Struan touched the fluttering pulse at her throat with his thumb. “You do yourself an injustice, Iona McKinley,” he said huskily.
Iona couldn’t seem to move. His eyes glittered like flint. No one had looked at her quite like that before, as if he saw deep inside her. He was close now. Breast-to-breast, thigh-to-thigh, they stood. Heat emanated from him in waves. Her own heat, too, tightening in her belly, pooling between her thighs. She ached for him to touch her. A myth come to life. Unreal. And yet deeply, viscerally real. She wanted him to kiss her, just so she could discover for herself what danger tasted like. “You don’t want me. You want revenge.”
“Not revenge—justice. On Kentarra you will be claimed. You will become one of us, bound to the clan. If,” Struan added, “you are willing.” He stroked the soft skin of her neck.
“I will never be willing.” Iona’s breath was coming in shallow, sharp gasps. His touch was beguiling. Thrilling. Arousing. Everything it should not be. Everything she wanted it to be. “I have no wish to become Faol,” she said raggedly.
Struan lowered his head, his lips lingering where his fingers had caressed. She tasted of fresh air and summer flowers. She tasted of rain. And human female…a strange, not to say illicit, spice. He nipped the lobe of her ear, his breath warm on the shell of it. “It is an honour granted to few,” he whispered.
Iona’s hand curled onto his shoulder. Her nipples were hard against her stays. “I am content as I am,” she said, unable to stop herself from nuzzling his throat, grazing her teeth on the salty skin.
“That is because you don’t know any better.” He stroked the soft outer curve of her breast. “Once you have experienced the Faol, everything else pales by comparison.” Then he put his arms around her, moulding her to him, and his lips claimed hers.
Chapter 2
He tasted just exactly as she had imagined—of man, of myth and danger, and something more elemental. His tongue touched hers, and Iona gasped, for no man had taken such liberties with her in all her one and twenty years. Sweetness flooded her, heated her. Her lips parted wider. Of their own accord, her arms wrapped themselves around him. The solid, sinewy length of his body threw her senses into wild disarray. His kiss deepened, and she moaned.
With a harsh cry, Struan pushed her away. His chest heaved. The air was heavy with the scent of their arousal. He was stunned by how close he had come to losing control. The urge to lay her down on the sand and thrust into her, claiming her for his own without finesse, was almost too much to resist. He had no right to claim her, but she felt so good it was difficult to even remember that fact, let alone act upon it.
Breathing heavily, he pushed back the fall of hair over his brow, lifting his head to test the wind direction. “We must make haste. The tide is on the turn, and there is a storm brewing,” he said, focusing on the need to make sail, determinedly ignoring the siren call of this vulnerable, bewitching female.
Iona shivered violently. What was happening to her? So contrary to her perilous situation, her body’s response was, and yet so fierce. Behind her, the forest looked impenetrable. Even if she could escape—which she severely doubted—she had no idea how to get home, nor any means of transport. She really was a prisoner, at the mercy of the legendary Faol—for the time-being, at least. Until her father paid up, as surely he would, when he realised she had been taken. And then she would be released. Surely.
She eyed the broiling sea nervously. The McKinleys were not fisher-folk. “I take it there is no point throwing myself upon your mercy and begging you to release me?”
“None whatsoever. Your foolish father broke faith with us, and all the Highlands must see that he is duly punished.” Looking at her, holding herself tight as if she would break if she let go, Struan felt a foolish urge to do as she asked. This was not her doing. The laird deserved to pay the price, not his innocent daughter.
He straightened his shoulders and touched his fingers to his amulet. It wasn’t the first time he’d had cause to question the ancient ways, but for now he must be content to uphold them. It was too soon after his election as Alpha to contemplate change, nor to allow emotion to interfere with duty. He would not tolerate such weakness in the members of his pack. Of a certainty he must not display it himself. “Come,” he said curtly, holding out his hand, “there is no more to be said. With luck, we’ll be on Kentarra by nightfall.”
White horses foamed on the crest of a heavy swell as Struan pushed the little clinker-built sgoth out to sea, leaping lithely aboard as the water lifted the hull from the sand. The wind tugged the sail as soon as he released it, making the boat surge forward.
Iona, who had only ever sailed in the calm of a summer’s day, clutched the wooden seat as the little craft dipped and climbed in the ever-deepening swell. Across from her, Struan, perched casually in the stern, seemed quite unconcerned, holding the tiller straight, gazing off into the distance. “Where is Kentarra, I can’t see it?” she asked nervously, looking at the empty ocean.
“It is there, if you know where to look,” he replied with an enigmatic smile. An icy spray arched over them. “Pull the fur around you, it will keep you warm.”
As she did as he bid her, Iona allowed her gaze to linger on her captor’s half-naked body. His long black hair streamed out behind him, his muscles rippling as he fought to hold course. He looked like part of the landscape, a force of nature. His raw animal power, though constrained, was there nonetheless. He made her feel as if she should hold her breath. Waiting. Watching. Wondering all the time, if he would unleash it. Looking out at the fast-diminishing land, down at the deep, dark ocean, she realised she was in every way completely out of her depth. Her patent vulnerability disturbed her, but not as much as it should. She should be frightened but she didn’t know quite how to describe how she felt. Nervous. Tense. Reckless. A little wild. And excited, too, there was no denying it. The boat rocked as it crested a particularly high wave, and she clutched anxiously at the sides.
“Try to get some rest,” Struan said.
“Rest! How can I rest when I’ve been kidnapped and am being taken to some Godforsaken island against my will, to suffer who knows what barbaric indignities?” Iona muttered. But she dropped down into the hull and curled up, pulling the furs tight around her.
“Go to sleep, Iona,” Struan said, “I am many things but I am no barbarian.”
His voice was like his fur cloak—warm and comforting. It made no sense, given the circumstances, but she believed him, though she saw no need to tell him so. A man less in need of reassurance she had never met. Not a man, a Faol, she reminded herself as her lids grew heavy. She should be on her guard. And she would be, as soon as they landed. She would be. Iona dozed off.
Struan watched over her as she slept. Her hair was like burnished copper now that it had dried. Her mouth tilted up naturally, as if she smiled often. Such a slight thing she was, but she had a strength of will most unusual in mortals. Taming her would be an interesting challenge, for unlike the rest of her kind, she did indeed seem to be quite impervious to the Faol in him. It would be a delight, pleasuring her. A delight, the dance she would lead him. It would make her final surrender all the sweeter.
His manhood stirred into life again. The wolf in him whispered seductively. Take her. Take her now. She is yours to do with as you please. But as ever, the man in him prevailed. She was not his. She belonged to the clan.
He touched his amulet. It should be enough, knowing he had successfully avenged the betrayal. Enough, knowing he had passed his first major test following the recent and hard-fought battle for power. Simply handing over the female slumbering under his cloak should be a straightforward task, after all he had endured of late.
But it was not proving to be so.
“Wake up, we’re almost there.”
Iona sat up, momentarily confused as to her whereabouts until the rocking of the boat and the slap of the waves confirmed the unpalatable reality. She looked around her in the gathering gloom at the em
pty sea. “I can’t see any island. I can’t see anything.”
As she spoke, a huge bank of fog rolled ominously in, completely enveloping the boat. Just as suddenly as it had arrived, the fog cleared.
“Kentarra,” Struan said solemnly, “sovereign kingdom of the Faol.”
Iona caught her breath. A vast wall of sheer cliffs, so tall they seemed to touch the sky, rose dramatically from the sea, above which seabirds soared and swooped, their plaintive cries like the wailing of the damned. The rock was scarred with deep fissures reflecting the dying embers of the sun, so that the whole cliff seemed to be on fire, a myriad of colours, crimson and carmine, flaming gold and bright vermillion, edged with ochre and umber, beneath which a darker, glittering jet leant an ominous hue. The reflected rays danced and sparkled on the surface of the water. Behind the cliffs, the island sloped gradually down to the sea, the moorland on the plateau heavily wooded, the lower slopes vibrant green and impossibly lush, the white sandy shores inviting. “It’s magnificent,” she said softly, quite awestruck by Kentarra’s captivating beauty.
Struan nodded proudly. “It is indeed a special place. Be warned though, you will find it quite unlike what you are accustomed to.”
As he spoke, the sun dipped below the foaming sea, causing an eerie gloom to descend like a cloak on the isle. The air felt portentous. Iona shuddered involuntarily. Her homeland, her kin, all that she was familiar with, seemed impossibly distant, another world entirely. What fate awaited her at the hands of the fabled wolf-clan?
Now, she truly was afraid. Another shudder wracked her body. It hit her then, hard, as it had not when first he had revealed himself. Struan was not just a formidable, forbiddingly attractive man. He was a Faol. Oh, dear heavens, what was to become of her?
Struan was considering that very question as he steered the sgoth straight at the towering cliffs. It was the way of things, but still it didn’t seem right to give her no choice in the matter, any more than it seemed right that he could not choose to claim her for his own. He was being contrary. And contradictory. He knew that, but the feeling persisted. A rogue wave lifted the boat and threw it forward.
“You’re going to put us onto the rocks,” Iona cried out as the little boat hurtled straight at the jagged outcrop of volcanic reefs directly in front of them. “Struan!”
Even as she called his name, he steered the boat through a tiny gap. A cleft in the rock appeared directly ahead, and Struan deftly guided them into a natural harbour. “They’re called the Beast for good reason, those rocks,” Struan said, tying the rope onto an iron hoop that hung on the stone jetty before setting about taking down the sail.
“I thought we were going to drown.”
“I told you, you’re safe enough with me,” Struan said, helping her ashore, trying not to think about what would happen to her when she was no longer in his care.
Iona scrambled onto the jetty and gazed around, dizzied by the sheer scale of the cliffs that surrounded the harbour like a natural amphitheatre, confused by the unnatural calm of the azure water, which lapped harmlessly onto the dazzling white beach, so at odds with the choppy sea beyond the Beast.
A scrabbling of claws on stone and a blood-curdling howl made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Peering into the gloom she saw two wolves, teeth bared, heads low and tails straight out, bounding towards her, slavering and snarling. She screamed, instinctively huddling into Struan’s side.
“Graifgh! Thalon Kree!” Struan called, the alien words sounding both guttural and vicious. The wolves stopped in their tracks and dropped down onto their haunches before, to Iona’s astonishment, crawling forward on their bellies, whimpering and letting out little ingratiating yelps.
“You need not fear,” Struan said, putting an arm around her. “They’ll not harm you.”
“I thought they were going to tear my throat out.”
“They have come to welcome me home, that is all.”
“Oh! Are they…”
“Faol?” Struan laughed. “No, they are wolves but they are our little cousins and like to be around us.”
“They obey your commands?”
“I was born to be obeyed,” Struan said haughtily.
Halfway up the cliff, a snake of light suddenly appeared. As the dusk fell, the light grew stronger, revealing a procession of shadowy figures carrying burning torches, zigzagging down the narrow path to the harbour.
“Your welcoming committee,” Struan said, his face a grim mask. “Prepare to meet the Faol.”
Iona’s mouth was completely dry. She swallowed repeatedly. “You are a laird’s daughter,” she whispered to herself, “behave like one.”
Struan sensed her fear. He could taste it, acrid in his mouth. The first time she had wavered. Her eyes were huge in her heart-shaped face. He had to force himself to take his fur cloak from her, to pin it back around his own shoulders. Her own sweet scent had permeated it. The urge to cast caution to the winds and break all the rules grew stronger. What was wrong with him?
“What will happen to me?”
Struan’s hackles rose. “At the full moon, all being well, there will be a Binding,” he said tersely.
“I—I have heard tell of this ceremony.” Iona’s voice shook.
“Then you will know it is our way of accepting you, making you one of us,” Struan said, his eyes fixed firmly on the rapidly approaching procession. She would become Faol, if she agreed. Which, he was beginning to think, was highly unlikely. He turned to her, catching her chin in his hand. “Iona, it is best if you try to see the Binding as the privilege it is.”
“And if I do not?”
If she rejected the Binding then she would undergo Marking, the ritual that Struan loathed above all. The ritual that he knew, deep in his bones, dishonoured his people. He could not bear to contemplate it happening to Iona. If it came down to it— He clenched his fists. It would not.
“Struan? If I refuse to be accepted?”
“You will not refuse,” he said through gritted teeth. His guts twisted. Part of him didn’t want her to comply, for it would inevitably affect what made her uniquely herself—the part that deeply attracted him even though he had known her only briefly. He knew that the transformation would enhance her but somehow that didn’t seem to matter.
Duty and desire. Normally they were intertwined. Struan cursed under his breath. What right had he to challenge the ancient ways? And for the sake of a mere woman, too! “Come,” he said, holding out his hand imperiously, “your escort has arrived.”
He would have to leave her. The next time he saw her— No, he wouldn’t think about that. “Iona, you know that this is not of my choosing,” he said impulsively. “If I had my way…” Struan broke off, realising he had been perilously close to heresy.
The wolves, which had hunkered at his feet, set up a howl. The women who would form Iona’s escort were detaching themselves from the procession. The remaining Faol stood impassively, torches flaring, a respectful distance behind them.
“Struan!” The anguish in Iona’s voice made him flinch. Her fingers clutched at his arm. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to detach her from him. He had no reason at all to feel guilty.
Iona watched with growing terror as the women made their way remorselessly towards her. Struan, flanked by the wolves, was standing just a few feet away, but it felt like a hundred miles. Even in the gloom she could see that the women were stunningly beautiful. They moved with an animal grace. Their eyes glittered like the wolves. The urge to flee warred with her pride, keeping her rooted to the spot. As they circled her, Iona threw back her head defiantly and garnered all her courage. The scent of them was sweet, heady, alluring as belladonna. As she was swept away, she cast a last, pleading glance back at Struan. For a second, she thought she saw him surrender to her unspoken request. He took an involuntary step forward. Then he turned away, and she was lost among the silent, pitiless throng of Faol women.
Dark. It was pitch-black, darker ev
en than the night now, for she had been blindfolded. Struan had abandoned her. She had only herself to rely on. “I am a McKinley,” Iona muttered. “I am a McKinley.”
The women hurried her on, nudging and pushing her up the path until the air changed and Iona sensed that she was in an enclosed space. Her boots rang on stone. Stairs, endless amounts of narrow stairs. To her immense relief there was a rope to cling to. At the top, she was guided along a passageway. A heavy door clanged shut behind her, and light dazzled her eyes as the blindfold was removed.
She was in a room like no other. A chamber with a vast vaulted ceiling of bare rock, the rock walls hung with heavy tapestries. It was warm, a huge fire burned in a hearth, which seemed to be hewn into the rock itself. Was she in some sort of cave, or grotto? “What is this place?” she asked, her eyes darting from one woman to the other.
One of them, older than the others, with rich chestnut hair, reached out to touch Iona’s own copper tresses. “You are in the kingdom of the Faol, Highlander,” she said softly. “Your new home.”
Iona hugged her arms tightly around herself and tried to back away, but the women drew closer. Their scent was stronger now, overpowering. Hands reached out to touch her, rubbing the rough cotton of her sark, the wool of her petticoats, between long, delicate fingers. “Such coarse material,” a dusky, almond-eyed beauty declared with a curl of her lip. “I wonder you can bear it next to your skin.”
The gowns of the Faol women were of a downy silklike material in vibrant, jewel-like colours. Ruby red, sapphire blue, emerald green. “Feels nice, doesn’t it?” the chestnut-haired woman said, capturing Iona’s hand and placing it on her bodice, laughing when Iona blushed wildly, snatched her fingers away in shock at the contact with the woman’s bare flesh.
“Let her be, Lillias.” The dusky beauty’s smile was cruel. “Poor little Highland creature, you’re not like us, are you?”
Claimed by the Wolf Prince Page 2