“Where’s Cam?” She wished for the comforting grip of her sword hilt. Hell, even clothes would make her feel less vulnerable. Instead, she wiped her hands down her sides. Met his gaze, refusing to look away, though the pain of it was enough to bring tears to her eyes.
He stepped back into the darkness of the sitting room. Reappeared, supporting a body that he tossed toward her. Rolling him over with one booted foot. “Here’s your colonel.”
Cam lay trussed and insensible, the slight rise and fall of his bare chest enough to give her hope.
“Despite your troublesome nature, I’m offering you the ultimate reward. Immortality. Invincibility. Or rather, I’m offering it to the colonel.”
Morgan conjured the first spell that came to mind, releasing it at the black Amhas-draoi.
Doran doubled over, his shoulders hunching, a grunt of pain coming from his thin lips.
But not for long.
In a moment, he’d straightened, his death stare potent enough to freeze her to the floor, wipe her mind clear.
Throwing his heavy cloak over one shoulder, he stepped up to Cam’s body. Drew forth his sword.
Neuvarvaan.
There was no mistaking the Fey intensity of the blade. It glowed with a gray-green cemetery light. And Morgan was suddenly reminded of Ensign Traverse’s words. A feeling like the first shovelful of earth hitting your coffin. Although in her case, the soil heaped higher and higher, burying her beneath the avalanche of raw, naked Morkoth power.
She choked, her lungs burning as she swallowed over and over. Her whole body shook until she knew she was going to be sick.
Doran laughed. And Morkoth magics burned their way through her. Bones grated, muscles went lax, and she felt herself falling. She bit hard on her lip to hold the screams back. She’d not give Doran the satisfaction.
Even as she collapsed, she heard the cut of air as Neuvarvaan plunged, and the wet suck of steel meeting flesh.
Cam’s body jumped, the blade quivering in his chest. His head lolled to the side, his eyes wide with shock, a moan escaping from lips frothy pink with blood. And as she watched, the change overtook him.
Not the strength and skill of the Undying, but a shriveling of limbs and features, years passing within the space of seconds. A ravaged face. Curled and crooked hands. A body wasted by age and magic. Only the eyes remained the same. Their icy blue luster searching hers for help. Begging for the release of death. “M’eudail,” he whispered.
And this time, she did scream.
Over and over until a hand covered her mouth, a voice whispered in her ear, a heavy weight as someone knelt beside her on her bed. “Morgan, mo chride, my sweet. Shhh, it’s a dream. It’s all right.”
And just like that, six months evaporated, leaving her crazy in love and heart-achingly destroyed. Torn in two.
“The dream was so real. Too real.” Morgan shivered, curling closer into the crook of Cam’s arm, the warmth of her naked body stirring him back to life. He should be exhausted. Drowsy with the afterglow of lovemaking. Instead, every part of his anatomy stood to attention. It was almost embarrassing.
To fight the urge and because he hated to break the spell of cold room, warm bed, and hot body, he brushed a chaste kiss upon the top of her head. “The worst dreams always are.”
She lapsed into silence, her breathing slow and even. Probably asleep again. And no wonder.
She’d clung to him after first waking, the thrum of her heart as fast as a bird’s, her breathing ragged with suppressed tears. But terror had quickly melted into something else. Something greedy and possessive that gave him barely space to breathe. Fast. Angry. As if she needed to prove to herself that this time he was real. Not another night terror.
Even when they lay spent and dazed, Morgan seemed twisted taut as a clock wire. The weight of her dreams still holding on. She inhaled a quick, shuddery breath. Curled into his body as if needing the comfort of his heat.
“Cam?”
Pulled from a near doze, he ran a hand down her arm. “Hmm?” Felt her tremble.
Another long silence, then, “I want to show you…me. All of me. Not just…well…all of me.”
He started to say something smart along the lines of what parts of her hadn’t he seen when some quality of her quiet resolve broke through his randy thoughts.
He opened his eyes. Leaned up onto one elbow.
She watched him, alert as a wild animal, frightened and ready to run if he made any startling move.
“What is it?” he asked.
She closed her eyes. Turned back the blankets, uncovering herself so that she lay exposed, the flat plane of her stomach, the high, round peaks of her breasts, the slope of her broad shoulders, and the long bones of her throat where her pulse beat as swiftly as it had when he’d first found her tonight.
“Look at me,” she whispered, closing her eyes.
How could he not?
He frowned, clamped down hard on the sinful thoughts flitting through his dirty brain. “What are you trying to—”
“Look. At. Me. All of me,” she repeated.
And as she spoke, it happened. A ripple of air like heat from the desert floor, and a prickly sensation that seemed to jump between them skin to skin. His eyes burned, but he wouldn’t blink in case he missed something.
A shiver of change passed over her body. Where before had been a creamy expanse of golden skin, unmarred and unbroken, now stood out a swirl of color, blue black, a twining of symbols curling over her left shoulder. Down her arm to her elbow.
His gran-da’s voice spoke to him from some long-ago memory. Mage marks. Symbols of magic and power.
“How did…”
You get them? You hide them from me?
Even though he left both questions unspoken, she seemed to sense what he asked. A sly smile crept over her features. “I received the first markings after my third year with Scathach. The fith-fath disguises them, a bit of household magic easily conjured and easily sustained. I barely even need to think about concealing them anymore.”
He should be disgusted. Repulsed at the outrageous scarring. No woman with any hint of breeding would allow such self-mutilation. And yet wasn’t this just more evidence—as if he needed it—that Morgan wasn’t entirely human? Or at least not like any human he’d ever known. She was Other. A species with its own rules, its own traditions—and now that he was forced to confront it—a freedom he envied.
Without thinking, he took a finger. Traced the swooping tattoos from their origin at the base of her neck. Followed their path across her shoulder. Her arm.
Morgan remained absolutely still, though her flesh pebbled under his light touch, her nipples pearling into hard buds, her stomach tightening. Her eyes locked on his, a wary expectancy darkening her wolf-bright irises.
She’d never seemed more foreign to him. A creature of legend and ancient mythology. How had he ever thought he could capture the heart of a being like this? A whirlwind of light and fire who carried the blood of another world within her veins? He’d been fooling himself. Immersing himself in a fantasy where he could give her what she wanted. Where he could be what she needed.
But that was insanity. Might as well try to catch a lightning bolt in his hands or cage a mountain lion in hopes of taming it to the leash.
Her expression went grave. “So say it and be done.”
Another test. But this one made the foul mouth and take-no-prisoners attitude she’d used earlier to check his reaction seem like child’s play. Like threading a field of caltrops, what he did or said here would affect all that came after.
He cupped one breast, his thumb rubbing the sensitive aureole, her hiss of pleasure making his own temperature rise. “Actions speak louder than words.”
He lowered his head, his tongue following the same path his finger had moments earlier. Her flesh tasted salty, smelled with a heady mix of her normal woodbine and meadowsweet overlaid with the musky scent of sex.
His hands skimmed her body
. Her breasts. He took it slow, knowing his patient thoroughness frustrated her need to have him inside her now. She arched against him, willing him to end the long, teasing strokes, the graze of his teeth and lips. But he held back, even though he felt his own restraint growing thin. This might be as close as he ever came to bottling the wild ferocity of a Highland storm; he’d string out the pleasure as long as he could.
“Cam,” she urged, her voice breathy and rushed with passion. “Please, Cam. Finish it.”
“I need to be sure you know exactly what I think. No mistakes.”
He laughed as she lifted her head, shot him a withering glare. “I’ll tell you what I think,” she began. Cut off by a slow, drugged kiss that caused both of them to forget everything but the pleasure they shared for the space of minutes.
Capturing her hands in his, he positioned them around the dowels of the headboard. Showed her how he wanted her to hold on to them before drawing himself up onto his knees between her legs.
With a steamy look that set his blood roaring straight to his center, Morgan gripped the headboard. Lay back letting him look his fill. And where before there had been a hesitancy, now she seemed to revel in the effect. Her head thrown back, her lips parted slightly in a take-me invitation that had his whole body alight and scraping the edge of explosion.
The tattoo’s pattern, the gleam of moist skin, the red-gold hair loose about her head like a crown. Hers was the sleek, muscled body of an Amazon, the voluptuous temptation of some prehistoric earth-goddess.
He dipped his head to hers, tasting, then devouring. She opened to him, showing with her tongue and teeth that she was more than ready for anything he wanted to do to her. His fingers found her woman’s place, a gentle pressure enough to bring a moan to her lips. He breathed it in along with the whimpers of near ecstasy, loved the way she asked for more, her whole body alive beneath his hands and then his mouth. She cried out, her body quivering beneath him as he lapped at her slick heat.
She released the headboard, squirming free of his assault. Lifting his head, he took her mouth again. Let her taste her own essence on his tongue.
She answered with temptation of her own as she ran her fingers over his member, just that slight touch enough to make his pulse leap into his throat.
He groaned, his body poised and throbbing at the brink of abyss. “Have I said enough? Or do you need more persuading?” His voice came out sounding almost normal, despite the live-wire quiver beginning in his belly. Sizzling like liquid fire through his veins.
“Always better to be sure,” she answered, the smoky sultriness of her voice as she guided him inside her, pushing him to the point where rational thought ended and pure animal lust took over.
He thrust deep, her hips rising off the bed to take him. She writhed against the steady increase of rhythm, her eyes black with urgency.
Climax took only moments, both of them already caught in a slippery tangle of arousals before their bodies ever joined.
A shuddering riptide of feelings broke over him as she clung, her head thrown back, eyes closed, the sculpted beauty of her face awash with moonlight. He crushed her to him, unwilling to release her, unwilling to uncork the bottle and free the storm. Because once he did, she’d be gone. And instead of a Highland storm he’d hold a frozen burn. Hard. Protected. The rush of heat and life frozen away beneath a shell of ice.
At that point, he might lay in bed with her, their bodies still damp from a joining that rocked him to his core with its wanton passion. But the real Morgan would be walled away from him. He’d yet to find the key.
And if Lord Delvish’s prophecy was right, his time might be fast running out.
Chapter 22
Cam folded the completed note to Rastus. Dripped the blob of wax across the edge, pressing his seal into it. Amos would take it to Arthur’s. Pass it along the chain to Rastus. And the trap would be set. The next move would be Doran’s.
But it wasn’t Amos who answered his summons.
“Look who I found skulking around outside.”
Brodie stood in the doorway, dwarfing the figure he held by the upper arm, crushing the wine-red velvet pelisse she wore.
She threw a dagger glance up at her captor. “I was not skulking. And I have as much right to be here as you. More so, he’s my brother.”
Brodie looked completely unfazed. In fact, he seemed almost amused. “The wee mousey can speak.”
Color infused her face, her gaze growing hard as diamonds. “How dare you?”
Cam cut her off before she worked herself into a rage. “Euna, what are you doing here? Aunt Sylvie’s probably worried sick.”
She straightened. Gave a conspiratorial grin. “That’s where you’re wrong. It was Aunt Sylvie who sent me.”
That knocked him back on his pins. Aunt Sylvie must be desperate if she allowed Euna with naught but a footman for a chaperone. She protected her niece as if she were made of spun glass, no matter that Euna was tough as nails and clever as a fox. Fortune hunters, rakes, dilettantes—they were all held at bay by Uncle Josh’s haughty condescension and unpredictable temper as well as Aunt Sylvie’s enveloping protectiveness.
No wonder Euna looked positively triumphant at being out from under their thumb, even for a moment.
She shook off Brodie’s restraining hand. Rushed forward. “Cam, Aunt Sylvie’s worried about you. She says this woman you’ve brought home with you is trouble. She doesn’t understand why you’d marry in such a helter-skelter way. She worries—”
“Sit,” Cam commanded, his voice like a gunshot. Euna dropping into a chair like a sack of potatoes. “Brodie? What’s your excuse?”
He blinked. “For being here? A desire to see your bride again. She may be trouble, but wrapped up in that body, who cares?”
Euna huffed her disgust. Crossed her arms, chin up.
“Morgan’s with Amos,” Cam explained. “As I would be if certain people”—he glowered at Euna—“didn’t make it their business to poke their noses into my business.”
She flushed, but held firm. “You can roar at me all you like, but I’m not frightened by you.”
“No?” He stepped toward her. “More fool you, then.”
She persisted in the face of his growing wrath. “I know Charlotte—”
“Is dead.” He cut her off, his tone accepting no argument. “And Morgan’s my wife now, so if Uncle Josh and Aunt Sylvie want to strip me out of the family tree, fine.”
A spark of anger lit Euna’s eyes. She rose, her hands clutched in her skirts, but her head high. “Don’t be dramatic. You know they wouldn’t do that. They want you to come to the Abercrombies’. They’re having a party the day after tomorrow. Here.” She handed him a gold-edged invitation.
“You must be joking. I wouldn’t let Morgan within ten leagues of so-called society. They’d fall on her like a pack of rabid dogs.”
“You make them sound like monsters.”
“I have heard rumors Lady Wesleyan eats her young,” Brodie quipped, eliciting freezing stares from twin sets of icy blue eyes. He held up his hands in mock surrender. “It’s just rumor, mind ye.” He cleared his throat. “I think I hear Susan calling. If you’ll…ah…excuse me?”
“Coward,” Cam muttered at his retreating back.
Euna sighed. “Really, Cam. All they want is a chance to find out what’s going on.”
“Why the Abercrombies’? Why not simply come here and do it?”
She didn’t say anything.
He nodded. “That’s what I thought. They don’t want to know the truth. They want to quash the rumors. The ton smells another Sinclair scandal, and Uncle Josh is hoping to head it off before it grows legs.”
“They love you, Cam. They’ve just forgotten how to show it. Uncle Josh’s business interests. His standing among his political friends. Aunt Sylvie’s work with her committees. They’re so caught up in appearances. In stepping a foot wrong. They’re afraid.”
Cam crossed to the sideboard. Plucked the
decanter from its place. Poured a whiskey, bringing it halfway to his lips before he paused, his gaze fixed on the amber liquid. Pure gold. And the very shade of Morgan’s eyes.
He slammed the glass to the table, where it shattered, spraying glass and whiskey over his breeks. “Tell them to join the queue.”
So he didn’t want her within ten leagues of his precious society?
Well, to hell with him.
Morgan stomped her way around her bedchamber where she’d fled upon hearing those gut-wrenching words thrown out like a live shell.
Ashamed of her. That’s what he was. Ashamed that Morgan Bligh would make a fool of herself and him in the company of his erudite, sophisticated London acquaintances.
The latch clicked, sending her spinning on her heel.
Cam stood, his eyes gliding over her with a decided lusty look. “I’ve managed to get rid of everyone. For the moment. And I’ve sent Amos with the instructions for Rastus.”
All he had to do was stand there, and a pathetic thrill zinged up her spine. Wicked ideas springing into her filthy mind. She quelled the swooping drop of her stomach. Reminded herself of Cam’s hypocrisy.
The quiet words—made more powerful by the very reluctance to speak them. The weaknesses he’d revealed. And the weaknesses he’d revealed in her. So convincing. Wrung from the heart.
And all lies.
He wanted her in his bed. That had been made perfectly, deliciously clear to her the last few nights. What he didn’t want—and that also had been made clear to her—was Morgan in his life.
She conveniently forgot the part where she’d wanted that as well.
He’d caused her to doubt herself. Wonder if she’d made the right decision. And then pulled the rug out from under her, leaving her for the second time in a year feeling like a complete fool.
She plastered a smile on her face. Hoped she didn’t look too manic. “A real London soiree? Sounds exciting.”
He cocked a frown in her direction. “You heard that, did you? As the Spanish Inquisition is exciting. I’m not going to give the bloodsuckers what they want. The only reason we’ve been asked is so they can sharpen their claws on us. Cut us to ribbons with their rapier smiles and false goodwill.”
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