Kilting Me Softly

by Persephone Jones

  Suddenly, something in the night sky caught her attention. From out of nowhere, a strong wind rushed past her. It tangled in the trees like a flock of birds, moving the branches as though they were strings on a harp. It was as if the wind had words and the wooden monoliths were speaking for them, whispering through their branches like reeds. But the wind was isolated, acting in a way that wind could not, taking shape, taking life. It was speaking to her in urgent warning.

  Run, run, run!

  Chapter Four

  Safely on the other side of her inn room door, Morgan drew the bolt and locked it. Wheezing and gasping for breath, she watched the door as if it might blow off its hinges and explode into a thousand metal shards at any second. Dissatisfied with the steely fortifications, she braced the wood and wicker chair against it. Racing around the room, she went to the windows, checked the locks, pulled the curtains shut. Uncertain what to do next, she paced like an animal and tried to calm herself.

  I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay…

  Morgan shook her head in utter dismay. All the preparation, time and money spent searching for answers to find herself in this crazed night terror of a dream. She could have sobbed, but something within her held it together.

  Disbelief.

  Twins. She almost laughed. It never occurred to her to consider such a thing. Without permission, her mind drifted to what she’d witnessed in the forest. Perhaps she was mistaken. Stress could make a person see things.

  But that?

  Best-case scenario, they would kill each other and she could leave without suspicion.

  One thing was certain, she wasn’t going to stick around to find out. In a frenzy, she threw her clothes back into her bags. Never comfortable with putting her things in drawers when she traveled, it wouldn’t take her long before she could call a taxi. Making a mad dash into the bathroom, she gathered her various toiletries and threw them in her overnight bag. Leaning into the shower, she grabbed her body wash, razor and shampoo.

  The room went black and she gasped. An icy chill snaked up her spine. She prayed the monsters hadn’t followed her. Moving at a snail’s pace, she inched her way to the window and forced herself to pull back the curtain enough to peek out. Someone had cut the power to the building.

  Then she heard it.

  A noise from the window. Morgan gripped the only thing she could use as a weapon, her disposable razor, and prepared to do battle. The billowing curtain at the far end of the room indicated she’d left a window unlocked but she knew better. She’d locked them all.

  Her heart thumped wildly. Someone was in the room with her. He met her with a quick grab and covered her mouth, putting a forceful squeeze on the hand that held the razor, causing her to drop the pitiful means of defense.

  “Don’t scream or he’ll hear you.” The Scottish accent was strong in her ear.

  Morgan concentrated on breathing, doing her best to stay sane through the command. Her mind spun its wheel in attempts to catch up, still waylaid by how he’d managed to get in. When she envisioned her room on the second floor, she didn’t like where her conclusions took her. Pondering it brought back the image of the crazed man, the bizarre phantom wind and the horrid brawl in the woods.

  “He can smell your fear and if you let it overpower you, he’ll find us and kill us both. Do you understand?”

  The man standing behind her relaxed his grip so she could stand up straight, but he didn’t let go. Leaning against the wall, he kept his hand on her mouth and a firm arm wrapped around her, holding her body against him like a second skin. She remembered the hard planes and shapes of his form, all painfully familiar. And apparently he remembered her too, because something below his belt stirred against her backside. “Not that he’ll be smelling anything for a while. I knocked the shit out of him when I thought he’d hurt you.”

  Conall.

  In defeat she sank into him, but her mind railed against her, angry at her body’s unchecked reaction. He was solid, strong and powerfully built but she hadn’t wanted her body to yield to him with such ease. She tried to ignore where he’d chosen to hold her, under her bust, his forearm like a shelf for her breasts, naked under her sweater and tender from his touch. With her back pressed against his chest she felt his rapid pulse, his woodsy scent filled her lungs, his warm hand directly under her nose had a faint scent she recognized. It was her own. And then there was the matter of his cock prodding her in just the right place.

  “Show me a sign you understand.”

  Morgan nodded and he released her, true to his word. She spun around and took a step backward, her body like a coiled spring, tensed and on the alert, minus a weapon but more than ready and willing to spar. In the darkness, she could barely see him but she knew who he was beyond a shadow of doubt.

  Conall.

  Palms up and panting with labored breath, he approached, making a slow and steady attempt to engage her. She could scream. Nothing could stop her from it. And yet something in the truthful way he’d spoken to her coupled with his state of disarmament kept her from tearing into him. She could always scream if she didn’t like what he had to say.

  “Are you hurt? Did he mark you?” In a one fluid movement, he lowered to a squat and examined her leg. “I almost died when I saw him reach for you.”

  She didn’t remember falling. However, by the telltale signs of caked-on dirt and bloody scratches on her shins and knees, she had. Unnerved by his unauthorized perusal of her body, Morgan jumped out of his reach and slapped his hand away. “Get away from me. You’re supposed to be dead!” With a small leap and roll, she went across the bed like a trained commando. Safely on the other side of it, she maintained her defensive stance. Though now her back was to the open window, the curtain still swelling in and out like a living, breathing thing.

  “The dagger isn’t real silver.”

  Morgan found she could not answer, staring back at him in wild-eyed disbelief. Shaking, she remembered purchasing the jewel-encrusted knife at the gift shop in London. The clerk swore it was real silver. The fact that she’d put her life in the hands of a fake was more than her mind could handle. “I killed you!”

  “No. But I almost wish you had.” Conall pulled down the neckline of his sweater and showed her the punctured skin, clearly sore and somewhat bloody but not life-threatening in the least. And it should have been. She remembered the blade sinking deep into his flesh, blood gushing out. “If that was Cupid’s arrow, I’m a dead man.”

  Her feet threatened to give out beneath her. She whined pitifully. He should be dead. The blow would have killed anyone. Anyone human, that is.

  Suddenly it occurred to her that he shouldn’t have been standing there for another reason. She’d tied him to the bed. Yet he’d come to her rescue. “How did you get loose?”

  “I changed.”

  She took a moment to try to decipher meaning in what he’d said but came up dry. “Changed clothes? You’re not making any sense and by God, you’d better start.”

  Speaking of that. “Why aren’t you naked?”

  Conall shared her look of confusion. “What?”

  “If you turned into a—” She couldn’t say it.

  “A werewolf.”

  Or listen to him say it. “Then why don’t your clothes look like coleslaw? You should be naked.”

  He had the audacity to smirk, the arrogant bastard. She squinted, underscoring how serious she was, and the look of amusement disappeared like chalk drawings in the rain. When he didn’t offer an explanation quickly enough, she pointed at him. “Why?”

  “I took them off.” Conall shook his head as if embarrassed to admit something so obvious.

  Damn it to hell, she hadn’t thought of that. “How convenient.”

  “I changed, Morgan. We changed. You saw us. I know you saw us in the woods. You saw…” Defeated by frustration, he let his voice trail off.

  “You’re insane. He’s insane. You’re both insane.”

  He ran his hand over his face.
“Morgan, I didn’t kill your sister.”

  Morgan shook her head and waved her hand at him, begging him to stop.

  “The man you saw in the woods tonight, the man who attacked you, is my brother Ciaran, my twin brother. He killed your sister.”

  Her eyes blurred with tears. She didn’t have the strength to debate his claims. All she wanted to do was run.

  Conall approached with caution and spoke softly. “He’s not well. He’s never been. All my life I tried to keep him out of trouble but he took off to America. Disappeared. I tried to find him but it was no use. Everywhere I went, he’d done something, hurt someone. Please, Morgan, listen to me.”

  “No. Get out or so help me God I’ll scream so loud my mother will hear me,” she vented in unintelligible sobs.

  Her eyes cleared enough to see him leaping over the bed in one jump. Morgan opened her mouth and gasped in amazement but there was no time for analysis. He was on her in a flash, both of them falling to the floor as he worked to get a hold on her.

  “You could have been killed!” Conall growled.

  “I don’t care!” It was true. Her panic was at its zenith. Morgan didn’t care if there were five hundred Ciaran McCades or if what she’d seen in the woods tonight had been something from a Hollywood movie. She didn’t want to think on it any longer.

  “Well, I do and God help me, if it takes all night, I’ll make you care!”

  Fueled by her earlier success, she kicked her feet and made contact with Conall’s body. Desperate not to be the only one in agony, she hoped she hurt him. No sooner had she crawled away did he catch her and pull her back. This time, he pinned her legs with his own, making escape all but impossible. The ease of her recapture wounded her pride as he took both her wrists in one hand and fumbled behind her where she couldn’t see. Not that she needed to. She knew what was coming next.

  Morgan caught a glimpse of the sash she’d worn earlier that night and realized he brought it with him. It wasn’t to simply return it. “No—no—please!”

  Growling, he wrapped it one-handed around her wrists and tied it tight. His other hand clamped down on her mouth. “Shut up. You don’t want to talk, we won’t talk.”

  She found the meat of his hand and bit down on it.

  Hard.

  Conall bellowed in pain. A stinging whack to her backside had her screaming in his hand, the sound garbled with a mixture of blood and saliva. With one rough pull, Conall hiked up her skirt and revealed her bare ass. A wave of heat rushed to her face as he gripped her hip and brought her naked skin back against his engorged cock. His kilt made it all the easier to claim her. Morgan braced herself for impact, knowing the fury of what was coming. Unable to move, she glued her eyes shut and clutched a nearby table leg with bound hands.

  Feeling his fingers part her pussy lips she braced herself for his entry. With one forceful thrust, he plunged his cock inside her. A searing pain took her breath and burned her from the inside out. “That’s for the dagger.”

  Conall pulled out, the head of his cock teasing her pussy lips. “This is for denying me my dying wish.”

  As she reeled from the force of his first thrust and anticipated the next, her mouth opened when he buried himself in her depths.

  “And this is for leaving me.” His voice, a hoarse whisper, introduced the most forceful thrust yet as he fucked her from behind. “And why the hell didn’t you tell me I was the first man you’d ever been with?”

  Oh hell no. This was not the time to be tender and apologetic. Damn him.

  “N—” Morgan faltered as he withdrew and returned his cock to her pussy over and over. Ablaze with euphoric sensation, her entire body went rigid, unable to move or speak, her mind blank and empty. Try as she might to think, she could not. No images, no memories, not even the night’s events would come to her and aid her in diversion. Only him. This male creature inside her who filled and emptied her, breathed in time against her, held her, used her like an instrument of his will and took her completely for his own.

  “My name is Conall McCade.”

  His words were a combustive force, joining two unharmonious realities. One was full of pain and sorrow, the other, bliss and the promise of release. In favor of the latter, she shook her head and tried to block out his powerfully seductive voice.

  He twisted a handful of her hair in his hand as he brought her ear to his mouth. “I have a twin brother who murdered your sister Megan last year.”

  Hot tears ran down her cheeks.

  “Like you, I’ve been searching for him. He is a werewolf. As am I.”

  “No. You lie. You lie.” She cried out at the reality crashing down all around her, his body behind her, pulling her harder and harder against him, faster and faster. “It isn’t true!”

  “I’m sorry, Morgan—I’m so fucking sorry—”

  Morgan knew what was coming. She could feel the rumble of his words rippling like tremors along her spine as their bodies slammed against one another.

  “I’m gonna make you come, Morgan, and then I’m gonna come. I’m gonna come so deep inside you, you’ll never be rid of me.” Without warning, shockwaves took hold of her entire form, her orgasm an electric storm that shook her body from head to toe.

  “Ahhh fuck!” Conall shouted. In rapid thrusts, he drove his body against her like a hammer to an anvil, relentless in his attempt to destroy her opposition. Pulling her hard against him, he sheathed himself to the hilt, her limp body flush against him. His warm come filled her and mixed with the juices of her release, signaling the end of their mating.

  They fell together and lay in a heap, his cock twitching in her pulsing core, as they caught their breath. Fused in flesh for a small, peaceful eternity she slept, diminished with defeat. When she opened her eyes, Conall was stroking her hair, coaxing her back to consciousness. With heavy-lidded eyes, she watched him move his large frame to a standing position and bring her with him. This was no dream though. He was there, hand extended to her. Real and tangible.

  Once she was on her feet, he took her by the wrists and untied the sash, draping it across a nearby chair. “Get in bed,” Conall whispered in a low-timbered command.

  He retrieved a t-shirt and boxers from one of her bags and handed them to her. Morgan dressed quietly while he checked the locks on the windows and door. She snuggled under the blankets, her body weary but soothed and replete with calm from head to toe. For the moment anyway.

  “You’ve had the day of your life and you’ve need of a good night’s sleep.” Conall slid in beside her, the warmth of his body like a crackling fire. Tucking her to his side, he wrapped his arm around her. “A good night’s sleep and plenty more fucking.”

  Conall couldn’t sleep for shit. That didn’t surprise him. He couldn’t sleep anywhere but his own bed. Then again, what man in his right mind wanted to sleep when he had someone as beautiful as Morgan Keevy beside him? Not to mention there was the matter of his brother and Morgan’s sister to keep him awake. Nope, no impediments to restful sleep there.

  God, what a day. When he replayed the night’s events in his mind, it made him dizzy. A stressful clan gathering, meeting Morgan, a knife in the chest and the best sex he’d ever had. Still his mind raced a hundred kilometers an hour.

  He was being torn down the middle. On the one hand, he was doomed to lose his brother, half his soul, to the maddening effects of some unfair curse. On the other hand, he’d been blessed having just met the woman he truly believed was the love of his life. In a few hours, they’d lived and loved more than most people, and he wanted more.

  Tomorrow. He would deal with it all tomorrow. Once Morgan was safely moved into another hotel, he would try once more to convince his brother to do the right thing. There were two choices. He could turn himself in to American authorities or he could turn himself over to the clan elders. Conall hoped he chose the latter but for selfish reasons. Ciaran would survive in the prison their father built. In a small cage built into the face of a cliff he might lose
his mind but he would never harm another person again. Perhaps in time, he could help Ciaran find his way back to restored sanity and a chance at happiness.

  The woman in his arms stirred softly. He wasn’t sleeping well lately and he could tell Morgan wasn’t either. The beast in him had something to tire them out and he had half a mind to act on his animal instincts. But the civilized man decided to give sleep one more chance.

  Just one more.

  Chapter Five

  Morgan sat by the window and defied the cold seeping in through the old seal. The full moon made it bright out but aside from grass and rock, there was little to see. She admitted to no one that she drew comfort in her own reflection. But it was not for vanity that the eyes the color of a November sky staring back at her soothed the tender place in her heart. It was that she used to share those same eyes with someone else. Again, her mind drifted to Megan.

  At the news of her sister’s murder, she’d spent the following weeks sobbing into her pillow, sitting by the window waiting for the lost piece of herself to return home, for the nightmare to end. But Megan never returned and the nightmare continued. And now the nightmare was her life. Thanks to Ciaran McCade.

  For days and days after hearing her sister was dead, Morgan didn’t venture from the upstairs bedroom they’d shared from grade school to graduation. She’d turned down her scholarship, stopped going out with friends and lost too much weight. She’d taken pills to numb the pain and stared down more than a few counselors who all preached the same message: grieve but move on.

  And she would. She promised her mother that much. But she needed resolution first. Resolution, or the first hint of it, was here in a sleepy little rural community in Scotland. The journey hadn’t been easy, but at long last she was on the cusp of the long-sought peace of mind she craved. Each new town, each new hotel room, each new recitation of her promise to the ghost in the mirror made this strange new life, if one could call it that, a little easier. At least it had until she met Conall McCade.