It began to fade, and she quivered as she returned to earth.
“We’re no’ done wi’ ye yet, lassie,” Hugh growled.
Steen took his hands off her hips and pinched her breasts, harder than he’d ever done before, and she shrieked at the top of her voice. Her clitty pulsed and her body clamped down on the hard shafts still buried in her two holes, as he forced her body into another climax, so soon after the first one.
She rocked her hips against the two men’s cocks, and wiggled her breasts in Steen’s hands, and Hugh reached forward and stroked her clitty, and the climax turned into another deep explosion.
To her horror, she became aware liquid was squirting out of her pussy, dripping past Steen’s cock, but she couldn’t help herself; she was still coming.
At long last, her blood began to cool, and so did theirs, and then they slowly slid out of her and drew her into a warm embrace.
“I suppose we’re married, then, now?” Lucy said at long last, when she was able to speak once more.
“Aye,” was all Hugh said.
“Bound together for all eternity,” Steen added.
“I like the sound of forever. It might just be enough time together,” Lucy murmured, as sleep claimed her.
Epilogue
Nine months later
It was pouring with rain on a gloomy March afternoon. Lucy waddled through the puddles, because she was far too pregnant to jump over them like she used to. She was supposed to be resting, but she wasn’t about to start lazing around in bed now, not when there was work to be done.
She took her purse out and was about to go into the village shop when a carriage arrived. It looked like one of the hire ones from Fort William. A young woman got out, dressed from head to toe in black, clearly in mourning. Her corset looked uncomfortable. The carriage driver got her trunk down and followed her.
Intrigued, Lucy watched them walk to Trina’s house, where the woman knocked on the door. When Trina answered, she wrapped the younger woman in a big embrace, and suddenly they were both crying.
Not wanting to intrude on what was clearly a private moment, Lucy turned away again, and went into the shop, where Dughlass the shopkeeper greeted her warmly. She would find out who the young woman was, by and by.
“Hallo, Lucy, I thought you were supposed to be on bedrest?”
“Aye, well it’s no’ a cold enough day in hell,” Lucy replied with a wink. “Anyway, my husbands have both managed tae get colds, and ye ken that’s the end of the world for men’s delicate bodies. D’ye have any camphor?”
“Indeed, but if ye walk back oot in the rain in your condition, ye might get sick.”
“I ken. It’s just this once. Anyway, I’ll no’ be doing much walking for a wee while so where’s the harm, aye? It’s no’ like I’ll be attending the Circle Dance, this year, with a bairn in my arms.”
“How much longer can it be? You’re as big as a house!”
She smiled with amusement. “Five more weeks.”
“Does the midwife ken it’s so soon?”
Lucy chuckled. The men of the village were so adorably clueless when it came to pregnancy and confinement.
“Aye, she’s been checking on me regularly for the past half a year,” she replied with a wink. She paid the shopkeeper and headed home to take on the lurgy that had felled her two brave husbands with a full heart. She was ready for their family to grow, and it was nice to be able to look after the men for a change and show them how much she loved them.
“Thank you, spirits, for bringing us together and making us so happy. And God,” she whispered.
The rain pelted down against the window panes, rattling the glass, and she could have sworn she heard an ethereal voice whisper, “You’re welcome.”
The End
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this book, please be a hero and leave a review in your favourite online store! And keep reading for a quick preview of book two!
Lots of love, Katie xxxx
Exclusive preview of book 2
An exclusive preview of Highland Fling Brides Book 2: Bound to the Highlanders, a reverse harem: Out now on Amazon.
Book 2 Prologue
Glenash Village, Scotland, 1875:
Fiona Magellan opened her eyes and had to rub them before they would focus on anything other than green. Everything was green in Scotland. It was something she’d learned in the three months since she arrived in Glenash, an out-of-the-way fishing village on the west coast of the Highlands, barely a month after she had turned twenty-one.
She must have fallen asleep in the field. Looking to either side of where she lay, she realized she was surrounded by two enormous men. The pain in her head was making it difficult to think. That, and the chilly early morning draft that... wait. She was naked. Naked, in a field, flanked by enormous highlanders. And her ears were ringing.
It took her reluctant brain a few moments to piece together what had happened, then all the memories of the Circle Dance overwhelmed her. Fiona groaned, rolled onto her front, and buried her face in the dewy grass. This was about the worst predicament she’d ever gotten into in her entire life.
She had accidentally married two men, right after writing to a third one in the hope that he would come and propose.
Book 2 Chapter 1
Chapter One of Book Two
The Night Before:
“Ah, fret not, Fee, you’ve never been to a real Highland midsummer fling, you’ll enjoy it,” her Aunt Trina had coaxed.
Fiona nodded, then frowned, sucking on the top of her dip-pen. “It’s certainly not something I’ve ever seen in London, but what do I wear? How do I speak to people? What are the rules?” She grimaced at all the uncertainty.
The older woman laughed warmly. “Dinnae fret about things like that, lass. Just turn up. You need tae get out more. As long as you dinnae dance the Circle Dance you’ll be fine. And even if you do, I’m no fussed. Finding a husband or two at your age is no bad idea. Larks, when I was your age, I had two husbands.”
Fiona stared at her aunt in shock. "You... two? How?"
"The Circle Dance. You were probably too wee to remember your other uncle, Trevor. The poor man got taken in the terrible floods we had fifteen years ago."
Trina's face fell for a moment, and Fiona's heart wrenched. Not wanting to add to her aunt's grief, she didn't say anything, but she did remember an Uncle Trevor, from the one visit she'd made to Glenash as a small child of four or five. She remembered her own parents sniffing their disapproval about so many things in the village, and at the time she hadn't known the cause of their distaste. Perhaps that was why they had left the village in favour of London. She also remembered Uncle Trevor and Uncle Keith, one holding each of her hands as they swung her around like a tiny monkey. It had been so much fun.
Perhaps it had been those happy memories that had drawn her back here after her parents died. She craved companionship and friendly faces, and this village was the only place she had ties to and which had both of those things in abundance. If they wanted to have strange ancient—probably pagan—rituals, she wasn't going to judge them, even if she found them peculiar. They all went to church on a Sunday, and none of them took the Bible too literally. Anyway, there had been a movement over the past thirty-five years for a growing minority of churchgoers in London to attempt to speak with ghosts—spiritualists, they called themselves—and although Fiona didn't believe in any of that nonsense, nobody seemed to think there was anything wrong with other people doing it, or that it conflicted with anything else people believed.
Fiona frowned, and absently signed the letter she was writing to her dear friend Martin, back in London. She didn't especially want a husband from the locals. Rather, she had high hopes that when Martin received this letter, he would catch the next train here and sweep her off her feet and down the aisle. They hadn't said as much, and although they had danced together once, she'd never walked out with him, but after what happened to her parents, he had insisted the
y exchange addresses, and they had been corresponding at least weekly ever since.
She had heard midsummer was when all the matching happened in the village for the year. It seemed a long time to wait for anyone who met their true love on the twenty-second of June, but as traditions went, she was curious. London held little of the folkloric old ways which still took place in little pockets of culture which had been kept mostly safe from the reach of mass-manufactured goods. Getting matched only on one day of the year, before the whole village, seemed like an interesting idea, although she wanted no part of it.
Another thing occurred to her. “They do remain fully clothed during the Circle Dance, don’t they, Aunt Trina?”
“Aye. During the dancing, anyway. You’re fretting o’er the wrong things, lass. Propriety, decency, these are nothing to concern yourself with at your age. The big city filled your head with too many rules about what you should and should’nae do, and not enough with interest in the world beyond your own front door. It’ll be fun. You’ll see.” Trina winked at Fiona, who tried to stop worrying about how to know if speaking with anyone at the fling would be too forward if they hadn't been introduced, yet.
Fiona finished addressing the envelope for her letter, then she took it to the post office and sent it first class, hoping Martin would act quickly and get her out of this barmy village with its bizarre customs before she ended up going native.
She was grateful to her relatives for taking her in after her parents' death, but the steadfast and earnest men from the village weren't what Fiona wanted out of life.
When it was time for the dance, Fiona dutifully followed her aunt out of the house, smoothing her dress down one last time and patting her hair before she stepped out into the balmy June evening. Up here, it was rare for it to be warm and dry, but through summer, the weather redeemed itself. So far, Fiona hadn’t needed the scarves and cloak she had brought with her when she packed her trunk and headed into the distant north.
The light was still bright at this hour, and the local villagers were gathering in the green. Already, at barely seven o’clock, some bonfires were being lit from expertly-stacked cones of logs. Fiona trailed behind her aunt, who occasionally stopped to greet people she knew, until they reached the centre of the action.
There, a small crowd of eligible men was assembling and talking amongst themselves. Trina didn’t concern herself with formalities as she waved and greeted people.
Fiona stopped dead when she stood three feet away from the tallest, most incredible, and finely-chiselled man she had ever met. He was breath-taking. She completely forgot her manners and just stared. Her eyes widened as she caught his twinkling azure gaze.
“Have you met my niece, Fiona, yet? She’s just arrived this past month from London,” Trina said by way of introduction.
“Well met,” the perfectly-formed man said amiably, but there was an undertone of something else beneath his words—something commanding—and Fiona could tell that he wasn't someone to get on the wrong side of.
Fiona’s tummy reverberated as she continued to stare. His brown hair was rugged and his entire appearance was untamed yet alluring. Eventually, her brain noticed Trina elbowing her in the ribs, and she remembered to breathe for a moment, then curtseyed, mumbling a sheepish, “How do you do?” before she was too overcome with nerves and racked her brain for an excuse to hurry away.
“Th-there’s Lindsey, I need to ask her about n-needlepoint,” Fiona stuttered, then she practically bolted toward a nineteen-year-old redhead who stood thirty feet away.
“Fee, whatever’s wrong?” Lindsey asked, as Fiona nearly ran through her in an attempt to get as far from the human god-man as possible.
“Uh... nothing. I don’t know. I don’t think so...” Fiona’s mouth trailed off as her brain pointed out that the words she was speaking didn’t fit with what Lindsey had said. Worse still, she looked over her shoulder and found his eyes were still on her. Fiona turned away quickly, but Lindsey followed her gaze.
“...Oh. William McCall. Aye, he’s enough to make any lassie flee.”
“He’s so... tall,” Fiona finished lamely.
“Aye, he’s that. And he’s almost never here. He’s a hunter. Exactly the sort of fellow the Circle Dance was made for. You ken that it came about because a lot o’ the chaps around these parts are in dangerous lines o’ work? So, at some point in the mists o' time, someone said, once a year, any two men from the village can claim the same woman.”
Fiona nodded; she knew that already. “But why is it on Midsummer’s day?”
“It’s the solstice. It's traditionally the day when the boundaries between our world and the spirit world are weaker. So we can marry anyone at all who walks the Earth. An’ we hardly lose anyone in the summer. So everyone gets at least a few months o’ happiness, and if the worst happens, there’s still someone to take care of the young lady and any babies she might have on the way.”
Fiona passed no comment on the idea of a spirit world. She didn’t truly understand the connection that all the people of Glenash seemed to have with the natural world, let alone their predilection for attributing nature with a vast folklore of magic and myth. Even if it weren’t real, it still shaped the way everyone here saw the world.
“You’re thinking tae much again,” Lindsey told her. That was the other thing about the people of Glenash: They always told people what they truly thought, even if it wouldn’t be especially polite in London. At first, the practice had upset Fiona greatly, but now she was getting used to it, she had to admit she liked knowing straight away what people thought and felt, without necessarily having to deconstruct shrouded meanings and allusions. Their honesty was now one of her favourite things about the Highlands.
The Highlands were like a foreign country compared to London.
"You should leave our good Highland men alone and go back to that city of yours!" Millie Woodward snapped as she wandered past. The woman had been giving Fiona sideways glares ever since she arrived. Fiona frowned at Millie in surprise at her rudeness.
"Oh, pay her no mind." Lindsey waved a hand dismissively. "She's only jealous."
“So, what do you know about William McCall?” Fiona tried to ask the question casually, but somehow, she was far too interested to succeed.
Lindsey smiled and put an arm around Fiona’s shoulder. “He's the meanest man in the village. I'm not sure if he even counts as a resident of Glenash, any more. A lot o’ the hunters are a bit uncouth, but he spends so much time out of the village hunting that people have started wondering if he’s gone wild. He hardly speaks to anyone, and he’s so... I dinnae ken how to describe it.... serious, maybe? He keeps everyone at arm's length. Naebody e’en kens if he likes girls or not.”
Fiona stared at Lindsey in amazement. The idea of even suggesting a man liked other men was scandalous.
“Dinnae look at me like that, lassie, it’s something we’ve all wondered. O’course, if he did have a thing for the menfolk, the main problem he’d have is that he’d struggle to find a man to come home to. We’re a little lacking in options.”
“Are there any... men who like men?” Fiona had never even come across anyone who would speak of such things, let alone speculate so casually. She couldn’t decide if it was nice to be open about it, or improper to talk about anyone in such a way.
“They’re very few and far between. But if two chaps get into the Circle Dance wi’oot a lassie, naebody pays them any mind.”
“Doesn’t the vicar call a stop to it?” Fiona couldn’t imagine any man of the cloth letting two men marry a single woman or one another.
“There’s no vicar involved. The Circle Dance is older; more natural and visceral than the new ways of church and Sunday hats. Naebody can stop a match if all the parties are in the circle. The spirit world—the fey, the dryads, all those—simply bind the correct people together. As long as they consummate within three days, they’re as good as wedded.”
Fiona was more surprised than e
ver. She had thought, despite how her aunt had described it, that the Circle Dance was to be presided over by a religious man. How else could one have a wedding? She knew weddings were very different in Scotland compared to England, and she had heard of people from London eloping to Gretna Green, just over the Scottish border, and being married at the village's smithy, but she hadn't ever thought about how that might happen.
More to the point, she was sure Martin wouldn't approve of any such nonsense, and she still hoped he would come and marry her, soon. Perhaps she shouldn't even speak with any highlanders, but the men here seemed so friendly, and the divide between the sexes wasn't enforced so rigidly, it would clearly be very rude to only speak to the women.
“Dinnae think about it tae hard, lass. There’s more pressing matters. Like whether you’ve tasted Andrew Callanish’s apple ringey.”
“Ringey?”
“Aye. It’s named after how it makes your ears ring the morning after.”
“Oh.” Fiona accepted a cup as it was handed to her, and she took a polite sip. “This is very syrupy. And tart. It’s like someone made whisky out of apple pie.”
“That’s aboot the long and short of it, aye.” Lindsey took a drink and grinned. “A dozen more swigs an’ you’ll be oot there talking to the fellows.”
Usually, Fiona didn’t drink much, so the warming feeling in her chest lasted a long time and seemed to bring with it an altered state.
It wasn’t long before she strode confidently into the circle and stood in front of the towering highlander.
“William McCall,” she said, then tried to tip her hat to him, but she wasn’t wearing one.
“That’s my name. You’ll mind not tae wear it out.” He winked at her and she giggled.
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