by Brenda Joyce
His lashes lowered, then slowly he looked up. “Will ye nay try?”
“No!” she snapped, shaking.
“An’ if I tell ye I dinna mind if ye love me?”
Her eyes widened. How could she have even forgotten, for one minute, that he was an arrogant medieval jerk? “I will not be tossed aside like Glenna at your tyrannical whim!”
“Did I say I’d toss ye aside?”
She froze.
His eyes were wide and watchful. “I gave ye my word I’d take ye home when ’tis safe, an’ I will keep it.”
Claire couldn’t even breathe. “But?”
His eyes flickered but he did not look away. He murmured, “But ye need nay go if ye dinna wish to.”
“What does that mean? Is that an invitation? Or are you suggesting I will be so smitten with your performance in bed—or so deeply in love with a man I will never understand—that I will decide to stay in the fifteenth century? There’s no way, Malcolm, no damn way!”
His face was hard, his gaze terribly intent. “Ye like it here,” he said softly. “Ye like me. I dinna mind—I like ye, too. Ye hope t’ fight me, but I willna fight ye, lass.”
Claire shook her head, dismayed. “I only came up here to apologize. It was a terrible idea. Why are you doing this?”
“Because when the time comes, mayhap ye won’t be wantin’ t’ leave Dunroch—or me.”
THEY BOTH DINED in silence. Malcolm ate with ravenous intent, apparently unperturbed by their conversation, while Claire was determined to fuel up and not look him in the eye. She was shaken, but she was glad that conversation had ensued. She had been mistaken to think, even for a moment, that they could have any kind of understanding or a physical affair, much less an emotional connection. His arrogance was mind-blowing. Of course she was going home! She was leaving his time the moment it was safe to do so. And in the interim, there would be no more sex, not even kisses, damn it, nothing! And she was not going to have any more intimate conversations with this man, either. Friendship was as bad an idea as anything else and she didn’t think it was possible anyway. Not when he was so certain he’d screw her brains out and she’d be dying for more. Not when he was so certain she’d want to stay with him in this godforsaken time.
Malcolm finally pushed his plate away, but he refilled her glass and then his. He had been filling her glass all night. She didn’t care—she could handle her wine—and she refused to glance up and thank him. She did not trust herself to look into his eyes—he would probably entrance her the moment she did so.
Suddenly, after twenty minutes of silence, he spoke. “I ken ye be tired an’ it be late. But we ha’ matters to discuss.”
Having no choice, Claire looked up warily. She knew what he wanted, oh, yes. “Last night was a mistake.” And even as she spoke, she felt her cheeks heat and her flesh swell. This was it, then. The moment she had been worrying about—and waiting for. The moment when he’d look at her, mesmerize her and take her to his bed.
But he did not react as she expected. He looked amused. “I dinna wish to speak o’ last night.”
She was confused. “You don’t?”
He folded his arms authoritatively across his chest. “I trust meself less now, after last night, than I ever did,” he said firmly.
Claire realized her brain was working a tad slowly. She was just a bit tipsy after all.
His gray eyes turned silver. “Dinna look at me with so much hunger, lass. I’d pleasure ye,” he added softly, “if we were in the light o’ day. But the moon be bright an’ I want to come inside ye. There’s more I’m wantin’ than yer body.”
Claire was ready to faint with the desire pooling beneath her leine and skirt. Faint, or come. “Damn it,” she said softly. All willpower was gone.
“’Tis easy to play ye, lass.” His eyes gleamed and he smiled. “An’ I’ll play ye again when the time is right.”
It was so hard to think. She clasped her burning cheeks. She knew she had decided to avoid him sexually—and in every way—but none of that seemed to matter. What mattered was the gut-wrenching desire in her body, the moisture trickling down her thighs, the urgent throbbing of her distended flesh. What mattered was Malcolm. “Guess what?” she said thickly. “I’ve changed my mind—a woman’s prerogative.”
And he was reading her thoughts, because he darkened. “Dinna try to seduce me, lass, I won’t have it.”
“You really don’t want to go upstairs?” She was shocked.
“Ye’ve had too much wine.” He stared.
It finally clicked. He was still afraid she’d drop dead in his arms. “As powerful as you think you are,” she said huskily, “I am not about to die in your bed.”
His eyes widened. “Ye think I think that I killed the maid with my cock?”
She blushed. “I think she died of heart failure but I think you believe yourself pretty unusually endowed!”
He suddenly laughed, and the sound was warm and rich and beautiful. “Lass, that be sure an’ strong, but the maid died another way.” His smile faded.
Claire did not like the serious expression crossing his face. “I’d give a fortune for an espresso,” she said grimly.
“I dinna ken.”
“No, you wouldn’t know. Why are you looking at me as if a firing squad is standing behind me?”
He reached for her. Claire was surprised when he took her hand in his. “Ye dinna wish t’ ken the truth.”
Claire tried to pull her hand away. “You know what? I did have too much wine and I am damn tired. I am going up to bed. Alone…I guess.” She tried to stand, but he hadn’t let her go, and she wound up sitting on the bench again.
“In yer heart,” he said quietly, “ye ken the truth already.”
“Like hell I do.” Now she tugged hard, and he released her. “Whatever you want to tell me, it can wait.” She felt panic, and it was making her far too sober.
“There be no safe place to hide, lass, nay even in ignorance.”
A shudder of dread swept through her. “Damn you.”
“Ye wish me to hell?” He was incredulous.
She inhaled. “No.”
“Ye don’t want t’ ken the way o’ the world,” he said softly, laying his large hand over hers again. “I ken because I hear ye thinkin’ all the time, an’ ye choose thoughts that please ye. Ye need face the truth, Claire, about Sibylla and her kind.”
Claire couldn’t quite breathe. She knew she did not want to hear his next words. “Sybilla is unnaturally strong, that’s all.”
His grip tightened. “She licked yer skin. Yer throat.”
Claire cried out, leaping to her feet. “She’s a sicko!”
“Pleasure crimes be ancient history, Claire,” Malcolm said grimly, rising to his feet. He never let her go. “The Deamhanain be the source.”
Claire was shaking. No! Malcolm did not know anything about pleasure crimes—he had been reading her mind! Death by pleasure was the result of the breakdown of modern society. It was not a part of the Middle Ages, too.
“The Deamhanain have been killing the Innocent fer pleasure fer thousands o’ years, long before Christ,” he said.
She knew what the Gaelic word Deamhanain meant without having to be told. “I don’t believe in the devil and I don’t believe in demons,” she cried desperately.
“But yer mother an’ yer cousin were killed by Deamhanain…fer their pleasure.”
“Stop! Please! They were killed by madmen, human madmen!”
“True Deamhanain can take life from anyone. They can suck life from a human until he has no power left t’ live. But fornication adds to the pleasure.” His nostrils flared. “The rapture be called Le Puissance.”
“Stop!”
He finally released her hand. “Yer afraid o’ the night, an’ ye should be, ’cause evil walks openly in the night while it hides in the day. Ye need to face the truth, Claire. There be nay safe place t’ hide, ever.”
She struck him, hard, across the face.<
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He jerked but remained rigid. “Yer world is nay different from this one. The Deamhanain be everywhere, in every time, in every place, and they want yer death—an’ mine.”
Claire couldn’t speak. She was sick. The floor felt off kilter and it was spinning. This could not be happening. The world could not be the way Malcolm was describing it.
His tone became kind as he steadied her. “Sibylla be human, like ye. But her powers are not. Moray has possessed her. ’Tis why she be so strong, so evil.”
Claire shook her head. Tears fell. “So Sibylla is a possessed human? Now you’ll tell me Moray is the devil?”
“Long ago,” he said softly, “a great warrior goddess came to Alba an’ lay with kings. One o’ her sons was Moray. He became a great Master…until Satan stole his soul.”
She met his gaze. His features were blurred. “You believe,” she gasped, “but I don’t…I won’t!”
“In Alba, Moray be the lord o’ the darkness, Claire. His spawn be the Deamhanain.”
Claire stepped back and hit the table. The devil. Demons descended from ancient deities. Possessed humans. Pleasure crimes since time began…On some gut level it made absolute sense.
Moray, a demon who had once been a Master….
And Malcolm, a Master who had killed a maid…
Claire felt the room swim. She was in a nightmare. And she knew that, for the first time in her life, she was about to faint.
She reeled. Malcolm caught her. She whispered, “Then what does that make you?”
Malcolm lifted her into his arms just as her world went black.
CLAIRE CAME TO CONSCIOUSNESS, choking on a foul odor. She was in the bed of the chamber she had been given. Malcolm sat beside her, his face grim. In that terrible instant, the nightmare returned and began all over again.
Her head pounded, hurting like hell. Malcolm was wrong. He had to be, even if Sibylla had had the strength of ten men.
He hesitated. “Lass, I be sorry.”
“Get out,” she gasped. She could accept that some men were genetically programmed for evil and that evil was as ancient as the Bible. And she could and would accept that crimes of pleasure existed in the Middle Ages, just the way crimes of passion did. What she would not accept, not for an instant, was that those crimes were being committed by beings with supernatural powers, beings that were not really human.
Malcolm walked out.
Claire lay back against the pillows, feeling sick in her soul. Evil was human. This was a medieval myth. The devil did not exist, and she was going to repeat that litany until she went home. Moray was probably an extraordinarily ruthless, ambitious and clever man, propagating the myth that he was a master of evil. This was a primitive time and men like Malcolm were resorting to superstition and religion to explain things they could not understand!
Claire felt tears falling down her face.
But the perpetrators of pleasure crimes were never caught. Their ability to seduce their victims had never been explained. All the victims died because their hearts stopped. And it was an epidemic….
The shutter on her window suddenly swung open.
Claire leaped from the bed, shaking with fear, but Sibylla did not appear, nor did any supposed demon. She reminded herself that the window opening was too small to admit even a child—and Sibylla didn’t need a window to get inside.
Claire cursed, terrified. She ran to the window and slammed the shutter closed. As she did, black shadows danced on the ramparts above her head.
Claire reminded herself that it was the night watch. A log fell in the fire, hissing. Claire’s heart exploded and she ran from the chamber, instinctively going directly to the end of the hall. The door was wide open and she glimpsed Malcolm inside. She seized the door, breathing hard.
He turned. He’d stripped off his clothes, every single garment, and his entire body bulged with rippling muscle. He was hugely endowed. His eyes widened, but she just stood there.
Now she failed entirely to breathe, but desire wasn’t the issue. Tears crept out from her eyes. Claire swiped at them, thinking about blood and demons and Masters and Malcolm, all at once. The maid died takin’ her pleasure from me.
Claire swallowed the urge to retch. No. Malcolm was human and good and he had not committed a crime of pleasure. That woman had died from too much hot sex. According to Malcolm, it was subhuman demons with superpowers who sucked the life from their victims.
“Lass.”
She looked up slowly, aware that she was at her emotional limit. “The shutter opened,” she whispered.
“It be the wind. There’s nay evil here. The walls were anointed with holy water before we supped.” He had wrapped the brat around his waist like a towel, but it bulged.
Claire trembled.
“The Deamhanain do not enter holy places, lass,” he added softly, but he didn’t slide his arm around her. She wanted to be in his big, strong and very safe embrace.
She hugged herself. “How can you be excited at a time like this?” she whispered.
“Ye’ll always excite me,” he murmured. “Come here.” And he pulled her into his arms.
Claire found her face pressed against the strong crook of his warm neck and shoulder, her hands flat on his broad chest, over his strong, pounding heart. She ignored the powerful organ that throbbed between them. “I don’t believe it,” she insisted desperately. “Not any of it. But what I do know is that you are good.”
His grip tightened and he stroked her hair as it flowed down her back. “Yer chamber be safe, Claire. But I ken ye dinna like t’ sleep alone. Ye can have the bed. I’ll watch over ye t’ night.”
Claire laughed hysterically. This from a medieval macho man? “Thank you.”
“Why do ye nay sleep now?” He smiled. “I’ll sit by the fire.”
“I can’t sleep!” she cried, looking up at him. And she hated the look in his eyes of concern blended with pity. She banged her fist on the slab of his pectoral muscle. “Moray is not the son of Satan. He can’t be.”
His arms tightened and he pulled her close. Claire thought she felt his mouth on her hair. “We’ll discuss such matters t’morrow.”
“There can’t be demons, Malcolm,” she whispered against his chest, meaning it. “There is evil…but it is human.”
He stroked her hair again, remaining silent.
Claire started to really cry then. She had worked so hard to rationalize the frightening epidemic of pleasure crimes—as had every intelligent person she knew. Everyone knew that city life was dangerous, but it was explicable. Crime was the result of poverty, broken homes, drugs and a culture of violence, and while some lunatics ran loose, causing murder and mayhem, relishing every violent sexual act, it was on a random basis. As bad as society was, as decadent, as chaotic, the loonies were a small minority, and they were human. There was always hope.
Claire didn’t know what to think now.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE FOLLOWING SUNRISE, Claire waited to mount her mare, shivering. A dozen men were preparing to mount up, as well, and the gatehouse doors had been opened, the portcullis raised. Through it, she could see the shadow of the drawbridge as it was lowered. She turned her gaze and instantly found Malcolm.
He had yet to mount and was speaking with Seamus by the castle’s interior entrance. Claire’s heart turned over, hard.
She had had one of the worst nights of her life. She’d barely slept, tossing and turning, her mind racing, but every time she’d opened her eyes, she’d seen Malcolm seated by the fire, awake and watchful. He’d watched over her the entire night.
Before Malcolm’s terrible declaration last night, she had been eager to go to Iona where she would see the shrine and hopefully the Cathach, as well. But how could she be excited now when her world was unraveling at the speed of light?
Moray be the lord o’ the darkness.
His spawn be the Deamhanain.
Claire had spent the entire night convincing herself that evil was
human. She had prayed that demons and the devil did not exist. But it had been impossible to convince herself that she was right and Malcolm wrong.
What if everything Malcolm believed was actually true?
Claire did not want to go down that road, not today, not ever. But that’s what scholars did—they asked, what if? She stared at Malcolm. He looked exactly the way a man dedicated to vanquishing evil should. He had the charisma of a leader, the power of a warrior, and he was so damn gorgeous. He looked as if he was the one descended from the gods.
Malcolm turned. His gaze was as concerned as it had been last night, but she did not want his kindness or his concern. She was very ashamed of her hysterical and cowardly behavior. It wasn’t going to happen again, no matter what. Panic and fear weren’t going to solve anything. And she already knew that bad things went bump in the night.
Claire thought about Amy, who had to be worried sick about her by now. How many times had Amy stressed how evil criminals today were? God, did she know something? How could she not, when her husband was in the Bureau, even if he was in counterterrorism? He had to have inside information; all cops talked, including feds.
If the world was as Malcolm claimed, then evil was deliberately and purposefully stalking its innocent victims, seeking destruction and death.
If Malcolm was right, evil had a terrifying new face.
Malcolm approached, his men now mounted. He smiled at her, but his gray gaze was searching. “Ye didna sleep well.”
It wasn’t a question. “Neither did you.” Claire noted that he didn’t look tired at all. She wouldn’t be surprised if he could go days without sleep and remain unaffected.
“’Tis a short trek to Iona,” he said. “Ye can rest there.”
Rest was not on her mind. “I am sorry about last night,” Claire said tersely. “It will never happen again.”
He shrugged. “Yer a woman, lass. Ye need a man to protect ye.”
Claire smiled grimly. She did not want to fight with him. The fight had been knocked out of her last night.
A moment later, she was mounted beside him and they were riding through the gatehouse, the portcullis slamming down behind them. They crossed the drawbridge. The moment the last rider cleared the bridge, Claire heard it being raised. The trail down to the beach was as steep as she recalled, forested ridges on their right, the cliffs on their left. And then the temperature dropped.
