by Terry Spear
By the time Cearnach had begun to work on Anlan, father of Sheba’s pups and the last of the male wolfhounds he had to wash, Dillon, the most mischievous of the males, had spied the hose with a devilish gleam in his dark brown eyes. Cearnach knew what he was up to before the dog lunged, but he couldn’t thwart Dillon fast enough.
The dog grabbed the hose and gave it a tug, sending a stream of water Elaine’s way. The water blasted her in the chest and she squealed in surprise.
The stream of water swung wildly as Cearnach wrestled the hose away from the dog’s tight grip. The spray came back around and hit Elaine’s face as she tried to get out of the way.
By the time Cearnach feinted releasing the hose and Dillon loosened his grip to re-situate his teeth for a better hold, Cearnach had pulled the hose free. Elaine was already sopping wet and wiping her eyes. Logan looked on in horror, then he ran back into the drying room and raced out again to give her a clean, dry towel.
She wrung some of the water out from her sweater. She was soaked to the skin, revealing all, which for Cearnach’s consumption was fine. But for the lad, no.
“Logan, why don’t you go up to the keep and ask Lady Julia if she has something dry that Elaine can wear?”
“Aye, I will.” Logan raced through the shower room.
“Walk,” Cearnach warned and shook his head.
“Were you like that at his age?” Elaine asked, her eyes and lips smiling as she wiped the water from her face.
Cearnach chuckled. “And then some. Though I would have helped you to remove your sweater and towel-dried you.”
She laughed, then began washing the mother dog. “Not if a man older than you was watching, and he had some interest in the girl who was more the older guy’s age.”
“It would depend,” he said, joining her, unable to help his feral gaze from roaming over her sexy, wet body.
He finished washing Sheba, then rinsed her off and took her into the drying room. When Elaine joined him, he reached over and shut and locked the door.
Elaine frowned. “Logan can’t get in.”
“That’s the general idea.”
Chapter 20
Elaine eyed Cearnach with intrigue as he secreted her away in the dog kennels’ drying room. Smiling at her with lustful intent, he shifted his gaze to the wet sweater clinging to her breasts. She smiled back at him. “What do you have in mind?”
“Helping to dry you off a wee bit, lass,” he said with a devilish glint in his eyes.
All the dogs were curled up on mats, some of them mostly dry and sleeping, some licking their wet fur, others sitting and watching Cearnach and Elaine, their tails thumping enthusiastically on their beds. Cearnach drew off Elaine’s wet sweater and tossed it on a bench. She felt wickedly exposed as he towel-dried her breasts while warm air from the heater vents swirled around them. The smell of citrus shampoo and wet dog and a couple of wet shifter wolves filled the room.
“You’re nearly as wet as me.” She reached up and touched the damp shirt outlining his hard muscles. Wanting to expose his brawny chest, she’d tugged his shirt barely past his navel before he took charge.
He yanked his shirt off and tossed it on the bench with hers. She picked up another clean towel and ran it over his beautiful pecs and abs—beach-body perfect, making her think of him lying on Pensacola Beach with her, enjoying the sun and surf.
“I’ll never wash the dogs again without thinking of you in that wet sweater, or like this, half naked in the drying room.” He cupped her breasts, then ran his fingers over the extended nipples, taut and sensitive. Her breathing suspended as she gloried in the sweep of his fingers against her flesh. “There’s a room off this one for the person who stays with the dogs when they have new pups. The sheets have been changed since no one’s slept in here for the last month.”
Thank God for that! She could envision pushing a wolfhound off its damp bed to make room for two wolves who wanted to find a soft spot to make love—yuck!—or having to run back to his bedchamber in the castle in wet clothes in the chilly breeze in front of those working on the grounds and inside the stone building. Cearnach kissed her lips gently, then moved her into the room where a twin bed covered with a light blue blanket and comforter sat against a wall, a wooden table and a chair beside it. Shades were pulled closed over the one window, and she noticed a sink and toilet in a half bath off the room.
Just as Cearnach reached for Elaine’s jeans zipper, they heard movement beyond the locked drying-room door. They froze.
“Cearnach, I’ve got the lady’s clothes for her,” Logan said, trying the door to the drying room, the doorknob twisting back and forth. “Cearnach?” Then the lad grumbled under his breath, “She is too your girlfriend.”
Cearnach grinned down at Elaine. “Leave them on one of the dry benches, Logan. You can come back in half an hour and exercise the dogs,” Cearnach said.
Elaine and Cearnach waited, listening, until they heard Logan slosh across the wet floor, then slam the door to the kennels.
Cearnach smiled and shook his head.
Elaine pulled off her jeans in a hurry, worried someone else would interrupt them, as Cearnach quickly shucked the rest of his clothes. Then he lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed.
Pulse quickening, she smiled up at him, loving the heat of his naked chest pressed against her, the feel of his hard muscles bunching as he laid her on the bed.
He stretched out on top of her, claiming her—all that sinewy strength and virile heat rubbing against her. Kissing her mouth, slowly, luxuriously, he moved his body against hers, working his stiff cock against her mound. She groaned with feral need, wanting him inside her now.
She slipped her arms around his neck, pulling him close, holding him against her. Spreading her legs, she willed him to enter her, her tongue teasing his smiling lips, his eyes already clouded with desire. She loved his passion, the way he couldn’t seem to get enough of her, the way he loved her just as much as she loved him.
“Elaine,” he groaned as she pressed her tongue into his mouth. She felt the heat between them building, his body rocking against hers, his erection pressing against her damp heat, urgent, relentless, not entering her yet, but close.
So close.
She angled her hips, trying to capture his erection so that she could sheathe the throbbing part of him that would join them together as one.
His hands shifted again to her breasts, cupping, massaging the flesh. His fingers toyed with her nipples, making them hard and sensitive and just as needy for his touch as the rest of her. She arched against him, aching for him.
He bent his head and licked a nipple, then the other, while her hands moved down his back, stroking, touching, loving the feel of his heated skin, his hard-working muscles.
Then before he seemed ready, she bent her knees, digging her heels into the mattress, willing him to penetrate her. Cradled between her legs, he reached between them and stroked her sweet spot, harder, faster, until she was soaring toward the burning hot sun, ready to explode. Then it hit her. Shudders of fine ecstasy filled her body as her heat enveloped him.
Sweet wolf, he was everything she ever wanted in a man, someone who could give her the sun and moon and love her as she did him.
She wrapped her legs around his back, locking her ankles together, urging him to fill her with his cock, to find his own release deep within her.
He slid slowly inside her, saying her name in his sexy Scottish way, which turned her on all the more. He drove deep, trying to satisfy the savage hunger, then pulled out slowly. As soon as she lifted her hips to take him back inside her, he moved inside her again, deepening the penetration, burying himself to the hilt while he kissed her neck and throat and chin.
Her pelvis met his as they continued to rock together, the bed squeaking, their hearts beating frantically as he pinned her against the mattress. Urging him on, she felt his body working, his thick cock sliding into her. Pleasure. Rapture.
All of a s
udden, he held still, buried deep, and then he increased the plunges, racing to the end. Taking her with him. A starburst of delicious fulfillment shot through her as he spilled his seed inside her, jerking with release. She sagged beneath him, satiated as the waves of contractions moved through her, loving him and the pure joy of being with him.
He pumped into her several more times as if milking every last drop, depositing a wolfish treasure deep inside her, then moving around so that she could rest on top of him on the small mattress.
For a long while, he lightly stroked her arm as they lay there, their breathing ragged, their hearts beating wildly as they cuddled. She ran her finger over his chest. “What are you thinking about, Cearnach?”
He leaned down and kissed her head, then wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug. “How I should never have lost you the first time I saw you in St. Andrews. And how I’m going to love making up so much lost time between us.”
She couldn’t agree more.
Cearnach snuggled with Elaine, nearly falling asleep on the small bed, the warm air circulating around them. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been happier. But he had to get dressed before Logan returned to walk the dogs.
He again considered that bastard Rafferty and his crew. Elaine said she’d killed a couple of them that had been guarding her, but he couldn’t stop wondering what had become of the rest of them.
She kissed his chest and looked up at him. “What are you thinking that has you frowning so?”
“Do you know what happened to the rest of Rafferty’s men?”
“I’d heard that some had died at sea during storms, some due to encountering ships that had more guns, some due to hangings. Three were murdered near where I relocated. I don’t know about the rest. If they didn’t make the newspapers, I had no way of knowing.”
“The stolen goods your uncles had hidden?” He combed his fingers through her silky hair.
“They may be long gone by now,” she warned. “What was the merchandise that my uncles stole from your ships?”
“Pearls, twenty hogshead barrels of sugar, gold dust, indigo, silver plate, emeralds, silk. All very valuable back then. Some just as valuable today.”
“Oh,” she said.
“You had no idea?”
She shook her head. “I thought the joke might be on Robert if the treasure was something perishable, like the sugar. I can just imagine what centuries-old sugar would be worth. Are the goods so valuable now that you still want the treasure that badly?”
“Only to keep it out of Kilpatrick’s hands because he wants it so badly.”
“Why, after all these years, would they want the treasure? For me, I wanted to see what my uncles thought so precious that they risked their lives to obtain it. Like you, I agree that Robert doesn’t deserve it. So if anything, I want to keep him from having the spoils as much as possible.”
“I understand. The MacNeill merchandise might not have been hidden in Scotland, though,” Cearnach said. “It became my duty to learn why your uncles had sailed to St. Andrews when I witnessed what happened to them and to see if that shed any light on where you’d vanished to. Had they had business there or elsewhere? We assume that was just where they docked. Beyond that, they could have had business at some other location.”
She closed her gaping mouth, and he realized she really hadn’t known what her uncles had planned for her. Perhaps they had wanted to see their relations, ensure that one of them would suit her as a mate, and leave her with the family to give her a chance to be with someone other than Kelly.
“The Kilpatricks and McKinleys were in the city of St. Andrews when your uncles arrived, as if the meeting had been planned. Had your uncles intended to rendezvous with them? But circumstances prevented it?” he continued.
“They said nothing about what they intended to do,” she said, then studied the ceiling as if trying to recall the voyage and everything that had been said between them. “Yet they seemed… disquieted. I thought it was because I was aboard ship.”
“Some believe a woman on a ship can bring disaster.”
“So I’ve heard.” She cuddled against Cearnach, idly stroking his naked chest while he brushed his fingers over her silky hair, delighting in the feel of her molded against his body.
He took a deep breath and exhaled. “You said you thought Kelly Rafferty might have murdered your parents. Did you ever learn the truth?”
“I believed he did. I questioned everyone I could, even his men. They told him I had been looking into my parents’ deaths and what I suspected. He took it out on me—for questioning his honor. I even asked him when he was in a drunken state if he’d done it, figuring he was too inebriated to realize what he was revealing to me. He hadn’t been drunk enough, and I paid dearly for it with a broken jaw and wrist.
“Even after word reached me that he’d died, no one would tell me the truth, as if his ghostly person would come back to haunt them. I admit that for years I feared he’d return and take up where he’d left off. I had nightmares about him forever, about his brutality, both physical and emotional. I know he had my parents murdered if he hadn’t actually done the deed himself.”
Angered that anyone could do violence against her, he caressed her arm, her body pressed against his, wishing he could take away all of her past pain.
“The whole scenario was a little too convenient. My parents’ carriage suddenly veered off into the river when they had been on their way to a party that night. For what reason? No one ever knew. The carriage sank so fast that they were unable to get out. But the horses were saved. The horses, as if they were the only thing of value and not my parents’ lives. That’s partly why I believe he had something to do with the carriage accident. The horses were safely returned home, and neither was wet.”
“My God, Elaine.” He took her hand in his and found that her fingers were ice cold. He held her hand against his chest and rubbed it to warm her. Again he regretted having lost her all those years ago and felt sickened that he couldn’t have protected her. “What about the other half of the details that would lead to the loot? Isn’t it with your suitcase or purse?” The game would be lost, but why would Robert still want Elaine to meet with him?
“In here,” she said, tapping her head. “He won’t get it from me.”
“I wonder if the stolen goods could be hidden on one of the properties you own.”
Elaine frowned. “Wouldn’t Robert have learned of them and already investigated?”
“Possibly.”
“Then he wouldn’t need me for finding the treasure.”
She snuggled closer to Cearnach, loving the sound of his heartbeat beneath her ear and the way he was caressing her hand. She hoped Cearnach wasn’t condemning her too much for not standing up more to Kelly Rafferty. She’d always felt she was a caught animal, unable to get free of his men when he was away and terrified of him when he was home, yet she had tried to show him her alpha side.
Sometimes he loved bullying her to show she wasn’t as alpha as he. Other times he seemed to love that she’d stand up to him and he would leave her alone.
“I’m sorry for letting you get away from me the first time,” Cearnach said, hugging her tight.
This was where she belonged. With him. Like this.
“I ought to get up and get dressed before Logan returns,” Cearnach said, not sounding like he wanted to let go of her.
“Yes,” she murmured.
Before they could leave the small bed, Cearnach turned his head in the direction of the door.
“Someone’s coming,” Elaine whispered, hearing the sounds of footsteps.
“Logan,” Cearnach guessed.
“Have you seen Cearnach?” Ian asked beyond the drying room, the door still locked.
Ian.
Chapter 21
Someone pounded on the kennel’s drying room door. “Cearnach, Elaine’s solicitor is here. She needs to speak with him. You and I will also listen to what he has to say,” Ian sa
id.
“Hell,” Cearnach said, running his hand over Elaine’s hair. “Guess we’ve got to face the world.”
She groaned. Then she sat upright and whispered, “Ian said my solicitor is here?”
“Aye.” He hadn’t thought the solicitor would show up this quickly, either. Ian must have made the man fear the wrath of the pack.
She wrapped the towel around her and pushed at Cearnach. “Go, get the dry clothes Logan brought for me. Mine are still wet.”
Cearnach put his damp clothes on.
“Why would a lawyer be here to speak to me?” Her eyes were wide.
“It probably has to do with your properties and the management of them. I’m sure that’s what the solicitor is here to talk with you about.”
“Did your mother know about this before she suggested you mate with me?” she asked. Then she shook her head. “She didn’t. We had only just met. I bet that would have been an even greater incentive for you to mate me.”
Cearnach sighed. “You are priceless to me, lass. With or without your holdings. With or without the treasure.” He smiled in a much too predatory way. “With or without your clothes.”
He sighed. “Let me get the dry clothes.”
He left the room and stalked through the drying room where the dogs had left their beds to crowd around the door, desperate to greet Ian. Cearnach unlocked and opened the door. The dogs rushed out as Cearnach came face to face with Logan and Ian, both giving him accusatory looks. The dogs eagerly greeted them, bouncing around and jumping up in a wild frenzy of doggy love.
“The clothes?” Cearnach was not about to explain himself in front of Logan. Well, to Ian either.
Logan handed him the clothes.
“We’ll be right out, Ian.” Cearnach shut the door.
“How’d they take it?” Elaine took the borrowed pale-pink sweater and jeans from him and hurried to dress.
“I’m certain they knew it was coming.”
“I’m not getting married.” She pulled on the light sweater and looked up at Cearnach, who was staring at her in surprise. “Wolves don’t get married. I don’t have any family and…”
