by Suz deMello
With a fingertip, he stroked up and down her folds, a different caress than his tongue but delightful nevertheless. He thrust two fingers inside her and curved them upward. An unexpected, sharp rush of feeling drew her cry and a spasm, a quick release that snapped through her body but left her wanting more.
He pulled out of her and replaced his fingers with his lips, and she maneuvered herself so she could plunge her mouth over his hard cock at the same time he sucked her pearl. With her body undulating against his, she could feel as well as hear his rumbling groans of pleasure as she ran her tongue up and down his length.
She loosened her neck muscles to take him in fully and swallowed, feeling him fill the back of her throat. It was a difficult maneuver but one that he enjoyed immensely, so she didn’t begrudge him the extra effort.
He gripped her buttocks convulsively and tore his mouth away from her quim as he gave a strangled groan of completion. She pulled her mouth away so she had just the round tip of his rod between her lips, and gripped the base of his cock in her fist, pumping until he released thick jets of seed.
He rolled away from her, panting, his pale skin slick with sweat. While they relaxed, he idly fondled her pearl, stroking until she moaned anew.
* * * * *
“I’m right pleased with ye, lad,” Kieran told Edgar as they sat at the laird’s table before dinner.
Lydia watched the boy’s chest expand with pride before smiling at his struggle to control himself. “Yes, it went well, didn’t it?” he said, but couldn’t quite conceal a trace of complacency.
Kieran chuckled and gently cuffed his arm. “Get ye gone to enjoy the attention of the lassies.”
Indeed, a cluster of girls lingered by the Great Hall’s hearth, staring up at Edgar, who’d cocked a jaunty hip and leaned onto the table while talking with Lydia and Kier. But he eyed the girls and frowned.
“What ails ye, lad?”
“They want to touch me all over. Some of them almost slobber.” He wrinkled his nose. “It’s…creepy.”
Kier turned away and bit down on his lower lip, visibly trying not to laugh. Lydia grinned. “Try to talk with them. They only want to be friends.”
“Well, all right,” Edgar grumbled.
“Before you go, come here for a moment,” she said. “If you would.”
He complied. She turned on her stool so she could face him, setting her hands on each of his shoulders to look him in the eyes. “Edgar, I heard what you said to your men…do you resent what has happened? Do you resent us?”
Blond brows drew together. “Resent?”
“Are you angry inside? At us?”
After a pause, he answered, “No…though I wish matters had turned out differently.” He looked away from her and blinked away moisture before returning his gaze. “I care about you, but…I wish I hadn’t caused my mother’s death.”
She sucked in a shocked breath. “Edgar—”
“Everyone blamed me. Please don’t deny it.”
She clapped her hands to her mouth and let Kier handle the situation. He knelt by the boy’s side. “Lad, women die in childbirth all too often. My own mam died bearing me. Ye shouldnae feel bad about that. Isnae your fault! It happens.”
Edgar bit his lip. Lydia remembered what Moira had said, long weeks ago on the parapet. “I know what happened to his mother,” Lydia had said. “She died in childbirth.”
“Did she now?” Moira had answered, her laugh high, shrill…witchlike.
Lydia wondered if she should pursue the question and quickly decided against it. Moira had been pure deceit and evil. She would have mouthed any lie to tempt Lydia into the tower or to drive a wedge between Lydia and Kier.
She came back to herself to see Kier ruffle Edgar’s hair. “Your guilt is profitless,” Kieran said. “Matters are…as they are.”
“Aye, and I cannot complain.”
Kier grinned down at the girls by the hearth and gave the boy a little shove. “Now go and enjoy yourself.”
Lydia tugged on Kier’s sleeve, turning him. “He behaves as though flirting with the girls is his duty.”
“He’s young yet.” Kier continued to smile.
Most of the clan had gathered for the evening meal, though guards still watched from the highest wall-walk and patrolled the perimeter. Owain and Kendrick weren’t present. Along with a company of two score Kilborn soldiers, they escorted the remains of the Gwynn forces off Kilborn lands.
Fenella, Grizel and the rest of the castle servants had worked hard to find places for the displaced clanspeople. Niall and his family remained abovestairs, and old Mhairi said that the fisherman would heal in time. Between Niall and Rose, the elderly Mhairi had been run ragged. But now Rose sat with Dirk, cuddling their baby, named Victor in honor of the day.
* * * * *
Later, after they’d had their bath, Kier sprawled naked on their bed and patted a spot beside him. She hung back. He smiled at her. “Ye were fair magnificent today.”
“I?” She remembered her husband, gleaming in the sun, seated on his golden charger, the moment she’d realized he was wholly human. An extraordinary man, yes. But a man, not a monster. “You faced down a mob backed by only six men and a boy. And you kept your temper admirably.”
Sitting up, he raised a dark brow. “Were ye afeared that I’d take Laird Hamish’s head and drink his blood?”
She hesitated. “Frankly, yes.”
“It never crossed my mind.”
“It didn’t really cross your mind, um…before. With the MacReiver.”
“Aye. Then I just…did it. I dinnae ken the difference, but today I had the chance to wait, and watch, and think. I could see that the attack was ill-planned and poorly executed.” He sniffed, his upper lip curling. “Hamish Gwynn should stick to prayer. He’s no warrior.”
“We are lucky he is so incompetent.” She sat near him.
“Aye, matters would have turned out differently had I torn off Hamish Gwynn’s head.” He grinned. “I felt ’twas best to control my baser impulses.”
“I’m not sure we should jest about it.” She bent her knees and wrapped her arms around them.
“Some things are so terrible that only a jest will rob them of their power.”
“P’raps. But truly I am happy you controlled yourself.”
“I had a chance to consider matters calmly. ’Tis a better way, I think. Now we still have an ally, but one who owes us tribute.”
“How much?”
“I dinnae ken, yet. We will need timber, I believe, quite a lot of it to rebuild the huts. I dinnae want to cut our forests. The Gwynn can provide that, and the labor also.” He stretched out a hand toward her. “But enough about clan business. Kylyrra, ye were so brave and so beautiful. So beautiful it hurt my heart to look at ye. I still cannae believe ye’re mine.” His voice had dropped to a husky, seductive whisper.
She managed to curve her lips in a smile but said, “Husband, we must talk.”
He raised a brow and couldn’t stop an expression of exasperation from crossing his face. “Milady, cannae we just enjoy a tup? For we emerged from battle victorious today.”
“A battle that should not have been necessary.”
“Aye. Hamish Gwynn should have kenned better.” His voice was impish but his manner uneasy.
She sat next to him but didn’t touch his thigh, strong and muscular, so tempting and near. “In many rumors, there is a kernel of truth. Husband, I must know. What are vampires?”
He sighed while closing his eyes, as though gathering his thoughts…p’raps deciding how to censor his words?
“Everything,” she said. “The truth. All of it. Don’t force me to go back to that priest and his numb-witted half-truths.”
He opened his lids and glared at her. “Ye spoke of us to the priest?”
Bloody hell. She shouldn’t have told him that. “I asked about the strange manner of Euan’s death, since neither you nor Dugald cared to tell me the truth!”
“Ye may have been a part of the attack on us, do ye ken? What did the priest tell ye?”
“A load of what you would call superstitious twaddle. About bats and rats. An inability to tolerate sunlight and, er…garlic.”
He huffed.
“He also said vampires drink blood, are unnaturally strong and prefer the night. Rather like you. That they are neither alive nor dead, but in a state he called undead, that their flesh is strangely cool to the touch because of that. Like yours. That they have midnight-black hair and eyes, like yours.”
“But not like Sir Gareth’s.”
“True. The priest said also that vampires can be killed by stabbing through the heart, beheading or burning, and to be safe, all three should be employed.” She wondered why she was telling her husband all this, certain she was earning herself another whipping.
“Aye. ’Twas chance that the Butcher Cumberland made certain that every wounded Scot was stabbed through the body and then the corpses were burned.”
“So there’s no chance he knew? That he planned to make sure your father and brother were dead?”
“I dinnae believe so.” He sighed. “So. Is the priest’s talk why ye’ve been watching me like a mother bear with her cub these last few weeks?”
She nodded. “’Twasn’t ’til today I was sure, because there’s rarely any sunlight around here.”
He laughed.
“And I was reasonably certain you’re human. You enjoy Fenella’s garlicky sausage far too much to make a good vampire.”
“And a bat’s wings would look stupid on me. We’re an unusual clan, I’ll grant ye that. The first Kilborn, the Viking we spoke of at Kilbirnie, we believe he was the one who brought the odd strain into our blood.”
“Ah.”
“He came from the far north, and ’twas said that his flesh was as cold as those icy climes. He needed hot blood to stay alive, and he was a terrifying warrior.”
She nodded. “I should have known, should have guessed that there was a kernel of truth in the priest’s maunderings. Keep talking.”
“What more is there for you to ken?”
“I ken that if ye had been plain-spoken from the beginning, many events wouldnae have happened. Many men wouldnae have died.” She stopped. When had she started to adopt a Highland accent? Bloody hell. She would not lose herself. She pressed on. “The truth. All of it.”
His jaw tightened. “All right. We’ll deal with the other later.” He sent her a glance charged with steel.
“Fine,” she snapped. Punishment she could bear, even enjoy. But she needed the truth. “Talk, milaird.”
He sighed. “Our clan started many centuries ago, and some fools believe that we are still a tribe of baobhan sith.”
“Bava…what?”
“Baobhan sith. Fae creatures, beautiful women who drink blood and wear green. Or white. It depends upon who is telling the tale.”
“What?” She couldn’t stop her stare of disbelief.
“Lydia, do ye not ken?” His voice rose with frustration. “’Tis madness to try to find even a kernel of truth in these tales.”
“I know that Sir Gareth was—is—was unnaturally long-lived. And he drank blood. Same with Euan. And what about you?”
“Kylyrra, I assure you, I have but thirty years and plan to p’raps live only thirty more.”
“What if you’re wrong?” she whispered. “You drink blood and your skin is cool. What if you turn into the mad old creature in the tower?” Her voice broke.
He gathered her into his arms. “Nay, nay, love, it won’t happen. I promise.”
“How can you promise such a thing?”
“My mam was a Cameron. I believe that my brother had more of the tendency than I, because his ma was a Kilborn. Not a long-lived blood drinker—she died of natural causes in her fiftieth year—but a Kilborn.”
“Ah. So the strain was…is diluted in your blood.”
“Aye. And remember, there are no such creatures as baobhan sith or vampires, at least not as the priest would have it.” His voice was firm. “Ye heard Edgar, did ye not?”
“A ten-year-old is not an authority. There was—is—was something beyond odd about Sir Gareth.”
He nodded. “Aye. I can admit to that. He is driven to drink blood, more so than am I. He needs it to survive. He is—was—unnaturally auld and quite mad because of it, and I daily pray that I will be spared his fate. But Euan was auld, also, but not mad. At all.”
“That’s true.”
“I did tell ye that we were an unusually long-lived family.”
“I thought you meant that p’raps there were an unusual number of folk who were, mayhap, sixty or seventy years old, not…not over one hundred!”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Call us vampires if ye will, but I am tellin’ ye that we dinnae turn into bats or rats. And, by the by, none of us is afeared of the sunlight.”
“Yes, I saw that today. But what Sir Gareth did—”
“Edgar was right. For such a small lad, he has much wisdom.”
She shook her head. “Euan’s death didn’t drive Sir Gareth into insanity. He was mad long before Euan died.”
“Aye, that is so. He lived too long, do ye ken? I think that brought the madness. But Euan was important to my grandda.” Kier sighed. “In some ways, Euan was Gareth’s last tether to civilization. I’m sorry my grandda’s gone, and yet…not.”
“He brought a lot of trouble,” she said darkly.
“Aye, he did. The attack this day was his fault, I ken. And due to other…factors.” He stroked her bottom.
Though his touch felt good, her thoughts continued to spin and twirl. “What if one of our children is a vampire?”
“Still with that word.” He squeezed her rear, then let go. “All right, then. With luck, our bairns will be normal children. The vampire strain—if ye insist upon calling it that—is weak. We have few bairns, and in each generation, p’raps only one so long-lived. And now ye’re marrying in, which will make it less likely that any of our children will be affected.”
“Did you think about it before we married?”
“Of course. I didnae tell ye, but it was a good reason to marry ye.”
“You don’t want—”
“Nay, never. I’m satisfied to be a mortal man. Your mortal man. Centuries of life without ye by my side? ’Twould drive me mad e’en without the Kilborn curse.”
“When will we know about the children?”
“We may never know. One could turn after we die. Worse, one could lose control and kill us before we ken she or he’s turned.”
Lydia shuddered. “We can’t allow this to happen again.”
“This—what? What do ye mean?”
“Think about all the trouble that Sir Gareth caused. Everything was linked, don’t you see? I was forbidden to enter the tower because of him. I was tempted, and she who tempted me was punished. She went to the MacReivers, who killed Euan. In retribution, Gareth destroyed their clan. Because of what he did, and because we’d lost Euan and were seen as weakened, we were attacked. How many men died today?”
“Most were mercenaries who chose their fate.”
“I realize that, but our clan was lucky today. If Ian hadn’t been able to get Niall back quickly he would have died. Many would have died, because the crofters would have been outside the castle walls when the Gwynns came. Owain and Kendrick did well defending us today, but the Gwynns could have burned the huts with the women and children inside them.”
“Aye, that is so.” His dark gaze was somber.
“We can’t allow this to happen again. Milaird, we must ask the clanspeople to take a vow to stamp out the unnatural strain.”
“A vow?”
“Yes. No one in the clan can intermarry. We have to bring in new blood from outside.”
He stroked his chin. “Aye, that can be done. Announcing the betrothal of our firstborn daughter to Edgar is a good start. We lead the way, do ye ken?” He reached for her and nuzzled
her hair.
“I also want—”
“What more do ye want?” His voice rose with exasperation. “Have ye not done enough?”
She jerked upright and shot him a hard, level stare. “Are you still blaming me for the attack, after all we’ve talked about?”
“Lydia, have ye no idea of my feelings when ye rode out of the castle into that mob this afternoon? Were ye thinking at all?”
“I was thinking of the clan!”
“One stray arrow, one feckless, foolish MacLayne with a blade, and ye would have been dead. What do ye think would have happened then?”
She was silent, trying to think.
“Did ye not ken that if matters had gone wrong, there would have been a bloodbath?” He jumped off the bed and began to pace.
“You mean you would have ripped off someone’s head and drank his blood?”
“Every Kilborn there would have done that to avenge ye!”
Outraged, she stood to face him. “I did what I thought was right, and I was right. Can’t you admit it?”
“We were lucky. Lucky. But ye cannae do that again, do ye ken, Lydia?” He reached for his belt.
“Don’t,” she snapped, steel in her voice. “Just don’t.”
“Ye ken I’m within my rights as your laird?”
“I know. But that isn’t the point. You never forbade me—”
“Ye should have kenned! What are ye, a bluidy fool? Only an idiot of a woman rides into a battle.”
“What did you just call me?” She clenched her teeth and controlled her temper, striving to keep a reasonable tone. “I saw that we had the situation under control. And what I told them worked! Hamish Gwynn and his forces surrendered completely.”
“Hamish Gwynn surrendered because he had no choice.”
“He was probably worried that you’d rip his head off.”
A grim smile crossed Kier’s face. “Aye, that he was.”
Lydia went to her side of their bed and got underneath the covers. “I’m going to sleep. My baby and I need rest.” She rolled over and presented her back to him.
