Especially the fleece of bronze curls.
Blood rushed to his shaft, swelling him even more. Slipping his hands beneath her knees, he gently bent her legs, urging them wider until she was fully open.
Totally exposed.
Lush red-gold curls, damp and fragrant. Pulsing, swollen flesh waiting for his touch . . . his kiss.
He nuzzled his face against her, pressed his mouth to her sweetness, licked and flicked his tongue over her. Tasted her. Drank fully of her essence, until the scent of her arousal rose up around him.
Her taste, her scent, her cries, sent pounding, urgent need thundering through him, stretched his shaft, and brought him to the very edge of his control.
She moved her hips, a gentle rocking at first, then more frantic, bold moves. Innocent attempts to bring her need closer to the pleasure he gave her.
And each time her limbs tensed, going so taut he knew her release neared, he upped the tender torment by lightening his kisses, reducing his slow wide-tongued lavings to soft, barely there little licks. Mere flickings of his tongue over her pouty, musk-scented sweetness.
Only when she strained so hard against his mouth, her hips raised off the bed, did he draw the swollen little bud of her sex into his mouth and suckle it, truly suckle it as if he meant to draw her release deep into himself, into his soul.
And when her passion verged, he pulled deeply on her, savoring her pleasure, holding her fast in its bliss by replacing his lips and tongue with his fingers.
Gently stroking, circling his middle finger over and over the tight bud of her desire. Keeping her need keen, as he stretched out atop her, and entered her with one swift stroke, plunging through her innocence in the same moment her sharp cry of release tore from her lips.
He stilled for but a moment, then glided into her snug, silken warmth again and again. Slow, languid thrusts, long and gentle, until he could hold back no more.
His own cry blending with hers, his seed poured from him in a blinding, rollicking deliverance powerful enough to blot out the moon and the stars.
Massive enough to extinguish not only the silver-hued cast of the night, but snatch the light from within the chamber as well.
Snatch the light, subdue the wind, and vanquish the very room itself, plunging him into a spinning vortex of the most intense bliss he’d e’er known.
As if from a great distance, he heard her soft moans, and knew a great joy, for they sounded of contentment rather than pain. But then those sounds faded, too, and the heavy aftermath of his release claimed him, pulling him down, down, down into a sea of dark drifting mists, a woman’s sated sighs, and the exquisite peace of holding her close.
And as they slept, their ardor spent, their bodies and hearts entwined, an ever darker, thicker mist descended upon MacKinnons’ Isle until not even a sliver of its stern-faced bulk could be seen.
The roiling sea mist—wet, gray, and drifting—blotted out its dunes and bays, its rugged cliffs. A dark shadow, blanketing the strewn wreckage of its once-feared fleet with an impenetrable shroud of dank, shifting fog.
Indeed, all that could be distinguished so far out to sea was a lone square-sailed galley bearing MacLean banners, and moving steadily through the curtain of mist, making its sad, slow journey home to Baldoon . . .
Chapter Seventeen
A FULL SENNIGHT later, Iain MacLean paced the dais end of Baldoon’s cavernous great hall and wondered at his folly in accepting the ailing MacKinnon laird’s swiftly proffered offer of help.
Thus far, the only “help” proffered had been spent by the MacLeans’ amply-stocked kitchens. Goods tendered, stores depleted, all to fill the bottomless bellies of the MacKinnon warriors who’d accompanied Iain and his men on the return journey from MacKinnons’ Isle.
An isle not only littered with the broken remains of the MacKinnons’ shattered fleet, but, did Iain care to believe their tales of woe, an isle plagued by all manner of ill fortune ever since a savage gale had blown its black breath o’er the MacKinnon holding a full year before.
And from what Iain and his men had seen, from the wreckage strewn along the isle’s dune-lined shore to the shambles of its once formidable stronghold, and the sad physical state of its men, Iain believed them.
He’d even admit a grudging respect for the MacKinnon’s generous offer to send his best men-at-arms, those yet hale enough to swing a sword, to aid Iain in finding his lady wife’s true murderers.
A two-edged offer, of a certainty. A down-on-its-luck clan reaching out to an old adversary, hoping to bridge past rivalries with a common goal, and mayhap desirous of a gentle grip under the arms until they’d recovered enough from their bout of misfortune to stand alone.
A two-edged offer, indeed, but one Iain had humbly accepted.
Doing otherwise would have been a gross breach of honor.
Even one as grief-stricken and quick-blooded as he could not refuse the outstretched hand of a foe on his knees.
Not if he meant to maintain his self-respect, hoped to walk proudly among his men. And since losing Lileas to the Lady Rock, naught much remained to cling to save his honor and his temper.
Sad bedmates, not always compatible, but all he had.
That, and his thirst for revenge.
A gentle but firm hand grabbed his arm. “Two more paces, brother, and you will set the hall a-fire,” Amicia said, and snapped her fingers in front of his face.
She nodded to the tall iron candelabrum he’d almost walked into. “The floor rushes would’ve caught flame before yon guests can devour another joint of roasted boar.”
Blinking, Iain fought the urge to topple the unwieldy taper-topped monstrosity anyway. Set loose the fires of hell to consume himself, his sorrow, and all else not wise enough to flee his wrath.
He heaved a great sigh, and raked a hand through his dark hair. “They do naught but eat and guzzle our stores of spirits.”
Amicia folded her arms. “Had you but listened to reason, they would not be sitting in our hall annoying you with their voracious presence.”
“They offered help.” Iain glanced at the MacKinnon men. They filled two of the hall’s many trestle tables. In truth, they gorged themselves most generously. And appeared much at ease in the companionship of their old foes.
The MacKinnon warriors conversed easily with Iain’s men, the lot of them jesting good-naturedly, exchanging boasts, and telling tall tales.
As if not a one amongst them carried a single care on his shoulders.
Iain’s hands clenched at his sides. “I should have refused their laird’s offer.”
A soft look came into Amicia’s dark eyes. A look appallingly akin to pity.
“Nay, Iain, ’tis good they are here, regardless of the reason,” she said, an odd catch in her voice. “Father would have been proud of you. He and the old MacKinnon laird were once friends, as you know.”
She touched his arm when he didn’t respond. “Donall will be proud when he returns.”
Iain rubbed the back of his neck.
A vain attempt to dislodge the growing lump of heat swelling in his throat.
“ ’Tis where that laddie’s a-got hisself off to is what I want to know,” Gerbert mumbled as he shuffled past with a platter of discarded gannet bones and other assorted table scraps. “Aye, ’tis mighty strange,” he muttered, ambling off toward the dark shadows of the wooden screens passage and the kitchens beyond.
Iain sprinted after him. “What is strange?” He planted himself in front of the white-haired seneschal. “Have you heard word of Donall and Gavin?”
“Naught but what you should have heard with your own ears, boy.” Gerbert stared at him from watery blue eyes and, much to Iain’s annoyance, the old bugger started clucking his tongue.
Just like he’d done when Iain and Donall were wee laddies and had been caught stirring up mischief.
“Mayhap I’ve wax in my ears, you clack-tongued old goat,” Iain snapped. He braced his hands on his hips. “Now what is this a
bout Donall?”
Gerbert drew back his scrawny shoulders, unimpressed by Iain’s bluster. “ ’Tis a whole head o’ wax you must have if you haven’t paid heed to what the MacKinnons have been puzzling about ever since we departed from that blighted isle of theirs.”
The tiny hairs on the back of Iain’s neck lifted. He slapped at his nape. A reflex against the queer sensation that something, someone, had been standing behind him.
Someone who’d breathed down his neck.
A drawn breath, quickly expelled. As if whoe’er it’d been had meant to speak, then gave off, drifting away into the shadows instead.
He cast a wary glance over his shoulder but saw naught amiss. Only his supping men, the roaring fires in the three great hearths, and the equally healthy flames of the pitch-pine torches set in iron brackets along walls. A few hounds scrounging for bones amongst the rushes.
All appeared as it should.
All save the harried servitors bustling about, plying the MacKinnons’ ravenous appetites with plenty of MacLean victuals and ale.
A bothersome state of being he could blame on none but himself.
He frowned and turned back to Gerbert. “What strangeness and puzzling are you talking about? Donall will still be in Glasgow.”
Gerbert allowed himself one or two more clucks before he spoke. “Not if he ne’er set foot there, he won’t be.”
Iain’s dark brows shot upward in a fine imitation of his older brother’s favored look of astonishment. “If he’d not set foot there?” he mimicked. “What nonsense would you speak?”
The old seneschal shook his white-tufted head.
Iain glared back. “Donall set sail for Glasgow weeks ago, with the MacInnesses. You know when . . .” he began, then let the sentence trail off, not caring to voice the reason Donall and Gavin had set off for Dunmuir Castle.
Too painful was the memory of watching his brother and Gavin ride through Baldoon’s gates, Lileas with them. Her shroud-draped body affixed atop a black-festooned cart, bell-ringers and candle-bearing children trudging respectfully in their wake.
“Set sail for Glasgow? With your dead lady wife’s kin-folk?” Gerbert’s reedy voice penetrated the fog of Iain’s pain, the words catching Iain’s attention with the swiftness of a stinging winter wind.
He looked sharply at the old man, only to find him casting a sideways glance at the MacKinnons.
“If we’re to believe what they say,” Gilbert mused, “no MacInnes galley has sailed past their isle in months.”
The queer feeling stole onto the back of Iain’s neck again, and this time it crept clear down his spine. “What are you saying?”
Gerbert shrugged. “Mayhap you’d best question them,” he said with a nod toward their guests. “I only ken ’tis strange if, as they claim, they’re e’er keeping a lookout on their waters yet didn’t see the MacInnes galley a-sailing to Glasgow.”
“Because . . .” Iain’s mind reeled, grasping at snatches of conversation he’d had with the MacKinnon men. He dragged a hand over his face, struggled to clear the grief-inspired fog from his brain.
The thought finally formed.
“. . . Because the MacInnesses would have to sail past MacKinnons’ Isle to reach the mainland.”
“Aye.” Gerbert nodded in wizened satisfaction. “And that is what I find a mite strange,” he offered, then shuffled off about his business, leaving Iain to gape after him.
Gape after him and rub at the odd tingling on the back of his neck.
About the same time, but far from Baldoon’s vast and splendorous great hall, Isolde stood wrapped in the evening quiet of Devorgilla’s thick-walled cottage, and gaped at the diminutive old woman. “A love potion?” she asked, promptly sinking onto a hard-backed chair.
Her heart sank as well. “A love potion?”
Apparently pretending to be deaf as well as half-blind, the cailleach ignored her questions and climbed onto a rough block of wood. She reached up to snap off a few sprigs of dried rosemary from one of the many clusters of dried herbs hanging from the ceiling rafters.
“Don’t fret yourself, lassie,” Devorgilla said, shooting her a cagey glance as she stepped down. “I ne’er said the potion was a love charm.”
She hobbled back to her hanging cauldron and dropped the rosemary into what smelled like a most savory rabbit stew. “I said I may have accidentally added in a few of the wrong ingredients.”
“Ingredients to incite passion and stir one’s heart is what you said,” Isolde reminded her, watching the old woman stir her bubbling stew pot.
Isolde’s brow creased.
Stir mischief is what Devorgilla was doing.
Leaning against the chair’s rough-hewn back, Isolde drew a deep breath of the cottage’s homeyness. An atmosphere of warmth and welcome she’d always cherished.
Until just a few scant moments ago when Devorgilla had confirmed her suspicions about the foul-tasting tincture she’d let Isolde imbibe for weeks.
Not an anti-attraction potion at all, but a love potion!
And with the crone’s upsetting admission, the cottage’s homespun appeal had slipped right out the ceiling’s chimney hole, its entire allure spiraling away along with the wispy ropes of smoke rising from the cook fire.
And neither the smoky-sweet smell of burning peat, the earthy tang of dried herbs, nor the tempting aroma of the simmering stew could fetch back the charm.
She’d had enough of charms.
Sitting bolt upright, driven to sheer madness by the firm grip he had on her heart, she blurted, “I have fallen in love with him!” She expelled a ragged breath of frustration. “I’ve wantoned myself, Devorgilla, and . . . a-and enjoyed it! Craved his touch, and ’tis all your doing.”
Devorgilla lifted a straggly brow in mock astonishment, the simple gesture giving Isolde’s heart a sharp jolt, so very much did it remind her of him.
Ignoring her distress, the crone hobbled to one of the unshuttered windows, the long-handled stirring ladle still clutched in her hand. “Did you see Lugh or Mab on your way here?” She stared out into the darkening night, her words as casual as if Isolde hadn’t just bled her soul onto the stone-flagged floor. “The boy wanders ever farther of late, and Mab is getting too old to be about on wild and stormy nights,” she fretted. “It will rain soon.”
“I saw neither,” Isolde answered, her voice flat, her irritation high. “Nor did I see a single cloud, but I ken better than to doubt you if you say a storm is brewing.”
Nor did she fear the wrath of an approaching storm.
Nary a tempest could rise from the sea to rival the might of the tumult raging inside her.
But her resolve cracked when Devorgilla returned to the cook fire and dipped the wooden ladle into the cauldron, calmly stirring the stew as if Isolde’s visit had been a purely social one and not a call paid in dire desperation.
“Oh, Devorgilla,” she wailed, “how could you?”
“You should ken I’d ne’er do aught to vex you apurpose.” The crone slid her a guileless look. “ ’Tis possible I mistook an ingredient or two, but not with ill intent, my lady,” she said, her thin voice steeped with contrition.
False contrition.
A tone as false as the contrived look of innocence on her face.
As mendacious as her use of “my lady.” Devorgilla ne’er called her aught but lass or child.
Isolde frowned. The crone’s expression, her tone, and her word choice, all boded ill.
All were but poorly disguised attempts to shield her treachery.
“ ’Tis my eyesight,” Devorgilla droned on, warming to her deception. She set aside the ladle and rubbed at her eyes with knobby knuckles. “My vision worsens by—”
“Your vision was clear enough for you to spot teensy bog violets growing along the edges of the marsh pools the day I asked your assistance in getting my . . . m-my message to Balloch,” Isolde protested, grateful when Bodo hopped onto her lap.
She wrapped an arm a
round him, pulling him close and reveling in the way he snuggled his soft weight against her. He would ne’er stoop to Devorgilla’s deceptions, ne’er betray her trust. Ne’er . . .
Her thoughts petered to a most disturbing end when a whole parade of images of Bodo and him rose up in her mind. The damning evidence of wee Bodo’s betrayal marched heavily across her sensitivities.
Feeling as if she were drowning in one of the many bog pits dotting Doon’s treacherous inlands, Isolde waited for the dog to settle himself before she railed on. “I think you tricked me apurpose,” she said, watching Devorgilla closely.
She didn’t care for the way the crone pressed her lips together. “He’s charmed you,” she said.
“Charmed me?” Devorgilla shook her gray head, and Isolde thought she saw her fight back a smile.
“Aye, you,” Isolde snapped, digging her fingers into Bodo’s warm fur, seeking a hold on her world before it slanted from her grasp. “His bonnie looks have taken you in, and you’ve contrived to bring us together.”
A strange twinkle glimmered in Devorgilla’s foggy eyes and, of a sudden, the skin around them appeared more crinkled with mirth than wrinkled with age.
“It wasn’t my idea to rid yourself of Balloch MacArthur by trying to get a bairn off the MacLean,” the crone said, filling two wooden cups with her special heather ale. “ ’Twasn’t I who wanted charmed yarrow sprigs to thrust beneath my pillow on Beltaine hoping to catch a glimpse of my true soul mate’s bonnie face.”
Isolde lifted her chin. “And is he the one you saw in your cauldron’s steam that very same night?”
The crone’s wrinkled face was wreathed in a smile. She tilted her head in a coy gesture better suited for a young maid of four-and-ten years. “Do you want him to be?”
Her ire rising, Isolde waved aside the froth-capped cup of ale the cailleach offered her. “I wanted an alliance, an end to strife and woe,” she insisted. “Peace for this isle.”
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