by Donna Grant
“I’m supposed to protect you,” Lucan murmured.
Cara rested her hands on his muscular chest and nodded. “You do.”
“Then who protects you from me?”
Before she could begin to understand what he meant, his mouth covered hers. His lips were firm, insistent, as they moved over hers seeking, devouring. She was powerless to pull away as she sank under his spell, her desire flaring to life like dry wood on a fire.
She clung to him, her hands fisting in his tunic as he pulled her against him. A moan tore from her throat at the feel of his hard body and his arousal that pushed against her stomach.
He slanted his mouth over hers, while he held her head with one hand and gripped her hip with the other. He groaned when his tongue slipped through her parted lips to mate with hers. He kissed with a skill that left her breathless. And wanting more.
A delicious heat spread from between her legs and settled in her stomach. Her breasts felt heavy, her nipples aching and hard.
When he ended the kiss, Cara opened her eyes to find her arms wrapped around his neck, her fingers in his thick locks. She hadn’t even realized she had risen up on her toes.
“My God,” Lucan murmured.
Cara couldn’t agree more. Her gaze rose to find his eyes hooded, the desire there for her to see, to feel. She tried to swallow, but her body wasn’t her own. Her gown was confining, her skin too tight. The emotions inside her left her feeling confused . . . and wanting. Needy.
Somehow she managed to step away from Lucan, to loosen her hold on his tunic. It was with much reluctance that she let her hands fall from his chest. The absence of his heat was instant, the loss of his hard body against hers immediate.
What would the nuns think of her if they knew she longed to rub her body against his, to feel the rigid length of his arousal, to have him lie atop her with nothing but their skin touching?
Cara turned to face the door, anything to bring her heated emotions back under control. To her mortification, Fallon held open the door, watching them.
“Stay with us,” Lucan said as he guided her toward the door.
Lucan, his hand on her elbow, helped her down the slick steps of the castle to the bailey where Quinn awaited them.
“Fallon?” Quinn called.
Cara paused beside Lucan and turned to see the eldest MacLeod brother standing in the doorway of the castle.
Lucan’s brow furrowed and he took a step toward his brother. “What is it, Fallon?”
“I’ve not left the castle. In over two hundred years I’ve not left the castle.” When he raised his gaze to them, Cara saw the panic and desperation.
Lucan bounded up the steps and pulled Fallon out of the castle. “There’s no one left. It will be fine.”
“I need my wine.”
Fallon tried to return to the castle, but Lucan stopped him. “Nay, you don’t.”
A moment later Quinn was on the other side of Fallon. “Come, Brother. I’ve ventured out plenty of times, and no one saw me. Well, no one besides Angus,” he said with a grin.
Before Cara realized just how much Angus had known of the brothers, she was halted by Quinn’s smile. It transformed him. Gone was any trace of the god, and in his place was a handsome man with teasing green eyes and brown hair streaked with gold.
She watched the three brothers, wondering how many hearts they broke before their clan had been killed and they were turned immortal. All three were incredibly good-looking, but it was Lucan with his sea green eyes and secret smile that made her heart miss a beat.
Lucan and Quinn got Fallon down the steps and out of the bailey. He stopped after they walked under the gate house and turned to look at the castle.
“God’s bones. I’m amazed it’s still standing,” Fallon said.
Lucan chuckled. “Our ancestors built it. Of course it’s still standing. Not even Deirdre’s army could topple it.”
His comment brought a smile to Fallon’s lips. With a nod, the eldest brother turned toward the village. Cara hadn’t missed the sparkle in his eyes. She couldn’t imagine staying confined to one place for days, much less centuries.
She liked watching the brothers interact. Even Quinn had softened, his rage almost forgotten. Cara smiled as Quinn punched Lucan in the shoulder over some comment, their laughter blowing on the breeze as they walked to the village.
Lucan looked over his shoulder at her, his smile gone. She frowned, wondering if he was upset because she had lagged behind. All she had wanted to do was give the brothers some time alone.
Then she saw the smoke.
The three men stopped and waited for her. Lucan threaded his fingers with her. “Are you sure?”
Nay. “Aye.”
“There isn’t much to see,” Quinn said.
Cara didn’t pull away when Lucan tugged her beside him. At the sight of the first dead body she knew she was going to need his strength.
Fallon glanced at her. “Why do you need to see this death?”
“I want to make sure they didn’t leave someone alive, or someone that needs help.”
“They didn’t.” Fallon stalked away.
Cara looked at Lucan. “How does he know?”
“Quinn came last night to check.”
Words eluded Cara as her gaze fell on person after person lying dead. It was like a bad dream she waited to wake from. People she had talked with, laughed with, were forever gone.
She couldn’t stop the tears when they came to the nunnery and she saw the nuns lying dead atop the children. The poor Sisters had done their best to shield the children, but not even the nuns’ prayers helped them.
Cara’s gaze caught sight of bright red hair. She hurried toward it, ignoring Lucan’s call. The sight of little Mary’s pale face brought another rush of tears. Cara didn’t glance up when Lucan knelt beside her.
“I was collecting the mushrooms for Mary. She had a fever and Sister Abigail was mixing some herbs for her.”
Lucan didn’t say anything. He stayed beside her, giving her the time she needed to say farewell. When she started to rise, he was there to help her.
“Do we bury them?” she asked.
“Nay,” Quinn said from the doorway, his emotions guarded. “There’s too many.”
Fallon walked into the nunnery and shook his head. “If this hasn’t already gotten back to the MacClure laird, it will soon. We need to leave everything as it is.”
“I agree,” Lucan said. “The fewer people that know of us the better.”
Cara didn’t want to leave her people lying out to rot, but the brothers were right. They couldn’t be found out. If anyone learned what the brothers were, they would be hunted mercilessly.
“Let’s gather what we can,” Fallon said. “Any food or weapons you find bring to the castle.”
Lucan stopped her when she would have followed Quinn and Fallon. “Is there another gown you would like to get?”
She glanced down at herself. She was sure Quinn wanted her out of his wife’s gown. “I doona have another.”
“We’ll find you one.”
Cara nodded and walked behind him, numb and grieving, as he piled weapons and gowns in her outstretched arms. She blinked through more tears. The trek back through the village was worse than when she first saw it. The rain had washed most of the blood away, but her stomach turned when she saw a puddle filled with red.
“Don’t look,” Lucan warned.
“First my parents. Now the village,” she said through her tears. Anger and guilt consumed her and settled like a stone in her stomach. She had done this to the village. Had the wyrran found her, the village might have been left unharmed. “How many more people have to die for me? You? Your brothers?”
Lucan turned to her, his eyes warm and steady. “We’re immortal, Cara.”
“But you can be hurt,” she argued. “You might not die, but you feel pain, aye?”
“Aye,” he answered with a small nod. “But our wounds heal quickly.”
Lucan grabbed her shoulders and gave her a little shake. “Don’t say that. Don’t ever say that.”
“You don’t know what plans Deirdre has for me.” Fallon snorted as he walked past them. “Nay, Cara, but they cannot be good, whatever they are. Deirdre is pure evil. And if she’s hunting something, she wants it dead in the end.”
Lucan glanced at his brother. “Fallon is right. If Deirdre gets ahold of you, it’s over, Cara. Our best course is to find out what your mother’s blood means to her, and why she would want it so desperately.”
“More important, why wait until now to find Cara?” Fallon called over his shoulder as he walked out of the village.
Cara’s head spun as she thought of the times she had felt someone watching her but could never see anyone. How the Demon’s Kiss would warm and vibrate on certain occasions. All of which had begun at the equinox. Was it a coincidence?
She looked away from Lucan’s penetrating gaze and gasped when she spotted Angus. She rushed to him. He sat on the ground, leaning against his cottage with his head lolling to the side as if he were asleep.
“He warned me about getting near the castle,” she said to Lucan as he moved to stand behind her. “He knew about you, didn’t he?”
“He did.”
Emotion welled in her throat. Angus blurred in her vision as the tears filled her eyes. He had cautioned her to stay away, not because he feared the brothers but because he had wanted to keep them safe, keep them from discovery.
“He was a good man,” Quinn said from beside her.
Cara jerked her head to him, startled. Quinn had been at the castle not a moment ago, but then she remembered Lucan had told her one of their powers was speed.
She glanced at Lucan behind her. “Angus was a good man. He was always ready with a smile, always willing to help. He was one of the few who weren’t afraid to talk to me when I was brought to the nunnery.”
Quinn nodded, his brown hair blowing in the wind. “The first time I saw Angus he was a small lad of five or six. It was night and I was prowling as I’m wont to do. He never screamed or ran away in fear, not even when he saw what I really was. Instead, he started leaving food at the gate house. It dinna take him long after that to approach me. He helped get us anything we needed, and he guarded our secret well.”
Cara stared at Angus, his white fluff of hair lying over his eyes. Lucan laid his hand on her shoulder, his strength and comfort pouring into her with such a simple gesture.
With one last look at the people she had come to call her own, she turned toward the castle. It was time to face the future.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Deirdre ran her hands along the cool rocks of her home deep inside Cairn Toul mountain. Most Druids could hear the call of the plants and trees, but for her, she heard the stones. It was the beautiful, wild call of Cairn Toul that had brought her to the mountain.
The cave had been hidden, but the stones had told her how to gain entry. And once she had, she had seen the wondrous glory of the mountain. Her mountain.
She had spent the first six months exploring the deep, endless caves and tunnels, marking them to memory. The upper part of the mountain she took as her domain, transforming it into a palace worthy of a queen. The middle part was used as her great hall where the mountain opened up into a stunning cavern. The lower part with all its caves and tunnels was perfect for her dungeon, which she had put to use almost immediately with the MacLeod brothers.
It was too bad she no longer held them. With all her power in black magic and her Warriors, somehow the MacLeods managed to keep from being taken again. The brothers were to have been the most powerful, most persuasive, weapon in her army. And she would have them again. It was only a matter of time.
She left the stones and walked to the middle of her chamber where a bench waited for her before a small table with a mirror hung in the stones. The bench was a favorite of hers with its scrolled arms and lovely Celtic knot work carved into the wood.
Deirdre pulled her long white hair over one shoulder and sat. Only then did she release her hair to fall down her back and puddle on the floor. Her hair was her crowing glory. It had once been a marvelous golden color, but each time she dabbled in the black magic her color had faded, until all that was left was hair as white as snow.
She had gotten used to it. Her eyes, however, were a different matter. Men at one time had commented on the vivid blue of her eyes, but just as with her hair, there was only a hint of the blue that had once been. Her eyes startled everyone, and she found she quite liked it.
Her head cocked to the side and looked into the mirror as a wyrran came up behind her and used its claws to delicately comb her hair.
“Aye, my lovely,” Deirdre said. “Just what I wanted.”
She had made the wyrran out of necessity, but once she learned how devoted they were to her, she used it to her advantage. They were her children. At least until she had all the Warriors under her control.
Which brought her back to the MacLeods. If they ever suspected the truth, her tenuous hold would disappear. It was only fear of what she could do that held the MacLeods in check.
She was a powerful drough. She had been the one to unbind the gods, hadn’t she? But there was more power to be had. Always there was more power.
The innocent girl from the MacClures would help to bring about that power, and once Deirdre had it the MacLeods wouldn’t be able to withstand her call. They, and the other Warriors, would be hers to control. Forever.
The wyrran peered over her shoulder, its round yellow eyes blinking up at her. It snarled, letting her know someone was coming.
“I heard him, my lovely,” she whispered to the wyrran. “Leave us.”
There was a hard knock on her door, followed by a muffled, “Mistress?”
“Enter,” she called.
She looked through the large oval mirror to find a Warrior, his royal blue skin signaling him as the holder of Ameren, the god of haunting.
“William,” she said, and rose to face her Warrior. She glanced behind him but didn’t see Caladh with his ash-colored skin, nor the form of a girl. Annoyance spiked through Deirdre, but she controlled it. “You are empty-handed?”
William bowed his head for a moment. “I am, mistress.”
“How could a slip of a girl get away from a dozen wyrran and two Warriors?” She kept her voice even as she used her magic to call on her weapon.
The ends of her hair that scraped her ankles when she stood lifted and flew at William to wrap around his balls.
“She had help.” William’s voice shook, his hands clutching Deirdre’s hair to try to stop the stranglehold.
Deirdre raised a brow. “Help? Who would dare to step in and help her?”
“The MacLeods.”
Surprise and excitement coursed through her. She eased her grip on William’s balls and used her hair to stroke his cock. Just as she expected, he hardened and lengthened through his breeches.
“The MacLeods?” she repeated. “Are you sure?” He nodded and licked his lips, his hands now caressing her hair. “Aye. I fought Quinn, then Lucan. I saw Fallon as well. There’s no mistake, mistress. It was the brothers.”
“At the village?”
“In their castle.”
Deirdre laughed. Of all the places. When they had first escaped her mountain, she had sent wyrran to MacLeod Castle to intercept the brothers, because where else would a Highlander go than back to his clan?
Yet the brothers hadn’t returned to their castle straightaway and had managed to continue to thwart her. And they fought against her. It didn’t bode well if the MacLeods had her little female. Deirdre needed Cara—more than she wanted to admit.
William’s stroking of her hair grew bolder. She eyed h
im as she looked at the bulge between his legs. It had been a while since she had taken a Warrior to her bed, though there was only one Warrior she really wanted, one Warrior who would give her the children she needed to carry on her kingdom. Until she had him back in her control again, she would take her pleasure where she could.
“Take off your clothes, William.”
He obeyed without question. Deirdre released him until he stood before her in all his royal blue glory. Her hair encircled his cock and she heard him moan.
“Were the MacLeods defending Cara?”
William’s eyes were closed, his breathing ragged. “Aye, mistress. Caladh smelled her magic in the dungeons and went after her.”
“You left him?”
“He’s a Warrior. Unlike the MacLeods he welcomed his god and the powers that came with him. Caladh is stronger than they are.”
Not if the three brothers fought as one, but she didn’t tell William that. She would wait a day for Caladh to return with Cara, if he escaped the MacLeods.
“I need my army, William,” she said as she walked to him and ran her hands over his thickly muscled chest.
He opened his eyes and nodded. “I know.”
“Will you lead them for me? Will you bring me Cara and the MacLeods?”
“Aye.”
She smiled and cupped his balls, rolling them in her hands. She brushed his rod with the back of her hand. “You are very hard.”
“I want you, mistress.”
“Do you?”
“Aye.”
She stepped back with her arms out to her sides and her hair hanging to the floor. “Then take me.”
William grabbed the neck of her black gown with his hands and with one yank ripped it from her body. She smiled when he gathered her up in his arms and strode to her bed across the room.
Desire made her breasts swell and her nipples harden while her sex grew damp. It had been years since William had shared her bed. She had forgotten how rough he could be, but she was looking forward to it.
He tossed her onto the bed. Deirdre laughed and opened her arms as he fell on top of her.