by Laurel Adams
CONTENTS
Product Description copy
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
Torn Between Two Highlanders
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
EXCERPT
DEAR READERS
ABOUT LAUREL ADAMS
ALSO BY LAUREL ADAMS
Torn Between Two Highlanders
When a crofter’s daughter is kidnapped from her home by a rival clan, two highland warriors come to her rescue, but which one will win her favors?
As far as Arabella is concerned, she didn’t need to be rescued. She had matters perfectly under control until two of her brawny clansmen thundered and blundered onto the scene with their swords unsheathed. Now, for her sake, Malcolm, the best swordsman of the Macrae clan is wounded. And Davy, his cagey russet-haired comrade-at-arms, refuses to leave him behind—insisting that Arabella tend the fallen warrior until Malcolm can ride his horse again. And Arabella agrees, even though it means hiding in enemy territory and spending days and nights alone with two men who plainly desire her.
Since Arabella’s reputation is already ruined, she now feels free to bestow her soiled virtue upon the man of her choice. But Davy and Malcolm—close as brothers—are willing to share her for a single night. Awakened to her own carnal desires, Arabella indulges the men. But when the arrangement lasts for more than just one night, and lust becomes love, Arabella is torn between the quiet depths of taciturn Malcolm and Davy’s sensual charm.
Reader Advisory: This is an erotic romance novella of approximately 40k words that contains sizzling menage scenes, voyeurism, and exhibitionism. For adults only.
TORN BETWEEN TWO HIGHLANDERS
A Sword and Thistle Novella
Laurel Adams
Torn Between Two Highlanders
Copyright © 2014 Laurel Adams
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portion thereof, in any form.
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Cover design by Laurel Adams. Plaid Attribution: Sg647112c at English Wikipedia under Creative Commons. Photo of castle by Dave Conner, also licensed under Creative Commons: https://www.flickr.com/photos/conner395/6469038583. Use of photos and art shouldn’t be taken as an endorsement of those artists of this work.
DISCLAIMER: The characters in this story engage in some risky behavior and make some questionable decisions; it should go without saying that this behavior is not to be encouraged in real life. But that’s the beauty of fiction; they can do this, and we can enjoy thinking about them doing it, without anyone getting hurt.
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Torn Between Two Highlanders
Chapter One
“She bit me!” one of Arabella’s captors cried, holding what she hoped was the bloody stump of his thumb.
Arabella hadn’t struggled when rival clan warriors carried her away from her father’s cottage with a blade to her throat. She’d been too startled to struggle. Too hopeful of being rescued by her father. By Conall, her betrothed. By the warriors of her clan. By any of the men in her life who were supposed to protect a Highland lass and keep her from harm. But now that her captors had her in a clearing where they built a fire against the cool autumn—presumably so they could violate her at their leisure—she realized that no man would rescue her.
Well, a simple crofter’s daughter though she might be, she wasn’t going to cooperate. Arabella learned what came of surrendering to the lusts of men when her sister had turned to harlotry to save their family from doom. But that wasn’t going to happen to Arabella. Arabella understood the truth of it. These villains had used her to cover their escape from the Macrea’s lands and now that they’d escaped, they had no more need of her.
They intended to rape and probably kill her…
…but she’d make them bleed for it first.
Which is why she scratched and kicked and bit like a frenzied thing, savoring the iron blood in her mouth. Vowing, “I’ll bite down hard on anything you put too close to my mouth, you filthy mongrels!”
A brawny Donald Clan warrior in green plaid—the one whose thumb she bit—raised a hand to beat her and Arabella braced against the coming blow. But before his fist cracked upon her cheek, one of his fellows stayed his hand. “Where’s your manners, man? The saucy young wench needs to feel like a woman before we make her one.”
They all laughed, some of them lewdly, as if they looked forward to having a turn. Then a bearded warrior sneered and thrust forward the corpses of a few rabbits, as if he expected Arabella to take them. “It’s been a long ride and we’re hungry. So make yourself useful by cooking a stew over the fire. There’s a pot and spoon in the saddlebags.”
Arabella scowled, dragging herself up from the cold ground, haughtily brushing autumn leaves from her skirts. She wasn’t about to let the bastards see her cry, so she bit her lower lip almost as hard as she’d bitten her attacker’s thumb. “I’ll need water for a stew,” she said, grabbing the string of dead rabbits. “And some herbs, I should think.”
Not that she knew how to make a stew. Or cook much of anything at all. Her older sister Heather had been the cook in the family and—
Oh, no. Thinking about her family made tears well up in Arabella’s eyes and a lump swell in her throat. She feared she’d never see her Papa or her siblings again. Maybe they wouldn’t even miss her. She’d never been an obedient daughter. She’d been a wretched sister, too. Never at home to help Heather with the bairns as much as she should, preferring to roam the wilds sketching plants and pester the village herb woman about their medicinal uses.
That is why Arabella knew next to nothing about how to skin a rabbit, how to chop it up for a stew, or even how long to set it all to boil over a campfire….
…but she knew how to spice it, of a certainty.
And the berries she needed were right there on the yew tree, red as blood.
~~~
“It’s a mite sweet for a rabbit stew,” one of the men said, savoring a scoopful. "Not half bad, though, lass.”
Arabella smiled tightly. "It's an old family recipe," she lied, encouraging him to eat more, taking none of it for herself.
Her captors groped her while she served them. Their rough hands tugged up her skirts and skimmed up her bare legs. They patted her bottom with hardened palms. And they squeezed her breasts when she bent to serve them, promising to do vile things to her once they’d eaten.
“We have to get our strength up to use you properly,” one of them said.
Then they rolled dice to see who would get her first.
Oh, how these men filled her with revulsion and fear! But the more they carried on in this way, the less she regretted what she’d done. It would take some time before the poison of the yew tree did its work. Too much time to keep them from violating her, she thought. But Arabella took satisfaction in knowing that they wouldn’t live to b
oast about it.
The one whose thumb she bit began to sweat first, pulling her down into his lap where he sat upon a fallen log. Breathing fast with foul breath, he vowed, "I'm going to take your maidenhead as my trophy!”
Then he belched in her face, his hand drifting to his belly as if it pained him. As if he were nauseated.
He let her up, just as another of the Donald men called out, “Which maidenhead? I’d wager she still has all three.”
The men laughed, two of them grabbing to tear her clothes off. Her struggles were ineffectual against the strength of their hulking bodies as they clustered around her, and her breath caught in her throat. She knew it would only go worse for her if she fought them.
But she couldn’t help it.
Crack!
Her wooden spoon whipped the face of the nearest warrior, catching him right in the eye and forcing a yelp out of him. Unfortunately, this only elicited a gale of laughter from his comrades who wrenched her arms behind her back and made her drop the spoon.
“Get her nekkid,” snarled the one whose eye she’d turned red. He must’ve been the leader of this little war band because the rest of them did as he commanded.
Arabella’s woolen outer clothes didn’t tear easy, but the men cut the laces of her bodice and her short-dress shredded under their big rough hands. As they forcibly undressed her, she screamed, kicking with her bare feet. She smelled their acrid sweat as strong arms wrestled and stripped her. Felt the bite of a dagger at her throat as they pressed her down into the dirt.
“Do it,” she finally spat at the bearded man who held a blade to her. “Slit a crofter girl’s throat, you brave, brave, man. Can’t you handle me without a weapon?”
“I’ve got a weapon for you, lass,” he promised, throwing the blade aside. “I’ll save the throat-slitting for later, since I enjoy swiving a live squirming lass and not the corpse we’re going to leave you.”
They weren’t even going to pretend to have other intentions!
God’s Blood, she hoped to live at least long enough to see them collapse in tremors, knowing that she’d been the one to drag them down into death with her. They were hurting her. Mauling her. Bruising her. Pinning down her arms and legs to the ground, wrenching her knees apart. She was exposed to them. Entirely naked, the chill of the early evening air upon her most private parts.
She was helpless and shamed enough to cry—to sob—but she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of her tears.
Red-Eye bent to take a savage kiss. Feeling revulsion and terror rise up inside her, she spit out the sickly sweet taste of him the moment he tore his mouth from hers. The men were sweating profusely now. Some of them trembling. They probably thought it was arousal, but Arabella knew better.
The man whose thumb she’d bitten staggered away to vomit in the bushes.
And a grim satisfaction came over Arabella.
Maybe she should surrender. Keep them occupied. Give up her body—which they were intent on taking anyway—to keep them distracted until they were too weak to do her harm. Though she hated to do it, Arabella let out a low moan in her throat; a kind she hoped men might find enticing. The kind she’d made when her betrothed stole a kiss on Christmas morn behind the church; a thing she’d confessed to the Reverend—a nice man of God who would no doubt pray over her coffin to save her soul, but wasn’t going to get her out of this bind.
“Oh, you like this, do you lass?” asked the bearded one, using his teeth upon her exposed nipple. She screamed at the pain, but that only seemed to make him bite harder. Her heartbeat galloped so hard in her chest that she could hear it. Was sure they could all hear it…until they realized that it wasn’t only her heartbeat that galloped.
Those were horse hooves. Then a familiar Macrae clan war cry.
Sgurr Uaran!
The Donald men sprang up off her, but too late for the one who had gone to vomit in the bushes. He lifted himself up unsteadily, too weak to dodge the blow as a dark and unsmiling avenger leapt from his black horse, then brought down his massive claymore upon the sick man’s neck and chest.
It chopped like an ax and a spray of blood misted the air.
The remaining four abductors cried out, rallying to their weapons, which some of them had left off in order to take a turn with her. But they still outnumbered the Macrae warriors, two to one.
While Arabella scrambled for her clothes, a red-headed Macrae warrior with flashing blue eyes laughed with glee as he dismounted from his bay stallion and came to blows with Arabella’s bearded kidnapper. It almost frightened her the pleasure her laughing rescuer seemed to take in the sound of metal upon metal as their swords clashed.
Meanwhile, three of the Donalds swarmed her dark rescuer with the claymore. And Arabella was breathless watching him fend them off. He was, without a doubt, the best swordsman she’d ever seen. Lithe, strong, tall enough to deliver a kick to the chest of Red-Eye that sent him falling to the grass while hacking at the arm of another.
It was bloody mayhem; a scene of horror Arabella could scarcely stand to witness. The bearded Donald warrior who had held a blade to her neck stumbled towards Arabella, and she recognized the glassy look in his eyes.
He was done for. And it wasn’t the sword slash on his arm that would kill him. His death would be her fault. Her poison. Her yew berries. She should’ve felt sorry. God would want her to be remorseful. But she put one palm to his forehead and declared, “You’re a dead man now, sword or no.”
Then she gave him a good push. He toppled from her like a chopped tree to the ground where he died, frothing at the mouth, staring up into her eyes…
He wasn’t the only one staring.
Her laughing rescuer stopped laughing and stared with wide blue eyes. She wasn’t entirely sure it was because she was naked as a newborn. Meanwhile, the rest of Arabella’s kidnappers died swiftly. They collapsed before they could be cut down by the dark demon with the claymore. Until the only sound in the bloody clearing was the panting breaths of the flushed, blood-spattered, and sweaty men who rescued her, both of whom stared at her as if she was the demon.
“Witch,” the dark one said, making a sign of the cross to fend her off.
She made a sound, a near hysterical sound between a sob and a laugh. This man—this strong, tall, incredibly athletic man—actually stumbled back from her, and fell, as if he, too, had eaten some of her rabbit stew. He went down hard onto the grass where her skirt had been tossed by one of her would-be rapists. But Arabella’s bitter amusement faded when she saw the fountain spurt of blood shoot up from her rescuer’s leg.
And the man with the claymore finally let go of his sword.
Dropped it, really, where it spattered in the mud.
“Malcolm,” the freckled one said. “You’ve taken a scratch the leg, man.”
As it turned out, his wound was much more than a scratch.
It was a horrible gash.
How had he fought so bravely, so fiercely, with such a wound?
“Which one of them did it, Davy?” the dark one asked, pressing his hands to staunch the blood though it flowed over his fingers.
“Didn’t see who did it,” the one called Davy replied, scrambling through the grass to help his comrade. Then he turned to Arabella. “Come help me bind his leg, lass. But none of that funny business with your palm to his forehead. You do that again, and the best swordsman in clan Macrae is like to swoon away in fear of your magic.”
Malcolm barked, “Shut it.”
Arabella started to say that she didn’t have any magic, but was cut off by the sight of her rescuer gritting his teeth against the pain, going paler with another spurt of blood. She hurried to help, offering the torn scraps of her underthings to bind him. It would be against all justice for such a warrior to die by the unknown treachery of one of the villains who lay dead at her feet, so Arabella did what she could to help.
“Too bad they’re all dead,” said Davy. “We needed one of these bastards alive. Are there more of
them, lass?”
“I don’t know,” she said, as a rush of blood warmed her hands.
She could only think about how they might staunch the flow of it. But Davy had other concerns. “Were they scouts for the Donald clan that stole you away or did they come to steal livestock, to start with?”
“I don’t think they came to steal,” Arabella answered, trying to ignore that her bare breasts swayed before then men’s eyes as she finished binding the wound so that Davy could tie it off. “They could’ve taken my father’s livestock at any time, but instead they…they took me.”
Then, and only then, did Arabella finally start to cry.
Chapter Two
“No time for tears now, lass” Davy said gently, stooping down to wrap something soft and warm around Arabella’s shoulders. A green plaid cloak, she realized. He must’ve taken from one of the dead men. And though it repulsed her to touch anything belonging to these villains, she used it to cover her nakedness, sniffling into the wool, trying to stifle her tears.
Meanwhile, the wounded Malcolm gritted out, “Take the girl and go.”
Davy squatted down beside his friend. “On any other day, I’d be happy to throw a pretty lass onto my horse and ride off with her. But I’m no’ going to leave you behind. So you’d better let me help you stagger to your feet.”
“Go.” Malcolm’s eyes were glassy and far away. “If there are Donald warriors still about, you’re no match for them on your own.”
“Now that’s just insulting,” Davy replied, with a sunny smile that was belied by the tightness at his eyes. “I might not be able to cut down three men at once with great chops of a monster blade, but I handle two of ‘em just fine even with a dirk. After all, which one of us is sitting in a pool of his own blood?”
