Page 14 of Highland Warrior
“No!” Vían cried out, her chains scraping the earth as she lifted her hands and pushed against his chest. “Damnyou,” she spat. “Damn you for making me care!”
They circled each other like suspicious wolves, but her shackles restricted too much movement. Emotions swooped and flew about them like bats in a cave, blindly searching for a safe place to rest and finding none.
“You know what it’s like as their prisoner,” she accused. “Can you blame me for doing anything they asked to escape their wrath?”
“Ye could have told me. I would have protected ye.”
His words both touched and angered her at the same time. “How can you be so arrogant? They threaten me even now, within these walls. I am not their prisoner as you were Malcolm, I am theirpossession. They own me, body and soul.”
Malcolm froze in place, his eyes daggers of emerald fire within the sharp planes of his masculine face, his chest lifting and falling as though he’d run a league at full speed. “The only way that could be is if ye…”
“Yes,” she hissed, a bit of her soul flickering and dying like a candle in a storm at the disgust and disbelief in his eyes. “Yes, I made a deal with them. I sold my soul, more than a century ago, and I became one of theirminions, as you call it.”
He took a step toward her and opened his mouth, but Vían backed away, holding a hand up against him.
“Don’t you dare ask me why,” she warned. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Just comfort yourself with the knowledge that whatever happens here tonight, whether you win or lose this battle, I’ll be thrown back in the dark void that has been my personal hell for the rest of eternity.” Her voice wavered on that last sentence, so she kicked her chin up a notch. “You’ll be done with me forever.”
“I’m not done with ye,” he growled. “I’llneverbe done with ye.” Tearing off his shirt, Malcolm tossed it to the stones. This time he stalked her like a predator, reaching out and dragging her against his hard, corded torso with punishing force. “Ye’ve bewitched me, somehow,” he accused, giving her a shake for emphasis. “Ye canna belong to them, Vían, because ye aremine.”
Oh, how she wished that could be true.
Even if her soul were to be set free, she’d instantly die. “Malcolm—”
His fingers pressed against her lips. “Doona speak,” he commanded as his lips descended once more. He had to know. The tension in his muscles, the bruising desperation of his lips told her that he realized the futility of their connection, but refused to accept it.
It was the anger of a man who was a Druid in his spirit and a King in his land. He was used to controlling his environment. To bending others to his will.
But she was something he could neither control nor possess.
With a frustrated groan, he shoved her tattered shift above her waist, baring her sex. In an astonishingly graceful maneuver, he turned her to the bars and forced her to cling to them as his kilt hit the stones at their feet.
His body was a muscular mass of coiled strain behind her as he gripped her ass with bruising fingers and maneuvered his erection to her entrance.
She went wet for him, panting as alarm and shock heightened the blood and lust racing through her veins. His growl of possession drowned out her whimper of submission and he surged inside her with a powerful stroke.
Pleasure rocked her, flooding her limbs, and she threw back her head with a moan.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped, as he thrust forward again, harder this time. Deeper.
“Shut up.” He wrapped her hair in his fist and secured her neck in place as he shoved inside her with such force, her teeth clacked together.
“Forgive me,” she panted.
“Never.” He thrust forward again and again, his hips bucking against her ass with jarring force. It took all her strength to brace herself against the bars, so the power of his body didn’t crush her against them. Her arms trembled and burned with the effort, and sweat bloomed on her skin.
He thrust so deep he evoked sensations she’d never before experienced. Her body wanted to thrust back, to seek release and to meet his need. But his relentless rhythm was too brutal and too fast, so Vían helplessly took what he gave her. His growls became groans, and the friction intensified.
“Come for me, temptress,” he commanded against her ear, tugging on her hair in a way that caused her inner muscles to clench with a spiraling pleasure. “Scream my name as ye knew it all along.”
She obeyed. Pleasure seized her in its unrelenting hold and his name poured from her lips again and again. First as a plea, then as a prayer. And at last a worshipful gasp as wave after wave of bliss pulled her from the void and lights exploded even in the darkness behind her eyelids.
When the climax began to fade, the Wyrd Sister’s cruel threat permeated her pleasure with a raw pain.
We’ll toy with your lover, and slaughter everyone he loves…
Inside her heat, Malcolm grew impossibly thicker, hotter, and his breath sped with his approaching climax. Conjuring her courage, she squeezed her eyes shut once more and whispered the words Badb had made her memorize. Three times. She had to whisper them three times and it would be over.
Her life would be over. Freedom beckoned.
