by Terry Spear
Duncan didn’t have any lock picks with him, but then he remembered Shelley had dead-bolted the door. Maybe she didn’t hear him because of the torrential downpour sliding off the roof onto the granite patio.
The bolt slid open, and she turned the knob and stood before him, one towel wrapped around her body and another around her hair in a turban.
She gave him a worried smile and looked damned sexy. He wanted nothing more than to sweep her up in his arms and take her back to bed. He had to shower first, though, and didn’t plan to touch her until he was truly clean.
Even so, Shelley kissed his lips lightly. She had to know by the way he stood so rigidly just inside the doorway, dripping water on the tile floor, that he couldn’t give in to the lust he always felt when he was around her. He didn’t want to take this any further just yet. She pulled the towel off her body and wrapped it around him, teasing him with the lush sight and fragrant scent of her, when she could just as well have removed the towel from her hair and not given him such an eyeful.
Siren.
He cast her a wicked smile as he wrapped the towel around his waist. That garnered a mischievous smile from her, and then she relocked and bolted the door. “Wait for me in bed. I’ll join you momentarily,” he said, his voice already husky with need.
She sighed and slipped her arm around him as they headed for the bedroom. “I never went to the reserve today. So I need to do some more research tomorrow.”
Plants. He couldn’t believe that she was still thinking about plants after what had happened. On the other hand, maybe they gave her a sense of peace and tranquility, no matter what else was going on. He had to admit that when he ran through the Caledonian Forest back home, he loved being immersed in the wild and nature.
“If you won’t return with my brother to Scotland, we’ll all three go to the reserve.” That was the only way she was going back there, he decided, given the way things were going. He was certain they’d only get worse.
***
Shelley was half asleep when Duncan finally joined her in bed. He’d not only showered and smelled of her tangerine body wash, but he’d called his brother to apprize him of the latest news. She’d heard him talking in the kitchen, unable to make out what he was saying, and nearly drifted off to sleep. At first, his duty to his brother had bothered her, when she felt he really only needed to talk to her since she was here with him and they would face whatever they had to alone.
But when he returned, she realized how much more relaxed he was. Discussing their situation with his brother, who was the pack leader, helped to ease the tension Duncan was feeling. For that, she was grateful. He tugged the covers aside and slid in beside her, pulling the covers back over them as if they were just going to sleep.
There was something sexy about the way he did that, skimming his hand underneath the covers and softly over her belly without seeing what he intended to do next. As if he were sliding his fingers up a nightgown—if she’d worn one—caressing and maneuvering until his fingers touched the underside of a breast and cupped it. She gazed into his beautiful dark eyes and saw the love in them but the worry, too. She smiled wearily up at him, tilted her chin up, and said, “Kiss me, Highlander.”
He actually grinned at her, as if that was the last thing he’d expected her to say and it both amused and pleased him. She knew the latter was true as his hand moved over her breast, molding to it as his lips pressed against hers in a way that said he wanted to block out the whole world and just experience this.
Her hands swept over his back as he leaned closer, his mouth partly open, his tongue slipping over her dry lips and moistening them for another assault. She greedily surrendered, shifting her hands lower until she was cupping his buttocks and squeezing the firm muscles.
His breathing instantly grew ragged, his eyes smokier, his tongue and mouth more insistent. She felt him already on the edge, his cock rigid with arousal as he pressed against her thigh. He was a considerate lover. She knew he wanted them to meld together as one and wouldn’t think of putting his own needs before hers.
He continued to touch her where it counted, her skin sensitive to his caresses, preparing her for his ultimate conquest. His fingers teased her nipple as she ran her fingers lightly over his backside, her touch making him move his fingers lower over the curls between her thighs, parting her feminine lips and stroking her into a fevered pitch.
She moaned against his mouth, his tongue flicking at hers. His fingers stroked her clit faster as her fingers dug into his buttocks. She rocked with the motion, arched against his fingers, trying to quicken the feeling aroused in her.
The sensation felt like the strong rising tide, drawing on strength, building, and promising to carry her away on a sea of ecstasy. The rain pounded on the tile roof, but inside they were warm and dry, except for their exertion and how slick and wet he was making her in preparing her for his penetration. She cried out as she came, her words drowned out by the wind and rain and thunder booming overhead.
As if he couldn’t hold on a second longer or wanted to feel her arousal gripping him with spasms of delight, he centered himself between her legs and pressed forward with a deep thrust that sent her thoughts reeling.
Duncan needed to bury himself in Shelley’s sweet flesh, making her moan with sensuous surrender as he drove in deeply, feeling her inner muscles clamping around his cock in a steady rhythm as if gripping him in welcome. Just hearing her call out his name while the storm raged around them, he felt his own storm-filled thoughts subsiding, given over to her sweet, appealing nature, to the way she surrounded him in silky heat.
Nothing else mattered when he was with her like this, loving her as she loved him back. Spirited and tenacious, she was his match, his mate, and he cherished her.
He kissed her soft, pliable lips as she arched against him and deepened his thrusts. His tongue stroked hers as her hands swept up his back in a tantalizing caress. “Shelley,” he murmured against her mouth, feeling her tense as she clenched her muscles around his penis, tightening like a slick satin glove.
He pulled halfway out, wanting to prolong the heightened sensations, and then plunged in again, barely able to maintain control. She drew her fingernails down his buttocks like a sexy cat resting on her back, purring and lightly scratching in rapture, inciting him to finish this quickly.
She was all wolf—growly when she didn’t get her way, and loyal and protective like a lupus garou. She was all his.
He felt the tumultuous end coming and let go. He filled her with his hot seed, bathed her deep inside, and kissed her again, saying sweet nothings to her in Gaelic that made her smile.
***
Falling asleep in Duncan’s arms as the storm raged outside was almost as wonderful as waking up in his arms in the wash of early afternoon sunlight. She would have felt guilty for sleeping so long, if she had been sleeping so long. Their repeated bouts of lovemaking wouldn’t count as sleeping—just being in bed.
His hand was caressing Shelley’s breast, his mouth nuzzling her ear, when a violent pounding on the front door nearly gave her a heart attack.
“Sal,” Duncan growled, guessing it was the bastard. “Maybe something else has happened—he found Kenneth dead or something—and he wants to offer me more for my services as a bodyguard.”
“Don’t agree to do it, Duncan.” Shelley began to pull the cover aside.
Duncan shook his head as he slipped his Bermuda shorts on. “Stay right where you are. We’ll finish what we had begun after I get rid of him.”
Bare chested, wearing only his shorts, he shut the bedroom door and stalked down the hall.
The banging started all over again. For an instant, Shelley thought it couldn’t be Sal. Wouldn’t he just have called? Also, she didn’t see him as the rough, violent type.
Except that he had killed the other man as a wolf.
Her heartbeat quickening, she was torn. Get dressed and monitor what was going on? Give Duncan aid if he needed it?
Or stay where she was and wait for Duncan to return to bed? She didn’t trust the situation. What if Carlotta had sent more hit men?
Shelley wasn’t one to wait things out if she had any other option. She yanked the covers aside.
A familiar booming voice at the front door made the hair on her skin stand at attention. “Where the hell is my niece, Shelley?”
Uncle Ethan.
Chapter 18
Duncan stared at the big, scowling Scot, who was standing like a riled-up grizzly in the villa’s doorway. The man’s gruff, angry voice was still tinged with a brogue, although living in America had taken away some of it. This had to be Shelley’s Uncle Ethan, his hair as auburn as hers and eyes just as green, only smaller and narrowed and angry. He was wearing buff-toned cowboy boots, a black Stetson, blue jeans, and a blue-checked Western shirt, like he was getting ready for the rodeo or to rope some cows on the ranch. Only he looked more like an enraged bull, come to think of it, and somebody needed to rein him in. That’s when Duncan remembered Shelley was from Texas.
Then he noted the engraved silver tips on the toes of Campbell’s boots and the belt with fancy silver trimmings. He thought of Shelley and the silver belt and sandals she’d worn at the airport.
“Where is she?” Ethan Campbell bit out.
Duncan moved aside to let the man enter, not backing down but not wanting to be antagonistic, either. The man was Shelley’s uncle, after all. Duncan didn’t want to create ill will with her close family.
“I’ll tell her you’re here. If you’d like to take a seat in the living room, I’ll be right back,” Duncan said with conviction.
“No, I’ll get her.”
Duncan knew that wasn’t the best idea. Campbell would smell his and Shelley’s sex fests in the bedroom. Before he could explain that he and Shelley were mated, he was sure her uncle would attempt to kill him.
“We’re mated,” he quickly said before Campbell could storm farther down the hall than the several steps he’d already managed.
Campbell swung around. “It will be the shortest mating in wolf history.” He stalked back toward Duncan. He knew this was going to be bad, no matter how it ended.
He didn’t want to strike the older man, not when he was Shelley’s uncle. Campbell took a swing with one large-fisted hand, and Duncan blocked the blow by throwing his arm up and knocking the man’s arm aside. His quick action didn’t deter her uncle. He rapidly swung his fist for another killer blow.
“Uncle!” Shelley screamed, rushing down the hall, a T-shirt and shorts covering her, but her hair was as tousled as if they’d made love half the night—which they had—and her feet were bare. “He’s my mate! If you kill him, I’ll never forgive you.”
She really didn’t believe her uncle could get the upper hand with Duncan, did she?
Her uncle glowered at her. “What have you done? Disgraced our name after all that went on in the old country? Aye, ’tis a shameful day when one of their kind takes one of ours like the users they’ve always been.”
Duncan knew that her uncle’s words cut deep by the way Shelley’s face crumpled. Her family must have filled her with horror stories all her life about the old days. No wonder she initially had not liked what he and his family had represented.
“Sir,” Duncan said, trying to take a more appeasing stance and to draw her uncle’s ire away from Shelley.
The man turned and growled at Duncan. “You should be ashamed.”
“For loving your niece?” Irritated that her uncle would make the statement, Duncan walked past her uncle and put his arm around Shelley’s shoulders in a comforting embrace.
Ignoring Duncan’s comment, her uncle said, “You’re not taking the lass back to Scotland with you.”
“Oh, aye, I am,” Duncan countered, his back bristling with barely controlled anger. “She can visit the States anytime she likes, but she’s living with me at Argent Castle.” He was even thinking that when the clan got their money back, he might suggest to Ian that they build an indoor swimming pool. He was fairly certain Ian would say no, but swimming with Shelley was something he didn’t want to give up.
“A castle, is it?” Campbell glanced at Shelley, a bit of calculation gleaming in his eyes.
She cast Duncan an anxious look, then quickly said to her uncle, “I’m sure that Duncan’s brother, Ian, who is laird, would say you and your brothers and my mother are free to visit anytime.”
“Aye,” Duncan agreed. He was certain that as hotheaded as her uncle was, things were sure to heat up between his family and hers. Why did taking the lass as his mate mean taking in her whole family?
At least they lived across the ocean.
“Your brother is the laird? Not you?”
As if Campbell truly hadn’t known, Duncan thought.
Campbell frowned at Duncan, as if he were thinking of allowing the mating, which was a moot point because once it had been done, it was for a lifetime. Campbell finally said, “I’ll let you keep her.”
The hell if Campbell had any say in it! His tone wasn’t conciliatory, either. An unspoken condition hung between them.
Duncan knew he wouldn’t like the condition, but he also didn’t like Campbell believing he had any say in whether Shelley stayed with Duncan. Shelley’s back stiffened with her uncle’s declaration.
“Aye.” As if Duncan would allow anyone to take her away from him.
Campbell folded his arms across his broad chest and gave the most evil smile. “We’ll move in with you.”
Shelley’s jaw dropped.
Duncan was just as stunned, unsure of what to say and knowing he couldn’t decide such a thing without Ian’s approval. Nor did he want to upset Shelley. He wasn’t sure what she wanted—her family far away or close at hand.
“She’ll be having children. My grandnieces and grandnephews. They will learn everything there is to know about their family roots from their uncles and their grandmother.” Campbell looked unmovable from his stance.
So that was what this was all about? To continue passing on the discontentment he and his family felt about how they’d been mistreated in the old days—the years of holding a grudge about something that should have been let go eons ago?
“Surely, you haven’t discussed this with your brothers or with my mother,” Shelley said, sounding stricken.
“They do what I say.”
“Laird Ian MacNeill would have to have a say in this. It’s his castle, his clan, his pack after all,” she quickly said, as if she was afraid Duncan would jump into the fray and cause the situation to get even more heated.
But Duncan knew when to let the she-wolf have her say. Right now, that was definitely something she had to do. If she grew quiet, unsure what to say, Duncan would again take on Campbell.
Campbell smiled slyly again. “Aye. We are a generous sort. If Duncan MacNeill wants you badly enough, he’ll agree to our terms. Either we all move back to Scotland, or your mate can have a home with us.”
“I have my own home,” she said, her voice angry now.
“Aye, which is fine. You don’t live far from us, which is my point.”
Duncan wanted to know if Shelley was all that close to her uncles. But he could see that her uncle was all business, no matter what the outcome. He was proud of her for being fiercely independent. She wasn’t letting her uncle get away with bullying her into what he wanted, either.
“I’m going to Scotland with Duncan,” she said firmly. “We could plan to return to Texas…”
Her uncle shook his head, then took a seat on the couch and motioned to Duncan as if Campbell was the king and Duncan served him. “Call your laird brother, lad. Call him and tell him he meets my conditions or else.”
Shelley opened her mouth to protest. Duncan gave her another squeeze and kissed her cheek. She looked up at him with regret swimming in her eyes. He gave her half a smile. “I’ll call Ian, lass.” He was doing it for Shelley, not her pretentious uncle.
When he headed
for the door, Shelley caught his arm, and with her back to her uncle so he couldn’t see what she was saying, she mouthed the words to Duncan, “You don’t have to do this.”
Appreciating that she said so, but knowing he did indeed have to do this if he was going to make any inroads with her family, Duncan smiled, wrapped his arms around her, and kissed her mouth with all the wolfish passion he possessed. He was stating that they were mated, she was his, and there wasn’t a damn thing her uncle could do about it.
When he released her, she clung to him, a little unsteady on her feet. He smiled, loving how he could make her melt against him just from his kisses.
He tried to put on an everything-is-under-control expression, but she looked too anxious for him to believe he was successful. Fighting the bad guys was easy. Trying to smooth over the situation with her uncle in a way that was satisfactory to all parties concerned was quite another thing.
Hell, didn’t they have enough trouble already? Duncan couldn’t believe he had to call Ian about this mess with Shelley’s uncle. But he didn’t want to tell her uncle the difficulties they were having with Sal Silverman or he feared Campbell would feel it was his duty to escort Shelley home to Texas at once.
Duncan walked outside while Shelley tried to talk reason to her uncle while fixing him a cup of coffee.
Ian answered on the first ring. He had been closely monitoring the phone, worried about what all was going on in the islands. Duncan told Ian about the second dead man and about Sal wanting Duncan to protect him.
“I said no to his offer,” Duncan said.
“Maybe you should agree to be his bodyguard,” Ian said seriously.
“What the hell for?”
“If Carlotta has him killed, then we’ve lost a chance to get the money through him.”
“Then we go after her.” It didn’t matter to Duncan who had their money.
Ian sighed. “Yeah, we’d have to.”
“I can’t agree to protect him, get the money, then kill him.”
“All right. Do what you have to do.”