by Becky Banks
I plucked the file from the table and slid a paper from it over to him.
Rowan read through the Secret Keeper’s version swiftly and tossed it back onto the coffee table. “Aye, I’ve read that one countless times. Did Peabody find something new?”
“Well, you’ll remember that he had measured your energy reading or whatever it is he does with the gadget he keeps talking about. He’s come to the conclusion that you’ve seen the likes of Lady MacLaoch’s pain. Since you were shot and with Vick’s associated death, apparently, it makes a big impact on your force field or some such.”
“I got that.”
“So we both agreed that since the curse states—as you know—that once the chieftain feels the—”
“Aye, likes of her pain. I heard ye and I know tha’, but Cole, I dinnae think tha’ what I felt was enough for Lady MacLaoch. She had to stand by and watch as her betrothed got his head severed. I dinnae think she’ll accept a bullet and a friend instead. More likely she’s looking to have me watch ye be strapped down and killed as payment made in full.”
I blinked. “I’m sorry. What did you just say?” I asked, then realized that this had been Rowan’s personal fear for some time now.
“I know tha’ it does not fit in with Peabody’s or your theories, Cole, but ye have to understand tha’ it is I who lives with the curse and has her blood beating through my veins. I’ll gather I have more experience than either of ye on this subject,” he said plainly, not answering my question—yet he didn’t look to be purposefully dodging it either.
“Rowan,” I said. “Why would she kill me? I’m the other half to this; I have the blood of her betrothed pumping through my veins,” I said, using his words. “I doubt she’d want to kill me.”
“And ye know this how?” he said, trying to make me realize I had no basis. But I did.
“Because she’s shown me.”
Rowan’s whisky glass was at his lips when I said this; his hand stilled and then replaced the glass on the coffee table without his having taken a swallow.
“She . . . ” he said and stopped. “How?”
“Two things, before I tell you.” I held up a single finger. “One, do you remember the day I came to Castle Laoch and I asked you if the ring in the glass case was Lady MacLaoch’s?”
“Aye . . . ”
Two fingers raised, I said, “Second, the dream we shared.” No need to ask him if he remembered, as I was now well aware that he remembered that dream vividly. “They both involved her. In the first dream, I was on the island that’s named after her, looking back on shore. In that dream, the ring was on my finger. We walked down the beach, she and I—she was within me, as if we were one, though she left me as a man came toward us.” I looked Rowan in the eye—he was not missing a word that left my mouth. “You have to understand that the whole time, she was joyous, jubilant with something—a homecoming. I thought it was because the man was coming home, only realizing afterward that I was the one returning—he’d been here all along.” I plunged on, “In the second dream, it started there—happy, lovely feelings once again, only this time the man who had no face in the first dream was standing next to me.”
“And tha’ man was me,” Rowan said softly.
“Yes. So now do you believe that Lady MacLaoch has lifted the curse?”
“Aye, I can believe ye,” he said, his voice sounding hoarse, “but, what is it, Cole, tha’ is left, because ye know as well as I tha’ she’s no’ done.”
“Yes. That’s where Peabody’s second theory comes in,” I said, feeling my heart ratcheting up, not knowing how I was going to tell this chieftain, this laird of MacLaoch lands that he and I were to wed. My words struggled to form and, in my silence, my rational mind began to fight a loud and determined fight. I picked up my whisky and slogged it back, heedless of its sweet fiery heat. Placing it a little harder on the table than I’d intended—like a college drinker at the end of finals week—I stood and put some distance between us. The coffee table was no longer enough—I felt that his presence was all too, well, present for me to easily tell him my next piece. At the moment I would have preferred to have the conversation with him on the phone. Long distance.
“Ye are making me nervous,” he said, lacing his fingers together and leaning back in the wide leather chair, looking anything but.
I rested my hands on my hips, trying for all I was worth for a similar look of nonchalance. “I’m not sure how to say this next piece without sounding completely ludicrous.”
Rowan simply grunted, his eyes never leaving mine.
“Peabody assumed the same as we did—that even though the evidence points to Lady MacLaoch’s curse coming to a close, there is something more that needs to happen. After I told him of my dreams, of seeing the ring and you in them, he came to the conclusion that the next piece involves you and me. Umm, closely.” Feeling a bit of background was needed, I added, “Did you know that Iain Eliphlet, and I suppose me, as well, is a direct descendant of the Minory who was killed?”
“Aye,” he said, “I asked Peabody to research tha’ the day I met ye. Aye, I know tha’ ye are the product of the legendary Minory’s own loins, and that’s what scared me—tha’ ye were here to ensnare me and then die as I watched, helpless. I tell ye, tha’ would be a fitting end for me for Lady MacLaoch—to crush the last bit of light from my soul,” he said with vehemence.
I felt myself wince at his words.
“It might seem impossible but, Cole, when ye watch someone killed in front of ye once, the thought of it happening again is no’ so outlandish as it may seem,” he said in simple truthfulness.
“I’m starting to see that,” I said, then realized distractedly that he had had Peabody, rather than the official MacLaoch historian, research my history. “But why did you have Peabody research it? Wouldn’t Clive have already known the answer?”
“Clive,” Rowan said, “is a very opinionated auld bugger and won’t challenge research tha’ has been done more than a century ago. When ye told me your story, I placed the pieces together tha’ Iain Eliphlet dinnae die but rather left.” He brought the subject back around to what I had been expertly avoiding: “From what ye described of your dreams, I can guess Dr. Peabody’s second theory.”
“Really?” I asked. “Because it took me by surprise.”
“Lady MacLaoch wants fulfillment of the one act that she was denied all those years ago,” he said.
“You are a quick study,” I said, feeling my heart rate gently increase once again. “Yes, Peabody thinks that with her showing me the ring and then you in the dreams—well, the rest, I suppose, should have been obvious . . . ” I let my words drift out into the air between us.
Rowan smiled, eyes glinting. “Not if ye weren’t looking for it.”
“And you were?” I asked, hearing my voice crack for the first time, my carefully controlled demeanor slipping.
“Aye. I was looking for it. Looking for another way, tha’ I could be wrong and now ye—and Peabody—have given it to me,” he said, sitting forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Cole, do ye know what handfasting is?”
I felt recognition ring the air as he asked me this—while the words themselves were foreign to my ear, they were not to my body, nor to my soul.
It was as if the forces of nature understood his words as well. Thunder rolled in the distance, long and deep, the telltale sound of a rainstorm building outside the lodge walls.
“No, I don’t know what that means,” I said. “Should I?”
“Handfasting is ancient, Cole—it’s no doubt what Lady MacLaoch and her Minory would have done if they’d lived,” he said, and stood.
My heart tripped over itself as he slowly walked around the coffee table, coming for me, as he spoke. “It’ll bind ye to me, and me to ye. We must be sure tha’ is what Lady MacLaoch wants. Are ye sure this is it what she wants?” he asked; then, as he got closer, “Is it what ye want?”
Would I want to bind myself to him fore
ver?
“How do I answer that?” I asked, feeling as though a freight train would be easier to face down than the laird of the MacLaochs and the heavy discussion between us.
Rowan came to stand in front of me. “If I know ye, Cole, as I feel I do, ye need to answer it with this”—he gently laid his fingertips just above my left breast, covering my heart—“then with this.” His fingers trailed up to and along the side of my neck, caressed my ear before cupping the side of my head. His thumb brushed my temple. “Because this one is crying out for ye to be rational, yet love is anything but.”
My heart caught in my throat as his eyes looked directly into me and saw everything. “They are in direct opposition in their opinions,” I admitted.
Lightning flashed outside as the pitter-patter of fat water droplets pelted the side of the lodge.
“But what does your heart say?”
“That I would be a fool to walk away from you,” I said. My insides went into pleasant knots and my breath became erratic. “God, what are you doing to me?”
“Nothing that ye aren’t doing to me,” he said, sliding his fingers into my hair and loosening my ponytail, pulling the cashmere scarf free and dragging it over my shoulder. “MacLaoch plaid,” he said as he fingered the material. Its blood red was run through with rich blue and yellow stripes, the distinctive tartan of Clan MacLaoch.
Plaid between his fingers, his knuckles grazed the skin of my arm as he grasped my wrist and wrapped one end of the scarf around it. Thunder cracked vehemently, drowning out the crackle of the fire and rattling the windows. He wrapped the other end of the scarf around his own wrist; seemingly of its own accord, the fabric tightened us firmly together. I watched all this as a woman might watch a distant lightning storm, detached but in awe of the strangely beautiful power she was witnessing.
Thunder shook the shutters even harder, and the rain pouring down the chimneys made the fires snap and hiss.
Words, silky and smooth, warm and lilting like whisky spilled from his lips. The Gaelic he spoke wound about us, pulling me closer to him and him to me, strings silky and silver bound us together. He broke from the lilting words to translate in English: “I take ye, my fair woman, and I bind ye to me, tha’ we now become no’ a man nor a woman but one mind and one heart. Forever your blood will be my blood, my thoughts will be yours, and your breath the only air I will breathe until I die. From this moment on, ye are mine and I am yours. This vow I will seal with my body and the seed of my loins,” he said as his free thumb brushed over my lips. “Tell me, Cole, forever your blood will be my blood . . . ”
My mind jarred awake as I opened my mouth to speak, stalling the words in the back of my throat—demanding me to be rational, just as Rowan had said it would. But in my heart I knew that, should I look back on this moment as an old woman sitting on my front porch, I would not be happy telling the children gathered around that I had walked away from this man. My mind was telling me to do just that, but I knew in my heart that I could not, and it was in that moment that I realized this was love. I was caught up and entwined forever with the man to whom I was bound at the wrist, even before I spoke the words.
“Forever, Rowan James Douglas MacLaoch, will my blood be your blood.”
His blue eyes flinted with emotion. I felt his strong fingers tighten around my forearm; his other hand cupped the side of my face as my free hand gripped the sweater at his waist.
His voice was thick as he continued, “My thoughts will be yours . . . ”
“And my thoughts will be yours,” I responded.
“Your breath the only air I will breathe until I die . . . ”
“And your breath the only air I will breathe until I die.”
“Until death, ye are mine and I am yours.”
“Until death,” I said, feeling the weight of my words as if they were a stone falling into the palm of my hand. “You are mine and I am yours.”
Lightning and thunder smashed light and sound together as Rowan took a shuddering breath and leaned down to my lips, sealing our words together, tasting me. The last of his translation rang in my head: And I am yours—this vow I will seal with my body and the seed of my loins. Heat blasted through me as I relinquished control to the chieftain, as I promised I was his, my blood, my thoughts, my breath, his. And he, mine.
Rowan broke the kiss and stood back from me. In one movement, he pulled his sweater and shirt off over his head. The scarf fell loose and rippled to the floor just as Rowan tossed his clothing onto the couch.
His chest glistened with sweat and heat—it rose and fell with his heavy breaths, emotions no doubt gripping his insides as they were mine. The MacLaoch chieftain stood before me looking much like a man who chased, fought, and regularly thwarted the demons that hounded him. He was as sculpted as a warrior, broad shouldered and muscular, the flat plains of his chest and taut belly marked only by that of the circular scar of his bullet wound, the injured tissue shiny just above the waist of his black pants, just next to the long crevice his pelvic muscle made.
Stepping in against me once again, Rowan brushed his fingers down the sensitive skin on the back of my arm as he held me firmly against him. His fingers found mine, pulled them up, and placed them against his scar, pressing the tips of them into the hardened skin there.
“I want ye to feel it, to know that I’ll always have it—tha’ with it, I bring my demons, but with ye by my side, I feel tha’ maybe”—he pressed a kiss against my neck before breathing me in—“tha’maybe with ye at my side I’ll have more light than dark in my life.”
Letting my cheek brush against the rough stubble on his, I sought out his lips. “I’ll take all of you, Rowan, light and dark.”
I heard him groan against my lips, a sound that rumbled deep in his chest, mimicking the storm outside. “Ye are the angel to my deviled side, love. God, I pray I can be gentle with ye.”
My body yielded to him, his lips parted mine, and his tongue delved into my mouth, tasting me, and I tasted him in return. His tongue was still smoky and sweet from the whisky, and just as intoxicating.
His Gaelic words spilled against my lips. “This vow I will seal with my body and the seed of my loins,” he repeated in English as his hand found the edge of my shirt and pulled it up over my head. One hand entangled in my hair and the other hovered at the curve of my lower back; he pressed me into him as if we could simply meld together then and there. Our mouths tasted and felt and repeated the vows we’d just made.
Rowan’s fingers traced my spine to my bra—with a single hand, and extreme talent, he unclasped it. Rowan’s mouth separated from mine and found the nape of my neck, and my hands splayed across his shoulder blades as my knees liquefied under his ministrations. His kiss seared the tender skin at the base of my neck, bit into my shoulder. Gently he slid one bra strap off my shoulder, the satin smooth in its descent, and oh so slow, sending anticipation rippling through me—and in turn, through Rowan.
He gathered me up into his arms and strode with me to the plush of the fireside’s sheepskin rugs, where he laid me down and made quick work of my jeans and socks, and even quicker of his own.
Seeing his whole body for the first time, in that moment, my heart stopped. Rowan was like no other man I’d been with before—I realized later that was because Rowan was just that, a man. The others I’d been with had been still boys. His muscles lithe, held powerfully in check as he lowered himself slowly down onto me—and with an education of the woman’s body I dared not think about—Rowan kissed my stomach.
Then the tender lips between my legs.
I gasped, my fingers threading into Rowan’s hair and gripping as my legs spread wantonly.
“Oh god,” I gasped as his tongue found what was hidden like a pearl. Euphoria ripped and cascaded, spread out and squeezed tight. I tried to catch my breath, but the air became elusive as pleasure rocked me. I felt my feet slip and slide—I found no traction as I squirmed within my own skin, an explosion threatening. “Rowan,” I
moaned, “please . . . ”
I felt his mouth leave me, for just a moment, and then it was biting gently across my belly to my breasts. “Please what?” he asked as his mouth covered the taut darkness of my nipple.
“Oh!” I exclaimed. Erotic electricity flooded my breast and then plunged down my middle, filling the intimate need between my thighs.
Rowan’s tongue played across my areola, teasing it even tighter, and my hands gripped his hair with equal measure.
“Ouch, love. Use your words,” he said as his deep chuckle melded with another crack of thunder.
I looked into his eyes filled with wicked humor, glittering dark blue through the fringe of his black lashes. His lean, angular jaw for once was not set in some stage of tension; his lips were moist from his work.
I felt my own lips quirk at his power over me, his feeling of being completely in control—though pressed against my leg was hard evidence that his control was wavering. Spreading wider, I slid his hardened self deep within my slick confines.
Thunder slapped the lodge with such force objects rattled around us, and the fire spurted alive with vengeance, the individual flames wild with movement. The clap and rattle nearly drowned out the gasp and growl that tore out of Rowan’s chest as he sunk into me. Pleasure rocked us both, stealing our breaths as we clung, unmoving, to each other, riding the aftershock of our long-awaited union. Arching him deeper within me, I felt him lay heavy upon me before he lifted himself again, to a single elbow, his other hand gripping my hip and stilling my thrust.
“My vow sealed with my body and seed of my loins,” he said against my lips.
I took a shuddering breath. “And mine, oh god, and mine.”
My head fell back as my arms gathered myself against the hardened steel of Rowan’s body above me.
Rowan’s intoxicating power rocketed through me, his rough breathing matching my own, as needy and rhythmic as our lovemaking. Pleasure slammed through me in unison with his thrusts, building pressure, making me moan and grip Rowan’s back, pulling him deeper, needing to feel him even closer, for his blood to become one with mine, our thoughts and breaths to become a single entity.