“I see ye two are a bit closer to coming to an understanding than I expected,” Lachlan mused. “I’ll no’ ask how it happened, as it’s no’ my business. Just tell me one thing.”
“Listen, mon,” Christie stammered, “I was going to ask ye for your permission to marry Alexis, but ye have been so tied up with the wedding and all, I…”
“Ye dinnae need my permission to marry whom ye please, lad,” Lachlan interrupted. “Ye should ken that by now. I was only about to ask if this has something to do with the curse, and if that’s the reason ye came to stay with us, Alexis. I suppose you’re about to tell me that’s no’ my business, either. In that case, I’ll ask no more questions.”
Christie and Alexis exchanged glances. “It’s like this, mon…”
Lachlan held up his hand. “Dinnae say another word. I can see it all in your faces. Whatever’s goin’ on between ye two, I’ll no’ interfere. I only hope ye ken what you’re getting into, Alexis.”
“I do,” she replied.
“She’s a wolf, mon,” Christie added, “just like us.”
Lachlan whipped around. “What?”
Christie took her hand. It was all coming out now. “I didnae ken how to tell ye. She’s one of us.”
Lachlan’s eyes snapped from one face to the other. Alexis squirmed under his sharp gaze, but Christie stood his ground. He wanted to tell Lachlan so much more, but this was enough. The sooner the wolves of Mull found out about Alexis, the better for everybody.
Lachlan narrowed his eyes at her. “Are ye sure about this? Are you sure ye ken this is what ye want?”
“I’m sure,” she murmured.
“How do ye ken you’re sure?” he asked. “What makes ye so sure ye belong with us?”
“Actually,” she replied, “it was you that convinced me, Lachlan.”
Christie interrupted. “Dinnae ask questions ye dinnae want the answers to, brother. Just accept it. She’s here, and she’s to be my wife. The curse is lifted—or as good as. We’ll have no more trouble with it, and she’ll be one of us in a way no’ even Ivy can be. That’s all ye need to ken about it for now. One day I’ll tell ye all, but no’ on your blessed wedding day.”
Lachlan’s eyes flashed. For a moment, he looked angry. Then he locked his eyes on his brother’s face. “I trust ye. That’s all I need to ken. You’re the one person alive I trust more than any other, even more than Ivy. Whatever’s going on between ye two, I accept it. I ken you’d do naught but for the good of the Clan, and I give ye both my blessing.”
Alexis burst out laughing. “Thank you so much, Lachlan. I promise I won’t let you down.”
Christie stuck out his hand. “Thank ye.”
Lachlan pulled him into a hug. “It’s me that should be thanking ye—both of ye. If ye can find a way to lift the curse, I’ll ask no more.”
“It’s done,” Christie replied. “It’s all done.”
Lachlan nodded and headed back to the Great Hall where the festivities still went on. He paused on the threshold to look back at the pair. A question still lingered in his eyes, and he frowned. Then he walked away, and the crowd swallowed him up.
Christie took Alexis upstairs to his room. No more sneaking around. No more secrets. He sat down on the bed and pulled Alexis between his knees. Her cheeks glowed, and her eyes sparkled.
He lifted his face to kiss her, and her hair draped around his face. It cast him in shadow, and he gazed up at the dark circles where her eyes should be. He wanted her more than ever, and she was all his.
The smell of her fur on the breeze, the feel of her neck between his teeth, the quiver of excitement when he wrestled her down to the ground—everything about her drowned him in blissful desire.
He stroked his fingernails up and down the back of her thighs. Her breath rasped in her throat. Her body sizzled under clothes. She kissed him in the delicious dark under her hair. Her hands trailed around his neck and ears and cheeks.
All at once, she dropped on her knees in front of him. She gazed up at him from below, and he thought his heart would stop. She ran her hands up his bare thighs under his kilt, and his guts twisted in knots.
He couldn’t contain all this pleasure. She radiated love and desire. He caressed her cheeks and combed her hair back from her face. She pushed his kilt up around his hips and laid her precious cheek against his bare thigh.
“Oh, lassie,” he breathed. “You’re all mine.”
She kissed his leg. “I’m yours. I’m yours forever.”
Her lips crept higher, higher. Every moist kiss shot a burning lick of flame through his insides. He wanted her so bad. She rose up on her knees in front of him. Her eyes bored into his soul while she unbuttoned her shirt. She pulled it off her shoulders and unfastened her bra.
She bared her immaculate breasts for him and guided his hands onto them. He massaged them in gentle circles while she unfastened his collar and unbuttoned his shirt. She slid it over his head.
She got to her feet and hitched her pants off. She stood naked before him, and he couldn’t keep his hands off her a second longer. He took hold of her hips and hauled her toward him. He buried his face in her belly and kissed her down to the nest of honey between her legs.
She heaved and gasped in his hands. She bucked her hips against his mouth, and her sweet essence gushed down his throat. It fed him and nourished him beyond anything he ever imagined. He could never get enough of her.
His shaft swelled to get inside her. She broke free from his demanding hands, flicked his kilt back and sat down to straddle his hips. Before he could stop her, she steered his hard tool into her molten fissure.
Her heavenly flesh gripped him all over. He hid his face in her neck and groaned at the unstoppable intensity of sensation sweeping over him. Every time he took her was more mind-blowing than the last. She took hold of a fistful of his hair and crushed him into her.
She sat down hard on his lap and rocked against him. His shaft glided in and out on a satiny cushion of slippery film. It infected his being with that burning passion he couldn’t resist.
He fought off her hands to kiss her. She whined into his mouth, and he gasped for every breath. He pulled her hips in against her. She reacted to that deep intrusion by jumping clear, only to fall down on his shaft one more time.
He had to take her for himself. He had to own her and occupy her until nothing remained but the two of them made into one. He had to find that heart he gave her that still dwelled in her chest. She was his home, his life’s blood, his other half.
He circled her ribs with both arms. The pulsing rhythm took hold of them both beyond any reckoning. It washed down his face and chest to somewhere deep inside him. It surged out through his prick into her and lapped up her body to her lips.
Her tongue slithered into his mouth, and he turned his head aside to meet it. He glided one hand up behind her neck while the other steered her hips in circles over his lap. Her moisture soothed the smoldering heat building to an explosive climax in his deepest bones.
She broke away from his mouth with a broken cry. She threw her head back. Her body convulsed against his hands, and she spasmed from her neck all the way down her spine. She thrashed in his hands, and her cries rose to shrieks. That sound stabbed into his nuts and he slammed in hard to shatter her into a million pieces.
She beat her pelvis against him until he thought he would die, but he could never stop holding her and pumping himself into her. He had to keep going, even if it cost him his life. She was his life. She was his whole world.
He tried to kiss her again, but her mouth wouldn’t obey her. She exploded in convulsions. She took all his strength to hold her in position. It was all up to him now. He fell over backward on the bed and held her close. He planted his feet on the bed and worked up into her from below. She relaxed in his arms, but she wouldn’t stop shrieking in his ear.
Those ragged cries sparked a cascade of nervous power rocking through him. His brain exploded. He slammed up into her
and stayed there while his entire being poured into her. He gave her his all and he would never get it back. He would live there, inside her, and that’s where he would die.
Chapter 36
Alexis carried a heavy bucket of water from the well. It splashed against her long skirts, but she couldn’t be happier. She closed her eyes against the sunshine and smiled.
She walked around the corner and stopped by the trough. She dumped the water into the trough and picked up the hoe lying there. She started the steady rhythm of mixing the mortar in the trough to a sticky paste.
Christie called down from the wall standing next to her. “Did ye go down to the creek to see about getting more sand? We’ll no’ make any more mortar ’til we get it.”
“The wagon’s down there now,” she replied. “We just have to drive it up here, and we can make as much mortar as you want.”
“Well, dinnae make too much,” he told her. “We cannae use it fast enough.”
She held up her hand to him. “Hand me down your hod, and I’ll fill it up.”
He handed her a wooden square with a handle attached to the bottom. While she piled mortar onto it, he stretched his back upright and wiped his wrist across his forehead. He sighed, and the sunshine glistened on his bare sweaty chest. “How long do ye think it’ll take us to repair this place?”
“I couldn’t guess,” she replied. “We haven’t even gotten halfway done with one house, but at least we’re making progress. It already looks a lot better than it did when we first got here.”
She handed up the hod, and he went back to work putting clay blocks into place to build up the walls. She surveyed the village with an appraising eye. After they buried the villagers, it took her and Christie weeks just to clear the devastation of ruined houses.
The house they were working on now stood half finished—at least, the walls were half as high as they needed to be. She and Christie hadn’t even made the first dent in building the roof, the furniture, or the chimney.
Alexis pushed all those considerations out of her mind. One brick at a time, one trough of mortar at a time—that’s how this village would get rebuilt. It certainly wouldn’t be rebuilt by worrying about it.
She scraped all the finished mortar out of the trough into a tub. Then she added the ingredients for the next batch. She measured the lime and the cement. “I’ll go down and bring up the sand now.”
“Aye,” Christie replied.
She turned around when a wagon rattled into the village. Two draft horses pulled on either side of the shaft, and the wagon stopped in front of Alexis’s trough. The driver stood up from the seat. “Here’s the lumber ye ordered, Miss. Sam Leslie, at your service. Morris Abernathy says I’m to come along and report to ye about installing the lintel over the door and fitting out the punged floor.”
Alexis stared up at him. All of a sudden, Christie burst out laughing behind her. “Morning to ye, Mr. Leslie. That’d be just grand. We can take all the help we can get.”
“Morris Abernathy sent to tell ye he’s got his lads down the quarry loading stone for the chimneys, and he’ll have the smithy along in the morning to see about the stove fittings, if that’s all right with ye two.”
“We’re obliged to ye and to Morris Abernathy,” Christie called down. “That’s a fine load of lumber ye got there.”
“Best in this country.” Sam set to work unloading the wood. He stacked it in a pile next to the trough. “Milled it myself, I did. I wouldnae have anybody else do it. It’s got to be done right, for a house to stand the test of time. That’s my way.”
“Perfect.” Christie grunted when he put the next block into place.
“I’ll just go down and see about that sand.” Alexis started forward.
“There’s no need, Miss,” Sam told her. “Robbie Cannon’s driving the wagon up now.”
Alexis looked around and saw Christie grinning at her while he worked. She couldn’t believe this.
“If you’ll go down the brae there, Miss,” Sam told her, “you’ll find Annie Abernathy and my wife, Tessie, and a bunch of others preparing a nice mutton pie for tea. If you’d like to go down there for a spell, I’ll take over here with your man.”
Alexis cast one more glance up at Christie. He wouldn’t stop grinning, and he nodded to her. She hurried away and found a bunch of women laughing and working over open fires not far from the village.
After the women served food to over a hundred men working all over the village, Alexis went back to mixing mortar. She had no time to rest all day. Ten others joined Christie, and by the end of the day, they finished the house the two of them started alone.
Toward sundown, Christie dumped a bucket of water over his head at the well. He washed the mud and mortar off himself and put his shirt on over his wet torso. He took Alexis by the hand, and they headed out of the village.
People waved and called good-bye to them on their way home. Christie and Alexis stopped in the field and surveyed the place before they left. “It looks pretty good already,” Alexis remarked.
“It’ll be repaired in no time now,” Christie replied.
“I didn’t think they would come back so soon.”
“I suppose it took us making a start at it for them to come back,” he remarked. “We had to make the commitment and do the work. Then they came to join us.”
“I don’t want to stop now that they’re here,” she told him. “I want to keep going. I want to make this place my own.”
He put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her forehead. “Me, too. Now come along. We have our own place to be.”
They set off into the forest, and in a little while, they came out in the rocky field by the shore. One wall of the Tower House poked the sky. The other walls still slumped and blended into the ground.
As they approached the building, Christie broke away. “I’ll go tend to my chores. I’ll see ye up there in a moment.”
He went off to the byre behind the castle while she went inside. She passed through the hall still standing open to the sky. She pushed through to the kitchen in the back. She squatted by the fireplace and poked up the embers smoldering in the ashes. She added sticks and got a blaze burning.
She worked around her kitchen in a steady rhythm that filled her body with easy contentment. Even after working all day on the village, the simple tasks of keeping this place going gave her more joy than any human being had a right to experience.
She kneaded bread and set a piece of meat on the fire to roast. She patted out bannocks and toasted them the coals. She chopped the vegetables and set them aside when Christie came back.
He set the milk pail down on the kitchen floor and sat down heavily on a stool by the fire. Alexis picked up the pail and took it into the pantry. She strained the milk and set it aside in pans to let the cream rise. She washed out the pail at the well in the gathering dark.
She paused there to survey the landscape. The surf kicked up along the coast. She sensed a change in the weather. She got back to her comfortable kitchen to find Christie leaning back against the chimney with his eyes closed.
“You should go to bed, darling,” she told him. “You’ve been working way too hard.”
His eyes snapped open. “You’re one to talk. If it’s no’ slaving to rebuild this place, it’s the village. We both need a rest.”
“I think we won’t be able to work on this place for the next couple of days,” Alexis remarked. “The weather’s turning. A storm is coming up.”
“We’ll no’ be working on either place for the next week,” he replied. “Lachlan invited us up to Duart for the christenin’.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “That will be fun.”
He leaned back and closed his eyes again. “So we’ll both be getting a well-deserved rest for a few days at least.”
She lifted the heavy iron pot off the hook and placed a skillet in the coals. “It’ll be good to see everybody again. We’ve been down here on our own too long.”
He opened his eyes with an effort. He put out his hand and drew her close to him. “Are ye lonely down here on your own?”
“I’m not on my own. I’m with you.”
He circled her waist with his arms. “Ye ken what I mean. You’re too isolated. Perhaps I should send ye up to Duart for a few months and get your dose of company. Ye could help Ivy with the bairn.”
“Don’t you dare!” She swatted his shoulder and broke away. “You know I don’t want to be anywhere else. It’s fun to be around other people and run with the pack every now and then, but this is where I belong. Here, and the village.”
“Ye should enjoy the time alone while ye can,” he told her. “One of these days, we’ll be having bairns of our own, and then you’ll no’ ken a day’s peace for the rest of your life.”
She laughed. “Maybe that’s why I don’t want to spend too much time at Duart. I need to soak up the isolation now before all hell breaks loose.”
He didn’t answer, and when she cast a glance his way, she saw him staring into the flames.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” she asked.
He stole a peek at her and turned away. “Why have ye no’ fallen with child yet? Are ye no well, lass?”
Alexis’s jaw hit the floor. “Is that what you’re worried about?”
“It’s been six months,” he replied. “What if there’s something amiss with ye—or me, God forbid?”
She laughed out loud and ran over to him. She sat down on his lap and hugged him and kissed him. “You don’t have to worry about that. It’ll happen. Sometimes it takes longer than others, and sometimes it can take up to a year. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with either of us.”
“Are ye sure?” he asked. “I’d hate to think…”
She silenced him with kisses. “You just keep doing your duty as regularly as you have been doing, and you’ll get the job done. I promise you that.”
He gave her a pat on the leg when she stood up. She went back to her work, and he closed his eyes again. When she finished putting the vegetables on to cook, she went into the pantry for the rosemary.
Curse Breaker (Phoenix Throne Book 7): A Scottish Highlander Time Travel Romance Page 24
