His only answer was a growl and the scrape of his teeth along her neck. He tested the taste of the flesh stretched over her collar bone.
“Malcolm!” Her light smack sounded very loud on his wet skin. He paused his nuzzling. His usually gray eyes were dilated to complete blackness and eerie shadows were moving about in them.
“Taffy, lass, there’s no call tae be striking me,” he complained. “I cannae feel it anyway. Greedy woman, ye’ll be seen tae this time, I promise.”
“Malcolm, duine—pay attention. We have to move from these stones. Please—” She stared directly into his turbulent gaze. Her hands made a gentle frame at his cheeks. “You don’t want to hurt me, do you?”
“Nay!” he denied immediately, his eyes finally focusing on her own.
“And you want to be seduced by me, don’t you?”
As a reply, Malcolm turned swiftly from the water, still holding her firmly around her waist, her tender feet well up off of the stony ground.
“Lie down,” she commanded in a shaky voice. “There. On the grass.”
He complied by kneeling in the patch of velvety green, but did not recline, preferring instead to drag her back against his lap and resume their kiss.
“No, lay back, love,” Taffy instructed, resisting his arms’ gentle but relentless pull. “It is my turn now.”
“Yer turn?” He stared at her.
“Yes. I want to make this decision. To direct this.”
“The decision ‘tis made. The direction is set. Ye needn’t worry, lass. I know where we are going.”
“Malcolm, please.” Taffy willed him to understand. “I have to know that I can do this.”
Bemused and frustrated by the delay, he nevertheless did as she commanded, lying readily as she laid an urgent palm on his chest—and then nearly sat up again as he felt her hands on his heated flesh and her weeping hair raining water down upon his abdomen as she stroked and tickled and kneaded. He arched unwilling into her touch.
“I have been like a leaf, too, blown about by everyone’s whims,” she said softly. “And I did not mind because I had no path of my own. But now I know what I want. Oh, sure. I was willful. But I’ve never made the choices that truly matter, or so it seems now.”
“Taffy, lass?” he croaked, his resolve to listen to her words tested by the feel of her hands upon him. His most primitive instincts were roaring for permission to take what they needed and search for the meaning behind her actions later.
“I want you, Malcolm. More than anything in the world.” She kissed his stomach. “And I want to stop being moved about by others’ wills and conveniences. So I must be strong enough to choose my own course.”
“And this will give ye strength?”
“Yes. This gives me strength.”
“I do not understand ye, lass, but do as ye will.” He gritted his teeth and prepared to be patient. “Talk all ye like. I’ll listen.”
She smiled, her expression a mixture of elation and impishness.
“Don’t worry, I’m done with speaking,” she assured him. “It is time to act.”
“Aye? Then please do!”
She laughed softly at the mix of annoyance and desperation in his voice. Teasing him was irresistible.
“I heard about this interesting method from a French woman who moved to New York. She said that one did not need a saddle and bridle to enjoy riding a man. I didn’t understand what she meant then.”
“A French woman?” But he didn’t protest anymore as she lay down on top of him and returned to his mouth where she began to nibble, responding instinctively to the roll of her hips that settled him into their cradle.
“Of course, she said that she usually used a crop as well.”
“A crop,” he repeated. Then the import of her words arrived in his foggy brain. “Ride a man! Ye brazen deil! Yer teasing me now, ye heartless wretch.”
“Only a little,” she said, laughing.
In an instant, she was rolled beneath him. The tides surging through his body could wait no more for jokes or exploration. Ride him, was it? And such brash kisses!
“Yer a wanton woman today, lass. And taking chances with yer teasing. I could pin ye here and devour ye an it was my wish.”
“Yes,” she answered, flexing against his hard palm. Her skin felt prickly and feverish. She snagged two handfuls of his hair and tugged. Her eyes remained wide open. “Yes. I am. And I want to do this. Now.”
“Then ‘tis my pleasure to serve ye, lass,”
Malcolm fitted himself against her. He surged once and Taffy’s long legs wrapped around him. Her hands wound into his hair, pulling his mouth down to hers with the strength of some new and urgent need.
Malcolm ceased attempting to understand her puzzling aggression and decided to simply enjoy the experience of making love with this now truly passionate female. In his experience, women were usually passive—obedient. Especially the Sassenach. But something had changed in Taffy during this last night.
Then he couldn’t think anything at all. Taffy had tightened against him and cried out in enjoyment. He set his lips to hers and drank her in. It was shocking, this demure beauty taking such open pleasure in coupling! She had been affectionate before, willing certainly—
Then the ecstatic trembling that had overtaken Taffy came to him. A last surge into her and Malcolm stopped being shocked and instead flew over the edge of the precipice where his body had been continually hovering since Taffy came into his life. He buried his face in her golden hair and gave a muffled roar as the healing heat poured through his battered heart and mind, and sent his lustful inner beast in a contented state back to its lair.
Eventually, time restarted itself in the corrie. The grass regained texture. The waterfall resumed playing its watery chorus at normal volume. A gentle sun caressed his skin. But still, Malcolm did not move.
“Malcolm.” Taffy’s voice was worried. She smoothed down his damp hair. He seemed far too quiet, and she was concerned that he had perhaps passed out. Heaven knew that she had left her own mind for a while there and had aspic where once her bones had been.
“Aye, love?” he finally asked in the laziest of voices, turning his head back and forth as he rubbed his face in her tresses and tangled the wet locks horribly.
“Are you well?” The question sounded idiotic but she wasn’t sure quite what else to say. She had never attacked a man before and wasn’t at all certain how he was taking it…or she was taking it. He had probably been shocked at her behavior. She was, herself, well-nigh reeling with astonishment.
One didn’t need a saddle and bridle to enjoy riding a man? What monster of wickedness had said that?
“I am quite well. And ye, wanton creature?” he asked, echoing her thoughts. Malcolm raised up on his forearms and stared down at her blushing face. Plainly, he was amused rather than offended. “Have ye proven yer mettle?”
“Yes, thank you. I mean, I am fine,” she replied, falling back on good manners.
In point of fact, she wasn’t at all certain that she was fine. How could she be fine when she had just been the victim of overwhelming, wanton, abandoned compulsion? And the pleasure which had come of it…It seemed almost impossible to reconcile what she had been taught of the normal feminine impulse and what had happened to her.
On the other hand, she felt strong and contented. And though that was not ladylike, it was wonderful.
“Taffy.” Malcolm looked suddenly very serious as he played with a lock of her hair.
“Yes?” she asked reluctantly, not wanting to spoil her tentative sense of balance, and not prepared to think any more until she had slept.
“I wish us tae marry. I know a priest, an Irishman. He’ll do this for us. I’d take ye tae an Anglican—an I knew one—and be married there, but there is nobody I can trust here. Not wi’ yer life.”
Taffy closed her eyes, trying to shut out returning reality. She wasn’t ready to again confront the danger of their situation.
“Is it that ye are hide-bound, lass? Not wishful of marrying a man o’ some other faith.”
“No. Of course not.”
As Malcolm remained silent, waiting for some further answer, she finally cracked open one lid and studied her lover’s expression.
His dark hair was thick and smooth and fell carelessly around the tanned face, partially hiding his prominent ears. His slightly arrogant—but entirely exciting—mouth was, for the moment, unsmiling.
But most compelling of all these attributes of countenance were his fey eyes, fringed with the thickest lashes any human had ever possessed. It was a face that was vivid with life, sober for the most part, and very intelligent.
Taffy’s skin still prickled and there was a hunger inside, but something else as well. A babe, she was sure of it. For its sake, if not for her own, she should do as he asked. It was only some notion of the rituals of courtship from her previous life that made her hesitate.
“This would please you?” she finally asked.
“Aye. It would.”
“Very well, then. If it’s safe,” she added, laying a palm against Malcolm’s smooth cheek. “I don’t want you to take any risks.”
“Fear not, lass. I’ll take no chances with ye or the bairn,” he vowed.
Taffy’s eyes widened.
“You—you’re certain that there is a babe?”
“Aye.” Malcolm laid a hand over her belly. “ ’Tis a wee girl with yer golden hair and my eyes.”
Taffy exhaled slowly, assimilating his words and conviction.
“And does she have your ears?”
“Nay. They’re great pointy things. She takes them from her mother.”
Taffy’s lips trembled. So, it was true then.
And she was supposed to walk away from this man? To return home to—what? Her father? Her former life of empty socializing? And how empty it would be! For she would have no one except her babe to share it with. And they would be ostracized for her being husbandless.
And yet, she couldn’t stay here, could she? Running away from Campbells and Covenanters, and all the other human carnivores who roamed this damaged land. Their only times of peace would be these moments they had snatched in these strange, magical oases provided by the still-folk.
Taffy turned her head, looking at the beautiful water, which spilled from the gray rock, feeling the unnaturally delicate grass woven into a blanket beneath them. Above them, the sun filled a clear, azure sky. At the mouth of the cavern, Smokey lay sleeping, filling the autumn air with gentle snores.
“Could we not stay here a while?” she asked, speaking her thoughts aloud.
Malcolm smiled sadly.
“Aye, we could. But the day would come—and soon—when we could never leave at all.”
She turned back to look at him.
“What does that mean?” she asked, touching the hard lines that had appeared suddenly at the side of his mouth. A touch of cold fear went through her sternum and pricked her heart. “Why couldn’t we leave?”
“Ye recall yer fairy tales, lass? Of what happens tae men who go tae visit among the still-folk? The fiddlers who come and play for a night. The giddy maids who stay for the length o’ one reel?”
“They are gone for a hundred years, the stories say,” she whispered around the growing tightness in her throat. Tears of exhaustion and frustration began to pool in her eyes. “They turn to dust and die when they go home.”
“Aye.”
“And it’s true?” Taffy could feel the scalding salt trails as the tracked down her temples and joined the water in her hair.
Malcolm brushed one of the burning tears with the pad of his thumb.
“Ye had two-hundred and forty-four years tae use on the day ye arrived.”
“And now?” The question was barely audible.
“I cannae say. Less than ye did. Soon, the still-folk will have to send ye home or ye’ll never leave at all.”
She stared at him for a moment and then her heart burst out in speech: “And what of you? Malcolm, what will happen to you? Can you still go to America and rejoin your family? Or is it too late for you to return?”
He hesitated, then spoke the truth. “I ken not.”
“What do you think will happen?” she pleaded. “Tell me! Will you have to stay someplace like this forever? You can still leave, can’t you? Or will you be old?”
There was a long silence while Malcolm stared down at her with his tragic, fey eyes.
Taffy rushed into speech, trying to negate the awful silence.
“I could stay with you! We could be happy. We could build a house—”
“That is no’ possible, lass. Ye and the bairn are needed elsetimes,” he said kindly. “Though I wish with all my heart it wasnae so. I would give anything tae stay wi’ ye. Here or anywhere.”
“I won’t go and leave you with these horrid faeries! They can’t force me to go!” Her voice was a whisper, but fierce.
“Dinnae worry, lass. I wouldnae stay wi’ the still-folk. I ken now that such would be no life at all.”
Understanding what he meant, Taffy rolled on her side and wept in grief and frustration.
“Lass.” Malcolm rolled her into his arms. Her tears were scalding on his bare chest. Her sobs were an agony to endure until he heard what she was actually saying.
As her creative cursing became clearer, Malcolm gave a low whistle.
“And where would ye have learned such words, Taffy, lass?”
Taffy rolled over, her face and voice vehement. Malcolm was enthralled. He’d seen such expressions of grim determination staring at him from behind a row of enemy pikes on the field of battle, but never from a naked woman lying in his arms. The changes that had come over this lass in her time with him had transformed her into a queen.
“I have had enough of being manipulated! I won’t stand for any more! I am going home!”
“Aye, lass. Soon.”
Taffy drew back her hand and smacked his bicep.
“You are coming with me. And I don’t want to hear another word from you about dying or what happened to other people in fairy tales! We aren’t other people. We are MacLeods. It’s not the same for us. The faeries are powerful, able to work magic on us—well, they can just bloody well find a way to send you home with me.”
Taffy sat up and glared at the bushes in the glen. She raised her voice.
“Are you listening to me? I won’t go back without him! I won’t have this baby alone, either,” she threatened, suddenly realizing that she actually did have the power to reach down inside and snuff out the new life growing there.
Malcolm’s eyes dilated at her words and he flinched in protest.
He was not the only one affected by the intimidation. Sudden dark clouds boiled up in the sky overhead, covering the sun in a gray pall.
Taffy wanted to assure Malcolm that she would never carry through with her threat, but didn’t dare do more than take his hand and squeeze it reassuringly.
“I don’t care if you loosen the storm of the apocalypse on me! I won’t move one step from this corrie until you tell me that Malcolm can go with me! No more coy games! Answer me now!”
There was a sudden absence of light and a black veil fell over them, encasing them in a night so black it had no stars or illumination of any kind. There was a sudden patter of many rushing feet.
“Nay!” Malcolm was on his feet in an instant and had Taffy gathered close. An odd glowing silver of the sgian dubh in his fist was the only light at hand. “Ye’ll not force her tae do anything against her will. So help me, ye come nigh of her and I’ll cut her throat!”
“Kill me, Malcolm,” she ordered, none of her inner terror showing, though the power of faerie magic was dancing all over her skin. She understood that he was threatening them and making a bluff they would never call. She added to it: “If they come near us, kill me.”
There was a long pause at her words and then great shifting in the black around them, one heave of wind that
sighed low, and then the sunlight began to bleed back into the world.
It was immediately apparent that they were no longer in a protected quarry. There was still a mountain behind them, but the passageway was closed. So fine was the seam that it might never have been opened to let them through.
The waterfall was also gone, but in its place was a small loaf of bread and Malcolm’s skin of water. It had been refilled.
Malcolm took his sgian dubh from her throat. His hand tremored.
An unhappy whine led them to Smokey who was sheltering under a dried and dusty shrub of wiry heather. His tail beat happily when they called to him, and he rushed immediately to their side.
Feeling the dog’s fur on her bare legs recalled Taffy to the fact that she was still naked, and she looked about quickly, half-expecting the enraged faeries to have taken her clothing with them.
But her clothes, including her missing chemise, were waiting in a tidy pile, looking as clean and new as the day she had received them from the dressmaker’s hand. Malcolm’s plaid was likewise neatly folded, his sark crisp and laundered.
“I thought maybe they would be angry and vengeful,” she whispered.
“Yer daft lass, to threaten them like that!” Malcolm pulled her tighter against him. His heart was thundering and his torso was lightly sheened with sweat. He laughed once. It was a sound more horrified than amused.
Taffy raised on tip-toes and found his ear. Pressing close, she breathed: “I didn’t mean it about the babe. I just wanted to get their attention.”
Malcolm snorted. His hands were urgent as they examined her for hurts.
“Well, ye’ve got it.” His voice was thick.
“Do you think we can sleep now?”
He hesitated then said: “Best we eat whilst food is here. Then ye can have a short rest.”
“And you?” she asked, suddenly weary enough to collapse on the stony ground, uncaring of her naked state. It was a sure sign that some magic had been done in the dark. Always, she was exhausted when faerie magic came too near.
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