As if he knew, his hand found her. His fingers skimmed over her maiden hair, drifting ever lower to gently caress the very center of her, cupping her fiercely.
“Och, lass, forgive me. I did no’ want this.” His voice, dark, rich, and seductive, made her shiver. “But I canna resist you . . . am lost, as I’ve told you.”
She cried out, reaching to clutch his shoulders and rocking her hips to increase the sweet pressure against his seeking, stroking fingers. But the drowsiness of sleep kept her gasps and sighs trapped inside her.
And hard as she tried, as was the way with dreams, her grasping hands and her aching hips refused to move.
He kissed her anyway, thrusting his hand into the loose spill of her hair and pulling her lips to his. Murmuring ancient Gaelic love words, he claimed her mouth in a hard, bruising kiss, deep and ravenous.
“Precious lass, let me touch you,” he begged, the words hot silk against her lips. “There’s no’ a breath I take nor a beat of my heart that’s no’ steeped with wanting you.”
“Ahhhh . . .” At last the dream let her move again and she arched into him. In reward, hot, tingling need rippled through her, drenching her.
She went liquid, her mouth opening wide beneath his. Her tongue swirled and thrust, seeking and tangling with his. Their hot breath mingled, each intimately shared gasp intoxicating her all the more.
Incredible pleasure whirled inside her, bright, sinuous flames that ignited her senses and curled her toes, making her wind and stretch on the cool richness of the bedsheets.
“Ahhhh,” she cried again, this time letting her knees fall apart, opening herself to him.
“Mo ghaoil — my dear — you shouldn’t have done that,” he growled, lifting up on his elbows to stare down at her, every muscle-ripped inch of him poised above her, the bold look in his eyes making her even more hot, wet, and slippery.
He tightened his grip on her heat then, but released her as quickly. Still murmuring Gaelic love words, he smoothed his hands swiftly upward, seizing and kneading her breasts. Hot and strong, his fingers squeezed and plumped her flesh, the pleasure of it finally shattering the spell of her dream and letting her cry out her need.
“Yesss . . . Ronan!” She writhed against him, her fingers tangling in the coverlets and her thighs clamping around the plump feather pillow caught between them.
“Ronan . . .” She kicked the pillow aside and flung off the covers.
Flipping onto her stomach, she swept an arm across the cold and empty sheets.
Bedding icier than any she’d ever shared with her sister.
Impossible that a man had lain there with her.
With surety, not the Raven.
She’d only dreamed that he’d come to her.
Her own female need and desire had spun the wild, abandoned kind of passion she ached for so badly.
The heady, set-the-heather-ablaze kind of lovemaking she knew no man save Ronan could give her.
“ No-o-o!” She dug her hands into the coverlets, her fingers gripping the richly embroidered sheets and the somewhat scratchy fur throws.
“Please.” She choked on the word, a hot, scalding wetness tracking down her cheeks. “Come back — I need you . . .”
But only silence answered her.
That, and the hollow whistling of the cold night wind; the touches and voices that weren’t there, reaching and whispering from the shadows.
“Ronan . . .” The name hung in the darkness, filling her soul even if her cry echoed back to her, hollow and unanswered.
Her heart pounding, she damned her dreams — for they only made her want him more — and rolled onto her side. A chill spread through her then, a coldness coming from deep in her soul. She reached for the cast-off covers, just closing her fingers on them when she saw him.
He stood across the darkened bedchamber, his tall form cloaked in shadow. Behind him, a few peat embers still glimmered on the hearthstone. The faint, orangey glow of the peat edged the wide set of his shoulders and the satiny spill of his sleek, raven hair.
No longer naked, he appeared swathed from head to toe in his great voluminous travel cloak, though she was sure the mantle would have needed laundering after shielding Buckie and his onion creel from the rain on the long journey back from Creag na Gaoith.
Shifting on the bed, she knuckled her eyes and then scrunched them to see him better. He stood unnaturally still, and although his face was cast in shadow, his eyes glinted darkly, and something about the way he was staring at her lifted the fine hairs on the back of her neck.
His neck, she saw with a start, was unadorned.
The fine golden torque he favored, nowhere to be seen.
Only the cowled folds of his robe’s hood, gathered like a yoke of bunched, dark wool around his shoulders.
He lifted a hand and took a step forward, as if to gain her attention. But if he spoke, a sudden blast of howling wind stole the words. Again and again, the gusts battered the tower, rattling the shutters and filling the room with the cold, damp scent of rain and old wet stone.
Stone steeped in silence, its cold, lichened essence feeling almost pagan.
“Ach, dia,” Gelis cried, her own words lost in the swelling, ear-piercing din.
Now a high- pitched, keening wail, the roar of the wind blotted everything but the wild buzzing in her head and the deafening thunder of her pulse.
The table and even her pile of strongboxes melted into the floor, quickly followed by the fine stone-carved hearth and its little clumps of glowing peat. Then the massive stone walls began to shake and weave, falling one by one into the darkness, their disappearance letting the deeper shadows swirl into the room.
“Gaaaaah!” She flung out an arm when one of those shadows rushed past her, the Raven’s great four-poster bed vanishing in its wake.
She pitched forward, her bare feet and the flats of her hands hitting the floor rushes only to plunge right through them, her spiraling fall hurtling her into even greater, colder blackness.
“Gaaaaah!” she cried again, tumbling and spinning, her flailing arms grasping only air before she slammed hard onto something that felt distantly familiar, like the furred coverlets of her bed.
But the bed was no longer there.
Nothingness surrounded her.
A great dark void pressed in on her from all sides, cold and cloying, terrible in its emptiness.
Only he remained.
Her heart began a slow, hard thumping as she stared at him, dimly aware of the hand she’d clutched so fiercely to her breast and of the eerie quiet that now replaced the wild screaming winds of moments before.
Looking at ease in the chaos, her raven seemed oddly taller now.
His dark eyes glinted ever brighter, and he held out his arms, silently beseeching her as the darkness around him grew blacker.
Black as a tomb.
“Ronan — I pray you, stop. Don’t do this . . .” But her voice sounded far away, as if she called to him from the bottom of a very deep well.
You’re frightening me.
Those words, too, she held back, shamed by her fear.
Not that he could have heard her.
Already the blackness was consuming him. Dark and dense, it poured in, swirling first around his ankles and then whirling ever higher to slide around his knees and finally spread upward, circling his hips and all of him.
As if the shadows sought to bury him.
“ No-o-o!” She clapped her hands to her cheeks, shaking her head. “Please stop.”
Silence answered her, its deadness worse than hell’s coldest wind.
She swallowed hard, her fingers digging into the swell of her bosom. She began to tremble, wanting to squeeze her eyes shut when the darkness reached his neck, but she couldn’t look away.
Then only his eyes were visible.
Dark and piercing, they still glinted right at her, glowing as hotly as the hearth’s reddish-orange peat embers she could no longer see.
But
then she was staring at the peat embers.
The raven was gone.
And she was sprawled naked across his well-appointed bed.
Her bedchamber — nae, his — appeared as always.
No black winds tore at the wall hangings or rattled the soundly latched shutters. The table by the window and her own towering stack of hump-backed, iron-bound coffers stood exactly where they should.
Untouched, and certainly not melted.
Even the scattered bearskin rugs on the floor were undisturbed, without even a single stray bit of dried meadowsweet or what-have-you marring their glossy pelts.
That alone was a clear indication that no unholy wind had swept through the room.
Even so, she drew the bedcovers to her chin.
She knew fine what she’d seen.
Even if she also knew someone else could have stood beside her and not noticed a thing amiss.
She knew better.
Something was sorely amiss.
And she had enough experience with such matters to guess exactly what it was.
“Saints, Maria, and Joseph!” Her father’s favorite curse slipped from her lips and she fell back against the bedcushions, her entire body shaking.
Staring up at the richly carved bed ceiling, she clenched her fists and fought hard against slipping into the deceptive peace of slumber.
Two truths were bearing down on her and she could deny neither.
The first seized her each time she drew a new, lung-filling gulp of the cold, early morning air.
Ronan had spent at least a few hours in her bed.
The sheets and coverlets reeked of him, or, better said, of the rank-smelling goldenrod goo she’d spread across his ribs and smeared onto his toes.
The second truth ripped her heart and stole her breath, its horror splitting her soul.
The blackness she’d seen consuming Ronan could only mean his death. And the icy cold, stone-drenched emptiness had to have represented his tomb.
Gelis shuddered, hating the interpretation.
But try as she might, she couldn’t find another explanation, much as the reality struck her like an iron-hard fist in the belly.
The Raven truly stood in mortal danger.
She’d just have to be sure she was ready when the blow came.
She’d be damned if her Raven’s foes would defeat her.
And she’d face down the devil himself before she’d let them conquer him.
Enough was enough.
Chapter Fourteen
Aye, that’s what I said, just!” Valdar leaned back in his great carved laird’s chair, his mailed shirt gleaming brightly beneath his plaid. “He rode out well before sunrise. And, nae, he didn’t tell me his business.”
He looked around the high table as if seeking agreement, seeming pleased when the kinsmen sitting there responded with assorted grunts and nods.
Even so, Gelis wasn’t fooled.
She took a deep breath. “He told no one where he was going?”
Valdar snorted. “My grandson?”
Anice, just setting down a platter of buttered bannocks and cheese, flushed and hastened from the dais. She stopped only long enough to right an upturned trestle bench, then quickly disappeared into the bustling hall.
Several men at the high table cleared throats or scratched at their elbows.
Sorley and the other garrison guards did the same at a nearby long table, each one studiously avoiding her gaze. Gelis frowned watching them. The men who’d readily helped her get Buckie and her Viking tent out to Creag na Gaoith now seemed far more interested in gobbling their oats and examining the floor rushes.
Some appeared to inspect their fingernails.
Ignoring them all, Gelis folded her arms. “I must speak with him, Valdar.”
He’s in danger.
She held back the words, not wanting to alarm the old chieftain.
Though, in truth, she was certain he knew.
“That one was e’er a man of his own mind,” he blurted, sitting forward to snatch up his ale cup. “We’ll not be a-seeing him until he comes hallooing back in through the gates. Like as not, sometime late this e’en.”
Gelis pounced. “You know where he is.”
Valdar wagged his bearded head. “I’m a-guessing, lass. No more.”
“Then where do you guess he is?”
“Off to Kyleakin to see about acquiring malt for MacHugh’s brewhouse, mayhap,” he offered with a shrug. “Word is our stores are low. Or” — he winked broadly — “perhaps he’s chasing down the peddler said to be journeying through your da’s territories these days. Could be he wants to fetch a few fine gee-gaws and ribbons for you!”
Gelis didn’t believe a word.
But Valdar held her eye, the image of graybearded innocence, save that he had donned a hauberk.
A precautionary measure if ever there was one.
Especially in light of the long, two-handed sword propped just a bit too casually against his chair and the wicked- looking Norse battle-axe resting on the table.
Called Blood Drinker, or so she’d heard, the axe held pride of place next to a wooden bowl of slaked oats and a jug of watered-down morning ale.
Gelis narrowed her eyes. “His absence wouldn’t have anything to do with all the steel in the hall, would it?”
“Steel?” He blinked, not quite managing to look surprised.
“Aye, steel.” She made a sweeping gesture. “And I don’t mean your men’s eating knives.”
Valdar coughed.
Grabbing his ale cup again, he helped himself to a healthy swig.
The other men at the table rushed to fuss at their plaids, clumsily trying to conceal the telltale glints and bulges of weapons peeking up from their boots or other sundry hiding places.
A quick glance into the crowded lower end of the hall showed that every MacRuari present was equally well armed. Gelis swallowed a curse, then scrunched her eyes to see better through the smoke-and-torch haze hanging above the long rows of tables. Her heart caught when she spotted at least two other Norse battle-axes propped against trestle benches.
She also spied young Hector perched in a window embrasure, Buckie sprawled at his feet. And — no great surprise — the boy’s newly acquired sgian dubh wasn’t tucked into a boot or beneath his belt, but proudly displayed atop one of the window seat cushions.
Most disturbing of all was the giant figure of Hugh MacHugh lurking near the hall’s vaulted entry. Pacing to and fro in front of the massive oaken door, he held a sharp-bladed meat cleaver clutched in his hand.
Her stomach lurched at the sight.
Everyone knew a master cook had too many duties not to be busy at his kitchen fires.
Especially at this early hour of the day.
She frowned.
Then she puffed a curl off her brow and stepped closer to the high table. “Dare is readying for a siege.” She didn’t bother to make it a question. “I’ve lived through enough at Eilean Creag to tell.”
“Dare is e’er prepared for trouble.” Valdar dug his spoon into his bowl of slaked oats, stirring. “The showing you see this morn has more to do with you than any foe who might or might not be bearing down on our walls.”
Her brows rose. “With me?”
“So I said.”
“But that makes no sense.”
Valdar stopped stirring his oats. “It did to my grandson.” He glanced up, eyeing her. “That much I can tell you. Before he rode out, he ordered every man not on the walls to hie himself into the hall to guard you.”
For one shining moment, a surge of pleasure wrapped round and filled Gelis, swelling her heart and warming her until she realized the true meaning of Valdar’s declaration.
Her gaze flashed to the Blood Drinker. “So we are under siege?”
“Nae.” He waved his spoon at her. “The Raven didn’t want you following him again. He set his men to keep watch so you canna leave the hall.”
Gelis blinked.
“What about all the weapons?” She put her hands on her hips. “We both know those swords and dirks aren’t meant for use against me. So” — she summoned her most persuasive smile — “just who is to be the recipient of their sharp ends?”
“That I canna say, lass.”
“Canna or willna?”
Valdar took renewed interest in oat stirring.
“I see.” Gelis tilted her head, pretending to consider. “Then I shall just have to find someone else to question.”
She glanced out over the torchlit hall, her eyes narrowed and searching, looking for the one soul she suspected might have answers.
It took less than a wink to find her.
She’d only needed to study the shadows darkening the hall’s entry. There, where Hugh MacHugh paced in all his ruddy, rough-hewn glory. Great- eyed Anice hovered near the door, the adulation on her face undisguised now that she felt herself unobserved.
Gelis smiled. Her pulse quickened.
Leaving Valdar to his oats and his spoon, she turned away and hurried from the dais. She strode across the hall, secretly pleased when the Raven’s hard-faced, steel-toting stalwarts made way for her, each man stepping back respectfully at her approach, clearing a path through their midst.
Soon, success would be hers.
A woman in love — and she was sure the timid serving lass had hung her heart on Dare’s cook — would never refuse help to another woman suffering the same affliction.
Her own heart began to pound and her breath caught on the realization that she loved the Raven.
She shivered, a delicious swirl of warmth spilling through her. Truth was, she knew, she’d loved him ever since the morning she’d first glimpsed him in vision. She could still see him that way, striding so boldly toward her on Eilean Creag’s little shingled strand.
Making her blood heat and all the woman inside her quiver with desire.
Seducing a Scottish Bride Page 22