by Lee Brazil
Unforgettable
Ian Kerr dreams of the blue-eyed gaze that met his in a strange, still moment on the field of battle. Brodick MacFarland, young and inexperienced, yet old enough to fight for his clansmen, saves a wounded man left for dead by his kin. Now, five years later, Brodick is a trained physician and an adult who knows his own mind. Fortunately for Ian, the clash between the clans still rages on, leaving Brodick fair game. Will Brodick come with Ian of his own accord or will this educated warrior continue to evade capture?
Pulp Friction Presents
A Sweet Exchange Erotic Short
Unforgettable
By
Lee Brazil
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. As such, any resemblance to any persons, living or deceased, businesses, events, or locales is coincidental.
Cover Art photo by © © Tomas Sereda - Fotolia.com
Editing by Jae Ashley
Copyright April. 2013 © Lee Brazil
Acknowledgement
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Unforgettable
Thunder awoke Ian Kerr from a restless sleep haunted by troubled blue eyes. He wanted to reach out to the owner of those eyes, tell the man that it would be all right. "All right," he mumbled, forcing heavy lids up. His head felt thick and his vision blurred.
Lying still, he forced himself to assimilate his surroundings as his head and vision slowly cleared. The floor beneath him was earth, the wall he lay against as well. A fire crackled nearby, providing warmth and a dim flickering light. His belly rumbled loudly, echoing the thunder.
Last he'd known, his brother Andrew, and Agnes MacFarland had left him to cover their retreat. How had he come to lie in an abandoned shepherd's bothy? Still, it was out of the storm that raged outside, and for that he was grateful. A savory scent lingered in the air, and Ian shifted upright to find the source of that enticing odor.
"Ahh…" Agony seared his chest, and he clutched at it, marveling as his fingers found a neat row of stitches. The pain jolted his muddled brain and memories fought slowly to the surface. "The battle…" The damned MacFarlands had left him to die on the roadside when one of their untrained whelps landed a lucky blow with sword he'd been scarce able to lift.
"Aye, easy there." The soft burr drew his gaze to a thin man in a MacFarland tartan kneeling near the small fire. The youth filled a bowl with pottage and crossed the small space between them. The voice was familiar, the figure strange.
"Where am I?"
"Boden's old place. I couldna get ye any further from the road. Wasna safe to take ye to the farm." When the youth knelt and offered him the bowl, Ian was struck by deep blue eyes, the steely blue of the sky before sunset, set in a fine boned face, beardless, thin, fragile nearly, and very familiar.
"Ye're a MacFarland." He reached automatically for his blade, though the stripling was hardly threatening in his appearance. Memories stirred of the recently fought battle. Those were the eyes from his dream… "I remember ye from the fight. Ye were in Andrew's bride's guard."
Laughter lurked in the blue eyes before the youth ducked his head. "I'm Brodick MacFarland. Agnes is my sister." His cheeks flushed slightly, though it could have been a trick of the flickering fire.
Brodick returned to the fire and filled another bowl of pottage for himself. Ian surveyed him cautiously. His instinct said the other man was no threat…but their families were at war. "Ye fetched the doctor for me?" Silently, he ate a few bites of pottage, studying the slim figure, the thin chest and wiry arms. This was no warrior, though he could plainly see the man wasn't as young as he'd first thought.
Brodick met his gaze again. "I sewed ye up meself. I'm a student at Aberdeen. I'm sorry if 'tis no' perfectly done. But I didna dare let anyone know you lived."
Ian nodded. "Why?" This youth hadn't participated in the mild battle; Ian's injury had been caused by a startled looking stripling who'd vomited into the heather and thistle at the roadside immediately afterward. Ian's clansmen had left him, their need to escort Andrew's bride to safety most urgent. He caught a sidelong glance from Brodick, and something in the darkening gaze sent a flicker of heat to his groin. Clan MacFarland was known for beauty in a land where brawn was prized, Ian wouldn’t have been so smitten with the sainted Agnes, but this one was different…special. Where the other MacFarlands shared his creamy pale skin and plump rosy lips, instead of the deep auburn hair the rest of the MacFarlands sported, this one had been graced with a wild mane of black curls, cropped at the shoulder. Ian's fingers itched to bury themselves in those curls, to test their silky appearance with his fingertips.
"Agnes wanted Kerr. From the time their paths crossed in Aberdeen last fall, he's all the foolish lass talked of…every letter Laird Kerr this, Andrew that. 'Twas for the best that she go with him. Her father wanted another match, 'tis true enough, but bride theft is an honored tradition."
And that explained how the lass had been so far from home with so few warriors about. Aye. Andrew Kerr was a shrewd man. Pity he hadn't shared with his brother the full extent of the plot. It would have been nice to know that the bride and her brother were in on the abduction. "How long?" How long had he lain here, unable to fend for himself? How long had this stripling doctor-to-be tended his wound? He shook the fuzziness from his head. Had the man drugged him?
"Your clansmen left ye on the road to die." The youth's voice was troubled. "'Twas a good six nights ago that Agnes was taken. None have come looking."
Damn. Six nights? "Aye. They wouldna. They know I can do for meself." He watched Brodick eat, spooning occasional bites of pottage between tempting lips. "I'll leave when the storm lets up." Watching Brodick, he fully understood his brother's fascination with Agnes.
Shaking his head, Brodick cautioned, "Nay. You canna go so far until ye've healed further."
"I dinna ken what the MacFarlands are made of, lad, but a Kerr is a hardy man. If it werena for yer drugs, I'd have been away long since." Under lowered lids he admired the fluid grace of the physician's movements as he scraped his bowl back into the pot and covered it.
"Ye had the fever. I gave ye a draught, is all." Brodick stared at the wall over Ian's head for a few minutes. Ian waited. His senses were on high alert…and not because he felt threatened. A sensual current between him and his caretaker sent prickles of awareness sparking through his body. The fine red gold hair on his arms stood upright.
"No more of yer draughts. I canna spend the whole of the season holed up in a bothy in the countryside."
"I've to get back to Aberdeen, to the college."
"Then, in the morning, we leave." Aye. The lad would make a fine doctor and a poor specimen of a warrior at that. Not that his body wasn't fine in its own way. Ian admired again the smooth chest with its tight pink nipples, the sculpted lean muscles. He dragged his gaze back to Brodick's face and noted his quickened breath. The lad was interested, even if he didn't know what lured him. "Ye go alone to the city?"
Were the MacFarland family crazed? To send one so young and fair alone?
A faint smile twisted sensual lips. "I cross only the lands of those my family is allied with. I'll come to no harm."
"I'll escort ye." He saw the other's lips part as though to protest and barreled on. "Ye cared for me when I needed it. I'll see ye to yer destination, I canna be indebted to a MacFarland while our clans are at war." Ian nodded resolutely, shutting his eyes to block out any further discussion.
The MacFa
rland didn't take the hint though and continued to chatter endlessly about his city, his school, the books he'd read, and wonders he'd like to see, until Ian thought the sound of the man's voice alone would drive him mad.
"Sleep," he ordered gruffly. His rod lay thick and hard against his belly, and if he were anywhere else, with anyone else, he wouldn't have hesitated to take himself in hand and relieve his frustration. Maybe when the lad slept and the temptation to show him that Scotland held plenty of marvels to wonder at faded, he'd be able to find relief from his aching need.
He slouched down, crossing his arms over his chest and ignoring the tug of the stitching, the ache of his wound. With closed eyes, he listened to the other man rustling around, preparing for his own rest.
When he was certain from the even breathing across the fire that Brodick slept, Ian loosened the folds of his tartan and palmed his cock. Imagining steely blue eyes and ruby lips, he stroked himself a few times, losing himself in the building fire until a smooth hand stroked down his chest.
His eyes flew open in surprise. "Brodick?"
"Ian…" The whisper brushed over his lips. "I want…"
Disregarding his injury, Ian caught Brodick by the waist and rolled them so that the younger man gazed up at him with dazed eyes from a thick swath of green and purple and red MacFarland tartan. "Aye," he muttered, capturing in a hot kiss the plump lips that had teased him. Brodick met each thrust of his tongue with eagerness, his mouth parted willingly. However youthful he might appear, Brodick clearly was no stranger to the wonders of Scotland, as his knowing touch and melting eyes proclaimed.
Hands too smooth to wield a sword slid over Ian's shoulders, his chest, down the furry path of his belly to his straining cock. Ian shuddered, pushing into Brodick's caress. They shifted, tartan shoved aside, until Ian could rut against Brodick's thickened cock, each slow, rough glide drawing moans. The gasping conclusion snuck up on him all too quickly when Brodick spilled his seed between them with a cry.
***
"That must be a helluva dream, Ian." Johnnie's gruff voice dragged Ian from his memories back to the thin sliver of trees above the MacFarland farm where they waited.
"Unforgettable," he concurred with his younger brother. His head fell back against the thick rough trunk of the mountain oak. Five years of unforgettable dreams while Brodick finished his studies, grew to be the man he was meant to be. Five years of furtive trips to Aberdeen, meetings in pubs and quiet out of the way places. Five years of planning that led to this night.
The night he claimed the man that was meant to be his, the future that they would have together.
It Was More Than He Wanted
Ian traced the scar on his chest absently. The pale marking seemed to gleam in the dim light, a white crescent directly over his heart. The mark was more than he wanted, less than he needed to keep his love close to mind. Brodick was fascinated by the mark when they were together. He considered it a badge of ownership, a seal of his place in Ian's life.
Johnnie grunted and dropped to the hard ground, leaning against the same twisted tree. Darkness had fallen, and a thin sliver of moon provided the only illumination as they stared at MacFarland's farm, where a dim yellow glow lit one lone cheerless window.
The thin stretch of trees where they lurked didn't provide much shelter, but the MacFarlands didn't seem to be providing much security for this farm on the edge of their holding either. The night was cool, but Ian and Johnnie hadn't considered risking a fire. Their thick wool tartans blocked the cold of the night from seeping into their flesh.
Unfamiliar sounds abounded in the MacFarland lands. Strange animal noises, odd muted shrieks, and moments of piercing stillness alternated with the bleating of sheep in the fields. Eerie breezes that were colder than the night air stirred the leaves and vanished as quickly as they came.
Ian shivered as a cold gust of air fluttered his tartan. His flesh prickled with awareness and he senses were on high alert. He'd endured the sensation of being watched since they'd left their horses at the Boden bothy where Brodick had stitched his injury years before. He kept his gaze squarely on the farmstead, on the door that Brodick would use when he left his kinsman's dwelling. The only time he'd glanced away, a strange light had flickered in the shadows. Will-o-the-wisp? Fairy lights? Old Clootie on the search for lost souls? It was clear that something otherworldly lingered here, testified to by the wolves that howled in the absence of normal woodland sounds.
It was an eerie enough coincidence that the man he'd come to spirit away was attending a birthing. Both he and Andrew had felt that Agnes's pregnancy was a suitable excuse for the kidnapping of her brother, but neither had felt a birth required a doctor in reality. Hadn't women been birthing children without doctors since the dawn of earth?
"He's still there. The bairn hasn't come yet. He'll stay as long as it takes." Johnnie interrupted Ian's reverie. That's the kind of man Brodick had grown to be, softhearted, Andrew called him. Ian didn't care. He admired Brodick's dedication to medicine, though he didn't at all understand the need to cure that didn't recognize clan lines.
Ian accepted an oatcake his younger brother pulled from his sporran. "We'll wait." He'd waited five years, a few hours wouldn't matter.
"Why is this particular doctor so important?" Johnnie stared in disgust at the oatcake before biting into it glumly.
Because he's mine, whispered his heart. His head spewed the agreed upon story that Andrew had crafted. "He's Agnes's brother. She wants him at the birthing next month."
"The MacFarlands won't take this easy. They'll come after him," Johnnie mumbled through a mouth full of dried oatcake.
Ian crumbled his cake, unable to bring himself to eat the thing. He was growing soft as well. Spending months each year in Aberdeen, dining in fine pubs and restaurants had spoiled his appreciation for simple country fare. "They didn't come after Agnes."
"She's a bonny lass, but just a girl. This 'un is an educated man, a healer. They'll want him back."
"They might, but they won't know he's gone until it's too late." He pulled his gaze from the door to meet his brother's eyes, careful not to look at that tiny yellow light where none should be. Fey…the MacFarlands were rumored to be descended of ancient races, possibly even sidhe. Lying in Brodick's arms in his tiny Aberdeen rooms near the college, it was easy enough to believe he'd been bewitched or ensorcelled. The passion between them raged bright as ever five years into their liaison, and that alone amazed a man who'd sought his pleasures without commitment for three decades, but somehow, Brodick's tales of new worlds and ancient lands had sparked a fascination in his breast. They would travel. "Aye," he murmured. And perhaps in their travels they would find a land where their love wouldn’t be a sin.
Johnnie straightened slowly. "Bedamned. It's another of Andrew's plots!"
Ian nodded shortly. "Aye. We've labored over the particulars these past three years."
"I wondered why I was here. He's a frail sort, from the looks of him. Ye wouldna have had any trouble taking him on yer own."
"He's not so frail as he seems, Johnnie boy. But yer right. Yer here ta tell the world how we died."
Johnnie blinked in the darkness, mouth dropping open in an "o" of surprise. "Died?"
"Died." More screams rent the night, these distinctly human and emanating from the farm below. Ian straightened, turning his gaze back to the lonely little house. "Agnes has birthed three babes all on her own. Why would she demand her brother's presence for the fourth?"
"I…Are ye sure Andrew knows about this? Ye aren't sending me empty-handed back into the lion's den are ye?"
Ian snorted. "Do ye think I'm able to plan such a thing? Andrew is the brains in this clan; I'm the brawn. It's all his doing. All ye need to worry about is taking this"—he drew a burned pair of tartans, one Kerr red and one MacFarland green, out of his satchel—"back home. Andrew will moan loudly about the death of his brother, and damn the MacFarlands again."
"And what happens to ye, Ia
n? And the doctor? Do we never see ye again?"
"We go to Aberdeen, where Brodick has his post at the hospital, where everyone already thinks he's going when he leaves here anyway. By the time the MacFarlands realize their doctor is missing, he and I will be on ship to New York in the colonies."
A frown furrowed Johnnie's brow as he worked it out. "Won't they think him dead?"
"Not if ye take the tartans back to Andrew immediately. It'll take a little longer for word to get back to MacFarland."
"They aren't stupid, Ian. They'll see our tracks. Won't they be suspicious?"
Ian shrugged. "They might. But by then, it will be too late. They won't go to the new world after him, and they can't blame the Kerr family without proof. If ye and Andrew stick by the story that we went to kidnap him for Agnes's birthing, and the fire struck on the way back, they havena choice but to let it go."
Slowly nodding, Johnnie continued, "I just have one more question."
Exasperated, Ian scowled at his brother. "Awful damned nosy, aren't ye?" Even in the dark, he could see Johnnie's flush.
"Why?" Johnnie demanded, bullheadedly determined to get all his answers, it seemed.
Ian shrugged. "He's mine." Speaking the words aloud to someone other than Brodick felt good.
Johnnie grunted. "I thought ye'd given that up."
Sighing, Ian slouched lower against the tree and pulled the plaid closer about his shoulders. "Can ye give up visiting Old Maggie's place and lying with the fair lasses, Johnnie?"
"'Tisn't the same, Ian. What ye do…‘tis a sin."
"Fornication is a sin too, Johnnie. But if it makes ye feel any better, I've given up sinning with anyone but the doctor."
Johnnie sat in silence. Ian risked a glance at his brother. "Do ye hate me then, for the sin?"
"I canna believe that Andrew approves."
Chuckling mirthlessly, Ian fingered the thin sharp blade of his dirk. "He does, though. I’m nearly certain he thinks the MacFarlands have laid a spell or a curse upon us. It is the same for him and Agnes as it is with me and Brodick. One look into those blue eyes and I was lost." He regretted the loss of Johnnie's esteem, but he could no more choose his clan over Brodick than he could choose celibacy.