttered, it affected the next pulse beat, making it almost painful with the thud. He wasn’t strong enough for this!
“Y-y-yes?”
“And . . . the death dealers that plagued the land? You ken them?”
She giggled. Giggled? And then she resumed her vicious stroking of his man-part, sending his heart rate into such stridency, it actually pained.
“Oh, Iain . . . you talk of death and ancient history? Now?”
“I dinna’ be
lieve, either. Once.”
He answered the ceiling high above them, shadowed and indistinct with loss of light, while his body fought an onslaught of need that elongated and defined his teeth farther. Tira was new to this. She didn’t know the power of her new existence. She didn’t know what she was doing to him. But that didn’t stop it, and it certainly didn’t stop her.
“Nice . . . oh, Iain. Verra, verra nice.”
He groaned. The slip of tongue she made into his own dialect toyed at his ear, sending tendrils about his senses. Enwrapping him. Binding him. He couldn’t seem to move from enjoyment of her caress . . . and she did it all without use of even a cover. Lips grazed him, then a tongue, before a skim of burn lit through him as she sliced at an inner thigh, lapping at the flesh. Iain grabbed her arms and hauled her into view before she took everything he had left. His arms shook as he watched her lick at the blood on her lip. And then she blew a kiss through the air separating them. His tongue loosened and he told her.
“Lass . . . you need ken this! I’m one of them!”
“I need you, Iain. All . . . of you. In me. Now. Please, Iain . . . now.”
Hellfire and damnation!
Iain could describe both as Tira slid her body along his, torturing him with her skin and the promise of her sheath wrapped about where he was pumping with little lunges his body made without any effort on his part.
His lips parted and he hissed, giving her a full look at his elongated spikes. He watched her glance there and back to his eyes, a flicker of fright deep within hers, interfering with the haze of sensuality wrapped all about her. But it was too late. He’d lost control. Again.
“Iain . . . I don’t—”
“Trust me, lass, you will!”
He surged up at the same time he pulled her downward, latching onto her throat with the same motion he used to bring her down atop him, gaining hot wetness wrapped about where he most needed it. The beast within him flexed, roaring with the instant influx of lifeblood, and then he felt the prick of her teeth into the flesh beneath his ear.
Everything went absolutely wild. Primitive. Iain thrashed against her in seeming agony and she held to him. He rolled with her, pumping as the mattress shifted beneath them, and then toppled onto the floor, taking them with it. She met every one of his thrusts as he filled and refilled her, her loins matching him move for move, her legs wrapped so tightly about him it worked as a spring. Iain unlatched his teeth from her puncture, licking to seal the wound and felt her do the same. But nothing stopped the complete and total abandonment of where they were joined. Connected. Thumping into each other over and over until the tightness in his chest, back, and loins was impossible to contain. That’s when glory erupted, ripping such complete and total ecstasy through him that he tossed his head back and yelled of it, ignoring how the deep throbbing tones of the beast burned his throat and tore through his chest.
The sound echoed through the cabin. Died. And then he looked down at this woman; Tira. His woman . . . his mate. Iain watched her view the blood coating him, assimilating and deciding it. Their blood . . . shared. Combined. His arms trembled slightly before they gave, collapsing him onto the mattress beside her, and then he felt her shudders. Like laughter . . . only . . .
She isn’t sobbing, is she?
Iain rolled his head, using his forehead for the fulcrum, solidly terrified of what he’d see. Then he blinked her into focus. He was wrong. She wasn’t crying. She was laughing, silently and with childish glee. She laughed? She knew what he was, and what he’d made her, and she laughed? For the first time since he’d met her, Iain relaxed completely and within moments he was unconscious.
A sunbeam brought him to awareness, singeing his shoulder as it speared the floor. The brightness stunned and then got action. Iain grabbed Tira to his chest, dragging her as he scuffled beneath the bed, inserted his forefinger into a knothole, and jerked up on the hidden door that led to his space. He swiveled to take the brunt of the landing. The drop wasn’t far, four feet . . . exactly as he’d specified. Yet it felt farther. They hit with a thud atop his pallet, his ancient pallet, the one he’d had when he’d first turned. Although back then it had been plump with horsehair and straw and not flat with age. Iain groaned with the loss of air. The door thumping shut hid it. The woman in his arms and atop him didn’t do more than sigh, softly brushing his chest with air, and then she snuggled into the well he created at his side.
His arms tightened as did the band about his heart as he realized the full power of love. He’d failed his strongest vow—never to turn another without their full awareness of the deed and the consequences, yet nothing on him felt remotely guilty or anything other than aglow with rapture. Why . . . if he knew his maker’s name and location, he’d even thank him. Iain lay back, looked over the seams of floor above his head, and shut his eyes for rest. With his woman’s appetite, he was going to need all of it he could get.
Chapter Eleven
The smell of food woke her, wafting through to scent the air; the pungent aroma of roasted beef and creamed gravy mixed with the equally mouth-watering aroma of warmed, fresh bread
. . . topped with a pat of butter. Tira lifted her head in appreciation and sniffed. It felt like weeks since she’d eaten, and her belly growled with emptiness while her mouth filled with moisture.
It was night dark, but that was odd unless she’d slept the day away. Tira stretched and moved a bit from the cool feel of what could only be Iain’s skin. The sensation was a bit like sleeping beside polished alabaster marble. She shivered and pulled into a sit, sliding her buttocks along texture that resembled woven hemp or rough-finished wool. She spread her arms out, looking for covering. Useless. There wasn’t a stitch of fabric anywhere. She was hungry and she was tired and she was chilled. And it was dark and foreboding. Cramped. Like a tomb. Tira grazed her hands along the pallet thing beneath her, reached bare plank floor, and within inches, her fingers met polished wooden wall. She ran her hands along the wall to a spot just above her head, where the delicious smell of a roast beef supper was getting overlaid by the sounds of someone eating it. And that angered her.
Tira narrowed her eyes and glared at the blackness, and from the exact spot came a glow. Feeble at first and then growing, it spread until the haziest bit of light carved out Iain’s form for her and then her own. As well as the finite amount of room they shared. She blinked and the light disappeared.
“Iain?”
The name hadn’t left her throat before she was seized, pulled into an embrace resembling iron, her mouth covered while Iain hissed a word at her ear. Tira’s heart ceased beating with the fright, and then restarted with a thud that hurt. It was impossible for anyone to move as quickly as he had, or the darkness warped reality.
“Hush!”
She nodded slightly and the hand at her mouth eased. It took another moment before she could pull enough moisture into her mouth to swallow. And then breathe. It felt like Iain matched her, taking his own breath. His skin was growing warm, too. And then he was running a tongue along her shoulder, making her scrunch it with the tickle.
“What . . . are you doing?” She barely made a sound with the whisper. He returned it in kind.
“Keeping you occupied.”
The touch of amusement feathered across her skin with the reply.
“Why?”
“Seems a pleasant way to spend an eve. With my bride. Whilst I await the sunset and our sup.”
“But . . . that’s not fair.”
“Nae?”
“I’m hungry now.”
His tongue lifted from her as she watched the compartment brighten again. This time a heady, golden glow infused it.
“You’re doing that?”
“Aye.”
“You truly can control . . . light?”
“I can illuminate in stages, but it takes from me.”
“How?”
“That is just one of my powers, love. One.”
Tira swallowed again, wonderi
ng at that vagary of nature as she nearly choked. Footsteps echoed across the floor above them and then the door shut. She felt the man about her relax. He eased the confine of his arms and legs as the light dimmed to a portion of before, making the planking about them indistinct and faint even when she squinted.
“Can I have just a small spot of tea? Maybe a scone? Or a bit of bread?”
“There will na’ be any left.”
“There won’t?”
“Na’ if Grant follows orders, as always.”
“You order him to eat in your chamber?”
“And take the leavings when he finishes. Or pitch it all overboard. Must have been a verra good sup if he ate it, since he has his own to now partake.”
“Your man eats your meal for you? And you allow it?”
“I canna’ do it justice, leannan.”
“That’s ridiculous. Just look at the size of you. You eat. You have to.”
“My size does na’ change. Ever. This is what my Honor Guard works to avoid.”
“Your size?”
“Rumor and speculation over such a thing. And how the years fail to dent any of it.”
Tira shook her head to clear it. It didn’t work. Everything felt muddled and fogged. “Where are we?” she asked.
“Safe.”
“Where exactly is safe?”
“Beneath my cabin. In a chamber I had constructed and designed. In secret and with a fortune in bribe money.”
“Why go to all that trouble?”
“So my Honor Guardsmen can partake of my meal and na’ one soul is the wiser that it was na’ me at that table.”
Highland Hunger Page 17