His Magick Touch
by
Award-Winning Author
Kimberly Killion
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PUBLISHED BY:
Kimberly Killion
HIS MAGICK TOUCH
Copyright © 2011 by Kimberly Killion
HIS MAGICK TOUCH copyright 2011 by Kimberly Killion. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of Kimberly Killion.
Originally published in the Mammoth Book of Scottish Romance.
Cover and book design by www.hotdamndesigns.com
Visit Kimberly Killion online at: www.kimberlykillion.com
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ALSO AVAILABLE FROM
Kimberly Killion
~ Taming a Highland Devil
~ Educating Aphrodite
~ Highland Dragon
~ Her One Desire
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Chapter One
Scotland, Inner Hebrides – 1587
The bastard was finally going to kill her.
Sorcha trembled inside her wool mantle as icy wind thrashed strands of brown hair over her face. The rope binding her wrists stung, and her battered legs ached where Hector had pushed her down the steps of the keep. But none of it compared to the fear clutching her insides. She craned her neck over her shoulder and gawked wide-eyed at the white waves pummeling the base of the cliff.
“Ye destroyed my crops with hail, infested the clan’s meat with maggots, and set the outbuildings afire. ’Tis August, yet snow blankets my land.” Hector pressed her closer to the pebbled edge with his dark glare and intimidating size. He stood a full head taller and easily outweighed her by ten stone. “And now this.” He held up his sword arm covered with lesions of oozing puss. “Ye give me a whore’s disease!”
“I did naught, m’lord. I swear it,” Sorcha pleaded between chattering teeth. She considered reminding him that he hadn’t come to her bed in over two years, but knew ’twas useless to defend herself. Hector had blamed her for every misfortune that befell Clan Ranald since he’d taken her to wife four years past.
“Ye lying bitch!” He struck her hard across the face with the back of his hand.
Sorcha twisted at the waist and landed on her knees and elbows. The pain stinging her cheek was soon forgotten when Hector kicked her in the side. She heard her rib crack just before an unbearable streak of pain shot through her very core. She couldn’t fight, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. The coppery tinge of blood spread over her tongue as she rolled onto her stomach. She spit a string of crimson and pulled herself forward by her bound hands.
“Think ye I dinnae hear ye chant your spells in the old language?” Hector wrenched her back to her feet.
If she were half the witch he accused her of being, then she might possess the power to save herself. She wished Da hadn’t ousted Grandmum from the clan before she taught Sorcha the Pagan ways.
“Ye have cursed me and my clan for the last time,” he bellowed over the howling wind.
“If ye kill me,” she panted through the pain, trying to draw upright to stare him in the eye, “my kin will avenge me.” ’Twas a false threat, but she was desperate.
A deep throaty chortle burst from Hector’s pocked face. “Your da died before naming a tanist to reign in his stead. The MacNeils have no chieftain, no bloodline, save for a sixteen-year-old girl. And your sister will be easy to break.”
Sorcha’s heart lodged in her throat. The horrid images of what Hector would do to her sister erupted in her mind’s eye like a nightmare. Peigi would be powerless to defend herself against Hector and his men.
“As soon as I send ye to your Otherworld, I’ll be claiming the Isle of Barra as my own.”
Sorcha looked to the gray sky and pleaded with the king of her gods. Thou Christ of the cross, snatch me from the snares of this evil demon so I might protect my kin.
A bird cawed overhead, circling them. ’Twas a falcon—a white falcon. Mayhap the Goddess Cliodna had come to escort her to the afterlife.
“Fare thee well, Sorcha of Barra. I’ll see ye in Hell.” Hector raised his foot high and drove the sole of his boot into her stomach, sending her reeling over the edge of the cliff.
Shock numbed her insides. She wanted to hold onto something, to scream, but she could do neither. Her body seemed to fall faster than her soul, and for one breathtakingly frightening moment, she felt as though her physical being separated from her spirit.
Through it all, she kept her eyes fixed on that white falcon following her downward to her death.
* * *
“Heave!” Keiran of Barra bellowed the order to his kinsmen pulling on the oars as he cursed Sorcha’s grandmum for not sending him sooner. They were close, but were they close enough to save her?
Standing at the bow of a three-masted carrack staring into thick gray mist, Keiran held fast to the magick thread connecting him to his animal spirit. Through his falcon’s eyes, he watched Laird Ranald strike Sorcha. When the poxed pig kicked her, Keiran’s fingertips dug into the wooden rail. Get up! Crawl away from him.
His falcon, Tàiseal, cried a warning above the scene, just before the cur pushed Sorcha over the cliff’s edge.
Keiran’s heart jumped against his ribs. “Bluidy-faugh!” He snapped his chin over his shoulder and ordered the MacNeil warriors again, “Heave! Heave!”
Two heartbeats later, the bowsprit broke through the thick mist. He pushed the falcon’s aerial view from his head and watched as Sorcha disappeared into the white waves.
Gasps issued overhead from the topmen perched like gulls in the rigging.
“Oh, Brigid, protect her,” Keiran begged the High Mother Goddess as he unsheathed his weapons—a broadsword, two daggers, and a sgian dubh—tossing them to the deck. His entire body shook as he heeled off his deerskin boots. He couldn’t let her die. Aside from being the queen of his clan, she’d held the key to his heart since she was but ten and six.
“Have ye lost your wits, mon?” Sileas stepped onto the prow, pulling a fur cap tighter over his bushy copper hair. “Ye cannot swim faster than they can row. Besides, you’ll freeze to death afore ye reach her.”
“If they keep rowing, the bow will splinter on the rock. Stop the starboard rowers and turn the Cerridwen around.” Keiran pulled his plaid over his head. “Send a long boat. I’m going after her.” He stepped up on the rail and dove headlong into the frigid water.
His eyes pinched tight. Tiny needles of ice pricked his body, seizing his muscles, but his spirit urged him on. He burst out of the water and spun in circles, searching for her, but could see naught through the mayhem of rolling foam. Tàiseal screeched overhead, and Keiran immediately tapped into the falcon’s vision.
Sorcha clung to the edge of a rock nigh ten feet away from him. A swell broke over her, mocking her efforts to survive, but she was alive. Hope gave him the strength he needed to close the space between them. He kicked and pushed the water behind him until he could see her with his own eyes. Keiran reached for her just as another swell crashed over her and pulled her beneath the surface.
Sorcha! He dove deep, refusing to return to the surface without her. Salty brine scoured his eyes, but he dared not close them and lose sight of the dark silhouette descending into the abyss. Painful silence hollowed his ears. Pressure s
queezed his chest. Just as he feared he would fail, a powerful force clutched his back like a sorcerer’s claw and pushed him deeper.
Sorcha’s hair feathered across his fingers. He kicked his feet and hooked his arm beneath her breasts. His legs burned with the added weight, but having her in his arms gave him the strength he needed to haul her back to the surface.
Air. Sweet, cool air. He gasped for it, choked on it as he wrenched Sorcha out of the water. Holding her lifeless body against his chest, he located the long boat only feet away. Within seconds, the hands of his kinsmen grasped at him and Sorcha, heaving them over the edge of the boat.
She lay still as stone in a bundle of sodden wool. Her dark hair coiled in a web around her face. An ashen tint darkened the skin beneath her eyes, and her lips were quickly turning blue.
“She is dead,” Sileas announced as the others rowed them toward the Cerridwen.
Keiran cleared the hair from her mouth, refusing to believe Sileas’s words. Her memory had kept him alive all those years he’d spent on the battlefield. She’d been his light of hope and he’d be damned if he would let that light be doused forever.
He flattened his hand over her chest and used the healing technique Magda had taught him to move the water out of Sorcha’s lungs.
She convulsed—thank the gods—and spewed salt water from her lungs like a geyser. She gasped for air, choking, coughing, gagging. Blood raced through her veins, turning the hue of her skin from pale gray back to creamy white in an instant.
Relief swept through Keiran as did a smidgen of arrogance. He grinned at Sileas. “She is alive.”
Sorcha opened her eyes. Her irises were not the bright blue-green he’d remembered. The color had dulled, become distant. Confusion wrinkled her delicate brow and tore at his heart. Did she not know him?
Shivering, she clung to him with her bound hands, clawed at his undertunic like a frightened kit, then twisted to look up at the cliff where her husband stood watching. “Help me,” she whispered, then collapsed in Keiran’s arms.
Chapter Two
Sorcha decided the Otherworld was blessedly warm and smelled of sweet spices and leather and brine. A gentle to and fro sway rocked her body like she was a babe in arms. She wiggled slightly, searching for injuries, but nothing hurt, save for a faint pinch in her ribs. Aye, she was definitely dead.
She remembered falling, remembered her spirit reaching upward toward the white falcon. Mayhap the goddess had taken her spirit before Sorcha’s body hit the rock, saving her from the pain of death. Regardless of how it happened, ’twas a relief to be on the other side and free of Hector’s abuse.
She snuggled deeper into a cocoon of furs and wrapped her arms around the warm body stretched out alongside her.
Warm body!
Her eyes snapped open. The warm body belonged to a man—a verra naked man. Her breasts smashed against his finely chiseled chest and the hairs on his thighs tickled hers. His clean scent told her he wasn’t Hector as she briefly feared, but she knew not who he was. She tried to inch away from him, but he circled her small frame with thick-muscled arms.
“Be still and rest, Sorcha,” he murmured in a deep husky voice then kissed the top of her head.
She sucked in an audible breath and looked up into amber eyes flecked with gold. She recognized those eyes. “I know ye.”
His smile was familiar as well—crooked with a single dimple set in the right cheek. “Aye. Ye do.”
He’d been two years her senior when he crawled over the curtain wall of Kisimul Castle to give her a satchel of eiderdown feathers for her sixteenth birthday. He’d been known by her kin as the Falconer of Barra. They were worlds apart in station: he, the son of a crofter, and she, the eldest daughter of the chieftain. He’d always reminded her he wasn’t worthy of her affections, but that didn’t stop him from seeking her out in secrecy the summer before he went to war.
“I taught ye how to skip a rock across the loch,” he reminded her when she didn’t respond. “And showed ye how to gig a frog,” He held her chin and traced her bottom lip with the tip of his thumb. “And I gave ye your first kiss when ye were just a wee lass.”
The memory of that kiss exploded in full color in her head. She’d been so young, so naïve to believe they could have a future together. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but had only been seven years.
“Ye do remember me, aye?” He lifted her chin higher so she might study him better. He had a man’s face now—a long lean nose, thick black brows, a high forehead. A coarse shadow darkened his strong jaw beneath sharply angled cheekbones.
“Keiran.” She touched a bruise coloring the side of his face, not yet believing him real. Then her gaze dropped to his lips, so perfectly thick and lush and kissable. Her belly filled with sensations, like a school of minnows flipping and flopping on dry land. When his privy parts hardened against her thigh, she became very aware of their state of undress. “I remember ye with more clothes on.”
He chuckled, but made no attempt to separate himself from the intimacy of their embrace. His hand slid over her hip and cupped her backside. “’Tis good to see ye again, Sorcha.”
Mayhap he never returned from war. Mayhap the sea goddess sent him in her stead to collect Sorcha. “Are ye dead?”
“Nay.” His chest bounced with laughter.
“Am I?” Her questions sounded foolish, but given the circumstances she felt justified. She couldn’t have survived the fall, and if she did, she would have been bruised from head to toe at the very least. Yet, she felt right as rain.
“Ye almost died, but I saved ye.” Pomp and pride lined his expression, but his arrogance was of little import at the moment.
She frowned, confused. Why had he been there? How had he known Hector was going to push her off the cliff? And why wasn’t she in pain?
“Ye are safe now, Sorcha.” He trailed the tips of his fingers up and down her spine, tickling her.
It felt good to be coddled, to be caressed. She’d longed for tenderness the whole of her life and could easily remain in his arms forever. Keiran had been the only person who’d ever made her feel like she was more than a piece of property. He’d vowed to protect her, but those had been the words of a boy who also promised her the moon for a kiss. The undeniable strength of his erection told her his desires were no longer so innocent. “Where are we and why are we naked?”
Keiran’s grin was only half as wicked as his roaming hands. “We are on a ship bound for Barra, and we are naked because I had to warm ye, else ye might have froze to death.”
“Thank ye for saving me.” Sorcha sat up, pulling the furs with her, worried her gratitude wouldn’t be enough payment for his heroics.
“’Tis a vow I made long ago.” The light pouring into the small cabin showed her his muscular torso. Battle scars crisscrossed his abdomen, but what caught her attention more were the Pagan symbols covering his left arm like a decorative sleeve. The blue-black markings formed a design that wrapped over his shoulder and around a crucifix over his heart. Many of her kin had been raised as Christo-Pagans, but Keiran and she had both been forbidden by their Christian fathers to practice the Pagan ways.
When he reached for his undertunic, she saw a bruise wrapped around his wrist. Blue ovals tinted his forearm much like the ones Hector had given her when he’d dragged her to the cliff. She looked down at her own wrists where Hector had bound her hands. Not a smidgeon of color tinted the skin. “Why am I not hurt?”
She caught Keiran wincing as he pulled on his undertunic and spun out of the small bed built into the bulkhead. “Because I took your pain.”
Her brows popped up. Obviously, Keiran had gone against his father’s wishes to practice the Pagan ways which meant the he was most likely dead.
“Dinnae look so surprised. I’ve spent the past nine months with Magda.”
Sorcha eyed him curiously. “My grandmum is dead.”
Keiran shook his head as he draped a blue and yellow plaid over his shoulder and bega
n fingering the pleats into a thick leather belt. “Your grandmum is verra much alive and once again living at Kisimul Castle.”
“’Tis not possible.” Sorcha had been first in line to offer Grandmum a gift to take to the afterlife. “Ye were at her burial. Ye placed a feather on her grave.”
“I know not who we buried that day, but ’twas not Magda.” He tied the laces of his deerskin boots. “When I was at war on the mainland, I suffered from what should have been a fatal wound to the side. I was left for dead, but awoke some weeks later in your father’s solar at Kisimul Castle. I have no memory of how I came to be there, but Magda nursed me back to health and taught me the Pagan ways while I was abed. Three days past, she sent me to collect ye.”
Sorcha struggled to believe his tale, but found herself weakened by the hope that Grandmum was alive and protecting Peigi.
He handed Sorcha a dry undertunic. “Magda is waiting for ye to come home and lead the clan.”
“I cannot lead the clan.” Sorcha shook her head adamantly. The man was a dunderheid if he thought her capable of such a task.
Both Keiran’s brows slid up. He set himself in front of her, then ran his fingers up and down the column of her neck. “Then ye will name a tanist to reign in your stead.”
His intentions suddenly became very clear. Had he cared for her at all, he wouldn’t have waited til Da died to save her from Hector. He’d always been determined to change his stars. An invisible wall of protection wrapped around her heart as she realized he’d saved her now because he wanted her title. No man had ever wanted her for herself. Da had traded her for an alliance. Hector had married her for land. And now Keiran intended to seduce her with gentle caresses for the power of the chieftainship.
She jammed her fists into the sleeves of the tunic. “I suspect ye think I’ll name ye tanist.”
“’Tis my hope that ye will find me worthy of the position.” His smug grin set her teeth on edge.
S’truth, other clans had named tanists outside of their chieftain’s heirs. However, Clan MacNeil had remained true to its bloodline for generations. Regardless of her viewpoint on the matter, she intended to refuse him simply because he’d hurt her. “Unless the laws of our clan have changed, there are only two men who can lay claim to the chieftainship: my husband or Peigi’s.”
His Magick Touch Page 1
