Warrior’s Redemption

by Melissa Mayhue

  Out here, with the moon shining brightly in the cloudless sky, the music was but a faint beat in the night. The early snow that had plagued their journey back from the stone circle had fallen only lightly here and melted into the thirsty soil almost as soon as it had touched ground.

  Dani’s steps slowed and she glanced up at him, a shy smile perched at the corners of her lips.

  “I didn’t exactly have a destination in mind. Only out. Away from the smoke and the noise.”

  “And good timing it was to be out of there, too.” Warriors whose senses were heightened by the free-flowing ale and pulsing music were already pairing off with eager women, their bodies swaying together to the beat of the drums. Another hour and they’d have been forced to step over the writhing heaps on the floor. He didn’t fancy the idea of Dani’s seeing that part of the celebration. “This way.”

  He took the lead now, holding tightly to her hand as he directed their path out to the glory he would one day complete. As they approached the half-finished building, he tried to imagine it through her eyes, wondering what she would think of his project.

  The site straddled a small stream, which had been part of his reason for choosing this spot. Stone walls jutted up on all four sides, though they’d only reached a height equal to his chest. The roof was yet a dream, but one day he would complete his design.

  “What is this place?” she asked when they stopped.

  “In my father’s homeland, most settlements have a bathhouse. It was one of the first additions he made to Tordenet Castle when it became his. It is my intent to construct one here as well.”

  “A bathhouse,” she repeated, smiling and stretching up on tiptoe for a better look.

  “This way,” he encouraged, drawing her toward the side where a door would one day stand. “The entrance.”

  She walked through ahead of him, stopping just inside. “Oh, Malcolm.”

  Her voice, thick with disappointment, stopped him where he stood.

  Again he tried to see it as he thought she might. An unfinished set of walls, surrounding a piece of meadow.

  “I’ve much yet to accomplish before it’s done, but one day the world will see it as I do in my mind.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” she responded quickly, walking toward the center of the enclosed space. “It’s just such a shame you’ll have to cut down this tree. It feels as if it belongs here on the bank of this stream, its little branches stretching out over it as they do.”

  She was a king’s ransom indeed that he was giving up in order to save his sister’s life.

  “The tree will stay.” It, more than the stream, was the impetus for choosing this site. “The rowan is sacred to my people. When I finish construction, the roof will open to the sky at this point, allowing this rowan to live on.” Exactly as in the atrium room his father had built at Tordenet Castle.

  “Oh, good,” she said, nodding as she reached out to run her fingers down the tree’s trunk. “That’s so good. I’d like to see that when it’s finished.” A pause, almost as if she were marshaling her courage to continue. “But I wonder, will I get to see it, Malcolm? Or do you plan to send me away when you return?”

  And there it was. That which needed to be spoken aloud. The words that would rip his heart from his chest, but which must be said.

  “This is yer home now, Dani. I’ve told you that. You’ve no a need to doubt yer future.”

  “But you’ll be wed to another.” She leaned against the tree, her arm outstretched, her fingers still laced with his.

  The pale skin of her breasts rose and fell with each breath and, in the moonlight, her skin seemed to glow as if her life spirit radiated a light from within. So delicate and sweet, yet her words cut like a freshly honed blade.

  “When I return with my sister, I must wed the MacKilyn’s daughter. But I’ll see to it that both you and Christiana are well cared for. I’m sure you’ll get on well with her and become great friends. You’ll have shelter and food such as we have and the freedom to spend yer time as you wish. You’ll want for nothing as long as I draw breath. You’ve my oath on that.”

  She filled her lungs, slowly, deeply, and blew the air out again before meeting his gaze.

  “Don’t give an oath you can’t keep.”

  “There’s none that can stop me from keeping that oath.” He would build an entire section onto the castle if he had to. No matter the cost. No matter how long it took. This would be her home.

  “No.” She shook her head, the gleam of tears shining in her eyes. “You can’t promise I’ll want for nothing because the one thing I want, the only thing I want, you won’t be able to give me.”

  He opened his mouth to refute her claim, but she pressed one delicate finger to his lips.

  “You can’t, Malcolm. Because the only thing I want is you. And no matter what happens, I lose you after tonight. Whether you’re lost in this battle you go to fight or you’re lost to another woman, the end result is that I can’t have you.”

  There should be blood to accompany pain such as he felt now. Copious amounts of bright red blood. Enough to cover the largest of battlefields. But no, a broken heart did not bleed as a wound of the flesh would. Nor, he feared, would it heal as a wound of the flesh would.

  “I . . . I have no choice.” He held her hand, grasped it tightly within his own, willing her to understand. “Skuld wove the skein of our lives long ago. What is to come after this night is not in our power to control.”

  “Maybe not,” she conceded, taking his other hand in hers and pulling him toward her. “But what is to come tonight is completely within our control.”

  She leaned into him, rising up on tiptoe to press her soft lips against his, dropping his hand to twine her fingers in the hair at the base of his neck.

  He could push her away. Should push her away. But he couldn’t seem to find the strength for anything more than lifting his lips from hers.

  “I will not ask you to be my mistress.” He would not dishonor either her or the woman he would marry in such a way.

  “That’s a good thing, because I have a very strict, no-exceptions policy about not dating married men.”

  She caught up his hand again and pulled him with her as she sank to her knees under the rowan tree.

  He joined her willingly, though Freya knew, he should walk away.

  Instead he caressed her face, running his thumb over her cheek. “One night, love. Can you live with the knowledge of only one night?”

  She kissed him again, fiercely this time, breaking the kiss to capture his face in her hands. “I’ll have to. Because what I couldn’t live with is the knowledge that you’re the one man in the whole of time for me and I let you slip away without sharing even one night with you.”

  Her fingers tugged at his shirt, freeing the cloth to slide underneath against his bare chest.

  “Yer hands are cold.”

  “All of me is cold.” She hooked her fingers in the waist of his plaid and urged him toward her as she lay down on her back. “Come heat me up.”

  He wouldn’t make her ask him a second time.

  MALCOLM’S BODY WAS warm and large and even had he not supported his weight on his elbows as he did when he covered her, Dani wanted him so badly that she wouldn’t have cared.

  Cold air skittered along her skin as his knee nudged the edge of her skirt up along her leg, even as his fingers worked at the laces covering her breasts.

  Need coursed through her body. Desperate, mind-numbing need.

  She pulled at the sides of his plaid, crumpling the cloth in her fingers until at last the coarse hair of his legs brushed against the backs of her hands.

  The drums in the distance beat in time with her need, a heady background of now, now, now, thrumming in her mind, until she moaned with her impatience.

  His tongue playing a game of hide-and-seek at her ear, stilled, and a puff of air wafted over her lobe as he chuckled his response.

  “Easy, love. We’ve this whole
night for ourselves. We’ll take it slow and enjoy one another.”

  “Like hell we will,” she panted.

  They lay, for all intents and purposes, in the man’s backyard, a party in full swing well within earshot. Not to mention she was pretty sure she could see her breath out here.

  Oh, she had every intention of enjoying the whole of the night, but act 1, “Love Under the Stars,” would be only a prologue. A short, quick prologue.

  She pushed her body against his, and he rolled with her, grasping her waist with his hands as she sat on his midsection.

  The erection pressing against her leg was every bit as good as she’d hoped.

  Maybe it was more appropriate to think of this as an appetizer to a banquet.

  She covered his mouth with hers, letting her tongue dance across his lips before sitting back up astride him and opening the laces he had been fumbling with.

  Cold peaked her nipples instantly. Cold or want. Not that it mattered which. His hands covered them immediately, the pads of his rough thumbs tracing circles of heat.

  She was ready. She was more than ready.

  Rising to her knees, she gathered her skirts out of her way before leaning forward to drive herself down on his jutting manhood.

  “For the love of Freya,” he groaned, and flipped her to her back.

  They stared into one another’s eyes for a long moment, his body poised above hers, him buried within her heat.

  And the need overtook her again. The searing, driving want of him, pushing her over the edge. He tightened his grip as, beyond her control, her muscles pulsed in rhythmic contractions around his heat as if her very soul sought to draw him deep inside her for keeping.

  His panting echoed hers and, as their eyes locked together, he began a slow withdrawal and reentry.

  Slow at first, but his need matched her own, evidenced by his increasing tempo. She lifted her hips to meet him and he drove into her, crushing her against him, burying his face in the curve of her neck as he buried his pulsing shaft in the folds of her body.

  They lay together, each breath a short, hard little pant, neither willing to move.

  So this was what it was like making love with your SoulMate.

  “Once is definitely not going to be enough,” she confided, tracing a finger over the contours of his cheek.

  He kissed the tip of her nose, her forehead, and both her eyelids before pulling away to brush a curl away from her face.

  “Yer right, it’s no, to that I will confess. But we agreed. Only this once.”

  She shook her head, forcing a smile much brighter than she actually felt. “No. We agreed on only this one night. Surely a powerful warrior like you, descendant of the mighty Odin and the gods of Asgard, is good for more than just one time a night.”

  He stared at her for a moment before throwing his head back, laughter bubbling up from his throat.

  “Oh, aye, lassie. I’ll gladly be about proving my endurance to you.”

  Twenty

  HOW WRONG WAS it to pray for an eclipse?

  Dani lay in Malcolm’s arms, head on his chest, willing the sun not to rise and bring an end to her one night with him. But even now the abundance of candles they had lit in their exuberance to explore one another’s bodies burned low. And the fact that he’d been a man of his word, repeatedly proving his “endurance,” only made the approaching end of their time together that much harder to accept.

  Her fingertip tingled as she traced the line of the tattoo over his heart, a perfect circle of what appeared to be spears, with runic writing at its center. Perfect except for a small bump of a scar across one of the spokes. It was meant for protection, he’d told her, a sign of Odin, from whose bloodline his family claimed descent. As the moment he would leave her to ride off to battle approached, she sent up prayers to her god and all of his that the protection ward would be effective.

  “Would that the sun might slow its arrival this day. You were right, my love, I canna see how once will be enough.”

  She smiled as his voice rumbled in his chest and tickled her ear, unwilling to allow herself to waste her last hours with him drowning in sorrow and self-pity. Instead she chose to concentrate on the wonder that allowed them both to have shared a single thought with regard to the sun’s arrival.

  There would be time for sorrow after he’d gone.

  “Losing you tears at my heart as wickedly as the knowledge that I canna countenance so much loss of life if I am able to prevent it.”

  Not a concern she’d ever thought to hear expressed by a medieval highland warrior.

  “My aunt Jean used to say that, instead of sending men into battle, if they made the leaders square off against one another, there’d be way fewer wars.”

  His fingers combed through her hair, tracing the shape of her earlobe, sending a shiver of delight sparking down her spine.

  Until his hand stilled.

  “It occurs to me you present a possibility I’d no even considered.”

  “What?” she asked lazily, waiting for his hand to move again.

  “Yer aunt Jean sounds to be a wise woman, love. She may well have had the right of it. Two leaders meeting face-to-face might well avert a battle.”

  He kissed the top of her head and slid out from under her, out of her grasp, out of the bed.

  Dani’s body tensed as she rolled over to watch him slipping into his clothes. What had she done? It had only been idle chatter. She hadn’t been talking about him personally. Of all the things she didn’t want, his risking his own personal safety was right at the top of the list.

  “You’re not thinking of doing something stupid, are you? You don’t need to get dressed yet, you know. We still have a good hour or so before first light.”

  First light. When he’d leave her to join his men on a journey that would end in battle. With him as the leader.

  Her stomach flip-flopped, forming a hard, sour knot as she anticipated what was going through his mind.

  “Malcolm? Tell me you’re not going to do what I think you are. Tell me you’re not that foolish.”

  He finished knotting the leather around his waist before he came to her, gathering her in his arms to draw her close.

  “It’s no foolish to attempt to gain yer ends without sacrificing the lives of others. Those men are my friends, my kinsmen. They’ve women who care for them every bit as much as you do for me.”

  “Don’t do this,” she whispered, knowing even as she spoke he’d already made up his mind. “Those men won’t thank you for leaving them behind, you know. It’s not worth risking your life just because you’re worried some of them might be harmed.”

  He cupped her face in his hands and placed a kiss on her forehead.

  “It’s no just their safety, love, though that should be enough in its own right. Think.” He pulled her to him, covering her lips with his for a brief kiss. “If I’ve no call to use the MacKilyn men, I’ve no debt to the old laird. I’ll be free to return to you. To many more nights such as the one we’ve just spent together.”

  Another kiss and he stood to retrieve his sword and sling it onto his back.

  “If you return at all,” she whispered, giving voice to her greatest fear.

  “Here, now. None of that. The gods hear and favor confidence.” He grinned as he leaned down to rummage in a wooden chest, standing up with a cloth roll he tucked under his arm. “I’d ask you to act as the warrior’s woman you will be soon enough. Will you do that for me?”

  Dani slid to the edge of the bed, her lips still tingling from his last kiss, wrapping the blanket around her body as she stood. “I’ll try.”

  What else could she say? She wasn’t about to send him out that door with more on his mind to distract him than he already had.

  “Good. I need you to dress and station yerself in front of Patrick’s door. It’s yer best chance to catch him there before he goes to make ready the men. I need you to tell him what I’m about and to pass along to him my orders. He’s n
o to follow me, but to wait here for any word I send. I hold him responsible to see that Dermid is kept here where he’ll be safe, even as I hold him responsible to see to the safety of all our people here. I must do this on my own, to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. To reclaim my own life. Will you carry that word to him for me?”

  She nodded, feeling too close to tears to attempt words.

  Again he pulled her close, bending to kiss her. She fastened her arms around his neck, returning the kiss as if she might never feel his lips on hers again.

  Fearing as he walked out of the room and closed the door behind him that indeed she might not.

  Twenty-one

  IF HE WERE to slice her throat now, to bleed her dry as she lay helpless in the thrall of her visions, he would never again suffer the vexation of her stubborn resistance.

  He also would never learn the content of those visions. That knowledge alone stayed his hand.

  Torquil of Katanes, laird of the MacDowylt, chosen son of Odin, looked out on the sparkling stars dotted across an inky night sky and roared in frustration.

  At his feet, his half sister, Christiana, lay on a bed of cushions, lost in the visions that even now danced across her face in shadows he was at a loss to interpret.

  That power had been denied him.

  Delicate and fragile, she was the exact image of the dark-haired Tinkler whore his father had married after his mother’s death. That the blood of his ancestors, the mighty Gods of Asgard, ran through her tainted body sickened him. That the power of the ancient seid, the magic of their ancestors, lay in her hands infuriated him. It was a power that should have been his.

  The half-breed abominations his father had spawned with the Tinkler were a stain on the world, an insult to the purity of their bloodline, for which he would never forgive his father. He had no doubt that Odin had never forgiven the old man, either, as evidenced by Alfor’s recent death. It was Odin’s punishment, as much as the potions he personally had prepared for his father, that had been to blame for Alfor’s final days of suffering.

  Now, as it should, it fell to him and him alone to redeem the family line and reclaim the greatness of their destiny. Before he was finished, the world would answer to him as it once had to his mighty ancestor.