Indecent: The Moray Druids #2 (Highland Historical) (5 page)

His fair eyes were even more disconcerting than the black pits his Berserker’s had been. They were keen yet merciless as they traversed the curves and valleys of her naked body.

The air turned hot and heavy, thick with tension and passion, blooming with the scent of a storm. Whether it brewed outside, or between them, Kenna was too lost in the moment to care. All she knew was when it broke, she wanted to be clinging to this man, to his strength. Not just that of his massive shoulders or immense thighs, but also the strength of his character, the self-assured courage that bled from his every pore.

Niall’s tunic and trews were discarded in a few jerks, and before Kenna had the time to do an appreciative inspection of her own, she was swept into his arms and deposited onto the window seat.

He remained standing, his impressive erection reaching toward her from a swirl of golden hair and sinewy hips.

To Kenna’s shock, her mouth and loins flooded with moisture, rending an answering noise from Niall’s throat. It rippled over her skin like silk and velvet, a sensual abrasion of sound and desire.

“Take me, Kenna,” he commanded softly. “Taste my need.”

His dark words sent her heart pounding against her breast bone. Heat welled within her veins and left her feeling shaky, jittery, and quite… aroused. The muscles in her loins clenched as though anticipating his intrusion, but first…

She parted her lips, letting her hot breath caress the bulbous head of his cock before closing her warm mouth around it. He tasted wild, like clean sweat and carnal sin.

An unnatural sound ripped from his throat as he gently cupped the back of her head, his fingers gliding through her thick fall of hair and then gripping it. His breath became rapid and shallow as she slid her tongue across the small slit at his head, indeed finding the slick drop as evidence of his need.

His shaft didn’t go far inside her mouth before it became too much, but he didn’t push. He stood, his knees locked, head thrown back to the moon as though about to howl like a Dire wolf, letting her mouth do with him what she would.

Only desperate gasps escaped him or sometimes guttural words in his harsh language as she began a rhythmic, pulling exploration of his sex. He was hot inside her mouth, and she felt her sensitive lips stretch around thick veins that she found curiously exciting.

She was about to take so much from him, of course she could give him this. His pleasure made her feel powerful in a way that had nothing to do with magick. It was as though she held his very soul in her hands, her mouth. His gasps and groans sounded as close to pleas as Kenna imagined a man such as he would ever make.

And he made them for her.

A gentle pulse in her mouth and a harsh sound was her only warning before she found herself shoved up against the window, her thighs wrenched open, and his heavy weight bearing her down. The smooth heat of his sex pressed against the slick warmth of hers, but he didn’t shove inside her like she expected him to.

Instead he kissed her. Hard. Devouring her mouth as he took her breasts in his hands, and thumbed the nipples until they were as hard as pearls.

“Take me,” she sobbed against his lips. “Now.”

He shocked her again by pulling back, his hands remaining possessively on her breasts. “I will fuck you,” he vowed crudely. “But first I must taste you.”

“Why,” she lamented. “I need…”

A wicked smile split his demonically handsome face. “I will always give you what you need,” he purred, rubbing against her so intimately that all she could think about was getting him inside her to ease the insistent ache. “But I will also take what I want.” He slid down her body, his tongue and teeth wreaking havoc on her trembling muscles. “I am a Viking, after all. It is what we do.”

He wasn’t gentle with her breasts, tormenting them with his lips and teeth until she gripped and clawed at his shoulders, leaving marks and saying things that had likely never been uttered within the walls of the abbey.

His face, rough from a day’s growth of beard, abraded the delicate skin of her belly as his hand found the auburn curls between her parted thighs. He didn’t slip his fingers inside, didn’t tease her or pleasure her, just held his hand over her mound, and dipped his tongue into her navel.

“I like to feel how warm you are,” he breathed. “How hot and wet I make you.”

Kenna arched, rubbing herself shamelessly against his hand, riding a wave of pure, desperation.

And still he remained motionless.

“Please, touch me,” she begged.

His laugh was low, yet full of victory. “I’ll do one better,” he murmured, pushing her legs as wide as her trembling muscles could allow them to part.

With no preparation he burrowed his mouth into her moist cleft, latching on to her clitoris and lapping it until it was swollen and full.

Ragged sounds of relief and frustration tore from her in tight sobs as his tongue circled and flicked, teased and tormented her to the edge of release only to pull away and start again. She begged him for mercy, pleaded for it with the innocence of a virgin and demanded it with the abandon of a whore.

But he decided when his sweet torture would culminate, and he drew two fingers down her pink folds and slid them inside her.

Kenna’s entire body tightened, arching and bucking against his mouth, releasing a rush of wetness against his fingers. For a moment nothing but the draw of his mouth existed. Nothing but the thrust of his fingers and the pulses they created surged through her body like a firestorm. She sang her pleasure in breathless screams that only lovers could hear as her soul burned with liquid desire.

“Fuck,” Niall swore against her intimate flesh, his eyes burning as he watched his glistening fingers withdraw from her. “I was going to do this for hours,” he mourned. “But if I don’t take you now, I’ll be unmanned. You’re too fucking sweet.”

He was on her again, big and demanding, drawing her beneath him and clamping her legs around his waist. “Take me now, my mate, take my body and my power. Take my heart along with my cock. It is all yours.”

He sank inside her and Kenna moaned with relief. Tears pricked her eyes as she felt their connection deeper than before. Faster. His power was already transferring, fueling the inferno he’d ignited within her.

He was deep and she was tight. And they were bound. Not just as mates, but as two people with a common goal. One that reached beyond pleasure, beyond tonight, and past tomorrow that may be or never be.

The heat became hunger, then demand, and then was a lust so powerful Kenna came apart beneath it. His thrusts were rough and pulled a pleasure and pain that had simmered beneath her skin to a scorching rush through every nerve.

She could feel him weaken, and still he thrust forward, his jaw setting with a determined emotion that both frightened and humbled her. “Take me,” he gritted through clenched teeth. “Take it from me.”

She took it while he came, roaring and convulsing on top of her like the great, ancient predator he was. His power spread from her loins to her blood, kicking her into a climax that spun her through the stars. The candles flared and melted and for a blissful moment she couldn’t think. Couldn’t fear. Couldn’t even breathe as her entire body locked with a fusion of the carnal and the divine.  

In the moment he collapsed to the floor, words of surrender and adulation on his lips, Kenna felt her heart melt and knew she was dangerously close to losing it.

She tested her own limbs and felt a sense of strength and power she’d never before imagined. It was something like masculinity and invincibility combined with the feminine force of her own magick thrumming through her veins with a rather intoxicating, almost inebriating potency.

Sliding off the window seat to kneel next to him, Kenna used her thin shawl to clean them. She hated seeing him like this, such a large and dominant creature powerless and immobile. But, the look in his eyes seemed so soft for such a hard face, full of satiation and reverence, and an emotion she couldn’t identify. Something deep and abiding.

Words that terrified her rushed to her tongue and choked her throat, making speech impossible. She should say something, shouldn’t she? About how grateful she was for his trust and power. About how he would feel better soon enough. Or maybe about how she was feeling hopeful for the first time in a long while, because he’d given her perspective and perhaps a future worth fighting for. 

She opened her mouth, but the crash of the library door against the wall cut off her reckless words.

Mother Superior stormed in like an avenging angel, all wrath and righteous indignation, followed by a black entourage of habits that milled into the room and surrounded her. “You
dare
to bring a demon into this house of God,” she screeched. “Then you fornicate with him in this holy place, even as the minions of the devil are at our gates.”

Kenna snatched her shift, holding it in front of her. “Mother Superior, I can explain.” She looked for a friendly face in the crowd and found none. No Judith, or anyone of her ilk. “He gave me his power so I could protect you. It’s the only way.”

“Bite your tongue, slut,” the old nun cursed. “There will be no tribunal for you. No inquisitor. You will burn for this, as will this barbarian and his savage men.”

“What have you done?” Kenna demanded.

“I have reclaimed this abbey for God.” Fanatical fire lit in the woman’s rheumy blue eyes, and it sparked Kenna’s temper. “All I have left to do is cleanse it of your evil.” Mother Superior stepped forward, as though to seize upon her.

“Careful, old woman,” Kenna warned, stepping protectively over Niall, who struggled to regain the use of his muscles. With a twitch of her fingers, the candles flared causing the women to start and scatter about the room in alarm. “My powers are no longer bound, and I won’t allow you to get in my way. So if you want me to save you from a magick far more ancient and malevolent than mine, I suggest we cooperate.”

Instead of being intimidated, Mother Superior curled her age-lined lips in the smug ghost of a smile. “I don’t need you to save us from the Wyrd sisters,” she sneered. “I already have.”

Niall choked a warning, just as pain exploded in the back of her head and down her spine, and the world pitched into darkness.

The smell of smoke, acrid to most, was like a perfume to Kenna. She could pick the scents of pine and larch trees from their smoke with the relish of a wine connoisseur. Her nose tickled with it, her throat filled with the taste of ashes and soot and she lurched into consciousness with a frantic jolt.

She was tied to one of the large stakes that had been where the whip had torn into her flesh. Firewood and kindling piled high to her knees. Her head pounded like the inside of a bodhran at Beltane, but the sight of Mother Superior carrying the torch toward the adjacent pyre upon which Niall stood was enough to force the pain into the background.

Vikings sprawled across the courtyard, though whether dead or unconscious, she couldn’t tell.  

Flames licked at Kenna’s feet, but they didn’t burn, only fed her ire, and the Berserker’s power surging through her veins. Fire might not be a danger to her flesh, but it would kill Niall, especially in his weakened state.

“What have you
done
?” she called above the crackle of the flames.

Mother Superior turned at the sound of her voice, buying Kenna precious seconds. “I have done what I must to protect those innocents under my care.”

“By killing everyone?” Kenna asked, incredulous.

“Those pagans are not dead, only under the influence of the belladonna we slipped into their wine.” A shadow of smug victory hung above her smile. “We hadn’t the time to build enough pyres, but we will deal with the rest of them in due course.” She lifted the flames to the firewood beneath Niall’s feet as he struggled against his ropes as ineffectually as a mortal man might.

This was her fault. She shouldn’t have let him weaken himself to save her. If she used her powers to redirect the flames, it would drain her strength against the Wyrd Sisters.

“Don’t,” she ordered. “You need him, and you need me against the witches who are, even now, plotting violence and terror without these walls.”

“I have no need of you, harlot,” the old nun hissed. “I’ve made my own deal with the devil.”

“What deal?” Kenna gasped, the smoke now becoming a real threat. She’d need to do something soon, take action.

“All will be revealed,” she hedged.

Kenna was so absorbed in the trajectory of the old woman’s torch toward Niall’s pyre as she tossed it onto the wood, that she almost missed the two nuns release the bolt to the abbey’s heavy gates.

Mother Superior turned toward her, eyes glittering in the light of Kenna’s own fire. “I
know
I’ll be absolved before I die, which is more than I can say for you.”

Kenna’s heart leapt from its perch in her chest and took a dive into her stomach as three figures were outlined in the abbey’s gates.

A maiden. A mother. A crone.

“You know nothing,” Kenna addressed the wayward nun in a voice made low and dark, though she never took her eyes from the Wyrd Sisters. “For if you did, you’d realize the mistake you just made.”

The Wyrd Sisters advanced in tandem, black-robed and coweled, a dark, malevolent ooze tainting the very air around them. Badb, on the left, the crone, her gnarled hands stirring the wind. Macha, the mother, on the right, calling upon the sea and darkening the clouds, promising the wrath of a storm.

And, in the middle Nemain, the girl with dark fire in her eyes and flames in her hands. Kenna’s nemesis. It was because of her existence that Kenna’s life was obsolete to these dark witches. They only needed one fire witch, and therefore could destroy her.

In Ireland they were thought to be the Morrigan, in England, the Wayward Sisters. Here in the Highlands, the home of their birth, they were the Wyrd Sisters. De Moray Druids who’d lost their way and let their greed for power take hold, turning them into creatures of darkness and avarice.

Kenna felt the ropes give as her clothes went up in flames. She yanked her arms free, letting the conflagration consume her robes. Heat spread through her body, a pleasurable singe with a punishing scorch at the end as she beckoned the blaze to heed her call.

Fire
. Her element. A masculine, destructive, consuming force. It filled her, danced for her, and ignited a passion and a need for justice.

 “Your fires of judgment could never hurt me,” she taunted the speechless nun who’d just set the blaze to her lover’s pyre. “It gives me the fuel to fight.”