Highland Dragon

by Kimberly Killion

  “And did she fall in love with the brave knight?”

  “Aye, she did,” she hollered over her shoulder. “And they lived happily ever after.”

  With the children content with the conclusion of her story, Akira’s pace quickened. What had delayed his return? Had he been hurt? Attacked en route by brigands? Where were his kinsmen? Her feet couldn’t keep up with her worries, and her walk turned into a fevered run. A cool wind pushed tears across her temples while the burning in her chest dried her throat. She only wanted to touch his skin and be reassured he was unharmed.

  Calin seemed to be in an equal hurry to reach her. They met at the base of the knoll, both inhaling air in starving gulps. Sweat trickled down her spine.

  An arm’s length separated them.

  Relief swelled in her throat. She feared she might burst into tears right here before him. Dark auburn hair settled atop his shoulders in wet waves. His freshly shaven jaw gleamed and the clean scent of a recent bath clung to the air like a fresh mist of rain. Fatigue rested beneath his eyes in dark half-moons, but his one brow remained raised and ever perky. She touched his forearm. His skin felt cool and damp beneath her burning fingertips. The muscles of his chest heaved. “Are ye angry with me?”

  “Should I be?”

  “Nay.”

  His answer cooled the tear-streaked path along one cheek. His eyes twitched as he studied her. He licked his lips. She could no longer hide her feelings for her husband. No longer wanted to. She wanted to leap onto his chest and crush his mouth with her kiss.

  The fire in his eyes told her he wanted the same.

  The whoops and cheers of the many kinfolk gathering on the lawn jarred her. His strong arm shook beneath her fingertips. Her breathing sounded raspy in her ears. She could bear it no more.

  “We have much to discuss,” they said in unison.

  Akira smiled and lowered her lashes bashfully, but Calin jerked her in the direction of the keep, nearly pulling her arm loose from her shoulder. By the time they reached the worn path, they were sprinting for the front entrance. Once inside the keep, Gordon tried to stay them. “Welcome home, m’laird.”

  “Gather the elders,” Calin tossed over his shoulder. “We need to meet after I speak with my wife.”

  Gordon spoke, but his words were incomprehensible behind her. They reached the base of the tower stairwell and Calin took three steps to her one. She clutched at her skirts trying to follow him up the stairs of the west wing. Evie and Tara ducked beneath a pitch-pine torch as they whirled past.

  “M’lady, have ye need of anything?”

  Akira didn’t know which maid asked the question, nor did she care. “Nay.” The single word echoed throughout the tower stairwell. Her body flashed with expectancy. Her nipples hardened against the coarse wool of her sark. She should inquire of his journey. A good wife would pay heed to his needs. Was it possible he felt the same sense of urgency as she? The same longing?

  The stairwell seemed endless. She couldn’t keep up with Calin’s strides and stumbled. He jogged back down and carried her the remaining twenty steps to his solar. Kicking the door open, Calin dropped her to her feet and barred the adjoining doors while she did the same with his solar door.

  “We need to talk,” Calin said, but no words followed when he tossed his belt and claymore to the floor with a clank. He looked angry or mayhap impatient.

  After removing the long pin holding his plaid at his waist, he jerked his léine shirt over his head. His hot hands closed over her wrists and pressed her open palms against his bare chest. The depth of desire in his eyes burned her face. The intensity scared her. “Have I displeased ye, m’laird?”

  “Nay.” His hands clutched her skull and tilted her head, then his lips covered hers. Their tongues spiraled each other in a frenzied chase. Calin pulled away, but not before nibbling at each lip. Teasing, taunting, promising so much more. She inhaled deeply through her nose, trying to steady her turbulent emotions. Her mind, her body, her entire being felt trapped inside a storm. Moisture flooded between her legs. A proper wife would never conduct herself in such a manner. She should break free of him.

  The task proved impossible. “I’ve verra much to tell ye. I started schooling the children.” She panted between eager breaths. Gooseflesh sprouted over her collarbone when his mouth moved to the pulse in her neck.

  “I’ve much to tell ye, too, but I need ye—now.” Calin raised her kirtle and impaled his thumb into the damp curls between her legs while his fingers stroked the cleft of her backside. His eyes widened wickedly. “And ye need me as well.” He looked starved, crazed—the same as she felt.

  Embarrassed he found her in such a state of arousal, Akira lowered her lids and moaned. The intimate touch made her knees weak and her sensitive breasts tighten.

  When she started for the bed, Calin pressed her against the door. “Nay. Here. Now!”

  He gave her no time to rebuke his demand. He shed his plaid and raised her atop him. She latched her boots around his waist while strong fingers circled her bottom and opened her hot flesh to him. She bit her bottom lip when he slid inside her. Pressing her back against the solidity of the wooden door, he plunged into her. She gasped at the intensity, but couldn’t control her racing mind. So much needed to be said, and she couldn’t hold back the information. “Jaime…has asked Isobel…to be his wife,” she mentioned, while suckling his neck and searching for an anchor.

  “I met with King James…and have his permission…to pursue an alliance.” Calin ripped the brooch from her arisaid to free her of the heavy wool while she worked at the laces of her bodice. The thin linen of her sark didn’t stand a chance. The seams ripped against his desperate need to get to her breasts. His teeth found her rigid nipple—bathing, sucking, biting, while he buried himself deep inside her. The door knocked within its frame with each thrust. She whimpered, but continued their conversation. “I’ve petitioned the king…for an annulment.”

  Calin ceased abruptly. His amber eyes filled with upset.

  She pulled his bottom lip between her teeth and smiled. “Not for us, for Elsbeth.”

  “Och, lass. Ye gave me a fright.” Calin growled and lunged back inside her.

  She squealed, then inhaled sharply. “I know who abducted me.”

  He silenced her with a kiss. His tongue swirled through the recesses of her mouth while he pumped hard and fast. He pressed the backs of her hands against the door and filled her with his seed. “King James wishes me to marry English,” he said between sporadic breaths.

  She fell against his shoulder when the deluge of ecstasy overcame her. “I missed ye.”

  “I missed ye more.” Calin put his arms around her back and carried her across the chamber. After shedding the garment hanging from her waist, she fell onto the bed. Her body ached for him and her mind turned to mush. What did he say about marrying English?

  “I met with Logan Donald and Kendrick,” he informed her while he freed himself of his deerskin boots.

  “Is Kendrick with ye?” She tried to sit up, but he pushed her back against the bolster and pinned her arms above her head with one hand. The other wicked hand rekindled the fire between her legs until she thought her bones would combust.

  “Aye, he just returned from securing your sisters and mam with the Donalds,” Calin answered, his voice raspy and out of breath.She wanted to ask more questions. There was so much to discuss. So much to do. But she only wanted to make love to her husband and not worry about the problems they would face.

  Crivons! What was he doing with his hand?

  The thickness of his middle fingers spiraled in the most private area of her body, while his thumb flicked deep inside her. She rolled her hips in response and clenched her muscles around his teasing touch. Calin pulled her fingers to titillate one breast while he filled his palm with the other, then proceeded to kiss his way down her belly—never once easing the exquisite torment between her legs.

  “I need to meet with the elders.” He
breathed against her nether curls.

  She squealed when he drew her swollen pebble between his teeth. Quivers of delight rippled beneath her skin. Icy air sucked through her teeth, then she exhaled her words. “I’ll not be long now. I vow it…Ye must be…hungry.”

  “I am ravenous.” Calin flipped her onto her stomach and gnawed on her backside. He was grateful he didn’t make camp with the others, even though the inside of his thighs were raw from the saddle. The glow of a full moon lit his way back to Cànwyck Castle as he rode throughout the night. He missed his wife. The irrefutable ache in his chest drove him to push Sirius to near exhaustion. His hands had burned with the desire to press his wife’s body against his own and feel her hands caress his heart. An empty stomach begged him for two days to stop, but he’d ignored the cramps. None of it mattered now. She was here, with him and not even the king’s demands would take her from him.

  He closed his mouth over the pink MacLeod crest branded on her creamy cheek. The brand marking her as his. He wanted to fill her with life. A new life. A child. He raised her to her knees and filled his palms with the milky swells of her behind. By the saints, the woman presented a tantalizing sight. She was pink and swollen and glistening with need. His manhood filled with blood instantly and jumped. He positioned his fully erect member between her silky mons. Running a hand up her spine, he pressed her shoulders to the coverlet and spread her legs wide with his knees. Sliding himself into her, he gripped her hipbones and rocked her against him, again and again. When she mimicked the cadence, he reached around to circle her tiny nub until she screamed in exhilarated rapture.

  The muscles in his thighs clenched. The heat of her orgasm, along with the friction caused by the awkward position he twisted her into, snapped any restraint he may have still possessed. A peculiar, yet wonderful, sensation rippled through him as he poured life inside her womb. A life that would bond them together forever.

  Loosening his hold on her, he gently caressed her hips and watched the red ovals fade where he’d gripped her pale flesh. Sprawling out beside her, he rolled to her side and wedged her against him. The silky softness of her damp body molded against his rugged skin. He kissed the back of her eyelids and wiped the sheen of sweat from her top lip. He caressed the base of her breast with his callused knuckles and speculated how any part of this woman could belong to Laird Kinnon. The answer to a question, which had plagued him half his life, suddenly became poignantly clear. For eighteen years he wondered why his father hadn’t put forth a battle the night he died. Why he sacrificed the last moment of his existence for a woman who wasn’t even his wife. Now, he finally understood. His father loved Lena, just as he loved Akira. He would die to keep her, regardless of what King James wanted.

  Akira’s warm fingers touched his cheek. He pushed her hand the rest of the way to his earlobe. He wanted her to admit they were soul mates. He knew it. He felt it in his heart. He just didn’t know how to tell her. Or worse, feared she didn’t return those feelings.

  Beautiful blue eyes peeked at him from beneath fluttering lashes and her voice caressed his ears. “That wasnae the way I know.”His chest bounced with laughter. He’d never known that way either, but he’d been crazed to have her, and she had yet to protest any position his creative mind could devise. “We will do it your way soon.” He kissed the curved corner of her reddened lips. “I missed ye, my love,” he whispered into the whorl of her ear.

  She giggled and toyed with his ear. “We already said that, but I fear we may want to start over.”

  “Gladly.” Though exhausted, he slid his hand between her thighs. “Mayhap we will try your way now.”

  “Nay, ye lusty barbarian!” She halted his wicked fingers, but instead of throwing his hand aside, she cupped his palm over her breast and gave him an encouraging squeeze. “We are supposed to be having a discussion.”

  “Ye are too naked for me to discuss anything. I cannae concentrate with your bonnie fine tit in my palm,” he protested and bent to nip the pink crest.

  “Then I’ll clothe myself, as will ye.” Akira crawled out of his embrace and slipped into an ivory silk robe. She sat atop the bench and waited for him to do the same.

  He groaned, but forced himself to retrieve a rust-colored robe from the anteroom and tied the matching belt about his waist. When he started to sit beside her, she held up her hand, palm flat. “Nay. Ye will sit over there. I dinnae trust your hands.”

  She pointed at the three-legged cuttie stool across the solar.

  Disgruntled, he followed her orders, and propped his elbows on his knees, all the while hoping the small stool wouldn’t topple beneath his weight.

  “I started schooling the children.” Akira told him about Jaime and Isobel, the kinswomen, and then summarized her conversations with Elsbeth and how she petitioned the king four sennights ago for their annulment. Calin buried his face in his hands when she described Catriona’s conduct. How could he have been blindsided by such a treacherous woman? Catriona’s involvement in Akira’s abduction would complicate matters even more with King James. Nonetheless, he assured Akira that Ian and his brother’s punishment for their betrayal would be severe.

  “Now. Tell me why Kendrick has need of securing my family.” Akira steepled her fingers beneath her chin.

  “Laird Kinnon knows Kendrick leads the rebellion. Your chieftain intends to give the Ionas to Darach in an effort to join the alliance.”

  “What?” Akira’s hand flew to her chest. “He is mad! And King James has agreed to support such a union?”

  “Nay. King James has other plans for the Isles.”

  Akira waited for further explanation, and Calin knew what her next question would be just as she asked it.

  “Plans that involve an English union? How are ye to marry English when ye are already my husband, bound by God and the kirk?”

  Calin had asked King James the same question. The king expressed his desire to maintain peace with King Henry for the good of Scotland. At which point, the archbishop unraveled a scroll. King James dissolved his marriage to Akira with the tip of a quill, but Calin ripped the parchment to shreds and threw the royal decree at His Majesty’s feet. This act of stupidity gained him three sennights of imprisonment.

  The kings of Scotland had been trying to dissolve the Lords of the Isles for decades. King James refused to support any alliance unless the chieftains of the Isles declared fealty to the crown and married daughters of English nobility as a selfless act to prove their allegiance to Scotland.

  “I would know how the king wishes ye to marry English,” Akira inquired again, when he gave no response. Now parched, he cleared his throat. “I’ll answer that question in the Great Hall with the elders. Mayhap ye’ll not throw a tantrum in their presence.”

  Two black brows rose. “Mayhap, I’ll bind your limbs and torture ye until ye answer accordingly.” Crossing her legs, knee over knee, Akira let the robe “V” over her sumptuous thigh. The tip of her middle finger circled the shadow of her peaked nipple pressing against the silk of her robe.

  His delicate dragon was indeed a dangerous creature. He sensed her impatience, but her seductive tactics for obtaining the truth shocked him nonetheless.

  “Or mayhap I’ll offer my body to ye in exchange for what I want to know.”

  Minx! Calin tore his eyes away, unable to watch her toy with herself. He enjoyed her games. The play thickened his blood and made him want her all the more. He stared at the adjoining doors. “Are ye done blathering, wife?”

  “Have ye an answer for me, husband?”

  Calin turned back, disappointed to find her arms crossed in defiance over the sweet swells of her breasts. His eyes narrowed on her. “Touch yourself again, and I’ll tell ye.”

  Her head tilted as if she might be considering his request. Excitement twirled up his spine when the corner of her lips rose, then she touched one finger to her exposed knee. “There. Now tell me.”

  “Nay. Ye know what I want.”

  Akira s
uckled the tip of her middle finger between her full lips then reached inside her robe to caress her nipple. Her mouth lay open and her pink tongue darted out to lick her heart-shaped lips.

  “King James wishes for peace between England and Scotland. He has issued an edict for the annulment of our marriage and has ordered me to marry English, but I refused him.” The words poured out of his mouth with astonishing ease, but the look of dejection on her face froze the fire in his loins.

  Her eyes pinched together and the hand that had teased him in playful banter now clutched the edges of her robe together at her neck. She stood and then unbarred the door to her solar. He followed her into the darkest corner of the anteroom where she wept open-mouthed into her hands. He hated her tears and hated himself more for causing them. He placed his hand on her shoulder and thanked the saints she didn’t pull away. “I’ll not give ye up, my love. I promise this to ye on my father’s grave and afore the saints I pray to daily.”

  “What if ye’ve nay choice?” Her chin fell to her chest, but her tear-soaked hand rested over his, quivering.

  “A mon always has a choice. Sometimes those choices require immense sacrifice, but ’tis a choice just the same.” Calin turned her into him and brushed his lips over her forehead then kissed her temple. He wished she believed in him, but that trust had not yet been built, and he hadn’t the time to erect such a fortress.

  “Ye have pledged fealty to your king. To refuse him would be treasonous. What choice did he give ye?”

  “If I choose to accept the annulment and marry English, Clan MacLeod will receive His Majesty’s full support in aligning the Isles.”

  “And if ye refuse your king?”

  “King James has threatened to confiscate the MacLeod title and land. My kin will be evicted from their homes, and I will hang for treason.”

  Akira’s hand covered her mouth, but not in time to hide her gasp. “I am not willing to make such a sacrifice.” She slipped past him and dressed quickly. Her eyes avoided him and the words to console her never found their way off his tongue.