Her Knight in Tarnished Armor: A Medieval Romance Collection

by Kerrigan Byrne

  Daroch didn’t allow his body to collapse on top of her when the spasms passed. He held his weight on trembling arms. He allowed her room to move so she didn’t feel trapped beneath him. The only sound in the cave came from their labored breaths and Daroch couldn’t for the life of him think of what to do next.

  A myriad of likely scenarios flooded his mind. He couldn’t bring himself to do aught but calculate the odds of this ending well in the least. All of the variables came out against his favor.

  “Daroch?” Her voice was husky and it vibrated to where he still remained joined with her, sending little aftershocks through him.

  He squeezed his own eyes shut, praying to the Gods she didn’t reject him before he’d even withdrawn from her body.

  “Daroch, I can hear you thinking,” her voice grew stronger. “Stop it at once and kiss me.”

  His heart clenched, though the rest of him relaxed in relief. That he could do. He leaned down and turned her chin and shoulder to meet his mouth with a tender kiss. A lover’s kiss. For his lover she now was. The first in a century. The first one he’d wanted in as many years, and the first woman, he realized, he didn’t want to let go of. Even though she was now a Fae creature.

  And his enemy.

  14

  The moment Daroch withdrew from her body Kylah missed him. Now that she possessed a form, every tactile sensation she’d taken for granted in her life now felt like the kiss of the sun after a freezing rain. She reveled in it all. The slight rasp of the calluses on his palms. The abrasion of his evening beard on her tender skin. The smooth glide of his cock inside of her. It took on new and treasured perspective beyond what it would have in life.

  She’d been unsure if she was ready to receive him into her body, despite the burning desire to do so. Now she was certain she didn’t want to let him go.

  Daroch collapsed to his back between her and the fire pit and rolled Kylah to tuck into the crook of his arm and chest, splaying her naked body over his. She contemplated the tattoos on his chest and torso, her finger fluttering over the new one above his heart. The skin, still raised and a bit inflamed, seemed to be healing.

  She traced the tri-point knotted design without touching it while soaking in the warmth of his hard, strong body. “Why did you put this here?”

  Daroch’s muscles bunched and flexed as he lifted his head and shoulders to observe his torso. “The Triquetra has a myriad of meanings, for example—”

  “I was raised a Highlander,” Kylah reminded him. “I know what it means to us, I’m asking what it means to you.”

  Daroch was silent, but he pulled her in tighter against him. “It reminds me of the three of ye sisters. Of the power that exists in that number. And of the vengeance you’ll never truly taste.”

  Any reply she could muster stuck in a throat thick with emotion. Kylah moved on to trace different runes with her finger, watching as her hand worked its way down the patterns of his torso. He let out a satiated moan that rumbled through him like a purr and she decided she would never tire of touching him. Everything about him, it seemed, was more interesting than any other person she’d been acquainted with. Even his skin.

  He murmured her name, taking her exploring hand in his own. “Are ye… all right? Did I frighten ye?”

  Kylah thought about it. “I was frightened, but not of you.” She kissed his chest, flicking her tongue across the nipple. “And then, I wasn’t afraid anymore, because I was flying.”

  Daroch brought her palm to his lips and kissed it. “Flying, were ye?” She felt his lips curve into a smile. “Careful not to say such things too often, lass, I’ll become intolerably conceited.”

  She nudged him and grinned. “Become?”

  “Aye, there’s the spirit,” he chuckled.

  Kylah watched as Daroch twined his fingers with hers, their tangled movements naught but black shadows back-lit by the glowing coals. Her heart expanded until it pressed painfully against her ribs and threatened her breath. Beneath all those cold calculations and inner volumes of burdensome cosmic knowledge was a tender man. Wounded and angry and lonely. She could still feel it inside of him. Though Daroch was sated and content for the moment, a dark purpose still burned in the soul encapsulated beneath all the hard sinew and complex runes.

  Sobering, she asked, “What about you? Are you afraid?”

  “I fear nothing,” he rumbled.

  “You’re a terrible liar,” she accused, rising onto an elbow to look down into his face. Beneath the insolent tattoo was near-perfect symmetry. A beauty unmatched in any man real or imagined. Though arrogance lifted his brow. Sardonic brackets pulled his mouth thinner than it should be and his eyes constantly narrowed in a wary, aloof way that most would consider uninviting. The line of his strong jaw thrust forward in impudent estimation that would make the most self assured of men squirm.

  But if he were to ever truly smile, his magnificence would rival that of the Gods.

  “Quantify that statement,” he challenged. “What do ye suppose I fear? You?” His brow lifted.

  “Aye. I know you fear me and not because I can kill you, either. But more than that, I think you fear my Queen.”

  He jerked as though she’d slapped him.

  “It’s why you tattooed your face, isn’t it? There is plenty of space left on your body for the marks. And why you covered yourself with silt and robes. You were hiding from her desire until you could take your vengeance for what she did to you.”

  “I work with and study corrosive elements and live in a cave rife with salt water. I wear the silt as protection for my skin.” He’d retreated into the Alchemist side of his nature, all traces of the tender lover tightly covered by an almost defensive logic. “The tattoos are required of me to work the magic that protects my sanctuary from the Fae. The greater the sacrifice, the more powerful the spell.”

  “Yes, but why—”

  Daroch sat up abruptly, presenting her with his wide back. “Ye ask why like its yer right to know everything. Why canna ye just leave me be?”

  Kylah flinched. “Is that what you want? For me to leave you?”

  “Aye,” he said irritably, then glanced back at her reclined, naked body. “Nay.” He turned from her and plunged his hands through his shorter mane with a sound of aggravation. “I… I want…” He fell silent. His back expanding and contracting with labored breaths.

  Kylah rose and put a hand on his back. The muscles quivered beneath her touch, but he didn’t pull away. “You know everything about… how I died, do you not? My torment was revealed to you.”

  He didn’t answer her, but she sensed a change in his intense emotion. His head turned toward his shoulder.

  “I know what they did to you, Daroch. Perhaps not all the details but Cliodnah told me horrible things, ordered me to kill you, and then made me what I am.”

  Daroch met her eyes then. Without her slightly improved Fae sight, she wouldn’t have been able to make out the greens and golds shot with rust and brown as he intently contemplated every detail of her face.

  “What are ye going to do?” he asked in an expressionless voice.

  Kylah put his fingers against the roughness of his jaw and pulled his mouth close for a gentle kiss. “I’m going to help you get the justice you deserve.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “Because the Faerie Queen threatened my family,” Kylah said matter-of-factly. “And because I love you.”

  Daroch leapt to his feet and Kylah again admired the speed and grace with which he moved. No mean feat for a man of his size and strength.

  “Nay,” he insisted in a trembling voice. “Ye doona.”

  Kylah also got to her feet, but she padded to the wood pile, affording him some much needed space. “I do,” she insisted gently as she fetched a few logs to set atop the glowing coals. “I have from the first night I set eyes on you in the Laird’s keep, though I only recently realized.”

  His wild look was so absurdly out of character that Kylah
had to stifle a pitying smile. Poor man, this would take him a while to digest.

  “Ye doona know what ye’re saying, woman. Y-Ye’re not making any sense.” He stammered.

  “Love isn’t supposed to make sense.” Lord but men were so dense at times.

  His features darkened and he shook a very paternal finger at her, as though gearing up for a lecture. As he was completely nude, Kylah wanted to inform him that the effect was ruined, but decided against it. “Ye know how I feel about love,” he thundered. “Try and be logical.”

  “Now you’re just being silly,” she admonished with a patronizing shake of her head. “Love isn’t logical. It cannot be measured, contained, or aptly described or recorded. It is simply powerful, undeniable, pure emotion. And is as necessary as any sustenance the body craves. Only it is also craved by the soul.”

  “Nonsense,” he blustered, the color in his face draining as though he came to a frightening realization.

  “Oh?” She continued building a fire in front of him. “Prove it.”

  He started toward her, then apparently thought the better of it and his feet remained planted on the furs. “I’m not the one making a claim, the burden of proof lies with ye.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Fair enough.” Kylah forced herself not to jump back as the kindling caught fire and licked at the larger dry wood she’d placed in the pit. Light flared between them and illuminated his glorious nakedness. For such an intelligent man, he was quite oblivious. It was one of the many things she loved about him.

  Skirting the fire, Kylah went to him. He regarded her approach as one might a dangerous predator, but stood his ground. She cupped his jaw in her hands and felt it clench, working over the strong emotions vibrating from his very core. “I do love you, Daroch McLeod, and I will prove it.”

  “How?” Kylah never believed that such a large man could produce such a small whisper.

  She shrugged. “I haven’t figured that out just yet, but I’ll get to it. Vengeance is a good place to start.”

  “Nay. How can ye know… and still love—” his voice broke on the last word and her heart shattered along with it. Though nearly imperceptible, the words were full of shame, of pain and torment compounded by a century of isolation.

  “Daroch, you removed my chains and my shame. Held my defiled bones in your hands. No matter how many clothes you shed in front of my eyes, no matter what I discover about your past, you will never be so exposed, so naked as that.” She pulled his face closer to hers. “Do you understand?”

  His eyes glittered with the flames behind her, but burned with something from so deep within him she was shocked he’d brought it to the surface for her to see.

  “You never have to cause to be ashamed before me,” she smiled gently and touched her forehead to his again. “Or behind me, as the case has most recently been.”

  He stared at her, still as stone but for the flare of his nostrils.

  And then he was on her. Mouth fused to hers and wild-hewn body taut with every imaginable sort of strain, he reached down and seized her thighs in his large, strong hands and lifted her against his turgid erection.

  Kylah closed her eyes and let his tongue force its way into her mouth. She wrapped her legs around his lean waist and ground herself against him, sharing her heat and coating him in slick desire.

  With a growl he sank to his knees with her clamped around his body, never breaking the contact of their lips. Only when he’d laid her beneath him did he pull back.

  Kylah arched her hips in shameless invitation.

  “Look at me,” he ordered darkly.

  Blinking her eyes open in shock, she met a stare so hot and intense it should have scorched the flesh from her bones.

  Again.

  He thrust forward then, and she gasped at the power of his invasion. Her untried body was swollen and sensitive and she felt every thick inch that filled her.

  He cursed in a language unfamiliar to her and the word was dark with such ragged lust it stabbed at the core of her just as powerfully as he did. His broad body pushed her knees farther apart as he pressed her into the furs and he shuddered as though experiencing a pleasure so intense it bordered on pain.

  But Daroch’s eyes never left hers. Something had been breached within him. Some wall or fortress erected so tall and strong that the collapse was brutal and devastating. Any sign of restraint evaporated as he pounded into her with deep, insistent thrusts.

  Kylah felt her body respond in kind. Opening to him, her hips leaving the earth to meet his in a grinding climb toward a peak that she now knew and desired with a wanton, wicked hunger.

  But she did look at him. It was why she’d built a dreaded fire. She wanted to watch his magnificent body surge and retract. To note every sinew and cord bunch and release. To find individual beads of sweat as they formed and rolled down into deep grooves between his muscles. She gloried at the intent in his savage eyes, at being the focus of something so rare and exacting.

  Her climax didn’t build with waves of pleasure, but rocketed her into bliss before she was prepared and ripped a banshee scream from her lips.

  Daroch smothered it with a kiss as his thrusts became impossibly faster, stronger, and he grew within her before tearing his mouth from hers to unleash a ragged cry of his own.

  15

  Daroch stood at the edge of Cape Wrath and let the sea winds lift the jagged edges of his long vest and flow through his sheared hair. He leaned against his staff, the end having been sharpened to a spear point and the whole thing coated with the Arborlatix. He’d even blunted the top into a rounded carving of the ancient tree of life. Closing his eyes, Daroch connected with each of the guardians he’d called upon to aid him against the Fae.

  The pack of wolves paced a wide perimeter around the cape, lending strength, unity, and a predatory ferocity that surged around and through him with feral intensity.

  A pair of black polecats tangled with each other nearby, leaping almost imperceptibly from rock to borough and gifting him with supernatural speed and unmatched, observant reflexes.

  A conspiracy of ravens circled above calling eerily down to them. They lent a certain darkness to his intent. A fortitude of will and wisdom. Theirs was a sight and perspective that differed from all other creation. A potent understanding of the need for adversity and finality. They were the harbingers of death and the arbiters of new beginnings. Their portent declared that this ended here.

  One way or the other.

  He sensed Kylah’s approach, but did not acknowledge her as she drew beside him. Despite everything, the strength he gained from her presence was more potent than what he’d derived from any creature in the past. It was as though he overflowed with it, and it unsettled him more than he cared to admit.

  “Kamdyn is safe within the protection of your cave behind the runes,” she informed him.

  He nodded, though his gaze remained fixed on the sea. If he looked at her now, he might say things he couldn’t take back. Things she could use against him. He might use words and platitudes that he didn’t believe in, only for lack of sufficient verbiage to describe his complicated emotions.

  The previous night had become a haze of lust and sex and recovery that had only dwindled when fatigue forced exhausted, trembling muscles to sleep. Barely a word was spoken between them and those that were only served as carnal encouragement. Kylah had taken him any way he’d wanted her to. She never issued commands or made demands of him, only desperate, passionate pleas that made him feel powerful and dominant. She’d allowed him to drive their pleasure in any direction he desired it.

  And he’d desired it all.

  He’d taken her with his mouth. With his hands. With his body, and sometimes intense combinations thereof. And in doing so, systematically shattered any physical barrier or taboo left between them. Only when she begged him for respite did he tuck her against his sated, exhausted body and allow sleep to overtake them both.

  She loved him. Or though
t she did, if ever there were such a thing. She trusted him. Desired him. Stood by him here at the end and risked everything she held dear to fight for his justice despite being denied her own.

  Foreign and intense emotion rushed into his throat until it was thoroughly blocked. He couldn’t have formed words if he tried.

  Kylah’s hand wound its way into his and gripped it with a strength that surprised him enough to command his attention.

  War braids tangled at her temple and the ancient blue war paint of their Woad ancestors marked her lovely features in a fashion very similar to his own. Dressed in a loose blue shift and kirtle, she clutched a long, deadly dirk that he’d given her this morning, coated in a substance ultimately dangerous to her.

  “Do ye know how to use that?” he rasped, wishing he’d said something better, more meaningful.

  Her wee face was fierce as she brought it out in front of her. “Not even a little bit,” she admitted with a wry smirk. “But the important part is, I know the sharp bit goes into a Faerie.”

  Daroch’s heart swelled. Her courage put him to shame and a sudden icy fear clutched at him when he thought of all that might befall her in this endeavor.

  “Perhaps ye should join yer sister in the cave,” he suggested, turning to her and taking her shoulders in his hands. “I can’t stand the thought of ye—”

  “Perhaps you should hold your tongue,” her brow lifted along with her lips in a taunting smile. “There’s not a force on this earth or in the heavens that would keep me from your side.”

  His heart jumped into his throat again and suddenly made him bold. “Kylah, I—”

  “Do not waste your breath, Druid.” The familiar, arctic voice of the Banshee Queen froze the warm words on his tongue and his heart along with them. “It is too late to save her traitorous life and she will die screaming.”

  Daroch and Kylah turned toward the Fae, who’d appeared upon the green plane behind them, trapping them effectively against the cliff. Dripping with diamonds as brilliant as the sun and robes as pure as fresh snow, they would have resembled wrathful seraphim to anyone who didn’t know better.