by Lucy Monroe
The words were so similar to the ones he’d spoken six years ago that she nearly let a bitter laugh tumble from her lips.
The hunger for his touch was stronger now though. She’d thought it near impossible to resist back then. And ultimately, she’d given in to it.
In this moment though? She had no hope to deny the potent need controlling her.
It should be easy now. She no longer loved him. He was not the center of her world, as he’d been to her younger self. To deny him should have been the simplest of things, but Shona did not find it so.
Everything inside her wanted to give herself to this man, though he’d proven himself unworthy of the gift. It had to be part of being mated to a Chrechte.
Would her own body betray her because of it?
The answer seemed to be yes as she swayed toward the giant warrior who shared his nature with a beast.
Caelis’s head dipped and his lips pressed reverently to hers. Despite the undeniable hunger raging between them, the caress of his mouth was gentle. Not tentative, but not demanding, either.
The sensation was both so familiar and so far removed from what Shona knew in her present life that she found herself incapable of responding to the kiss in any way. She did not open her lips to give him entrance to her mouth, nor did she repudiate him.
Paralyzed by conflicting emotions, she allowed him to kiss her, his own passions and desires fully in evidence. They called to her, insisting she acknowledge them as well as her own physical need.
He pulled her close, wrapping her in his strong embrace and lifting so their mouths might align more easily.
She remembered how he used to do this, compensating for the great difference in their heights. The way he made her feel both safe and cosseted as he used his strength to protect her and increase her enjoyment of their moments together.
Her husband had never made any accommodations for Shona, though his sexual needs had not been overly onerous. Just very unpleasant.
Henry had not treated her with the tender care or even respect Caelis had. She’d learned to be grateful for the sporadic sexual appetites of an old man.
Caelis growled and broke the kiss. “You will think only of me.”
She did not question how he’d known she was thinking of Henry. It did not matter. She had no more desire to dwell on her life in England with the baron than to return to do Percival’s bidding.
“Make me.” If the order came out sounding more like a plea, neither she nor Caelis remarked on it.
With another primitive, animalistic sound, he kissed her again, this time unquestioningly demanding entrance to her mouth with his tongue. She gave it, letting him wash away unhappy memories and revive good ones.
He tasted like he’d had at least one draught of usquebagh before taking up his sentry duty outside her door. Mixed with his own natural flavor, ’twas a heady combination.
The kiss fulfilled one hunger while fueling another. The craving that had beset her so deeply to have his touch became less acute, though it did not disappear, while the need to have him inside her grew.
Caelis’s hand roamed over her body, pulling at her dress as if the English clothing annoyed him.
She helped him undress her, her instincts and desires in full control now.
At the first touch of his hand on her naked flesh, she cried out with the satisfaction of a long abandoned need. Her body had craved him the entire time they had been apart, though she only now realized it. She was certain she would have continued to do so until the end of her days, even if she had never seen him again.
No other man’s touch would have satisfied, or even come close to pleasing her.
At least now, she understood why. He’d done this to her with the wolf mating thing.
Hands that had once known her body better than any other, learned her anew, big fingers so gentle the caresses brought tears of emotion to her eyes.
And not sadness.
Only he could do this to her. And she let him. They tumbled to the bed, her body trembling with the need to be claimed by his, his strong warrior’s muscles tense with the need to claim.
They touched one another as lovers who had never parted, with sure hands and knowing caresses meant to evoke further passions. He teased her nipples, sending pleasure throughout her body, making her ache and writhe even while her own fingers caressed bulging muscles and traced battle scars.
Her heart cried out in possession, mine, with each pass of her hand over his body. She neither denied nor acknowledged that heart’s cry, but made no effort to hold back on her desire to touch either.
Neither did she try to stop him when his hand delved between her legs to touch her intimately, pushing the pleasure to a higher, almost unbearable level.
But when she spread her thighs for him, he did not enter her.
Instead, Caelis arranged their bodies so that when he pressed down with his pelvis, his shaft rubbed between her swollen folds, his manhood trapped between their bodies so penetration could not occur. This position also ensured that the hard flesh rubbed back and forth over the sweet spot so filled with pleasure for her.
She arched upward, uncontrollable sounds of pleasure spilling from her.
His kisses grew voracious, his movements hard and demanding. Ecstasy spiraled tighter and tighter until it exploded with starbursts inside her.
He climaxed, too, his shout muffled against her lips, his seed marking her stomach with his primordial scent.
She did not know how, but she sensed that his wolf was very happy with that achievement.
The contented growl that sounded in his chest as he reached down to lazily rub the creamy substance into her skin indicated that the beast was indeed pleased.
“I cannot believe I let you do that,” she said with more honesty than anger.
“It was inevitable.”
Perhaps, if all his claims were true, it had been. Shona didn’t feel particularly comforted by that fact, but neither did she feel as if she had betrayed herself completely.
It was a sign of her constant inner conflict with this man that it seemed as if for every thought or feeling she had, an opposite one rose up to meet it.
Chapter 7
The proof of a warrior’s strength is in the contentment of his mate and children.
—ÉAN ORAL TRADITIONS
Caelis gave her a look, his brown gaze filled to overflowing with satisfaction. “You smell like me.”
His gratification was more than a little annoying. He wasn’t beset by conflict like she was. It was apparent that to him, all was quite simple.
But it wasn’t just typical warrior arrogance.
“Your wolf likes that.” Again, she did not understand how she knew, but she had not doubts on the matter.
“Aye, but do not be mistaken…the man is just as content to have every wolf in this clan know you have been marked as mine.”
“They’ll be able to tell?” she asked, heat at the thought filling her cheeks and spreading over her chest. “They’ll smell you on me?”
It was a most disconcerting, not to mention embarrassing, thought. How many wolves were there? If the laird was a shape-changer like Caelis, how many others were as well?
“Aye.”
“Do not sound so pleased about it.”
“I cannot help it. You are mine, Shona, and should always have been with me. I have lived without you for too long. For a time, I even believed you were dead.”
“What? Why?” She could not imagine how much worse the last years would have been had she believed Caelis dead.
“Why do you think? Our laird told me you had been killed by a wild boar. I carried great guilt along with my grief until I began to realize perhaps that had been a lie along with so many other things Uven told me.”
“He is not my laird.”
“No, he is not.”
She was glad of the easy agreement, but it was not enough. “I am English now.”
“No, you are not.”
“I am.” No matter how he would stubbornly refuse to admit it.
“Are you not here seeking a life in Scotland for you and your children?”
“Yes.”
“Because at heart, you are a fine Scottish lass.” His smile was irresistible.
But still she said, so there could be no confusion, “I’ll not wear the MacLeod colors again.”
“Not now. But later.”
“Never.”
“Never is—”
“A long time. So you’ve said.”
“Best you remember that.” He was smiling again.
She responded with some bite, “Best you remember that I am not so easily gotten around.”
He looked between their naked bodies with significance.
“Your wolf can take credit for this, I think.”
“My wolf is me.”
“The one part of you I just might trust.”
He jerked a little and then stared down at her. “You trust my beast?”
“Yes. I don’t know why, but I do.”
“You do not trust me—the man—though?” he asked carefully.
“No.” She made no effort to soften the effect of her denial. He had betrayed her most thoroughly.
“Yet you allowed me to touch you.”
“I told you, blame your wolf. There is some kind of magic in this mating thing and my body is not my own.”
The glow of satisfaction around him dimmed. “You truly believe this?”
“Absolutely.” And he’d best not try to deny it. “Give me another explanation for a craving I cannot stand against for the touch of the very man who has betrayed me so cruelly.”
Caelis looked down at her with shock, as if her words were beyond his ken. But surely he knew the truth of it more certainly than she. He had lived with knowledge of his wolf his whole life. She’d just found out about it.
Finally, his mouth opened and a very ugly word came, but nothing else.
She frowned up at him. “What is the matter?”
“You must ask when you have just told me you still hold my actions against me in such a grievous way? That you allowed me to touch you only because you could not help yourself?”
What did he expect? Protestations of love as she used to give him? “Did you think pleasure could erase the past?”
The expression on his warrior’s features said he’d believed exactly that. Men! They uprooted a woman’s life, made changes over which she had no control and then expected a thank-you at the end of it. Her father had been the same.
“Have you forgotten your anger at Uven for lying to you now that we have once again shared passion?” she asked, wondering if Caelis would let himself understand.
“Nay! I am more furious with that liar than I was before. What you and I have just shared only shows what he took from us both with his lies. He robbed me of my sacred mate, of my son.”
As Caelis had allowed the man to rob her. She did not say it, having earlier made her point on that issue.
Instead, she reiterated, “So, the pleasure did not negate the pain?”
Sighing, Caelis shook his head. “You are saying you do not forgive me, either.”
“No.” Though maybe she was beginning to.
He frowned, his overt satisfaction all but gone. “I see.”
Perhaps he did. Mayhap he even realized that only time would prove him more worthy of her trust than she now held him.
“You have grown into a hard woman, Shona.”
“Circumstances have forced me to draw on strengths I did not know I had.” Though the strength to resist him clearly was not among them.
He nodded. “When you realized you were indeed pregnant, why did you not send word?”
“You assume I had some way of doing so. I did not, but even if I had, I would not have. You had already told me you would consider my child someone else’s by-blow.”
“I did not mean it. You had to know that. You were untouched the first time we shared our bodies.”
“I did not know it. You said it after rejecting me; why would I believe you would want me even if you knew of the babe?”
“I am not a man who would abandon my child.”
“Tell yourself whatever you like, but you already had.”
He stared at her, his expression clearly showing how foreign he found the concept of her words, but then great sadness came over his features. “You are right.”
She knew she was. So, why did seeing his grief hurt her as it did?
He turned and moved as if to leave the bed.
Her hand moved out to touch him before she could snatch it back. “Where are you going?”
“Back to the hall.” His massive shoulders hunched. “I have no place in your bed.”
“You are already in my bed.”
He merely shrugged, but he did not stand.
“I do not want you to go.”
“That cannot be true.”
“It is.”
His head turned so he looked at her over his shoulder. “Because of my wolf. Because we are mates.”
“Maybe. I would like to think so. It paints me a stronger woman, but all I know of a certainty is that when I am with you, I have peace I have not had these past six years.”
“Even with all the anger you have toward me?” he asked with disbelief.
His reaction was understandable. She found her own desires and behavior very confusing indeed. “Prove yourself trustworthy to me.”
“How?”
“Begin by not leaving my bed now that you have gotten what you wanted from me.”
“You think one moment of passion is all I want from you?” he asked, this time the disbelief huge in his tone and demeanor. “I have gone six years without you. We could spend until the next new moon in this bed and I would not have gotten all I wanted of your body.”
And suddenly, the desire was rolling off him again in hot waves that reached out and covered her. Inexplicably, but not surprisingly, her own rose to match it.
This time, their coupling was no less hungry than the last. In fact, his body moved against hers with greater urgency, though he still refused to enter her. And a part of her was grateful for it.
She did not want another pregnancy outside the bonds of matrimony. The last had cost her dearly.
Though as he’d pushed her to admit to him, she would never truly regret it.
When their passions had been spent, Caelis lowered himself to lie by her side. “Tell me about Percival wanting to make you his lehman.”
“The disgusting degenerate. He’s not content to tup half the serving wenches and his own poor wife, but he wanted to make me his official mistress, thereby making my children by his father at risk for being considered natural, rather than legitimate.”
“Is that the way it works in England then?”
“In England it is no more common, or acceptable, for a man to take his father’s wife as his lehman than in the Highlands.”
“But he would have done it regardless?”
“He’s too arrogant to care if others approve of his behavior.” She worried her lower lip, deciding if she wanted to tell Caelis everything. “You are committed to claiming Eadan?”
“Aye, and Marjory too.”
Could she trust him to be father to both her children? Again, only time would tell, but Shona had to take the first step forward. Whether she liked it or not. Trusted him, or didn’t.
She took a deep breath and let it out. “Percival tried to kill Eadan, on more than one occasion. He always denied his intentions, but the accidents were no accidents at all. Percival wanted no competitor for his father’s barony.”
“But as the eldest, he was the acknowledged heir.” Caelis sounded confused.
“Yes, but if Percival could not provide offspring—and thus far he has not, though his marriage is older than mine to his father—the king would naturally name Eadan’s eldest son the heir to the title. Percival’s pride would not allow it.”
&nb
sp; “He would rather there be no heir to the barony?”
“Oh, yes. In that case, the king would appoint an heir who would likely come from the monarch’s own extended relations.”
“Percival sounds like a very vain, manipulative man.”
“He is, and cunning and determined.”
“You think he would come after you here?”
“I do not know.”
“If he comes, I will kill him.”
“He is an English baron; it would be considered an act of war.” Not that she would miss the man’s existence on this earth.
“If England’s king is foolish enough to go to war over such a worm, then he deserves the losses he will suffer at our hands.”
Shona shook her head. “Stubborn man.”
“We are well matched then.”
* * *
Audrey quietly pushed open the door to Shona’s bedchamber, disturbed to find it not barred from the inside. Thus far, the Sinclairs had shown themselves hospitable and unlikely to harm, but they were still a clan of strangers.
Except that man who wore different colors and was so obviously Eadan’s father. There was no doubt that Shona had known that man very well at some point in the past. And though perhaps it should not, that fact had quite shocked Audrey.
She had always known the baron wasn’t blood relative to her dear friend’s first child, but she’d never guessed the father was a Highland warrior.
It was testament to Audrey’s agitated thinking that the scents of the Highland Chrechte and that of unmistakable passion did not become apparent to her until Audrey’s gaze fell on the bed occupied by one more person than it should have been.
The wolf was awake, staring at her with dark, unfathomable eyes, his hold on Audrey’s dearest friend too proprietary to be mistaken. The air of protection was no less certain.
“How? What?” she stuttered out, her shock so complete, she nearly lost her breath.
Shona woke in that moment, her eyes widening at the sight of Audrey and then in horror as realization of her circumstances dawned. “Audrey! I…It’s…”
Audrey shook her head. “Come, we will bathe before the rest of the keep is up and sniffing around.”
Whatever explanations Shona wished to make, she could do so later. When she was no longer embroiled in an undeniably and hopelessly compromising position.
