by Unknown
“You want a war!” Raife threw up his hands and stood too, a head taller than his brother.
“Not like this I don’t.” Darrow pointed a finger at Sibyl so that everyone around the table turned their heads to look at her. “She puts all of us at risk. You want me to speak English? I’ll say it in plain English then! Are ye doin’ what’s right for the pack? Or are ye doing what’s right for ye?”
Sibyl couldn’t breathe. Was it true, was her mere presence here putting them all in danger? If she believed that, even for a moment, she would leave without a second thought. She’d never felt so welcome anywhere before, but she also had never had a family like the wulvers. She didn’t want any of them harmed.
“And you, Darrow?” Raife glanced down at Sibyl and then back to his brother, eyes flashing. “You want me to say it plainly? You risked your woman’s life and the life of your child, and if it weren’t for this woman you want to toss out into the woods on her own, you would have lost them both!”
“Raife…” Sibyl’s wide eyes met Laina’s across the table, seeing the pained look on the woman’s face.
The two men stood, face to face, eyes locked, unmoving.
“Raife, please.” She tugged his hand as she stood beside him. “Don’t.”
He wasn’t listening. A low growl came from his throat, from both of them. She imagined them leaping across the table at one another, brother against brother, tearing each other to pieces, and couldn’t stand it.
Sibyl put her hand in Raife’s, squeezing hard.
“Tiugainn,” she whispered, pleading with him. “Tiugainn!”
He looked down, seeing her eyes brimming with tears, and the word registered in his eyes.
Come. Come on.
He turned away from his brother, away from his pack, and followed her into the tunnels.
Chapter Eight
There was nothing but silence as they made their way through the tunnel. Slowly, she heard the sound of the pack beginning to talk again, but it was far away now. She saw the light of a torch in a distance and knew there was a sentry on duty, as always, near the front of the cave.
Raife stopped outside her room, hand on the latch, looking down at her.
“I am sorry about that, lass,” he apologized softly. “My brother overstepped his bounds.”
“Does Alistair know where you live?” Sibyl asked. “Does he know about this mountain?”
“He may,” Raife admitted. “Our families… we have a history.”
Sibyl knew, more than she let on. Raife didn’t know what the wulver women had told her by the stream that day.
“So Darrow spoke the truth,” Sibyl whispered, her blood going cold at the thought of Raife and his pack in danger. “Alistair and his men could come here. They could… attack.”
“They will’na,” Raife assured her. “If they were going to come for ye, they would have done so. Besides, we have a pact.”
“The wolf pact.” She rolled her eyes when his brows went up in surprise. “I am not an idiot. I know the story. But I would hear the truth from you. From your own mouth.”
“Sibyl, don’t ask this.” He shook his head but Sibyl took both of his big hands in hers, tugging gently as she nudged the door open with her hip.
“Tiugainn,” she said softly in Gaelic. “Come.”
Raife followed her into the room—his room, a place he hadn’t slept in over a month—shutting the door behind him. Sibyl went to the fire and fed it. The flames were low and she used a poker to stoke it, glancing over her shoulder to see Raife still standing in front of the door like a sentry.
“Tiugainn.” She said it again, holding her hand out to him. “Sit with me by the fire.”
The rug in front of it was made from lamb’s wool, soft and white and inviting. She had fallen asleep in front of the fire a few times on that rug, wrapped up in her plaid, just like a real Scot.
“You’re starting to look like one of us.” Raife approached, looking down at her in her shirt and plaid as she pulled her knees up, resting her chin on them. She’d gotten used to this way of living quite quickly. No more corsets. She liked going around with bare legs, even running through the valley in bare feet. It was like reliving her childhood again. “You’re even getting some color.”
“Just my freckles.” She rolled her eyes, patting the floor beside her. “Sit.”
Raife did as she asked, sitting next to her on the rug in the firelight. She searched his face and that faraway look in his eyes as he stared into the flames, and wondered what he was thinking.
“Do you like it here?” he asked softly. He didn’t look at her when he asked.
“Yes,” she confessed. “It’s beautiful.”
Sometimes she was afraid to admit how much she’d grown to love it in the den. As strange and frightening as it had once been, it was now just as familiar, like home. Even her childhood home had never felt like this. Traveling through the mountain and its tunnels had become routine, and their valley, with its sheep and goats and pigs, its running stream and fields of heather, was one of her favorite places in the world.
“Bóidheach.” Raife turned his head to look at her, reaching out to touch her face. His fingers were rough against her flushed cheek. “Tha thu bóidheach.”
“No.” Sibyl felt her cheeks redden at his words, biting her lip and shaking her head. “Not me.”
“Yes, ye know those words.” He tilted her chin up when she tried to avoid his eyes. “Yer beautiful.”
Hearing him say it made her feel dizzy and flushed, but she told herself it was the warmth of the fire that made her feel that way, not the heat of his gaze.
“Darrow was right, wasn’t he?” Her voice trembled. “I’m putting all of you in danger just by being here?”
Raife shook his head but he didn’t deny it.
“I can’t continue to risk your lives,” she said, the thought of Alistair and his men attacking the wulvers in their mountain too horrific to contemplate. She had the image in her mind of four hundred wulvers being slaughtered, blood splattered everywhere like red paint against the mountain walls, turning the stream that ran through it red. She couldn’t be responsible for that. She wouldn’t.
“I am weak.” Raife sighed, closing his eyes and hanging his dark head. His hair spilled across his cheek, a black waterfall, obscuring her view of his face.
“You’re the strongest man I’ve ever known,” Sibyl countered, reaching out to touch his arm.
“I cannot let ye go, lass.” He lifted his head to meet her eyes, the look in them so filled with longing it took her breath away.
“I don’t want to go,” she confessed, swallowing, feeling tears brimming at the thought. She couldn't leave them. Couldn’t leave him. But if her very presence was putting them at risk? If Darrow was speaking the truth? “But I should go, Raife.”
“No.” His jaw tightened, eyes flashing. “Ye will not leave me.”
His words thrilled and terrified her at the same time.
“There is a woman in a village not too far from here. She was my ladies’ maid, but she…” Sibyl swallowed, remembering. How long ago it seemed now. “She found herself in the family way while we were traveling.”
“Without a family?” he guessed.
“Aye.”
“Listen to ye.” His smile was infectious. “Aye.”
How much of his Scottish brogue had she picked up? Sibyl wondered, smiling at her own choice of words.
“They wanted to leave her on the side of the road.” Her face hardened when she remembered the men denying relations with Rose, as if she had been the one solely responsible for her chastity. “I found a family to take her in. I know they would take me in, too.”
“No.” His brow knitted as he looked at her in the firelight. “I can’na allow it.”
“Allow it?” Her shoulders straightened and squared as she faced him. “No. You do not allow anything. You do not get a say, Raife. You are not my father. You are not my…”
He didn’t say anything as she struggled to finish the sentence and found she couldn’t.
“But I am.” Those incredible blue eyes, so bright in the firelight, sought hers. “I am yours. I have been yours since the moment I first saw ye, Sibyl.”
How could she deny it? Deny him? Hadn’t she been his, from that very moment when he broke out of the underbrush, throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her out of her intended’s reach? Hadn’t she been his, ever since?
“Raife…” She whispered his name, so dear to her, a name she spoke in her mind a thousand times a day. “I can’t be yours.”
“But y’are, lass.” He traced the outline of her hand, still gripping his arm, with his index finger. “I am yours and y’are mine. Nothin’ can change that. No matter wha’happens.”
“Things are different here.” She felt a tear tremble on her lashes and she let it fall. “Here, you get to choose who you love. But I never had a choice. I was used as a political pawn, sold by my uncle to a man who… who…”
“I will not let him hurt ye.” Raife cupped her face in his hands, turning her chin up so she was forced to look at him through the blur of tears.
“I was born a girl and not a boy,” she whispered, remembering her father’s constant lament. “Do you know what that means?”
“Aye.” He smiled, those blue eyes dancing devilishly. “I do.”
“No, you don’t,” she choked, jerking her head away from him. “You don’t understand. You’re a man—you can do what you like. Me… I’m a woman. I only ever had one thing of value in the world to offer.”
“And what is that?” Raife asked softly.
“My virginity.” The words hung between them, much to Sybil’s horrible shame. Even after all of the training her father had bestowed upon her, she had, in the end, still been sold to the highest bidder as his ornament, his brood mare.
“It’s hardly yer only valuable feature,” Raife teased. She sniffed and tried not to smile at his words. “Although I would’na dismiss it out of hand.”
“But it is all that makes me valuable to them. To him.” She sneered, remembering Alistair’s snide comments, the way he’d treated her like property.
“But ye are here now,” Raife reminded her. “And here, ye get to choose.”
“Then I choose you.” She met his eyes, knowing if she did this, there would be no going back, not ever. And she didn’t want to go back. Not anymore. She wanted this man, more than she’d ever wanted anything. He made her want to give up everything for him, to him.
“Take it,” she urged, kneeling up in front of him so they were eye to eye in the firelight. “Take it from me. Take… me…”
She leaned in to him, her mouth quivering as she touched her lips to his. She felt his spine stiffen, heard his gasp at the daring press of her mouth.
“Please,” she pleaded, her lips burning where they touched his. “Raife, please…”
“I want nothing more.” He captured her face in his hands, searching her eyes. “But Sibyl… what ye are asking… wulvers mate for life. This is’na a simple matter of a man taking yer virginity. I would be claiming ye. Making ye my own.”
“If you don’t want me….” She swallowed, blinking in surprise at his words. A simple matter? Did he think she took it so lightly? “I… I understand…”
“Och!” He closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to hers, a pained expression on his face. “’Tis not that, lass. Tha mi gu dòigheal.”
“I… I don’t know…” She didn’t know those Gaelic words.
“Love.” He opened his eyes and met hers. “I love you, Sibyl.”
His mouth captured hers and all the feeling between them was caught in that kiss. Sibyl whimpered, putting her arms around his neck, spilling into his lap, unable to contain herself. Raife moaned like he was in pain when she tumbled into his arms, so eager for him she scrambled to get closer, desperate for more of the hard press of his chest against the soft give of her breasts, the way his hands roamed through her thick, red hair.
“I want ye,” he confessed, breathless, when they parted. “But I do’na just want yer maidenhood. I want all of ye. If I can’na have that—”
“Don’t you know how much I want you?” she choked. “How much I want to be yours? Really and truly yours?”
“Ye realize what yer askin’?” His eyes were bright with the knowledge, and the fire in his gaze matched her own.
“Yes,” she whispered, knowing only that she wanted him, needed him, that more than anything, she loved him. She had never experienced anything like it before, and knew she never would again.
“Tomorrow I’ll declare ye as my mate in front of our family, our pack.” His words thrilled her to her very core and she trembled with anticipation in his arms. “Tonight, I claim ye as mine own.”
Finally.
Her body screamed it, her mind too, as she wrapped herself around him, giving into the feelings that had been building between them for overlong. Raife held her in his arms a long time in the firelight, kissing her lips until they were raw and swollen and she was desperate for more, something more, but she didn’t know what. She felt as if she wanted to climb inside his skin and wear him like a coat.
“Hungry li’l thing,” he murmured against her mouth as she pulled at her clothes, too hot to keep wearing them. “Easy now. Let me.”
She watched, reclining on the rug, swallowing hard as he unbuckled her leather belt, pulling it through the loops on her plaid. This caused it all to fall apart in his hands, the yards and yards of material coming away in an instant. Her Scots clothes gave no resistance. There was no corset, nor a hundred tiny buttons to wrestle with. She surrendered the last bit of her clothing herself, pulling her shirt off over her head, leaving her completely nude on the rug.
“Bóidheach.” Raife’s gaze moved over her form and his hands followed, tracing the curve of her waist, the swell of her hips, the gentle slope of her thighs.
“Mine,” she whispered, reaching for his thick, leather belt, unbuckling it.
“Aye,” he whispered again as he pulled off his plaid in the dimness.
She’d never been so afraid in her life, even watching him change into a wolf, as she was when he disrobed for the first time in front of her. Looking at him, rising up stiff and erect, her breath caught in her throat. She didn’t know what to expect now that they were both naked together, whether it was from man, wolf or wulver. The stories she’d heard her ladies’ maids tell had contained a lot of innuendo but not a lot of details.
“I’m afraid,” she confessed, clinging to him as he leaned in to kiss her.
“I do’na want to harm ye,” he whispered, feathering kisses over her bare shoulders. “Och, lass, ye are so beautiful. It hurts me heart. “
She smiled, fingers playing in his long, dark hair as he lowered his mouth to her breast.
“Oh!” Sibyl cried out when his tongue flickered back and forth against her nipple, staring at him, aghast at the sensation. Was it supposed to feel like this? She remembered watching babes suckling at their mother’s teats but she had never in her wildest dreams imagined it would be like this.
Raife chuckled, rolling one nipple between thumb and forefinger, continuing to assault her other breast with the hot lash of his tongue. She couldn’t help the low moan that escaped her throat, the way her hands groped him in the dimness, finding all the lean, hard slopes of his body, so different from her own softness, beyond exciting.
He kissed and suckled at her breasts for a long time, so long it made her squirm and cry out, begging him for more, although more of what, she still wasn’t sure. It was endless, exquisite torture, his titillating exploration of the open, yielding terrain of her body. She gave herself over to the sensation, gave herself over to him, to the flickering quiver of his tongue, to the rough press of his hands against the small of her back, pulling her into the saddle of his hips.
“Oh Raife,” she whispered, her thighs trembling as she wrapped her legs aroun
d his waist. She couldn’t stand this torture, not for another moment. “Please, oh please, I want you.”
He let out a low groan when she rocked her hips against him.
“It may hurt ye.” He sounded regretful as he lowered his forehead to her breasts, nuzzling her still, sending shockwaves through her body. “I will go slow.”
She nodded, whimpering when she felt him press between her open thighs, so hot and throbbing, insistent. There was no resistance on her part. She received him with every breath. Even the cry that escaped her throat when he finally pushed into her was an affirmation, welcoming him home. Raife stopped, poised above her when Sibyl’s nails dug into his neck, her heels into his lower back, meeting her gaze in the firelight.
The tears that trembled in her eyes weren’t from pain or fear. How could she tell him they were tears of joy at being his, finally, completely and utterly his? Raife leaned in and kissed her eyes closed, kissed the tears from them, no words between them. There was no need for them.
He moved in her and it was like flying. Her arms slipped around his neck, face buried there as they rode toward release together. Her body was taut, wound up like a lute string, a hunger burning in her like she’d never experienced before. She knew what it was like to crave this man, to spend her days longing for him, but this was entirely new. How was it possible to have him in her arms and still want him just as much?
“Oh Raife, please!” she begged him over and over, yearning for more, her body twisting and thrusting up against him all on its own, as if she might attain some sort of relief from the fever burning between her thighs. So much heat. So much delicious friction.
“Och, my love!” he cried, his motions matching her own fervor, impaling her again and again with steel heat, forged between her legs. Sibyl clung to him just as she did when he took her for a ride as wolf, squeezing him between her thighs, feeling the hard, muscled planes of his body working as she grasped for something just out of reach.
Almost there, she thought. Almost there.
“Oh!” Sibyl’s eyes flew open, meeting his dark, midnight blue gaze. His eyes were dark in the firelight, focused solely on hers, their bodies slick and slippery as they came together. “Oh, Raife!”