Finally, he spoke, flinging himself off the side of the horse so that he could pull me off with him. “Ach, hush yer mouth, Grace. I doona even know what to say to ye. I have never in me life heard a lass speak such.”
His tone was admonishing, but he still hurriedly pulled me toward a secluded area amongst the trees, his chest rising and falling quickly with each step. He didn’t look back at me until he stopped walking, spinning to force my back against a wide-based tree, his cheek leaning forward to press flush against mine. “’Tis verra shocking.”
“Is it?” I enjoyed this exchange so different from any we’d had before. The evening he’d been drunk, he’d kissed me roughly—his own inhibitions dampened enough by the ale to permit him to treat me less gently than he had at any time since that night. I’d enjoyed that brief encounter very much. Every woman wanted to be cared for, to have a man take their time with them, and Eoghanan certainly did both of those things. In this instance, however, I didn’t want to be taken slowly. Now that Eoghanan was my husband, I wanted him to know that I trusted him to do with me what he wished. I wanted to feel as if I belonged to him and him alone. I wanted to be claimed by him.
“Aye, ’tis Grace. I canna tell if ye speak in jest or no.” He leaned his hips into me, the length of him pressing into my abdomen. “Ye see, lass,” his voice grew more husky every second, “it doesna matter how good the man, there is a bit of beast in all of us. ’Tis hard enough for us to no treat ye such when we know ye doona wish it; but when ye ask for it, Grace…” he paused, drawing in a shaky breath. “Ye should no tease a man with such things.”
I smiled against his cheek, slowly sliding my hand in front of me, bending my knees slightly so that I could reach underneath his kilt and wrap my hand around him. “Do I look like I’m teasing you? I care far too much about you to do that.” He groaned into my ear as I rubbed him. “I am entirely serious, Eoghanan. I need you. Now.”
He growled and removed my hand from him, raising my dress as he spun me so that my chest and face pressed against the tree.
“As ye wish, lass, but doona say that I dinna warn ye against this.”
Chapter 39
“We canna ride the horse the rest of the way. I’ll leave him with a man I know in the village. We must make the rest of the way on foot.”
I nodded, flipping myself over so that I could slide off the top of the horse. “Thank God.” He’d done as I’d asked him, much to my regret, and I had indeed been forced to ride the rest of our journey sideways, my thighs much too sore to spread them over the width of the horse.
After one more day of riding, we arrived at the smallest of villages that sat at the base of a tall cliff. Only one trail led up the hillside. While I could see that was where he intended to take me, I still couldn’t make out the final destination.
“Still tender are ye, Grace? I told ye I dinna think ’twas truly what ye wanted. I dinna mean to harm ye, lass.” He dismounted and gathered me in his arms, kissing me down the side of my cheek until his lips landed tenderly on my own. “I love ye more than ye can ever know. I would never knowingly hurt ye.”
“You didn’t. Just bruised me a little. It is not your fault. I brought it on myself.” I laughed against him. “I only wish I’d known just what I was asking for. I think perhaps I wanted to behave more adventurously than I truly am.”
“Aye, I feel much the same. I willna deny that no matter how I bury meself inside ye I love it enough to sell me own mother for a chance to do it again, but I want to see yer face when I make love to ye, Grace. I want to touch the verra piece of yer soul that is now shared with me own. ’Tis a wondrous thing that can occur with the pairing of two bodies.”
With my face resting against him, I breathed in his heady scent, undeniably male after so many days on the road. He smelled of sweat and earth, and sex. It was a comforting, surprisingly lovely smell, and I loved it. “You know, I don’t think there’s a single man alive that would admit to feeling that way.”
“Aye, and I doona think most men do feel as I do, lass. I am no a common man. ’Tis perhaps the poet in me that makes me so.”
“Hicumm….” The deep noise came from behind, and I twisted to find a man in his mid to late forties standing with his arms crossed and a pleased expression in his eyes. “If ye be a poet, then I am Laird of yer brother’s castle. Now, introduce me to yer new bride.”
Eoghanan stepped away to greet the man but kept one hand on the small of my back, nudging me along with him. “’Tis good to see ye, Tinley. This is me wife, Grace.”
I smiled and nodded to him, trying my best not to speak as to rouse the usual conversation that ensued as to the strangeness of my accent.
“Do ye have it ready for us?” Eoghanan moved to bring him the horse as Tinley answered.
“Aye, me wife helped in the preparations. I think ye will find it to yer liking. Doona ye worry about yer beast. I shall take good care of him until ye are ready to return home. There’s enough food to last ye a week if ye need it, though I expect the lass will grow tired of ye far earlier than that.”
Talk of preparations only heightened my curiosity further. Eoghanan must have sent a rider ahead of us to request such work of Tinley right after we’d announced our wedding for it to be ready and awaiting us today.
Eoghanan handed the reins over and reached for my hand. “I have no doubt that ye are right, but I’ll do me best to keep her as long as I can.”
“Aye, I’m sure ye shall. She is far too pretty for ye, even before what happened to yer face.”
The man’s words made me flinch. I’d never known him without the scars, which made it easy to forget that once his face and body had been entirely undamaged by Niall’s blade. He looked perfect to me now. The realization that others saw him as injured, as different from how he once was, had trouble resting with me.
No matter what I thought of the man’s words, Eoghanan seemed unbothered by them, only nodding in the man’s direction as he pulled me toward the winding trail. “Aye, she is. Thank ye for everything. Ye’ll find yer payment,” he pointed to one of the packs hanging off the horse, “in there.”
I waited to speak until Tinley was out of sight, making sure to look down at my feet as I climbed so I wouldn’t step on the bottom of my dress. “If you’d warned me, I could have packed my pair of jeans.”
He chuckled but continued his trek upward. “No, ye wouldna have. The first time I saw ye in such things I couldna look anywhere but yer thighs and yer backside. I willna have another man see ye dressed in such a way.”
I paused for a moment to hike up the dress. “And are there people that would see me dressed in them wherever we are going? I assumed you’d be taking me somewhere a little more secluded.”
“Aye, ’tis secluded. I doona wish to see anyone but ye for many days still.”
*
We marched upward for the good part of an hour before I heard it—the loud rush of water so strong that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed the sound before. The trail must have wound up the cliffside more than I’d thought, otherwise I couldn’t imagine how the sound could have remained so well hidden. “Are we going to a waterfall? Is there a cabin near it that we are staying in or something?”
He slowed for the first time since we’d begun and smiled back at me with a smile that told me I’d still not quite figured it out. “No cabin.”
“A castle then? What? A river boat?”
His eyebrows pulled in. “A river boat? No, lass. Why doona ye just wait and see?”
“Patience was never my strong suit.”
“Aye, I can see that. But ’tis mine, so no matter how many questions ye ask, I willna say a word. There is no need for ye to ask anything else, for we are there. But first…”
He moved to stand behind me, cupping both hands over my eyes.
“I’ll trip if you make me walk like that. My arms are too full of my dress for me to even catch myself.”
“I’ll catch ye, just step forward and turn when I tell
ye to.”
He didn’t remove his hands from my face until I could feel the spray of the water against my skin. “Now, ye may look.”
Chapter 40
McMillan Castle
Bebop was sleeping, but Cooper could still see that his grandfather was worried. He could tell by the deep lines in his forehead and his wrinkled brow. Cooper knew how he felt. For some reason, he was worried, too.
He approached the chair where Bebop slept quietly, hoping he wouldn’t wake him up as he crawled carefully into his lap. He should’ve known better though. Bebop was always a light sleeper, and his light blue eyes flew open as soon as Cooper settled onto his lap.
“What? Oh good, it’s you, Coop. What’s my favorite grandson up to? I was just resting my eyes for a while.”
Cooper smiled, reaching up to try and stuff the puff of white hair that stuck out the side of his ear back inside. “I’m your only grandson, Bebop. And you can’t fool me. I know what it means when you say you’re resting your eyes—it means that you’re sleeping.”
Bebop reached up to swat his hand away. “Sleeping? No, I don’t sleep during the day.”
Cooper didn’t argue but nodded to let Bebop know that he knew he did.
“And just because you’re my only grandson doesn’t mean that you can’t be my favorite. What did you and your father do this morning?”
Cooper shifted on Bebop’s lap so that he could face him. “We rode with Ba-o into the village and helped him pick up a crib for the baby that’s coming. It’s really pretty, Bebop. He had some man who can do super cool things with a block of wood make it.”
“I should like to see it. Were you a big help?”
Cooper shrugged. He knew he was still too small to be much help to anybody. “I tried but, not really. Hey, can I ask you something, Bebop? What’s bothering you so much?”
“What do you mean, son? Nothing’s bothering me.”
Cooper shook his head. He knew grown-ups sometimes lied to him to protect him, but he didn’t like it. “That’s not true, Bebop. I’ve known you my whole life, and I know that you’re worried. Now, what’s it about?”
Cooper knew the moment Bebop would tell him, because his grandfather reached up to mess with his hair, chuckling slightly as he always did when Cooper surprised him.
“I’ll tell you, if I’d been as smart as you are when I was a child, I would have gotten in so much less trouble.” Bebop paused. “Or maybe more, hard to tell really. Would you believe me if I told you that you’re right when you say I’m worried, but what worries me the most is I don’t know why? Just a feeling…like something’s coming that I’m powerless to stop. Do you understand that?”
It was like Bebop took the words right out of his head. Cooper nodded and leaned into him. “I do understand. Do you want to know why?”
Bebop reached his arm around him to hug him tight. “Why?”
“Because I feel the same way, Bebop, and I don’t know why.”
*
Brendon Falls
As promised, there was no cabin, castle, or riverboat when I opened my eyes. Instead, I stood perilously close to the edge of the cliff, my feet standing on a small foot-worn trail that seemingly led behind the waterfall. I couldn’t see how anybody could make it behind the powerful rush of water without being swept into the water below.
“It’s beautiful.”
His hands slid from my eyes as he moved them down my arms and gathered them around me, pulling me close. “Aye, and so is what lies behind it.”
“Behind it?” Even if he and I could manage to follow the trail behind the falls, it would have been impossible for Tinley or anyone else to carry supplies and whatever else they’d left us along that path.
“Aye.” He crouched his head down next to mine while I looked nervously at the narrow, rocky trail.
“Well, you go right ahead, mister, because I’m not doing it.”
“Do heights frighten ye, Grace?”
“I would be an utter fool if that drop didn’t frighten me. Only an idiot would try to walk behind that rushing water.” I leaned into him so that he would take a step back. The view was beautiful, but I found myself ready to step away from the ledge.
“Aye, ye are verra right, lass. I wouldna allow ye to get inside the cave by way of the trail even if ye wished it. Do ye no remember when ye fell in me bedchamber at the inn? If ye canna walk across a room without meeting the floor, I doona wish to see ye try to manage that.”
I stepped back, pushing us both farther from the ledge. “I remember it very well, but I didn’t just fall. I was startled by the sight of you standing there naked.”
“Mmmm…”
It was a contented noise, as if the memory brought him great joy. I was sure it did. It was the first day any real flirtation had begun between us. “So, there’s a cave behind it, huh? And just how do we get back there?”
He stepped away and took my hand, winking back at me over his shoulder. “This way.”
We walked up a rocky staircase that I’d not noticed earlier. At the top, the steps turned downward, leading underneath the river feeding the waterfall. I found the engineering of it amazing, albeit utterly baffling. Without the use of modern tools, it seemed impossible that such a place could exist. “Who did this? It’s truly astonishing.”
He paused a few steps in front of me, answering over his shoulder. “No one knows. No many know of its existence now. ’Tis truly a place of magic.”
I didn’t doubt it. As we stepped into the cave itself, I couldn’t come up with any other explanation for the dwelling other than the use of magic from another like Morna. “Men didn’t create this.”
It wasn’t a question, and he understood my meaning. “I doona think so, either. ’Twas a question I meant to ask Morna. If she knew of the witch who created this place.”
“Perhaps it was Morna.” I moved about the room entirely awestruck by its beauty. The magic in the room was tangible.
Candles flickered from every corner of the stone room, highlighting the surprisingly large, round feather bed that sat against the back wall. It was draped in thick coverings, and looking at the warm, lush bed made me realize that I wasn’t cold. That in and of itself was enough to convince me of the magic that lingered in the room.
“This is…Eoghanan, I hardly know what to say.”
He smiled, leaning a hand against the wall opposite me. “Touch the stones, Grace. ’Tis the only way we could stay so close to the spray and remain warm.”
They were warm, almost hot to the touch, and I closed my eyes at the pleasant sensation. “Oh, that’s wonderful. I was just wondering at it actually. I wondered how it was that I wasn’t freezing in here, so close to the spray of the water.”
A warm breath traveled down my neck, and I opened my eyes to find Eoghanan standing over me, his deep green eyes staring into mine. “Are you hungry, lass?”
My stomach seemed to growl on cue, and I laughed into his neck. “Very.”
Chapter 41
We were both famished after days on the road and dined happily on an assortment of bread, ale, and meat pies made for us by Tinley’s wife—all of it delicious. By the time we’d had our fill, the sun began to dip down into the sky, casting a spectacle of light through the water and into the cave.
I stood from the small table where the food had been so beautifully laid out and ventured nearer the room’s edge, hesitantly extending a hand into the running water. Its force sent my hand flying down to my side, but I pulled it upward once again, enjoying the feeling of the water’s power running through my fingers, its spray splashing onto my face and body, getting my dress rather wet.
“I think it best ye remove yer dress, before ye soak it so through it willna dry for days.”
I laughed but stepped away, reaching behind to work my laces. “True, but if it takes days for my dress to dry, I suppose that also means that I’d be naked for days.”
His hands were grasping my arms in an instant. “Too tru
e, lass.” He lifted me in the air, swinging me over his shoulder as he stepped into the spray, drenching us both in the cool water.
I gasped and floundered against him, my laughter drowned out by the water that covered us both. Once we were both dripping, he stepped back, setting me on my feet while he laughed deeply enough for the noise to reverberate off the stone.
“What did you do that for? I thought you didn’t like water—especially the sound of it falling.” I pulled all my hair around over one shoulder, ringing out some of the water.
He removed his kilt unabashedly, his chest still covered with water droplets as he watched me. “I doona like water, but this is a special place and ’tis too beautiful to dislike. Besides, I would be a damn fool no to stick ye into the waterfall after ye told me that doing so would leave ye naked for days. Do ye know how breathtaking ye are, Grace?”
Despite the cold, heavy dress now glued to my body, I warmed through instantly, blushing as I combed my blonde hair through with my fingers. “Not so breathtaking really, I imagine. You’re just partial. You have to say things like that now that I’m your wife.”
He crossed his arms while he shook his head, his own red hair dripping and shaggy once more. It grew quickly. Already he neared the need for another cut.
“No, Grace. I doona have to say any such thing to ye. I know plenty of lads who doona think their wives to be pretty and wouldna tell them so just because they were married.”
I frowned reactively. “Well, that’s quite sad.”
“’Tis verra true. I wouldna say it to ye if I dinna mean it, lass. I can scarcely breathe when I stand in front of ye, even dripping like a wet dog as ye are now.”
“The wet dog look is your doing. I was content to let the water touch my hands.”
“Aye, ’tis. Now, turn around and let me help ye out of yer dress so that we may let it dry.”
Morna's Legacy 04 - Love Beyond Measure Page 18
