Reluctant (Heroes of the Highlands) (The MacKays #3) (5 page)

She felt so exposed. So completely at his mercy. The cold evening autumn air touching her most heated, intimate flesh caused her to clench and shudder.

He surprised her by reaching into her hair and drawing out the clip and comb she’d used to secure it off her neck. He tossed them somewhere in the darkness, it didn’t matter where, and plunged one hand into her riot of curls, pressing her cheek against the table.

In unbidden answer, her hips arched back again and a prudish voice in her head told her to control herself.

Kamdyn swiftly silenced that voice, gripped the table, and whimpered.

Gods but she wanted this. It wasn’t at all what she’d expected. Instead of a lover’s soft caress, his free hand branded its way down the side of her waist, found the flare of her hip, and gripped at the flesh of her offered backside. Instead of preparing her with his fingers and mouth as her sister, Kylah, had described in one wine-filled night of over-sharing, he forced her legs to open wider by nudging her feet apart.

From her prone position, she felt gloriously powerless to do anything but let him do what he would with her. She wasn’t gifting him with her virginity, he was claiming it. She would be naught but another conquest. A willing victim. A consenting plunder. Her need had become like an all-consuming hunger she’d never before experienced. It throbbed and demanded. Its intensity overcame her as easily as he did, rendering her helpless before it.

His chest heaved against her shoulders with wild breaths as he bent his knees. Her teeth caught her cheek as she awaited his intrusion.

She’d known it would burn. The heat of his sex had branded her even through her robes. But she hadn’t fully prepared herself for the fiery pleasure-pain of his thrust. Her untried body convulsed around him, and she groaned. It was that or scream, which would do neither of them any good as her scream had dastardly consequences.

He cursed in a foreign, guttural language.

Kamdyn heartily agreed with him. Though she felt as though his steely length would cleave her in two, the insatiable void that had suddenly opened up in her womb throbbed and demanded something only he could give.

“More,” she whimpered.

“Small,” he growled. “So fucking tight.” He pressed forward, probing her, torturing her, and still a barrier held that neither of them understood. “Take it, woman,” he bit out. “Yield to me.”

“I-I can’t.” No matter how hard she wanted, her body wouldn’t cooperate.

Soren withdrew, still pressing himself against her distressed opening, rubbing the thick head of his cock on her creamy desire, spreading the slickness onto his flesh.

“Do it,” she insisted. “Hard.”

The sound he emitted was rough and raw as he surged forward. She sobbed with equal amounts pain and relief as her virginity yielded and he buried his sex deep within hers. The pain rapidly drained as her immortal flesh healed, leaving only that persistent, feverish need. Which was fortunate because he didn’t pause to savor or allow her to adjust, but tightened his hand in her hair and made good on his promise.

He fucked her.

He impaled her with a merciless rhythm that forced her to cling to the table in helpless submission. The sounds he made were low and masculine, a rhythmic percussion to the husky mewls her lungs produced.

Each time she thought she could cede no more, her slick body would yield its heat to him and he’d fill it, demanding she let him farther inside. Kamdyn was desperate to accommodate him, for the deeper he plunged, the higher her pleasure climbed. When the hairs on his strong thighs brushed against the back of her smooth ones, his cock struck something so deep within her that a cry of shock escaped her mouth. It was like he’d prodded her soul. He did it again, and again, until she wanted to give it to him. Her soul. Her body. Anything he wanted if he just never stopped.

He didn’t seem capable of stopping. He pounded into her, over her, with ferocious determination. The hand he’d wound in her hair jerked at her scalp, the tension there tight and delicious. The hand at her hip gripped with punishing strength, bruising her skin, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything but his next invasion. Every time he pulled away from her body was a little death. Every time he returned, she rejoiced.

She wanted to writhe, to seek him, to press back against him, but she couldn’t move. Her muscles still tried, instinctually, and when she arched her back slightly, he said something so foul, Kamdyn wasn’t sure she knew what it meant.

With that, he quickened his pace from punishing to brutal.

Kamdyn began to tremble uncontrollably. Her muscles seized from her own power as though controlled by some kind of sadistic puppeteer. A stab of pleasure so exquisite held her in its unrelenting grasp. It locked her jaw, grinding her teeth together. Stopped her breath. Bowed her spine beneath him until she feared she would be crushed between it and Soren’s heaving body. Each time he entered her, the pleasure pulsed and grew, licking at new nerves like a flame becoming a destructive inferno. This couldn’t go on, she realized, this state of unmitigated bliss. It would destroy her.

As the thought congealed in her mind, Soren reared up with a sharp hiss. His hand left her hair and gripped her other hip. A jerky, frenzied note interrupted his otherwise seamless rhythm and Kamdyn became certain he was going to—

Soren froze. Cursed. Growled. Cursed again. And suddenly his weight and heat were gone from her. When Kamdyn found enough strength to turn around, the tent was empty.

Chapter Seven

Blood. More fucking blood. Soren never attempted anything in his life but he was drenched in it an hour after. This time it was
her
blood. Just a small measure, but any was too much. He thought he’d Berserk again. Then remembered that wasn’t going to be a problem with her anymore, not with his mate.

He ground his fist into a tree and it splintered, crashing to the ground. Luckily, he was too deep into the forest to worry about any of his men coming to investigate the sound.

Soren was no stranger to the blood of the innocent staining his blade, his hands, his armor.

But never his sex. Never that.

And blood meant that she
was
innocent. Had been, before he took her like an animal. Like a common—

“Soren?”

He whirled to face her, though it took all his fortitude. She stole his breath from a dozen paces away. How had she followed him all the way out here? He’d used his Berserker speed to escape her. To escape what he’d done. He was a coward.

The last vestiges of grey and silver light, the remaining memory of a sun that had set a half hour prior, caused her creamy naked flesh to glow. The flakes of snow still aimlessly drifting like errant feathers, caught in the wild tangles of copper and flame tumbling about her shoulders. Her gentle green eyes shone with concern.

“You’re not trying to escape your death, are you?” she asked sadly. “Because I’m afraid you cannot.”

Soren stared at her. It was the last thing he’d expected her to say.

“Do it,” he rasped. “It is what I deserve. End me now.” He watched her small, perfect breasts quiver and bead with the tiny shiver of her taut body. “And then get the fuck out of the cold,” he commanded.

She stepped a few paces closer to him and his heart began to pound. “But we weren’t—you didn’t—finish.” Her eyes flitted to his manhood, which hadn’t fully lost its erection, despite his distress.

He snarled and turned away from her, bracing his hands on a nearby tree to keep them from snatching her where she stood. “You were untouched,” he accused.

“And?”

“And I was a brute.”
To my mate,
he finished silently. “I made you bleed.” ‘Twas the ultimate shame for a Berserker. Even for The Laird of Shadows. He’d held her down, dominated her, pulled her hair and shoved himself inside her like she was an experienced wanton. Which he’d thought she was. He’d thought she’d been dallying with pretty faerie men between her thighs for years.

“You
are
a brute.” She was suddenly between him and the tree, her lithe legs wrapped around his torso, her hands gripping his shoulders.

Soren leapt back in surprise, but she remained clasped around him, her small, taut nipples rubbing against his chest with delicious friction.

“How did you—”

She kissed him. Then vanished. Teeth nipped him sharply on the meat of his shoulder. When he turned around to reach for her, she was gone again.

A whistle drew his attention to the highest bough in the forest. She posed there like a nubile goddess, an impish grin touching her lips and twinkling from her eyes.

A realization struck Soren with the weight of a falling tree. His mate was wrapped around him again, her feminine warmth rubbing a slick welcome against his cock. “I could have vanished from your grip at any moment,” she whispered his prior realization against his ear in a hot, husky breath. “But I
wanted
to be taken by a brute. By you.”

Lust tore through him, evaporating any vestiges of shame or reticence. He looked between their bodies to where he’d stabbed her with a dirk less than an hour before. No scar. No blood. Just taut, lovely skin.

“All my wounds heal,” she informed him smugly. “One of the many advantages of being immortal.”

Soren seized her tiny waist. Her skin was chilly against his. Relief flooded through him and adrenaline, blood, and lust chased it until he felt like he was on fire.

“I’m going to take you again,” he warned, then frowned. “Don’t you
dare
disappear.”

She hooked small, surprisingly strong arms around his neck and planted a kiss against his rough cheek. “I’m going to have
you
again,” she informed him, curling her hips and coating him with more of her slick desire. “And
I’m
not the one who disappeared.”

Soren bared his teeth at her. She was so impudent. She didn’t fear him in the least, and the fact that had at first irritated him was suddenly so erotic he could barely stand it.

Her hips pulled back just far enough for his sex to find her, but he filled his big hands with the flesh of her ass and held her motionless. His blunt head poised between her folds. “You may be taking my life later, but
I’m
taking your body now.”

Her eyes snapped and she writhed against his grip.

“Yes,” she hissed, pressing little wet kisses against his jaw.

“Yes. What?” he prodded her, but pulled back when she squirmed to get closer.

“Yes!
Please
, Soren.”

The sound of his name as a supplication on her lips was nearly his undoing. Soren began to impale her inch by glorious, maddening inch.

Her breath hitched. Her nails bit into his shoulders, gouging his flesh and into his muscle. Her body shuddered and he began to worry that she’d again have difficulty accepting him completely inside her. But he paused, pulled her back and started feeding himself to her again. This time, with a quivering sigh, he stretched her and filled her completely.

Soren stood like that for a breathless moment. In the middle of the woods with the shadows of night thickening around them, he just let himself be as one with his mate. She was so tiny against him. Light, he imagined, even for a normal man, let alone one of his size and strength. She weighed little more than the flakes of snow brushing his back.

Conversely, the pressure of her core was as tight as a vise around him. The grip of her arms desperate and demanding. She tugged at his hair. Nibbled at his ear lobe. And Soren began to fear that the urge to spill his seed within her might overpower his legendary self-control. It was the most exquisite torture he’d ever experienced.

He pulled her hips back and drove her down on him, giving her what she wanted. What
he
needed.

“Yes,” she gasped against his ear. The word became her mantra as he bounced her off his unyielding, thrusting hips. He gritted his teeth. Took deep breaths. She would find her pleasure before him or he would die first.

Soren anchored her hips with one arm, refusing to look at where their bodies slammed together or he’d be lost. He wound his other hand back into her curls, pulling her head away from where her lips worshiped the skin of his neck.

His eyes locked with his mate’s and her passion-fogged gaze instantly sharpened. The little explosions of her breath caused by his jarring thrusts hit his face. He used her lovely eyes as a marking point. If he lost himself in them, he wouldn’t lose himself into her tight, sleek body.

She’d come to him untouched by another man. Soren still couldn’t believe it. No man had previously had these legs wrapped around his waist. He was the only one she’d chosen to accept into her body, out of the doubtless hundreds who’d tried. Kamdyn wasn’t only his mate. She was truly
his
. A dark, primitive possessiveness gathered inside of him as encompassing as the encroaching night.

“Soren,” she breathed between his merciless thrusts. “Your eyes.”

Her red hair disappeared, replaced by a lustrous silver. The green of her eyes became an iridescent, shimmering grey.

When his Berserker growled at her, she cried out. But not in fear. Her head tossed back and her body arched against him. Convulsions began to rake through her, concussing at her core and gripping at his cock.

The beginnings of his orgasm drove him to his knees and he used the new leverage to angle upward inside of her, wringing new and intense cries from her lips.

This time, when Soren became the Berserker, it was unlike any other. It wasn’t blood, but another catalyst altogether that brought the beast to the surface. He didn’t cede his humanity to it, he shared it. They both took her. They both reveled in her pleasure.

And when he gave her a few more powerful thrusts, it was the beast who roared his release into the night.

Chapter Eight

“You shouldn’t kill people.” Kamdyn scolded half-heartedly as she lay draped like a limp rug across her Berserker lover. “And you shouldn’t take their things.” Perhaps she should have opened with that and worked toward the greater sin, which was the part about murder.