by Loki Renard
How could someone possibly be that raw and masculine at a distance? The other figures in the room seemed to fade to shades and shadows of themselves. For a moment, there was only him. The stranger with his eyes locked on hers.
She blinked and the moment was gone. The noise swelled to fill the sensory void that had opened up around her and the crowd shifted to hide the stranger from her view. She was left with a swirling excitement in her belly, a sense that Darkwood Heath truly did hold mysteries beyond the natural realm.
Aunt Honoraria had been certain of it, and reading her journal as a teenager, Hannah had become certain of it too. The book still clutched in her hands had been a window to another world, a place of possibility that made her pedestrian life seem somehow exciting for being linked to it.
Hannah’s mother was a teacher, her father an accountant. They had lived a very comfortable, very safe life, and always they had despaired of Hannah. Hannah who liked to sneak out at night and visit the local cemetery to see if any dead people were clawing their way out of the ground (they never were); Hannah, who had eschewed prom in favor of a sky clad Wiccan ceremony held on the hill near the local mall. It had been fun until the football team had shown up with water balloons filled with substances other than water and sent the coven screaming for their cars.
But this place, this place was different. It was older. There was a history to the very walls. And there was something she could almost call magic in the air. Not in the Disney, fanciful sense, but in the deep, earthy, somehow real sense.
Excited by all she was experiencing, Hannah ordered another beer. Was she drunk? No. Surely not. There wasn’t that much alcohol in beer. The fourth one went down as smoothly as the third, and then the fifth went down as smoothly as any of the four before it. Perhaps she was overindulging, but the freedom to imbibe was running through her veins like fire. After what felt like waiting forever for her adventures to begin she wanted to experience everything all at once.
As night further fell and the bar became increasingly crowded, she felt the mood begin to change. It had been casual at the outset, but as a plethora of young men entered, something shifted in the air. The comfortably round older patrons seemed to have filtered out at an undetermined point and quite suddenly Hannah found herself one of the very few women in a pub now brimming with what seemed to her to be virile men from her age to later middle age.
Hannah was not sure precisely how much beer she had drunk. The funny English currency was almost meaningless to her. Shiny coins went this way and that, and beer after beer arrived. Not overly familiar with the effects of alcohol, Hannah felt herself becoming increasingly warm and cheerful.
“More, pleashe!” She smiled happily at the bar maiden who had been very helpful and accommodating about bringing her fresh pints all evening.
“We’re closing up, luv,” the woman informed her. “You’ll have to be on your way.”
Hannah looked around the bar with a small frown of confusion. “But everyone elshe is here?”
“They’re, uhm, members,” the lady said in the sort of way that made Hannah think they weren’t really members at all. The mystery was finally afoot! Something was going to happen that they did not want an outsider to see. Alcohol and excitement combined to create a cackling squeal of excitement as Hannah resisted the woman’s efforts to coax her out from her seat.
“You can tell me your sechresh,” she said in a whisper almost louder than a shout. “I won’t tell.”
“You’ve had too much to drink,” the woman said. “We can’t serve you anymore. It’s against the law.”
“Is it againsh the law if I sherve myshelf?”
“Yes.” The lady was becoming terse and grim, her worthy broad features clamping down against one another after the manner of a stern toad. “I’m sorry, but this is a members’ club and you’ll have to be leaving now.”
“I could be a member,” Hannah suggested.
“No, little girl, you really couldn’t.” The woman’s heavy hand descended on her arm. “Come on, let’s get you… oh, God.”
As Hannah swayed to her feet, she became suddenly and irrevocably aware of the fact that her brain was swimming in alcohol. Her limbs did not seem willing to function as they usually did and her stomach was suddenly seeming incredibly overactive.
“Ish okay,” she slurred. “I’m oka…”
* * *
Lorcan felt the disturbance almost before he heard it.
“No! I don’t wanna go!”
The girl was standing, swaying back and forth with a half-empty pint of beer in her hand. He had seen enough bar brawls to know that if she fell down with that still in her hand, she’d make a hell of a mess of herself and possibly someone else when it shattered under her.
Nelly the barkeep was doing her best to try to eject the troublemaker gently, but it wasn’t working. The young lady was avoiding all attempts to remove her without touching her, swaying around like an inebriated cobra.
“No! I came all the way here… and I came all the way here… and I’m here, becaushe I came all this way,” she declared. “And I’m here! And you can’t make me not here, because I came all the way.” She finished the sentence with a defiant albeit unfocused glare at the world in general.
Before Lorcan could move through the crowd, she swung out with the hand she seemed to have forgotten contained the glass. Her hand hit the wall, the glass exploded into shards and managed to cut the girl and shower the floor in sharp pieces.
A howl went up as the scent of blood flooded the air. There was only a small trickle, but it was enough to make eyes go glassy all around her, noses rise, and hackles lift as animal instincts began to rise in the patrons. If he didn’t get to her now, she was going to find herself in real trouble, and Darkwood was going to be the final resting place of yet another wayward traveler.
“Time to go, pup.”
She squealed incoherently as he bent down, wrapped an arm around the back of her thighs, and hauled her up over his shoulder. “Trouble,” he muttered to himself. “I knew she’d be trouble.”
Chapter Three
Hannah woke up with a pounding headache in a bed that was certainly on the hard side. She felt as though each part of her insides had been run over by very small bulldozers, and her brain trammeled by tiny moles. She felt about as rough as she had ever felt, a fact that expressed itself in a long, low groan of despair.
“Good morning.” A hand pushed a cup of coffee under her nose. She jolted away from it with a grunt of surprise.
“Easy,” the deep voice soothed, putting the coffee down somewhere out of Hannah’s narrow line of sight as she did her best to keep her eyes as closed as possible. Light hurt. Even though the room was dim, the small amount creeping around the shutters was enough to make her head pound.
Hannah looked up to see someone who looked vaguely familiar and yet she was sure she did not know him. It clicked the moment she looked in his eyes. The shadowy room did not diminish the brilliance of his gaze, and even through the hangover she recognized him instantly. The man from the bar, much taller when he was up close.
He was more handsome than she had first thought, if that were even possible. His stunning amber eyes were set under dark brows, his face broad and strong with the kind of jaw that made Hannah’s tummy quiver. There was something about him that reminded her of a beast in its prime, a male who reigned over a territory with little more than his sheer physical prowess. The dark beard was close trimmed enough not to hide his features, which truly belonged more to the hyper-masculine ideal than the average man.
She found herself staring at him completely awestruck. It was hard to tell his age, though he was probably in his early thirties. He had more gravitas than would denote a younger man, and the breadth of his shoulders and the fullness of his features suggested that he had reached his full prime—and what a prime that was.
“Uhm,” she said not very eloquently. Trying to force her addle
d brain to work, she sat up in bed. The moment she did that the sheets fell down, revealing her bare breasts. Hannah realized with blanket-grasping panic that she was naked. A quick glance under the blanket revealed that she was entirely naked. Not a scrap of clothing separated her from the bedding.
“Oh, my God, did I sleep with you?” She sounded almost excited at the prospect to her own ears, though the expression was supposed to be one of shock.
He smirked at her as if the notion of sleeping with her had never so much as crossed his mind. “You were sick all over yourself. Repeatedly. That’s why you’re not wearing anything.”
“Oh, my God,” Hannah squealed again, her voice reaching an even higher pitch. “You stripped me?”
“Sacha and I did.”
“Who the hell is Sacha?
“My sister,” he said, still with that broad smirk of amusement tempered with just a hint of indulgent chastisement. “So don’t worry, your honor is very much still intact.”
Hannah promptly bounced from that crisis to the next one. “My stuff? Where’s my book? Where’s my necklace?”
“It’s all next to you,” he soothed her as she burst into a fresh round of panic. “We took care of you, it’s okay.”
“Oh,” she said, spying the book and locket placed on the bedside table next to her. “Uhm… thank you, for that. I don’t usually drink that much…”
“I don’t need to hear your excuses, pup,” he said with a smile. “You’re not the first young lady to make a mess of herself in the Rusty Shank, and I’ll wager you won’t be the last either.”
Pup? Was that some kind of British slang?
“My name’s Hannah,” she said.
“I know. You told us,” he said. “You told us quite a lot of things. Some of them even made sense.”
He was teasing her gently, but Hannah could sense that there was something more to the little interlude. She clutched the covers to her neck and watched him with a wary concern. He was not leaving the room. He was standing there being handsome and tall and fully clothed compared to her nudity. He wasn’t done with her, but she wasn’t sure what his intentions were.
“Uhm, well, thanks for helping me out, that was nice.”
“I’m going to help you out again too,” he said. “You made quite a mess of the Rusty Shank, and that’s a hard place to mess up. There were damages, breakages, it was all quite expensive.”
“I don’t remember breaking anything,” she frowned.
“You don’t remember anything, I’ll wager. They asked you to leave and you decided you didn’t want to.” His eyes crinkled with amusement. “You put up quite a fight.”
“That doesn’t sound like me,” she scowled, scratching her head. As she raised her hand, she saw that there were faint bruises on her wrists and upper arm. “Whoa,” she uttered in surprise.
“Mhm,” he said. “And you were lucky to get away with a few bruises and scrapes.”
“Wow,” she said, surprised. “Really?”
“Really,” he said, shaking his head at her. “You have got to learn to handle your drink, pup.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?” Hannah frowned.
“It fits you,” he said. “My name is Lorcan, by the way. Thought I should introduce myself before I deal with you.”
“Deal with me?”
“Well, you don’t look like you’ve got any money to settle your debt, which means…”
Hannah’s eyes went wide. “You want me to have sex for money?”
“No,” he laughed. “It means you’re going to have your arse thrashed.”
Her eyes went wider still. “I think I’d prefer the sex option.”
“Before anything happens,” he said, stepping toward the bed. “You’re going to have a bath. You’re a right mess, you are.”
“I don’t need a… hey!”
Hannah squeaked as Lorcan slid his arms under her body and lifted her out of bed without giving her an opportunity to refuse. She found her naked body pressed against his chest, his arms holding her securely in what felt like a caring embrace. Hannah could not do anything but submit to his will as he carried her through a door into a large albeit antiquated bathroom that seemed to have been restored from period times. She was not sure what ‘period times’ consisted of precisely, she was no historian, but the tall tub with claw-shaped feet waiting for her looked as though it had bathed people for generations, its gleaming white porcelain standing stoically as Lorcan slid her slowly into the water.
She felt so incredibly small and guilty for being such trouble, but Lorcan did not seem concerned at all. It was as if he’d given a hundred hungover young women a hundred baths before. Perhaps he had. She didn’t know a thing about him, aside from the fact he was devilishly handsome and appeared to live in some kind of mansion.
“Are you well enough to clean yourself?”
“Yes!” She blushed the answer. Her nudity was not at all obscured by the water, and her shame was growing with every passing moment. “I’ll be alright. You don’t have to stand there.”
“I don’t want you passing out in the bath,” he said. “You had a skinful last night.”
“I’m awake now,” she said, sliding down as much as she could and lifting her knees up so just the tips of them were poking above the waterline. Her chin was level with the water too, the bulk of her body surrounded by the comfort of the bath. She gave him an accusatory look designed to make him leave her alone. It did not work.
Lorcan seemed to have no concern at all at seeing a woman he barely knew without clothing. He’d taken charge of her as if he had some right to do so, which was a strange thing for Hannah to try to adjust to. She’d heard of culture shock, but this was like no culture she had ever imagined.
“Is this what all you British people are like?” She scowled the question at him. “Do you watch people take baths?”
A thick brow lifted at her as she tried in vain to cover her various feminine charms with her knees and her hands. “I can’t speak for the rest of the population, but I know very well you need an eye kept on you.”
“At least look away while I wash,” Hannah said. “I can’t bathe with some strange man watching me.”
“Can you bathe while you’re arguing?”
She stared at him, completely unable to fathom the arrogance that allowed him to stand there with his eyes locked on her as if he had some right to invade her privacy.
“Seriously, get out.”
“That’s not how things work here,” Lorcan said firmly. “Here, I make the rules. You lost your right to decide how things happen when you got blackout drunk and had to be taken care of.”
Hannah screwed up her nose. It wasn’t exactly fair, but what could she do? The big man with the fascinating gaze wasn’t going anywhere. Unless… she scooped up a handful of water and cast it at him, sending an arc of gleaming droplets in his direction. Most of them fell short, wetting the tile and the bathmat, but little else.
“You know, being spanked on a wet bottom hurts a lot more than being spanked on a dry one,” he observed in bland British tones.
“You’re not going to spank me,” she informed him. “I’m not some… one you can spank.”
“Do you want me to prove otherwise right now, or do you want to have your bath first?”
He was maddening. Utterly certain in his right to treat her like some kind of… she didn’t even know how he was treating her. Almost as if he owned her. And yet they were complete strangers to one another.
“I don’t even know you,” she said, attitude dripping from every word. She was aware she sounded like some kind of spoiled Valley girl, but she was fast running out of defenses. Nothing seemed to make Lorcan aware that he was not in the right.
“We’re getting to know one another,” he said, flashing her an unrepentant toothy white smile. Hannah looked at him with disbelief. He truly was like no man she had known before.
�
�How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight,” he said. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Liar,” he said, his lips twisting. “You’re eighteen if you’re a day.”
“I’m nineteen and several days, actually,” she shot back. He let out a chuckle and shook his head at her.
“You’re a very long way from home in a very remote little village,” he observed as she finally gave in, picked up the soap, and started washing away not just the events of the evening, but the sweat and grime of the journey it had taken to get there. She had been traveling for almost three consecutive days and there was a distinct buildup on her skin, layers of airports and buses and trains and all the smog and airborne debris that came with big cities and crowded places. It was good to feel it slide from her skin and be dissolved into the increasingly soapy water in the bathtub.
“I’m young,” she said. “Young people don’t have homes, they have destinations.”
“Is that right?”
“Yup,” she nodded.
“Quite a theory you have,” he said as she tried to surreptitiously soap her breasts.
It was impossible to clean her more intimate areas with him watching as he was. How could she slide her fingers down through the warm water to touch her pussy in the company of a man?
“Would you please at least turn around,” she said, a blush rising to her cheeks. “You don’t need to see everything.”
To her surprise, he nodded and turned, giving her the privacy to run her fingers through her most intimate places, all the while keeping a close eye on him, her eyes roaming the impressive breadth of his shoulders, his height, his tight, powerful-looking ass encased in dark denim. Hannah enjoyed looking at him almost as much as he seemed to enjoy looking at her.
She realized her fingers were lingering in against her pussy, teasing the little bud at the apex of her lips as she watched Lorcan, making sure he did not turn around and catch her playing with herself in the bath. She was excited, adding her own wetness to the water, if that were even possible. It felt so naughty to be touching herself, stimulating her clit while Lorcan stood there, giving her a semblance of privacy, which she had immediately subverted to pleasure herself.
