Unwanted (10 page)

“Stop doing that,” he commanded, his strong hands encircled her wrists and gently pried them from the front of her.
 

“Then stop calling me beautiful,” she shot back.
 
“It’s cruel.”
 
He’d seen her the
entire
time?
 
While she’d been standing in front of him?
 
While his mouth had—?

Dear sweet
Jesu
, she was going to die of mortification.

“You
are
beautiful,” he insisted, joining her on the bed and covering them both with her insufficient furs.
 
He lay on his back and pulled her against his chest.
 

“I’m not beautiful,” she countered, “I’m invisible.
 
Sometimes I feel that I could stand in the middle of the square and scream and thrash about like a wildling, and no one would notice.”

Finn pulled her in close, tugging on her knee until she had it resting over his muscled thigh and trapped between his legs.
 
“People don’t see you because they don’t want to see you.
 
If they did, they’d have to admit that they ignore your bare feet or your tattered clothes.
 
They’d see the loss in your eyes and realize they’ve mistreated you.”
 
 
His voice was harder now, cold, like it had been when he’d first entered her home.
 

Rhona
swallowed a lump that formed in her throat.
 
“But you see me?” she asked.
 
“Even in the darkness?”
 
She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.
 
Though the darkness could be a dangerous place, it could also offer safety.
 
He was one man from which she could never hide.
 

Finn’s arms enfolded her.
 
“How could I not?” he murmured.
 
“To me, even in the shadows, you’re illuminated.
 
Unlike any other.”

“Really?”
 
A stray tear escaped the corner of
Rhona’s
eye and she had to catch it with her hand before it fell onto his chest.
 
She allowed herself to sink into his warmth, reveling in the feel of his hard, naked body.
 
For one night, he would ward off the constant permeating chill.
 
For this one night, she’d be safe and protected.
 
Instead of utter, empty loneliness, she had two people for company, each with their own joys.
 

Each with their own needs.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he admitted.
 

“So,” she rested her cheek against his chest, listening to the strong, steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
 
“You can see at night, you can hear as well as woodland predator.
 
Is everything they say about Berserkers true?”

“What do they say about Berserkers?” his amused words sounded as though they came from the deep chest against her ear instead of his mouth.

“They say all kinds of things.
 
Like you have to feed on blood and it’ll make you strong as ten men.
 
I’ve heard the blood will also
cause
you to go mad until you kill everything in your path, whether it be man, woman, or child.”

Finn grunted, but it wasn’t a displeased sound. “I don’t feed on blood, I’m not a Demon.”

Rhona
waited a bit.
 
“But… what about the rest?”

Her head lifted with a shrug of his shoulder.
 
“If blood is spilled before me my Berserker is unleashed.
 
He is a beast of rage and destruction.
 
He is stronger than
twenty
men, faster than a pack of wolves, and without the ability to feel fear or compassion.
 
It is his duty to annihilate anything that lives.”
 
It sounded as though he recited a creed.
 

“Duty?” she stiffened.
 
“Duty to whom?”

“To Freya, our Goddess of battle.”

 
“This Berserker is a curse?
 
It lives inside you?”
 
Disbelief curled inside of her.
 
Because of her circumstances, she’d never put much thought or stock in one god or another.
 
Blessings eluded her, no matter how long she spent on her knees begging for help.
 
And she worried far more about the immediate pain and punishment exacted my man then the vague possibility of a vengeful deity.
 
Why blame God or Demons for one’s misfortune?
 
People were capable of enough evil on their own.

“A man is born a Berserker.
 
It is what I am.
 
It is what my father was.”
 
He sounded resigned to the fact.
 

Would he kill her for slicing a finger?
 
Or a child for skinning a knee?
 
Rhona
tried to reconcile this fearsome, compassionless creature to the considerate lover that held her so snugly against him.
 

“Freya.”
 
She tested the foreign name.
 
The names of the Celtic Gods slid through her mind with familiar ease.
 
Her father was a deeply superstitious man who adhered to the old ways, though her mother clung to the Christian faith now dominating the Lowlands.
 
“What sort of Goddess is she to create such a lonely existence for a man?”

“She is a Goddess of the
Northmen
.
 
Only her people can claim the Berserker.”
 
His voice warmed a little, as though
Rhona
had pleased him, somehow.

“That’s not true.”
 
She rubbed her hand across the smooth span of his chest, finding the flat of his nipple with her palm.
 
“It’s widely said that our Laird, Connor MacLauchlan and his brother Roderick are Berserkers.
 
And they’re as Scots as there ever was.”

He stiffened against her.
 
“Do you know them?”
 
The question held an intensity that alarmed her, but she dare not move away from him.
 

“Nay,” she answered honestly.
 
“I’m not the kind to socialize with nobility, though I’m summoned to the keep in the morn.”

“What do they want with you?”
 
Suspicion deepened his question to a growl.
 

Rhona
shook her head against him.
 
“It’s not the men who summoned me.
 
Lady Evelyn MacLauchlan was going to discuss retaining me when the child is born in the spring.
 
I had some dried herbs I was going to take her that might help to soothe her morning ills that won’t abate even after all these months.”

“One of them has a mate?”
 
His voice shook with astounded outrage, louder than it had been since the baby had fallen asleep.
 

“They’re both recently married, if that’s what you mean.”
 
Rhona
lifted herself onto her elbow.
 

“
How
recently?” he demanded, sitting up and unsettling her.

Rhona
didn’t understand what could possibly have made him so angry.
 
Did he know them?
 
Were they his friends?
 
Enemies?
 

Had she put herself in danger with the only clan that would have her by sheltering him?
 

“Tell me!” he took her elbow in a firm grip.
 
A jolt of alarm stabbed through her.
 

“I-I don’t know exactly.
 
Roderick brought Evelyn home in the summer, she was already pregnant.
 
And the Laird married Lindsay Ross rather quickly, I believe, just after
Samhain
.”

A slew of guttural words flowed from his direction.
 
They sounded like curses.
 
Like the kind of incantations that blighted entire bloodlines.
 

“Please,”
Rhona
begged.
 
“You’ll wake the—”

A reedy whine preceded a plaintive cry from over her side of the bed.
 
Rhona
sighed as she extracted herself from his grip and rolled over to retrieve the wriggling bundle from his nest on the floor.
 
Worry curdled like sour milk in her stomach as she soothed and bounced the child.
 

Had she called more trouble and tragedy upon her house by allowing this stranger into her bed?

***

Finn crouched and added another dry log to the blaze he’d crafted in the fireplace.
 
He’d checked to be sure that the woman was fully absorbed by the babe so that she wouldn’t notice that he’d ignited it without tinder.

She couldn’t have understood the impact of the information she’d given him.
 

As a final test of his strength and loyalty, Magnus the Elder had sent him on a holy quest solicited by Freya herself.
 
Upon his success, he was to be inducted into the order and adopted into a bloodline.
 
The holy blood of the Berserker had somehow leaked into the Celtic Isles.
 
There were two men unworthy of the blood, and therefore had to be eradicated.
 

Finn was to be their executioner.
 

Magnus neglected to mention that Connor and Roderick MacLauchlan were mated, a position which increased their power tenfold.
 
They would be unstoppable.
 
Lethal enough on their own, even for him, but with two of them?

Finn heaved out a great breath, squinting at the flames as though they held the answers to everything.
 
He was such a fool.
 
The Goddess and the elders of the temple hadn’t sent him on a quest.

They’d sent him here to die.
 

The dulcet sounds of
Rhona’s
soft hum to the suckling child combined with the dancing flames mesmerized him.
 
 
One threw enough heat to singe his skin; the other ignited a warm glow deep in his being.
 

He couldn’t look at them.
 
Not now.
 
Not with the emotion gripping his chest.
 
He had to wait for the implacable cold to come back.
 
He was too raw.
 
Too exposed.

 
Somehow, over the course of the night, the ice blockade he’d built around his heart had thawed.
 
At first, Finn thought it was a consequence of the intensity of heat created by their passion.
 
Now he had to admit it went beyond that.
 

When he’d first glimpsed
Rhona
in the light of her one lone candle, something sparked between them that bespoke of providence.
 
While he’d watched her succor the abandoned child, that spark fanned into glowing embers, fed to flame by the force of her abiding spirit and selfless love she’d proclaimed for her own child conceived through misery or brutality.

The inferno created by their shared passion had consumed him, leaving him no choice but to burn as hot as the laws of nature would allow.
 
In the aftermath, he’d expected the flames to die out, leaving nothing but cold stone and charred ashes.
 
Like always.

Instead it remained, much like the fire he’d just built, spreading warmth to every dark and shadowed corner and creating a bed of coals that would endure countless bitter nights to be fanned into a strong blaze at the slightest provocation.
 

A woodchip burst and sparks showered toward his legs.
 
Finn was grateful that he’d donned his
trews
in order to gather the wood.