A Storm of Passion

by TERRI BRISBIN

  A STORM OF PASSION

  A STORM OF PASSION

  TERRI BRISBIN

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First, my thanks to Kate Duffy and Megan Records at Kensington for their support in my first project with them. It has been a wonderful learning experience for me and I’ve enjoyed working with them.

  And, I would like to thank Jennifer Wagner and Cara Carnes for serving as my mini critique group when I wrote this book. Their input and, more important, their questions about plot, characters, and scenes were a tremendous help to me in making this story come to life. Thanks!

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  The damp fog crept off the sea, moving onto the land and over the hills of Quinag like tendrils of sticky sea grass. It seemed alive even as it covered the dead of her village. The smoke from fires set by their enemies choked her and burned her eyes as she searched for someone, anyone, still alive in the destruction. Struggling through the hazy gloaming, Moira slipped in the mud and fell once again.

  She pushed her hair out of her face and rubbed her eyes. Shoved into a hidey-hole by her mother at the first sound of the attack, she’d stayed as long as she could, resisting the urge to fight back, to stand with her father and brothers, to protect her mother and her sister. Now, they lay dead, their lives’ blood draining out onto the ground in the center of their village. Unable to help them in life, she knew she must help them find peace now.

  It took hours, but she worked into the night to find and drag the bodies of her sister and mother nearer to the burned remains of their cottage. She worked on and on, sometimes giving in and crying out her grief, especially when she looked on the battered and bruised face of her sister. Then only her mother was left to bury.

  When Moira reached under her mother’s arms to pull her into the hastily dug grave, her mother’s hand twitched, scaring her and sending Moira scurrying back. Taking a breath, she crept forward and touched her mother’s cheek, hoping against hope and sense that she was still alive, though she knew that her mother could never survive the wounds she’d received.

  “Mam?” she whispered. “Mam?”

  Then, a rasping, labored breath, drawn in and sputtered out of her, spewed more blood on the ground. Moira tried to lift her, but the hours of digging had left her with little strength now.

  “Get away,” her mother said, choking with each word. “They will return…”

  Tears flowed down her cheeks as she watched her mother struggle for a breath and lose that battle. She did not ken how long she sat there, holding her mam in her arms, but the growing light of dawn creeping over the mountains to the east told her it was too long. She would be vulnerable in the light of day, a lone girl amidst so much death with no one to protect her. Gently, she laid her mother down and offered a short prayer for her soul, their souls, and then she ran.

  Their enemy did return as her mam had warned, and she was able to avoid them only by squeezing under a decaying tree and hiding in the morass of roots and grass at its base. Moira listened to their words, and the only bit of it she could hear and understand was that they’d been sent by someone called the Seer. The soldiers spent hours in the ruins of her village, and then they left.

  With hunger and thirst driving her, she waited for the sounds of their leaving to cease completely before creeping from her hiding spot. Stumbling through the forest, she stopped to drink from a stream and pluck some berries. So confused, so tired, and so heartbroken, Moira could not think of where to go or what to do. Looking around, she knew she must find shelter, for the sun was sliding down the sky toward the sea.

  Gathering what berries she could stuff into the pocket of her skirt, she found the path that led away from the sea and toward the mountains. If she could follow the path through the mountains, she could find the village where her mother’s sister lived. Surely she would take her in.

  The final shock met her as the path rose to enter the first mountain pass, and she nearly buckled under the pain of it. If she had kept her eyes on the rocky trail, she might have missed it, but it was at that very moment when she looked up.

  Her father dangled at the end of a rope, his body twisting in the winds. Moira’s stomach clenched and heaved, forcing her to her knees. His eyes were gone, and his body showed signs of torture at the hands of his enemies. She crawled on, not daring to look back.

  When she reached a place where she could not see him clearly, she stood, and—from someplace within, some strength she knew not of—a burning desire for vengeance rose. Clenching her hands, she offered not only a prayer for the soul of her father, but also one for courage and resolve.

  She would find the ones responsible for this, and she would make them pay. It might take her years, it might mean more suffering on her part, but she would make someone sorry for the day they chose her family as their target. This man, the Seer, would pay with his life.

  Her fingers dug into her palms, mixing her blood with that of her slain mother and sister. Holding her hands up to the sky, she spoke the words of a blood oath to the souls of her family and to any god listening.

  “I will not cease until every drop of my enemy’s blood is spilled or until I give my own in the trying. On their blood, I swear this.”

  Chapter One

  Six years later

  He didn’t remember seeing her before, either in the keep or in the village or among Diarmid’s people. Connor walked past the woman, but then turned back to face her. When the visions approached, with the power seething through his veins and the heat building throughout his body, it was difficult to think about much other than women. If she stood by his door, she was most likely sent there by Lord Diarmid and for one purpose only.

  To sate his lust.

  Connor smiled as he considered this one, surely sent to ease his needs. He leaned in closer and allowed his essence to envelop her even as he inhaled hers.

  Arousal.

  Fear.

  And something more surrounded her, like the curtain of her brown hair. He inhaled again, savoring the female essence of her, and then he recognized the other scent that she carried.

  Anger. A bone-deep, overwhelming rage that she kept hidden from others.

  Startled by it, he tried to meet her gaze to ascertain its source, but she only looked away. No matter. She was for him.

  ‘Twas always the way it worked—Diarmid sent them, the magic in his blood entranced them, and he pleasured them even as they did him. His appetite for the fairer sex grew as the power pulsed stronger and stronger and as his body prepared to channel the visions sent to him.

  At first the wench did not react—she even shook her head as though trying to clear her thoughts—but when he held his hand out to her, she took it. As he guided her into his chambers he realized that she was not the curvaceous, full-bodied woman that the lord usually provided to him. He’d fallen into a pattern of selecting bedmates whose breasts and hips were voluptuous and soft and whose bodies could take his weight and height and length, and Diarmid had noticed quickly
and provided them to him.

  Instead, this woman was tall and strong, her steps nearly as long as his, and from the firm grasp of her hand, her body nearly as strong. Her body clearly had its feminine softness, but there was a leanness about her that spoke of an inner strength and purpose.

  His cock hardened, his mouth watered, and his blood raced in anticipation of the lively bout of bed play this one would give him. The ones before always gazed at him in adoration and allowed him his way, but this one teased him with her seeming indifference and the mysterious scent of her skin. Would it taste different as well? Would her female essence taste different when he sampled that place of her own arousal? Connor smiled at the possibilities between them.

  They entered his chambers, and he closed the door behind them, dropping the bar. Now that his interest and his lust were growing he wanted no one interrupting them. If he was lucky—and he usually was when it came to the females in his bed—it would take at least the whole of the afternoon to wear them both out from the passion that filled the air around them now. And to ease the torturous tension that grew within him as the visions approached.

  Connor dropped her hand, but still she did not look at him. She peered around the chambers, better appointed certainly than the ones she was most likely accustomed to, and he stepped aside to observe her reactions. The plush rugs on the floor instead of woven rushes, the thick tapestries covering the walls and blocking out the coastal winds, and the carved wooden furniture that turned his rooms into a comfortable place must be impressive to those who lived in less-luxurious parts of the keep or village.

  Hell, it rivaled even Diarmid’s chambers when it came to comfort. And cost. Whatever the Seer wanted, the Seer got, be it for his comfort or his whim or his pleasure.

  She stood, staring at the chair on the raised dais at one end of the chamber, the chair where he sat when the visions came. From the expression that filled her green eyes, she knew it as well.

  Had she witnessed his power? Had she watched as the magic within him exploded into a vision of what was or what would yet be? As he influenced the high and the mighty of the surrounding lands and clans with the truth of his gift? Walking over to stand behind her, he placed his hands on her shoulders and drew her back to his body.

  “I have not seen you before, sweetling,” he whispered into her ear. Leaning down, he smoothed the hair from the side of her face with his own and then touched his tongue to the edge of her ear. “What is your name?”

  He felt the shivers travel through her as his mouth tickled her ear. Smiling, he bent down and kissed her neck, tracing the muscle there down to her shoulder with the tip of his tongue. Connor bit the spot gently, teasing it with his teeth and soothing it with his tongue. “Your name?” he asked again.

  She arched then, clearly enjoying his touch and ready for more. Her head fell back against his shoulder, and he moved his mouth to the soft skin there, kissing and licking his way down and back to her ear. Still, she had not spoken.

  “When I call out my pleasure, sweetling, what name will I speak?”

  He released her shoulders and slid his hands down her arms and then over her stomach to hold her in complete contact with him. Covering her stomach and pressing her to him, he rubbed against her back, letting her feel the extent of his erection—hard and large and ready to pleasure her. Connor moved his hands up to take her breasts in his grasp. Rubbing his thumbs over their tips and teasing them to tightness, he no longer asked; he demanded.

  “Tell me your name.”

  He felt her breasts swell in his hands, and he tugged now on the distended nipples, enjoying the feel and imagining them in his mouth, as he suckled hard on them and as she screamed out her pleasure. But nothing could have pleased him more in that moment than the way she gasped at each stroke he made, over and over until she moaned out her name to him.

  “Moira.”

  “Moira,” he repeated slowly, drawing her name out until it was a wish in the air around them. “Moira,” he said again as he untied the laces on her bodice and slid it down her shoulders until he could touch her skin. “Moira,” he now moaned as the heat and the scent of her enticed him as much as his own scent was pulling her under his control.

  Connor paused for a moment, releasing her long enough to drag his tunic over his head and then turning her in to his embrace. He inhaled sharply as her skin touched his; the heat of it seared into his soul as the tightened peaks of her breasts pressed against his chest. Her added height brought her hips level almost to his, and he rubbed his hardened cock against her stomach, letting her feel the extent of his arousal.

  As he pushed her hair back off her shoulders, he realized that in addition to the raging lust in his blood, there was something else there, teasing him with its presence.

  Anticipation.

  For the first time in years, this felt like more than the mindless rutting that happened between him and the countless, nameless women there for his needs. For the first time in too long, this was not simply scratching an itch, for the hint of something more seemed to stand off in the distance, something tantalizing and unknown and somehow tied to this woman.

  He lifted her chin with his finger, forcing her gaze off the blasted chair and onto his face. Instead of the compliant gaze that usually met him, the clarity of her gold-flecked green eyes startled him. Connor did something he’d not done before, something he never needed to do: he asked her permission.

  “I want you, Moira,” he whispered, dipping to touch and taste her lips for the first time. Connor slid his hand down to gather up her skirts, baring her legs and the treasure between them to his touch and his sight. “Let me?”

  She shivered again and reached out to grasp his shoulders, steadying herself. She did not speak, but only nodded in acceptance. It took him but moments to tug her bodice free, pull off her shift, and loosen her skirt so that it fell to the floor. Standing only in her stockings before him, Connor hesitated only because he wanted to touch every place on her and could not decide which would be first.

  Her mouth beckoned to him, so he lowered his head and covered hers with his. Sliding his hand into her hair and holding her close, he tasted her, slipping his tongue deeply inside and searching for hers. She opened for him, and he felt her body do the same. Her step closer forced her legs to separate, and he could not resist caressing her there. She gasped against his mouth as his probing fingers were met with wet, hot proof of her body’s reaction to him. With his thumb against that bud of flesh that was most sensitive, Connor slipped one finger, and then two, deeper into the cleft and stroked in and out, drawing the moisture of her weeping body out to ease his way.

  When her legs buckled and she stumbled against him, he lifted his mouth from hers and noticed the shallow panting in her breathing. “Ah, sweetling,” he whispered, “can you feel what your nearness does to me?”

  Connor took one of Moira’s hands and guided it down to his hardness, never moving his other hand from its place between her legs. When she covered his cock and began to caress it, he could not stop his body from reacting. Arching against her, he thrust once and then twice, noticing that wetness seeped onto his hand between her legs with each thrust. In spite of any trepidation he had that this woman was somehow different or hesitated in being part of this, her body fell under his magic just like all the others had…and would.

  He paused then and released her from his grasp, only to take her hands and lead her across the room to the chair on the dais. Climbing one step and then the next, he sat down on the wide, wooden seat and reclined against the back of it. Although big enough for two people to sit side by side, it was wide enough for one woman to straddle one man on its surface.

  And that was his plan…until she fell to her knees before him. Crawling forward to place herself between his legs, he watched as she unlaced his trews and freed his manhood from its coverings. Connor tried to imagine the feel of what she would do, but none of his imaginings came close to the sheer pleasure of the heat of her
hands surrounding his cock.

  She worked his rod, surrounding its width with her fingers and entwining them, closing her circle with her thumbs. Then she began her magic, sliding that tight grasp up and down, from the head of his cock to its base, turning and twisting and sliding with each movement. His blood forced near to boiling from her bold caresses, he lifted her chin so that she would look up at him.

  No innocent wench this one, for when their gazes met she leaned forward and touched her tongue to the wide head of his cock. He felt the jolt of it and with each touch after, as she licked from head to sac, never taking her gaze from his. Then, as though she knew her own power, she began to use teeth and lips and tongue on the length of him, nipping and licking and sucking up one side of him and down the other. Connor felt his control slipping, so he clutched the carved arms of the chair to keep from thrusting the length of him into her mouth and throat. Now, it was his breathing that was shallow and wild with need.

  Without lifting her mouth from him, he felt her tug on his trews, sliding them from his hips and off his legs. She moved closer, which made her breasts tease the insides of his now-naked thighs. When she slid to the head of his rod and closed her eyes, Connor knew he would not be able to stop himself.

  The wench opened her mouth and took him into it. The heat and tightness made him ache for release, but he would not give in to that yet. With her hands surrounding it, she leaned down, taking more and more of him into her, until he was deep in her throat and her lips nearly to the base of his rod. His head dropped back against the chair, and he reveled in the sensations of heat and liquid and flesh on flesh. Placing his hand on her head, he did thrust then, once, against the pressure of her hold.

  Connor felt the squeeze of her lips around him and waited. When she slid down on him even further, he let out a moan of pure pleasure at such temptation. Her hands then slid down to lift and caress his sac until it tightened in her grasp. He was near to exploding when the need to plow her deeply and fully took over. He lifted her head from his rod and pulled her forward and up to straddle him.