There was something different about her, something more than being attracted to her that made him feel connected. Even as he collapsed upon the bed with her luscious bare body beneath him, he felt as if this were his destiny. As if they were meant to be joined in this way and anything else would go against the predetermined course of life as he knew it.
Cradling her head in his palm, he gazed into her eyes. They were as green as the rolling meadows of Ireland and as clear as the streams that gushed over moss-covered rocks after a long Erin rain. He could dwell in them for hours. “Are you certain this is what you want?”
He felt her fingertips drag across his back and down to his waist. In a flash, she ripped the towel from his body, her eyes as honest as he’d ever seen them. “I want you to take all the energy you’re using to hold yourself back and put it into making love to me.”
Leif didn’t know what shocked him more. The demand she left him with or the feel of her warm naked flesh beneath his, no longer separated by terrycloth. If he didn’t get a condom on soon, he’d risk spilling his seed before he was ready.
Tearing it with his teeth, he opened the silver square package and rolled it over himself. On their own volition, his hips shifted and moved against her. His painful erection sought sanctuary in the delicate flesh of her body. Raking his hand down her hips, he followed the length of her thigh and hiked it up, thrusting inside her without warning. The tiny whimper in her gasp aroused him to the point of pain, every muscle in his body screaming to do it again.
Sheathed inside her, he captured her lips and dragged his hand up the curve of her hip and over her ribs until the swell of her breast filled his palm. He could feel the taut peak of her nipple teasing him and he had to have it. Kissing his way down her neck and shoulders, he cupped her with a firm grasp and drew her hard into his mouth.
Sweeping his tongue over the entire orb, she moaned and arched against him. The mere movement of her body writhing beneath him tipped the scales in such a way that he couldn’t help but drive himself into her again.
He barely recognized this unleashed primal being. When her teeth scraped along his skin as she sucked his neck, he countered by bracing his arms behind her thighs and hoisting her legs up and open. When her nails scratched down his back, he struck back by trapping her arms above her head and holding her down. When she wrapped her legs around his back and squeezed him tight, he retaliated with another hard thrust inside her.
Every aggressive action she made, coerced an equal and opposite reaction from him. Though it wasn’t slow and sensual, their struggle to acquire sweet revenge was wicked, erotic, and more gratifying than he ever dreamed.
Sheer ecstasy drew near and her body stiffened beneath him. Every drop of blood pooled at the base of his groin as he felt the muscles of her entrance contract and clamp down around him. He gripped the blankets and raised his head to the ceiling. As the fiery fluid surged from his body, he groaned in sweet agony, a feral outburst inadvertently representing his last primordial deed.
Collapsing upon her, Leif heard his name on her lips, a winded utterance of a spent woman, lying in exhaustion beneath him, trembling. He smiled. His limbs felt like dead weights at the same time his body soared.
Using every ounce of energy he had, he lifted himself and rolled off of her, the bed bouncing beneath his weight as he fell to his back. Staring at the ceiling, he removed the condom and threw in the garbage pail next to the bed.
****
Feeling the shock of his warmth vanish from her body as he flipped away, Lorraine felt cheated. She loved the heavy weight of his body pressing her into the mattress and the security of all that male muscle surrounding her. Unwilling to let those pleasures slip from her grasp, she roll on top of him and sat astride his hips. The rigidity of his semi-erect bulge put a smile on her face.
“You’re not finished, are you?”
Leif’s brow hitched above his eyes in surprise. “I was but…” He wet his lips and scanned over every inch of her body. “I could always reconsider.”
Dragging her hands over his chest and feeling every cord of muscle on the way down, she examined the sharp contours of his torso. She liked how his stomach felt like an actual washboard, ripples of bunched muscles in pairs above his perfect bellybutton. “What would it take?”
His whole body shook once on a silent chuckle and his hands gripped her bottom. “Very little persuasion.”
“Little as in…just barely?” She toyed with him, touching the tip of his head between her legs with butterfly strokes.
His eyes closed and his jaw clenched. “Mmm hmm.” The rasp of his voice, laden with dark desire, vibrated and tickled the sensitive flesh laid over him.
He was a sizeable man, this she knew. The lingering delicious ache of her stretched loins attested to that. But as he seemed to become rearoused with each gentle caress, she wanted a better glimpse. After their shower, everything had happened so fast. Before she knew it, he had her pinned to the bed with no luck of admiring his noteworthy assets. She wanted to get a good long look at the parts she missed.
Sliding down his legs, she hovered above his hips. Her hands splayed over his engorged member while her eyes drank in his stunning physique. Nothing about him was little. He took up most of the bed and, had it not been for his head cocked to the side, his feet probably would have hung off.
Massaging her way down his thighs, a raised streak of smooth skin beneath her right hand grabbed her attention. It was long and jagged, devoid of course hair like an old scar from a deep wound. Upon seeing the only flawed part of his gorgeous body, she traced it with her fingertips. Out of nowhere, fear gripped its cold-blooded hand around her heart and a vivid revelation overtook her.
Chapter Seventeen
A hardened palm forcefully rolled me to my back and another covered my mouth, quieting me from calling out. It was Dægan, his dagger in hand. The blade reflected an evil shine from the fire, and his eyes were stern and gravely serious. He brought a finger to his own lips, demanding my absolute silence, and then pointed outside.
“We have company,” he whispered so very lightly. “Stay here.”
Naturally, I sat up to object, but he pushed me back down preventing me from talking, this time with the fervency of his nearing face. He brought himself so close that his lips touched my cheek as he spoke in a heated whisper. “Lie still!”
“But—”
“They know not that I am with you! Let them think that!”
“What will you do?”
Dægan grabbed my trembling hand and placed the dagger within it, but didn’t answer. He unsheathed his sword in the very slowest of ways and quietly backed up with the same careful stealth, putting his finger to his lips one last time before the shadows of the cavern swallowed him whole.
Panic gripped me. I couldn’t breathe. Disturbing images of many ill-gotten foreigners fully clad in armor and helmets, bearing bloody swords and mighty battle-axes flashed before me, draining the blood from my body like a sieve.
The rustling came again, but closer now as if it were just outside the opening. My heart slammed to a stop. My eyes searched the darkness, trying to see through the teeming rain. It was useless. I felt helpless and vulnerable, much like a sitting duck awaiting the arrow.
Suddenly, two men emerged, their swords drawn, their steps cautious. They were dripping wet from head to toe, their warm breath emitting into the cool air like dragon’s fire. Quickly, I hid the dagger underneath the cloak and waited as Dægan had told me.
It was evident now that they believed me to be alone, for they lowered their weapons and stalked toward the fire. “Well, well,” one said resignedly. “You are a hard little wench to track down.”
I sat deathly still, looking from one to the other.
“She’s in here!” the man called over his shoulder, his voice echoing against the damp rock walls.
At that instant, Dægan came out from behind them, fatally slashing across the one man’s back and turning abou
t to take on the other. The second man barely got his sword raised before Dægan thrust his blade so deep into the man’s stomach that it exited out his back. Dægan held poised, his jaw set, his forearms extended, until the man slid from the blade and fell to the ground. Dægan glanced sympathetically at me before slipping back into the shadows.
With all this taking place only meters away, Dægan’s horse had become nervous, stomping and shifting about. I jumped up to calm it, stroking its muzzle and neck, when into the cavern ran three more men.
They stopped in their tracks, finding their comrades dead at their feet and only myself in the firelight, my little weapon in hand. Their eyes were wide in astonishment and in their next breaths they turned angry and callous.
“You want to play rough, aye?”
I turned to face them, keeping one hand on the horse’s back, preparing to see yet another brutal attack, only this time Dægan came from the opposite side of the cavern.
He slew again the first unsuspecting victim with ease and ducked to avoid the coming of a high sword at his head. As he stood up, he spun and cut the second man deeply across the thighs, making ready to take on the third. He let the Northman initiate the duel, their irons loudly clanging in the night, until Dægan forced the man’s sword tip into the ground and stepped on it, coming up swiftly to cut the unguarded throat. The Northman dropped like a sack of wheat, his legs bent beneath him, but Dægan did not stop there. He revisited the wounded man who still lay upon the ground groaning, and double fisted the hilt above his head, staking his sword into his foe’s chest.
****
The grotesque sight of his blade sinking deep into flesh pulled her out of the nightmare. As she sat wide-eyed between Leif’s legs, she screamed, still trying to get the sound of punctured organs and breaking rib bones out of her head.
“Oh my gosh!” She backed off the bed in a hurry.
Leif followed her, his hands reaching for her. “Rain, what’s wrong?”
She ogled the heinous scar on his left leg and tripped over her own feet to get away. Crashing to the floor, she crab-walked into the corner. Sheer terror enslaved her as her surroundings spun within a blurry haze. The last she saw was Leif padding toward her.
****
I rushed to Dægan’s side, looking him up and down. “You are hurt!”
He glanced himself once over, surprised to see that his upper thigh had been sliced open. “Naught but a flesh wound.”
“You are bleeding,” I commented earnestly. “A lot…”
But before Dægan could argue differently, I took the hem of my gown and dabbed clean the blood that ran from his leg, gingerly at first as if I were nervous to even touch him, but more fixedly as the blood disappeared. Soon, I was employing the use of both hands.
He watched me, my hands especially, as they touched his bare skin, that sensitive area on the inside of his thigh. He knew it was often times an erogenous place on a woman, but until he felt the slender fingers of my kind nursing, he had no idea it existed equally for a man.
“You wear not breeches like the other men.”
“Nay, I do not. In Hladir, ‘tis a necessity, for the winds are cold enough to turn a man’s skin black. But here, the weather is more tolerable, and I have grown accustomed to the way the men of the Erin dress. I prefer it, actually.”
By the time he finished his explanation, I had become more absorbed in cleaning his wound. My left hand slid around and gripped the muscle of his leg while the other went precariously high, just short of grazing him, which sent his heart to skip.
He couldn’t take any more and gathered my hands in his. “Mara, please.”
I glanced up at him. “Did I hurt you?”
“Of course not.”
“But you stopped me,” I said solemnly.
“Only because I have more than recovered,” he allotted kindly. “Thank you.”
****
Lorraine fought to open her eyes, to put an end to the voices and scenes in her head. She could hear Leif’s voice talking to her, his arms holding her against him, stroking her hair. But something gripped her and pulled her back, forcing her out of Leif’s guest room and into a tattered animal-skinned tent lit by torches. She jerked and heaved to get away, but found ropes bound tightly around her wrists and a soiled gag tied around her face.
A man entered the tent briskly. He stood with legs definitively spread, his shining sword marked with the color of violent death, and his flaxen hair curling from under his helmet. He removed it with one jerking motion and dropped it at his feet.
****
My stomach coiled and turned over, my breath tethered in my chest, as my eyes fixed on Domaldr’s awful face.
“Mara, ‘tis me!” he whispered forcibly. “Dægan!”
Oh God, he was callous enough to use that trick again. How dare he! How dare he think me that stupid!
I cursed Dægan’s evil twin behind the gag, a long slur of words quite unbefitting of a woman, and if I could have spit at him, I would have done that, too. Instead, I made doubly certain his pursuit of me was nothing short of difficult, if not downright impossible.
He grabbed my wrists now, yanking them up to the level of his eyes as if I weighed only a pennyweight. I braced myself for his swift punishment and even welcomed the possibility of death before he could have his way with me.
“Hold still!” he commanded, holding the blade carefully between my wrists. He paused only for a moment, righting the knife directly on the rope and pulled. My hands were free and with animal instinct, I smacked his face twice and began beating him for all I was worth.
“Mara, please listen to me! ‘Tis I, Dægan! I swear it. Look at me!”
I clenched my hand into an embittered fist and struck him solidly, his head snapping to the right. He groaned with irritation and gripped both my hands, forcing them above my head as he held me to the ground. “Look at me!” he called, but I squeezed my eyes shut on purpose.
“Damnation, woman!” He plummeted to my ear, forcing a kind voice from a rigid jaw. “Sh…listen to my voice, love. Listen to it. I beg you.”
I stilled for a brief moment, unsure of the heated whisper upon my skin, cringing at the thought of Domaldr’s putrid breath upon me.
“Aye,” he said sweetly.
He waited, his breath still warm against me, but he made no effort to maul my neck as I thought he would. I narrowly opened my eyes and through my desperate heavy gasping, I smelled a hint of expensive oils, the familiar scent of his hair, and the faint masculine aura of his leather armor.
He seemed to feel a change in me and sat up.
I wanted to believe. I wanted with everything that was in me to believe that this man was Dægan. That, though seemingly impossible, my tried and true husband had found a way to travel across the sea and rescue me. But strangely, his armor contradicted my hope. I looked at his chest and broad shoulders, eyeing the thick shell of metal plates, leather, and ringlets around his torso and arms, but it looked nothing of Dægan’s.
I feared it was a trick. Almost felt in my heart that it was, and sucked in a breath plotted for screaming, but he placed a gentle finger to my gagged mouth.
“Look at me,” he whispered. “Listen closely to what I say to you, for there is not much time. You first gave yourself to me in Luimneach. And I took you not until you begged it of me. And the next morning, I thought you to regret it, but you did not. I can describe every part of you if you want me to. I can tell you how sweet your tongue is after you have sucked the sugar from my finger. I can count on one hand the times I made love to you and wish on my very life ‘twere more. I can speak of the solitary freckle just beneath your right breast. The first time you quickened from my mouth and the tightness of your legs around my head, for only a husband could know such intimate things. I am he. I am your husband. I want naught more than your love and trust right now and by the great God in Heaven, I wish I could steal it. But I will not. I will wait forever and a day for you. Listen to my words, M
ara for I speak as a lost sheep. Find me. Find me in your heart…I just might be there.”
I felt the certainty in his words and the sweet ring of familiarity. No one could know those things save for Dægan himself. Relief and unfettered happiness washed over me like an ocean wave, but my words were still trapped amid the shock of his very presence. As final proof of his true identity, I quickly lifted his tunic and there, like a brand, was the wound across his left thigh he had received a sennight ago in the cavern.
****
Lorraine’s eyes fluttered open. Lazily at first, then as wide as she could muster after she realized a strange man waved a tiny bright light back and forth in front of her. “Ms. O’Connor, can you hear me?”
She shoved the light away. “Of course, I can. Who are you?”
“I’m Dr. O’Donnell.” He thumbed toward the opposite side of the bed. “Leif called me. He was worried about you.”
Lorraine glanced at Leif, regarding the anxious lines furrowing his face. Upon seeing him shirtless, she recalled the last thing they had been doing and jerked her eyes down over her body. One of his oversized T-shirts adorned her naked body and she was never so thankful. She sank back into the bed.
She felt Leif grab her hand and squeeze it. “It’s okay now. You’re safe.”
“Ms. O’Connor,” the doctor initiated, sitting on the side of the bed. “Can you tell me what you remember?”
Lorraine looked back at Leif and swallowed. She remembered everything. The scar she found on his leg and the vision of how he came to be wounded. Only it wasn’t Leif, but Dægan who acquired it.
She remembered the fight to the death. The blood. The sound of the dying men’s screams. And she remembered caring for Dægan’s wound thereafter, feeling guilty that he hurt himself while saving her. She then recalled the feeling of dread and hopelessness when she thought Dægan’s twin was about to kill her, only to be relieved at seeing that heinous scar, proving he was her—did she dare think it?
…for only a husband could know such intimate things. I am he. I am your husband.
The Emerald Isle Trilogy Boxed Set Page 79
