A Faerie Fated Forever
Page 30
He looked up and his future was in his eyes as he met the smiling gaze of the Faerie King. Then he lurched toward Heather so suddenly that he had to catch himself on his hands to keep from falling face first in the dirt. She was alive. He hadn’t lost her. He might have lost the respect of every person who stood in the crowd, but he hadn’t lost Heather.
She was all he needed.
He tried to rise to his feet but was too shaken to make it. He crawled to her, finding he couldn’t speak, and his eyes couldn’t seem to focus. She was alive. His hands went to her chest where the gaping hole had poured forth her life’s blood moments ago. The wound was gone as though it had never been. She blushed, and her eyes fogged with a complete lack of comprehension as to what was going on. He realized that to her, it must seem that his hands were fondling her breasts in view of a large crowd.
Yet, he couldn’t stop, couldn’t pause in his examination. He patted her down from head to toe. He ignored her protests for modesty and even turned her over to examine her rear. He patted each inch of her and could find no wound. Still, he wasn’t assured so he turned her back over and began examining her front again before he loudly called for Mac. Nial’s hands wandered continually and the healer had to ask him to cease so he could examine the lady properly. A moment later Mac pronounced her “fit as a fiddle.”
She was well?
He threw back his head and laughed, filled with joy beyond bearing. He was laughing too hard to answer her, and she didn’t like being ignored, so she pounded on his chest as she demanded he stop acting like a mad man and explain all of this immediately.
Instead, when he finally found his voice, he turned to the faerie host and looked at the King. “Thank you. I wish I had words for what your gift means to me.” He was already taking Heather into his arms as he finished. “She is everything and my pride was a very tiny price to pay to still be able to do this.”
With his final words he took Heather’s lips in a tender kiss, too full of the vision of her lying near death to give his passion free rein. He kept his eyes open and saw the faerie host floating to the clouds and heard the King’s hearty laughter the entire time. He waved, before he turned his full attention to the woman who, by God, would be his wife in a moment. Well, he would make sure they were wed as soon as he could lift his lips and stop reveling in the fact that this would not be their last kiss.
She tried to rise, but he still saw her, in his mind’s eye, lying there as her life’s blood left her. She was still here, and by God he would keep her. He rose and scooped her up in his arms, ignoring her protests that she was fine. He called for his guard and the warriors surrounded them immediately. His eyes frantically searched for the priest among the crowd. He refused to allow anyone, including Boz or her parents to approach them. In the pressing crowd he could not find the father so he called for him. The priest appeared, wearing the biggest smile Nial had ever seen.
“Father, we will exchange the vows right this minute.” Nial demanded, providing full proof to the crowd that the supplicant was gone and the Highland laird had returned.
“I don’t know if I will promise anything until you put me down and explain to me what exactly has been going on here,” Heather began in a demanding voice. Her demand was softened by the absolutely besotted look in Nial’s eyes as he gazed at her. She looked up at him and saw again the blood and was reminded of her fear that he was wounded. “Nial, for goodness sake, put me down so I can examine you.”
“Sweetheart, I’m fine. The blood was yours.” His assurance wasn’t enough for her, and he looked at her within the circle of his arms and realized that like him, she would not be assured until she had examined him with her own two hands.
After sweeping the area with his eyes, and repeated assurances from his warriors that they would guard her safety, he put her down, but kept her within the tight circle of his arms. She ignored the gathered, pressing crowd completely as she examined him with the same care he had shown her. By the time she finished, his shirt was open and her hands patted his bare chest, ceaselessly seeking the wound that must be producing all of the blood that coated his garments. She was puzzled, for she could find no injury.
“Nial, if there is no wound, where is all of this blood coming from?”
“My love, I am fine. The blood is yours.”
“Mine?” She chuckled, “But that is impossible. I am not hurt. I am quite fine”
“You are fine now, thanks to faerie magic.” The humor left his gaze as his eyes darkened to show the horror of unimaginable loss that would haunt the dark corners of his mind for the rest of his life. They darkened to show the fear that would keep his lovely Heather close by his side for every moment of their future.
“You were shot, love and you were very close to breaking your word and dying and leaving me here to face forever without my faerie fated love. However, thanks to the magical touch of a faerie sword you seem to be fine. The healer has now pronounced you well.” His face took on the stubborn look that would brook no disagreement as he continued.
“I am done with ceremony and rules that would have you walk away from me. Within the circle of my arms you will be safe. There you will stay.” He turned to glare at Carrick who looked guilty as Nial shouted, “Unlike your father, who would leave your side for something as inconsequential as flowers, I will keep you within my arms from this moment forward.” Carrick hushed his wife who wanted to protest the insult. Just now he couldn’t argue with the man who put aside clan and pride for love of his daughter.
Carrick whispered to his wife instead, “Love, cease. Boz and I are already taking bets on how long he will insist on keeping Heather right within his arms.”
The irrepressible laird was back in force as he said, softly so that only Heather heard, “Immediately after we are wed I will whisk you away to our bridal chamber. There I promise that I shall answer your questions and you shall relieve the ache that now flourishes for all to see thanks to your thorough examination.”
She looked at him questioningly and her wide-eyed golden gaze saw that his shirt was wide open (Good Lord, she had apparently torn it in her worry) and his nipples had drawn into hard buds of need that her mouth went dry in a sudden desire to taste. The front of his kilt was tented with the pressing ache just mentioned. As she blushed, she licked her lips and he threw back his head and laughed.
“Perhaps it is fitting, my sweet. A few minutes ago, my summons of the Faerie King for the magic that saved you provided ample evidence to the crowd that I love you beyond all else. Now, as we are finally united, your touch has proved that my love is joined in full measure by those claws of passion. Thus, I am certain that no one here doubts that you are, indeed, my faerie fated forever.”
Father McGiven waited not a moment longer. “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to witness the joining…….”
After a ceremony that may have set records for its brevity, the priest pronounced them married. The groom’s obvious arousal grew throughout the ceremony. Thus, it surprised no one that the bridal kiss was a passionate possession, a branding, a giving and a taking. It was long and thorough and as it concluded, the crowd pressed forward to offer congratulations.
Nial ignored them all to scoop his wife into his arms to take her to their bridal bower. He barked at those, including her own mother, who tried to be presumptuous enough to remove her from his immediate touch. As he kicked the bedroom door closed behind them, he was already raising the skirt of her gown and his kilt. He was buried within her less than ten minutes after they were formally married.
The knot in his throat made it almost impossible to speak, but Nial tried, growling more than stating, “Thank God for faeries, sweetheart. The words were nice but this is our union.”
His haste had been to join. Now he slowed and took her tenderly and with each thrust he called out his love for her. When it was over, he collapsed in her arms, and she said, softly “Nial, you….. you begged for me.”
“You saw?” Someh
ow, he had hoped that she hadn’t witnessed him on his knees, pitifully begging for the only help he knew how to summon. He rolled off her and interrupted her gruffly, overcome suddenly with the fear that she would see him as less of a man.
She repeated her question, “Why?”
If he had been willing to display the depth of his love for the world, he could hardly shirk from confessing it to her. So he held her eyes as he spoke, “My love, you know I was worried before the ceremony. We were expecting trouble. It arrived not openly, but as a hidden threat from an enemy who wore the face of a friend. It was Calum who has apparently hated me for years. He saw himself as second best. He said that he lost competitions that I always thought were friendly contests. He measured himself by some calculation of his own making and created a fiendish scheme to make me lose the only competition I ever cared about. He thought that made him a winner. What did he win?"
"Calum, how bizarre. I spent a fair amount of time with him on Skye. I always liked him. He even saw my odd eyes and my cursed hair and..."
"He knew?" Nial asked, jolted. "He knew of your beauty? Had I realized that, I might have put it together and prevented all of this. You're okay?"
"After what we just did, now you ask that?" She teased but regretted it when she saw fear flash in his eyes. She hastened to reassure him. "I'm fine. Well, I'm almost fine. I may die of curiosity if you don't tell me why you knelt before the faeries today."
“Sweetheart, I told you that you meant more to me than anything else, but until today, even I didn’t know how true that was. The Faerie King demanded that I beg. No one expected me to do it; no one wanted me to do it. But the plain fact is, though I balked and refused at first, when I weighed my pride against losing you forever, well, there was no question.”
He turned and asked the question that would torment him forever if he didn’t know. “Love, do you see me as less of a man because you saw me on my knees, begging?”
Her eyes filled not with the scorn he feared, but with worship that made his chest expand again and made him feel like strutting and crowing. Her words only made the feeling grow.
“Husband, today, you challenged death for me and won. That doesn’t happen in real life, it only happens in faerie tales. My Prince Charming, you have made me believe in faerie tales again. Now, we get to the best part, the happily ever after part.”
He was her proud Highland laird as he answered. “I must disagree, love. How about, satisfied ever after instead? Oh and lass, I don’t have a glass slipper but I have something else that I know will fit and I think you’ll enjoy it a lot more.”
It did, she did, and they lived satisfied ever after – and happily ever after too.
Up in the clouds, the faeries mourned for the mating game had ended for this laird. They perked up though when they remembered the little one. They anticipated all the mischief they would brew with the anxious father-to-be and then all the fun they would have with the next laird as he faced the choice.
Hmm, they heard that Nial and Heather would name the baby Ian in gratitude and tribute to the first laird, whose connection with the faeries had saved the life of Lady Maclee.
Imagine how much fun they would have with him!
THE END
About The Author
If you were born in Hartsville you were surely fated to adore romance.
Mary Anne Graham was born an Outlaw in the tiny town of Hartsville, South Carolina. She attended Francis Marion in nearby Florence back when it was a college rather than a university and earned a Bachelor of Arts in English with double minors in history and mass communications. She went on to USC Law School – think South not West - and graduated with a Juris Doctor degree. She (somehow) survived and passed the bar exam. She practices law in South Carolina.
When she wasn’t busy writing legal briefs, Mary Anne read and re-read her shelves and shelves of works by authors like Johanna Lindsey, Catherine Coulter, Elizabeth Lowell, Susan Johnson, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, and Julia Quinn. Although her career as an attorney called to her passion for justice, it wasn’t quite the right kind of passion for the lady from Hartsville who always dreamed of writing a book of her own – someday. Deciding that the only wasted dream is the one abandoned, she sat down to work on populating her bookshelves with some tales of her own.
She now lives in “paradise” - Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, with John, her computer programmer husband and her sons Zack and Sam. All of her men spend much of their free time battling each other at computer games over their home network. Mary Anne used to feel a bit left out of the wired world the men inhabited, but it suits her just fine these days, because she is at her laptop, crafting a happily ever after where second chances and new beginnings are always possible.
You can reach Mary Anne through her blog - "Quacking Alone." (http://quackingalone.wordpress.com) Stop by and let her know what you think of this book.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
About The Author