Page 7 of Highland Warrior
Malcolm paused, his hand resting on her shoulder. There was naught left to do, and yet he didn’t want to leave her here.
A soft hand snaked from beneath the cloak and covered his. “Is there… aught I can do to repay you for your kindness?” She moved his hand from her shoulder to her breast, emphasizing her meaning.
Malcolm had to force his next words around a throat gone dry. “Nay,” he said. “I’d never take an offer like that as payment.”
“Then what would it take, to get you to share my bed?”
Chapter 3
Vían thought Malcolm would hastily accept her invitation.
Instead, he backed away and gained his feet, knocking his head on the ceiling in his haste. “I should… go.” Moving the door, he ducked out and replaced it with a final-soundingthunk.
No man she’d been forced to seduce for the Wyrd Sisters in her century or more of confinement had ever turned her down. It seemed that the more odious her charge, the more willing they were to take her. There was not one thing odious about Malcolm de Moray. The man was built as strong as the castle he lorded over, and had features just as finely crafted.
Sitting up, Vían brought her knees to her chest and hugged them, staring at the hovel’s entry. Maybe he’d seen past her beauty, to the demonic creature she’d become, and it drove him away. Maybe he suspected her intentions, or perhaps he would rather lie with a man than a woman. After all, a king his age and not married? A rare thing, indeed.
Or maybe he was married. Come to think of it, the Wyrd Sisters had never mentioned it.
Vían considered every last one of these options before landing on her real fear. What if he found her repugnant? Maybe the spark between them was one-sided and he was in a rush to quit her company. Instead of a damsel who enticed him, she might be a pauper who repulsed him.
The question was, what difference did that make to her? Why was she so forlorn over his rejection?
She hadn’t been sent tofallfor Malcolm de Moray. Her job was to get him to fall for her charms just long enough to fuck her. He’d hate her much worse than that when he found out who she was, who she worked for, and why she’d betrayed him.
And betray him, she would.
Vían’s intention to stay out of the void that imprisoned her soul for more than a century had gone past desperation, past madness, into a determined ruthlessness that drove her like nothing before. If Malcolm de Moray had to be a casualty of regaining her freedom, then so be it. She couldn’t go back into that place, the dark hole where despair swallowed her in endless torment, and she couldn’t even look forward to death as a release.
There was no release. No escape. Only this.
Running her cheek along her drawn up knees, she reveled in the warmth of his fine cloak. He’d left it for her. Why? Because he pitied her? Because he was a decent man?
Most likely because he had a hundred more like it in his castle chambers and left this one to ease his conscience.
Well, it would give her the perfect opportunity to see him again. She could request an audience at Dun Moray under the guise of returning it to him. He’d be more relaxed in his own home, less guarded, and easier to seduce. There would be beds, candlelight, and maybe she could get Nemain to craft her a spell that would—
The collection of sticks that passed for a door moved again, stunning her thoughts to silence. Malcolm bent to enter, carrying a bundle of kindling and a few larger logs. “Yer wood pile is nigh empty,” he chastised gently. “We’ll need to remedy that.”
Vían could only stare, as he bent to lay a fire in the meager circle of stones that passed for a fire pit.
“We?” she finally ventured.
He stood again and left just as abruptly as before, returning with his saddle bags. Retrieving implements from within them, he bent to start a fire on some tinder striking the flint together blowing on the spot where sparks began to catch.
Vían knew she should be re-strategizing her approach, and she would, just as soon as she could tear her eyes from the way his back and shoulders stretched at the seams of his fine shirt, or how his kilt rested on his bent backside.
His legs were so long. Lithe and powerful. Her fingers itched to get at what was under that kilt.
For the sake of freedom, of course, she reminded herself.
Vían got the impression that Malcolm wasn’t a man of many words. He worked quietly, absorbed in the task of building a fire, and didn’t look up until the blaze was stable and throwing off a furnace of heat. That accomplished, he reached again for the saddle bags and extracted a cloth wrapped around some cheese, some bread, and a few slices of cured meat. Next came a skein of something, hopefully spirits or ale.
It had been so long.
“If yer not nauseated, ye should eat and drink something,” he murmured. Taking her knife, he crouched down and cut her generous portions of the food, handing it to her without truly looking at her. “I retrieved water from the spring trickling into the loch, there. While ye eat, I’ll restock yer wood pile.” He frowned, motioning for her to take the food he offered. “I’ll not leave ye here with no axe to pick through frosty kindling. I’d have to question my manhood if I did.”
Vían thought of the member that had twitched and throbbed against her rump while they’d shared the saddle. No one in the history of the world would ever be able to questionhismanhood. Lord, but it was generous.
