Seducing a Scottish Bride (29 page)

She cried out, reaching to clutch his shoulders and rocking her hips to increase the sweet pressure against his seeking, stroking
fingers. But the drowsiness of sleep kept her gasps and sighs trapped inside her.

And hard as she tried, as was the way with dreams, her grasping hands and her aching hips refused to move.

He kissed her anyway, thrusting his hand into the loose spill of her hair and pulling her lips to his. Murmuring ancient Gaelic
love words, he claimed her mouth in a hard, bruising kiss, deep and ravenous.

“Precious lass, let me touch you,” he begged, the words hot silk against her lips. “There’s no’ a breath I take nor a beat
of my heart that’s no’ steeped with wanting you.”

“Ahhhh . . .” At last the dream let her move again and she arched into him. In reward, hot, tingling need rippled through
her, drenching her.

She went liquid, her mouth opening wide beneath his. Her tongue swirled and thrust, seeking and tangling with his. Their hot
breath mingled, each intimately shared gasp intoxicating her all the more.

Incredible pleasure whirled inside her, bright, sinuous flames that ignited her senses and curled her toes, making her wind
and stretch on the cool richness of the bedsheets.

“Ahhhh,” she cried again, this time letting her knees fall apart, opening herself to him.

“
Mo ghaoil
— my dear — you shouldn’t have done that,” he growled, lifting up on his elbows to stare down at her, every muscle-ripped
inch of him poised above her, the bold look in his eyes making her even more hot, wet, and slippery.

He tightened his grip on her heat then, but released her as quickly. Still murmuring Gaelic love words, he smoothed his hands
swiftly upward, seizing and kneading her breasts. Hot and strong, his fingers squeezed and plumped her flesh, the pleasure
of it finally shattering the spell of her dream and letting her cry out her need.

“Yesss . . . Ronan!” She writhed against him, her fingers tangling in the coverlets and her thighs clamping around the plump
feather pillow caught between them.

“Ronan . . .” She kicked the pillow aside and flung off the covers.

Flipping onto her stomach, she swept an arm across the cold and empty sheets.

Bedding icier than any she’d ever shared with her sister.

Impossible that a man had lain there with her.

With surety, not the Raven.

She’d only dreamed that he’d come to her.

Her own female need and desire had spun the wild, abandoned kind of passion she ached for so badly.

The heady, set-the-heather-ablaze kind of lovemaking she knew no man save Ronan could give her.

“ No-o-o!” She dug her hands into the coverlets, her fingers gripping the richly embroidered sheets and the somewhat scratchy
fur throws.

“Please.” She choked on the word, a hot, scalding wetness tracking down her cheeks. “Come back — I need you . . .”

But only silence answered her.

That, and the hollow whistling of the cold night wind; the touches and voices that weren’t there, reaching and whispering
from the shadows.

“Ronan . . .” The name hung in the darkness, filling her soul even if her cry echoed back to her, hollow and unanswered.

Her heart pounding, she damned her dreams — for they only made her want him more — and rolled onto her side. A chill spread
through her then, a coldness coming from deep in her soul. She reached for the cast-off covers, just closing her fingers on
them when she saw him.

He stood across the darkened bedchamber, his tall form cloaked in shadow. Behind him, a few peat embers still glimmered on
the hearthstone. The faint, orangey glow of the peat edged the wide set of his shoulders and the satiny spill of his sleek,
raven hair.

No longer naked, he appeared swathed from head to toe in his great voluminous travel cloak, though she was sure the mantle
would have needed laundering after shielding Buckie and his onion creel from the rain on the long journey back from Creag
na Gaoith.

Shifting on the bed, she knuckled her eyes and then scrunched them to see him better. He stood unnaturally still, and although
his face was cast in shadow, his eyes glinted darkly, and something about the way he was staring at her lifted the fine hairs
on the back of her neck.

His neck, she saw with a start, was unadorned.

The fine golden torque he favored, nowhere to be seen.

Only the cowled folds of his robe’s hood, gathered like a yoke of bunched, dark wool around his shoulders.

He lifted a hand and took a step forward, as if to gain her attention. But if he spoke, a sudden blast of howling wind stole
the words. Again and again, the gusts battered the tower, rattling the shutters and filling the room with the cold, damp scent
of rain and old wet stone.

Stone steeped in silence, its cold, lichened essence feeling almost pagan.

“Ach,
dia,
” Gelis cried, her own words lost in the swelling, ear-piercing din.

Now a high- pitched, keening wail, the roar of the wind blotted everything but the wild buzzing in her head and the deafening
thunder of her pulse.

The table and even her pile of strongboxes melted into the floor, quickly followed by the fine stone-carved hearth and its
little clumps of glowing peat. Then the massive stone walls began to shake and weave, falling one by one into the darkness,
their disappearance letting the deeper shadows swirl into the room.

“Gaaaaah!” She flung out an arm when one of those shadows rushed past her, the Raven’s great four-poster bed vanishing in
its wake.

She pitched forward, her bare feet and the flats of her hands hitting the floor rushes only to plunge right through them,
her spiraling fall hurtling her into even greater, colder blackness.

“Gaaaaah!” she cried again, tumbling and spinning, her flailing arms grasping only air before she slammed hard onto something
that felt distantly familiar, like the furred coverlets of her bed.

But the bed was no longer there.

Nothingness surrounded her.

A great dark void pressed in on her from all sides, cold and cloying, terrible in its emptiness.

Only
he
remained.

Her heart began a slow, hard thumping as she stared at him, dimly aware of the hand she’d clutched so fiercely to her breast
and of the eerie quiet that now replaced the wild screaming winds of moments before.

Looking at ease in the chaos, her raven seemed oddly taller now.

His dark eyes glinted ever brighter, and he held out his arms, silently beseeching her as the darkness around him grew blacker.

Black as a tomb.

“
Ronan
— I pray you, stop. Don’t do this . . .” But her voice sounded far away, as if she called to him from the bottom of a very
deep well.

You’re frightening me.

Those words, too, she held back, shamed by her fear.

Not that he could have heard her.

Already the blackness was consuming him. Dark and dense, it poured in, swirling first around his ankles and then whirling
ever higher to slide around his knees and finally spread upward, circling his hips and all of him.

As if the shadows sought to bury him.

“ No-o-o!” She clapped her hands to her cheeks, shaking her head. “Please stop.”

Silence answered her, its deadness worse than hell’s coldest wind.

She swallowed hard, her fingers digging into the swell of her bosom. She began to tremble, wanting to squeeze her eyes shut
when the darkness reached his neck, but she couldn’t look away.

Then only his eyes were visible.

Dark and piercing, they still glinted right at her, glowing as hotly as the hearth’s reddish-orange peat embers she could
no longer see.

But then she
was
staring at the peat embers.

The raven was gone.

And she was sprawled naked across his well-appointed bed.

Her bedchamber — nae, his — appeared as always.

No black winds tore at the wall hangings or rattled the soundly latched shutters. The table by the window and her own towering
stack of hump-backed, iron-bound coffers stood exactly where they should.

Untouched, and certainly not
melted
.

Even the scattered bearskin rugs on the floor were undisturbed, without even a single stray bit of dried meadowsweet or what-have-you
marring their glossy pelts.

That alone was a clear indication that no unholy wind had swept through the room.

Even so, she drew the bedcovers to her chin.

She knew fine what she’d seen.

Even if she also knew someone else could have stood beside her and not noticed a thing amiss.

She knew better.

Something was sorely amiss.

And she had enough experience with such matters to guess exactly what it was.

“Saints, Maria, and Joseph!” Her father’s favorite curse slipped from her lips and she fell back against the bedcushions,
her entire body shaking.

Staring up at the richly carved bed ceiling, she clenched her fists and fought hard against slipping into the deceptive peace
of slumber.

Two truths were bearing down on her and she could deny neither.

The first seized her each time she drew a new, lung-filling gulp of the cold, early morning air.

Ronan
had
spent at least a few hours in her bed.

The sheets and coverlets reeked of him, or, better said, of the rank-smelling goldenrod goo she’d spread across his ribs and
smeared onto his toes.

The second truth ripped her heart and stole her breath, its horror splitting her soul.

The blackness she’d seen consuming Ronan could only mean his death. And the icy cold, stone-drenched emptiness had to have
represented his tomb.

Gelis shuddered, hating the interpretation.

But try as she might, she couldn’t find another explanation, much as the reality struck her like an iron-hard fist in the
belly.

The Raven truly stood in mortal danger.

She’d just have to be sure she was ready when the blow came.

She’d be damned if her Raven’s foes would defeat her.

And she’d face down the devil himself before she’d let them conquer him.

Enough was enough.

A
ye, that’s what I said, just!” Valdar leaned back in his great carved laird’s chair, his mailed shirt gleaming brightly beneath
his plaid. “He rode out well before sunrise. And, nae, he didn’t tell me his business.”

He looked around the high table as if seeking agreement, seeming pleased when the kinsmen sitting there responded with assorted
grunts and nods.

Even so, Gelis wasn’t fooled.

She took a deep breath. “He told no one where he was going?”

Valdar snorted. “My grandson?”

Anice, just setting down a platter of buttered bannocks and cheese, flushed and hastened from the dais. She stopped only long
enough to right an upturned trestle bench, then quickly disappeared into the bustling hall.

Several men at the high table cleared throats or scratched at their elbows.

Sorley and the other garrison guards did the same at a nearby long table, each one studiously avoiding her gaze. Gelis frowned
watching them. The men who’d readily helped her get Buckie and her Viking tent out to Creag na Gaoith now seemed far more
interested in gobbling their oats and examining the floor rushes.

Some appeared to inspect their fingernails.

Ignoring them all, Gelis folded her arms. “I must speak with him, Valdar.”

He’s in danger.

She held back the words, not wanting to alarm the old chieftain.

Though, in truth, she was certain he knew.

“That one was e’er a man of his own mind,” he blurted, sitting forward to snatch up his ale cup. “We’ll not be a-seeing him
until he comes hallooing back in through the gates. Like as not, sometime late this e’en.”

Gelis pounced. “You know where he is.”

Valdar wagged his bearded head. “I’m a-guessing, lass. No more.”

“Then where do you
guess
he is?”

“Off to Kyleakin to see about acquiring malt for MacHugh’s brewhouse, mayhap,” he offered with a shrug. “Word is our stores
are low. Or” — he winked broadly — “perhaps he’s chasing down the peddler said to be journeying through your da’s territories
these days. Could be he wants to fetch a few fine gee-gaws and ribbons for you!”

Gelis didn’t believe a word.

But Valdar held her eye, the image of graybearded innocence, save that he had donned a hauberk.

A precautionary measure if ever there was one.

Especially in light of the long, two-handed sword propped just a bit too casually against his chair and the wicked- looking
Norse battle-axe resting on the table.

Called Blood Drinker, or so she’d heard, the axe held pride of place next to a wooden bowl of slaked oats and a jug of watered-down
morning ale.

Gelis narrowed her eyes. “His absence wouldn’t have anything to do with all the steel in the hall, would it?”

“Steel?” He blinked, not quite managing to look surprised.

“Aye, steel.” She made a sweeping gesture. “And I don’t mean your men’s eating knives.”