by Laurin Wittig - Guardians Of The Targe 02 - Highlander Avenged
“It does not feel bad,” she said, not even sure where that sense came from. “But I dinna ken if it is good, either.”
“Then we have no choice but to find out for ourselves.” He took her hand and pulled her in the direction the stag call had come from.
It was not long before they spied the stag again. The majestic animal snorted at them, as if in disdain that they had tarried when he was in a hurry, but he took off at a slower pace than before, heading straight up the steep slope.
MALCOLM FOLLOWED JEANETTE up the steep side of the ben, curiosity and excitement drawing him after her as if they were tethered to each other. He did not understand exactly what was happening, but the lass seemed both sure of herself and tense. Of course, just the idea that they had seen the same stag twice in different places was unusual. And she said she had dreamed about this deer leading them today, which was odd, too. The more he thought about it, the odder it got. She’d dreamed of a stag with a bent antler, received a warning from him one day—and he could not deny, no matter how much he’d like to, that the deer had somehow warned her—then she had seen him again, the same deer, for the bent antler was unmistakable, doing what she had dreamed he did . . .
She dreamed it, and then it happened . . .
His mind stuttered and his feet slowed as his thoughts coalesced into one clear understanding. ’Twasn’t a dream she’d had. ’Twas a vision. She had seen this day, the stag, and the place that same damned stag was leading them to.
Everything she had shared about her cousin, her clan, and yet she had not told him what she was. Did she not trust him with this knowledge? Nay, she trusted him with the secrets of her clan, so why would she not trust him with this?
“Jeanette!” She was quite a ways ahead of him now and didn’t seem to hear him. He scrambled to catch up to her. “Jeanette!” He got close enough to tug on her skirt, stopping her abruptly. She looked back at him from her position just above him as if he’d awakened her from a deep sleep—or a vision.
She blinked slowly, but didn’t say anything.
“Your dream about the stag was no ordinary dream. ’Twas a vision. You are a seer, angel, are you not?”
“A seer?” She looked away from him but did not resume her trek up the ben.
“Did you fear what I would do if I knew?” he asked.
“Fear?” She seemed genuinely confused. “Nay.” She looked off into the distance again. “Seer? Do you really think I am a seer, Malcolm?” The look on her face was hopeful and doubtful, all at the same time.
Now he was the confused one. “You are, are you not?”
“I do not ken, but I think I might be. ’Tis not uncommon among Guardians.” She stared into the distance again and Malcolm realized she was not looking at anything, but was lost in her thoughts, as if she searched deep in her memories as she had searched in the scrolls last night. “But I am not the Guardian. Rowan is, so why would this manifest now?”
“This has not happened before that dream?” he asked, as puzzled as she was. How could she not know she was a seer?
“A few times when I was a wee lass, but none since then, at least none that I remember.” She turned toward him now and sat so that she was looking Malcolm straight in the eye. The stag barked in the distance and she waved a hand in the air as if telling him to wait a moment, though he was not in sight.
“ ’Twould be a formidable weapon against our enemies, would it not.” It wasn’t a question, but more like she was thinking out loud.
“Aye, angel, ’twould. Are you certain you have not had more of these dreams since you’ve been grown?”
She looked off in the distance again, shaking her head slowly. “Dreams fade so fast. But I have always had an uncanny ability to ken where needed herbs are for my healing simples, or what an ill person needs in order to recover, as if the knowledge has been set into my mind when I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Like in a dream you don’t quite remember.”
She nodded slowly and only his finger, still under her chin, kept her from gazing away again.
“But this dream you do remember.” He did not question her, for ’twas obvious that she did.
She gripped his hand but did not remove it from her chin. “I do—but only to a point.”
“Was this conversation part of the dream?”
She closed her eyes this time, then slowly shook her head. “You were not in the dream, at least not that I remember. Let us see what happens and I will know better if I truly had a vision, or if it is only that I have perhaps been here before as a child and do not remember it.”
“A test then,” he said. “And you will tell me later if you saw this day or if ’tis only an echo of a childhood memory?”
She leaned forward and placed a chaste kiss on his lips, though his blood still heated at the light contact. “I promise.” The deer barked again, as if sensing that they were ready to continue.
They only got another glimpse or two of the stag, but the trail was easy to follow, if not easy to climb. As they made their way onto a narrow shelf, there was a final call from the stag.
“He is gone,” Jeanette said, and Malcolm could feel that she was right.
“Is this the place?” he asked.
“Aye,” she said, wonder in her voice. She reached out and touched the stone face of the mountain, running her finger over what looked to be grooves carved into the rock. “Just as I dreamed it.”
He stepped up to get a closer look and found a stylized deer under her fingertips, the right antler bent, just like that of the stag they had followed. A chill ran down his spine. He looked at the ground to see if there were hoofprints there, suddenly not sure if the stag was real or a vision itself, but the shelf was bare stone without even a little dirt to show what had passed by this place.
Jeanette grabbed his hand then and pulled him after her into a dark fissure in the mountainside.
JEANETTE BURST OUT of the confining fissure, pulling Malcolm behind her, and into a large sun-filled grotto where the ceiling of what had once been a cave had clearly collapsed long ago. A large pool of crystal-clear water was tucked up against the wall opposite the entrance and took up half the space in the grotto. It was surrounded by jagged rock walls that were covered in ferns and mosses and tiny blooming flowers of blues and yellows that she had not seen anywhere before. The walls were more darkly streaked where water trickled down them from above, splashing just enough to fill the grotto with quiet music, and decorating the plant life with droplets that sparkled in the slanting sunshine. The rest of the floor, from the edge of the pool to the spot where they now stood, was carpeted in thick mosses in more shades of green than she could count.
“ ’Tis beautiful,” Jeanette said, her words like a sigh.
“Aye, ’tis. Do you remember it this way?”
She was quiet as she turned, looking at every part of the grotto before she answered. “I have never been here before, not as a child, nor in my dream, but the entrance . . . the carved deer on the rock next to it . . . those I dreamed about.” Jeanette kept her voice even, quiet, though a thrill ran through her unlike anything she had ever experienced before, as if she’d been brought to the brink of discovering a secret treasure. But what was it?
She turned again, taking in the entire grotto. It looked as if it had been hidden here for ages, kept secret from anyone who wasn’t led here . . .
Led here. First she’d dreamt of this place, then the stag had literally led her here. But for what purpose?
“Do you see any more carvings like the deer?” she asked Malcolm.
“You look that way,” he said, signaling to her right. “I’ll look this way. Is there anything specific I should be looking for?”
Jeanette shook her head. “I do not ken, but I have been brought here for a reason and we must discover what it is.”
“That we
will, angel mine.”
The endearment settled her jittery nerves and reminded her that she was not alone in this. Malcolm was here. Malcolm would keep her safe—she knew that, deep in her bones without any help from a vision. He turned away from her and began examining the stone wall surrounding them, and she did the same. Every few feet, at varying heights on the wall, she found carvings of animals done in the same distinctive style. Hares, wolves, an eagle, a serpent, a boar. No more deer.
They called out what they found to each other, for Malcolm found similar animals carved into the walls. When they had both reached the edge of the pool, they walked along it until they met each other.
“ ’Tis a magical place,” Malcolm said, wonder in his eyes.
“Aye, but I do not ken why I was brought here.”
Malcolm reached for her hand, enveloping it in his. “Perhaps we were brought here to understand that your dreams are not just dreams. Perhaps we were brought here to understand that you are a seer.”
She looked up and found him staring down at her, wonder and something deeper mingling in his expression as he bent to kiss her.
All thought left her mind as she moved into his arms and lost herself in his kiss. Heat surged through her, as if they stood in the heart of a fire, but it did not hurt. It urged, wrapping around them as if to draw them closer and closer together. Jeanette tilted her head back, baring her neck to Malcolm’s lips, building the heat even more. She ran her hands down his back and up again, reveling in the hard muscles that bunched and quivered beneath her touch. But it was not enough. She wanted his golden skin beneath her fingers. She found the pin that held his plaid at his shoulder, and released it, the heavy wool falling behind him. She tugged his tunic free and slid her hands under it, sliding her palms along his back, her breath hitching as his hand cupped her breast and she suddenly needed his palm against her skin, too.
“There are too many clothes between us,” she murmured against his lips.
“Aye,” was all he said, but he was suddenly busy at the laces of her gown, sliding it off her shoulders and down her arms as soon as they were loosened, the gown puddling at her feet.
When her hands were free of the garment she reached for his belt, letting it fall as her gown had, the rest of his plaid following it to the ground until she was left in her kirtle, and he in his tunic. Suddenly she grew shy.
“Angel?” He tipped her chin up so she had to look at him. “We will stop.”
Jeanette swallowed, and let herself see only Malcolm, see only the man she loved. Her breath hitched when she realized ’twas true. She loved him. It had happened so fast, ’twas unseemly, but still, it was true. In the space of ten days she had come to feel more for him than she had ever felt for any man.
Where she had seen only a bleak future for herself when Rowan became Guardian, now she could see happiness, a family of her own, a place for herself in the arms of this strong, honorable man. She was free to choose for herself now, unfettered by the need of the Guardian to choose the clan’s chief. She was released from the requirement to bide in Dunlairig, at least once Rowan was trained. For the first time in her life, Jeanette realized, she could do what she wanted without the weight of responsibility that came with being the future Guardian dictating her path.
And she wanted Malcolm for her own.
She shook her head slowly at him. “I do not want to stop, Malcolm. I ken we have not known each other long, and I ken that this is something best kept for the marriage bed, but if there is one thing I have learned these past weeks, it is that life is uncertain and hard and I do not want to depend upon the future for my happiness, for there may not be a future. I am happy with you.”
“And I am happy beyond experience with you, Jeanette, angel.”
“You did not hesitate in the forest to tryst with me.”
“Oh, aye, I did, a lot. But if we continue”—his eyes went dark and the heat that had faded while she pondered her future sprang back to life so fast, it took her breath away—“I will make you mine this day.”
She smiled, her heart blossoming at the thought that he wanted her that much. “And I will make you mine.”
He pulled her so close, only two thin layers of linen separated her from what she wanted more than anything—this man to be her own.
“Truly?” he whispered as he pressed a light kiss to her lips.
“Truly.”
She lifted his tunic once more, breaking the kiss long enough to rid him of it. Stepping back into the circle of his arms, he renewed his exploration of her with his lips as she reveled in the feel of his skin beneath her hands, allowing herself now to explore his back, his arms, skimming lightly over the scar of his remarkably healed wound, his buttocks, then moving her hands between them, running them over his chest. As she skimmed her fingertips over his taut nipples, he groaned and took her mouth with his, letting his tongue play over hers in a dance that sent shafts of desire through her. He swiftly untied the lace of her kirtle and slid it off her, then pulled her hard against him, the evidence of his desire hot between them.
Slowly he lowered her until her back sank into the cool, thick moss carpeting the grotto floor, and he lay over her, nestled in the cradle of her thighs. Instinctively she hooked her legs around his trim waist and pressed against him.
“Not yet, angel,” he whispered, his lips against her neck.
Jeanette’s heart hammered, and her body hummed with desire and heat. So much heat. And then Malcolm moved down her, trailing sweet kisses over her neck and her breast until he ran his tongue over her almost painfully peaked nipple, drawing a low moan from her such as she’d never heard from herself. She threaded her fingers through his hair, and pulled him closer, closer, until he chuckled and took her into his mouth, pulling hard on her nipple until she writhed beneath him, desperate to reach that peak he’d taken her to before. He moved to the other breast, raising her need even higher. His hand slid over her belly, down between them, until he touched that place between her legs that begged for pressure, for release. He slid a finger into her wetness.
“Aye. There—” Her voice was ragged.
He let out a low growl, as if pleased with what he found, then pulled his hand free.
“Nay, do not stop.”
“I have no intention of stopping. Jeanette, sweetheart of mine, open your eyes. I would look into them.”
She did, losing herself in the depth of his gaze, the love she saw there, the yearning, and the need that matched her own. She felt a different pressure between her legs, a welcoming pressure, and she followed the demands of her body and let her knees go wide as her hips raised to meet him. Slowly, oh so slowly, he slid into her until she felt a pull, then he retreated.
“You are sure,” he said, his teeth gritted together as if he were in pain.
Jeanette took his face in her hands and looked deep into his eyes. “We already belong to each other. I am sure.”
He thrust into her, stopping at her quick gasp, holding himself still when all he wanted was to bury himself in the hot wetness of her. After a short moment, she kissed him.
“That is not all there is to it?” she said, a teasing twinkle in her eye that he had not seen before.
“Nay, not nearly.” And then he pressed into her, slowly, letting her body become accustomed to him until he could go no deeper, and then she wriggled against him, pressing herself harder to him and he could control himself no longer.
Jeanette’s body tightened as he surged into her and retreated, again and again, bringing her closer and closer to that incredible shattering sensation she’d experienced only with this man, bringing her closer, and closer, until he went rigid against her, his back arched, pressing so hard into her she leapt over the precipice, flying with him to heights she had never imagined, both of them shattering, then joining, then shattering again and again and again.
CHAPTER T
HIRTEEN
JEANETTE LAY BESIDE Malcolm on the soft moss, slowly coming back to herself as if she had left her body in that moment of union with him and now floated down from dizzying heights. She slowly settled back into herself, the same, but fundamentally different. Gradually, her senses began to gather information from outside her—the trickling and splashing of the water, the lovely green aroma of the moss crushed beneath her, the warm pressure where Malcolm’s arm was pressed against hers, their hands clasped as if neither of them could bear to be completely apart from the other after such a wondrous act of joining together.
Cool air settled on her bare skin so she rolled on her side. Malcolm hooked his arm around her and pulled her close against him.
“I did not hurt you badly, did I?” he asked, his voice whisper-soft.
“Nay, hardly at all, and after . . .”—she put her hand on his chest and propped her chin upon it—“. . . after, I felt nothing but joy.”
“I think you felt a wee bit more than just joy, angel.” The teasing glint was back in his eyes and she could not help but laugh.
“Aye, a wee bit more than joy.” She stretched up to kiss him when something caught her eye. She stopped and sat up.
“What is it?”
“I am not sure, but I think there is something—” She stood to get a better look and her eyes alit on a large flat stone that sat in the middle of the pool, just below the surface of the water, which was why she had not noticed it before. It was far enough away that she could not step from the shore to the stone.
“Jeanette?” Malcolm rose to stand beside her, looking in the same direction, but he did not seem to see what she did.
She pointed, suddenly sure that was what she was supposed to find.
“Stay here,” she said to him as she waded in.
The water was instantly numbing. It was deeper than she had thought, and the stone seemed farther from the shore than she had thought as well. She was quickly up to her waist in the water, but then she scrambled up onto the large stone. Water streamed from her body, disturbing the surface of the stone, which was barely covered by the pool, making it impossible to see the stone itself even while she stood upon it. But she could feel something unusual beneath her feet. She began to trace the grooves she could feel, and quickly determined that they were not natural, but were incised, as were the animal carvings on the grotto walls. She knelt and patiently let the water still as much as it would. Suddenly the carving was revealed: the same three swirling circles within a circle symbol that was incised on the Highland Targe.