Page 11 of Highland Warrior
Malcolm shot up, his arms coming around her in a protective vice before he rolled her between the wall and the shield of his body.
“Odin’s bones, Malcolm, your pale backside is the last thing I need to see this early in the morning.” A dark masculine voice trembled with half amusement, half disgust.
Malcolm instantly relaxed, though his voice was laced with rage as he addressed the interloper. “Bael, if you doona get the fuck out of here, I’ll forget ye’re my brother-in-law and—”
“Malcolm you gave us a fright!” A flame-haired woman bent into the hovel, filling the poor structure to the brim. “What in the name of the Goddess are you doing all the way out—” She cut off when Vían poked her head above Malcolm’s shoulder, her lovely blue eyes widening to the size of saucers. “Oh, my!” the lady exclaimed. “I thought… we assumed you were in danger… not…Oh my! Pardon us!”
Burning a bright pink, even in the dim light, the woman seized onto the dark-haired lummox next to her, and tugged at his arm toward the now ruined door.
The man relented, black eyes glittering with mirth. “My liege,” he said in a strange, foreign accent before executing a mocking bow to Malcolm’s back side, and ducking out of the hovel.
Their chuckles could be heard through the thin walls.
Malcolm’s groan of frustration was more of a menacing growl. His morning erection still pulsed against her thigh, and he’d yet to let go of her. “Sometimes family isna the blessing others make it out to be,” he grit out.
Vían began to panic. What would she do now? How could she face the Wyrd Sisters after her failure? They’d know she’d lain with him, and that she’d chosen not to carry out her charge. “I… suppose you must be going now.” Fighting to keep her voice even, she mentally berated herself for the weakness he brought out in her. Was this the last morning she’d ever see?
“Aye,” he sighed, pulling away and running his hands over his tired eyes. “Gather what things ye want to take with ye.”
“What?”
Malcolm’s jaw cracked on a yawn, and he reached for his discarded kilt and tunic. “I’ll get ye home so we can finish what my sister and her husband so rudely interrupted.” He kissed her forehead, and pulled his tunic over his unruly auburn curls.
Vían gaped at him in absolute shock, frozen in place.
He pulled his kilt over his tantalizing backside and then turned to her as though to ask her why she hadn’t moved yet. Upon seeing her face, he crouched down to her and touched her cheek, obviously taking her astonishment for outrage.
“I doona mean to offer ye the dishonor of being my mistress,” he amended, green eyes sparkling with mischief. “I mean to make an honest woman out of ye.”
He couldn’t mean…
“What are you saying?” she breathed, her heart slamming against her ribcage.
“I’m saying I mean to make ye my wife.” He grinned before leaning in for a kiss. “Now get dressed, dawn is upon us.”
* * *
Malcolm felt lighterthan he had in months as he guided his steed over the moors toward Dun Moray. He ignored the silent, astonished glances of his sister and the smug, lifted eyebrow of his brother-in-law as they each followed behind him on their own horses.
He supposed he deserved both. Since Morgana had returned home from exile in England with a Berserker mate, he’d lectured both of them over the unwise speed of their union. He would reap what he’d sown, and try to keep a good humor about it. Morgana was full to bursting with questions, Malcolm could feel them swimming inside her, but she wouldn’t ask him until Vían was no longer clinging to his back in dazed silence. If nothing else, his sister was a lady.
There were a myriad of noble reasons why he should marry Vían. He’d been found in her bed, such as it was, and therefore honor bound him to her. Though Picts didn’t believe as the English did, that a woman exploring her sexuality was more sinful than a man doing the same, it still was a man’s responsibility to take care of his offspring.
And what if their night together had resulted in a child?
The very idea terrified and humbled him. He was an Earth Druid after all, they were known to be more fertile than your average Celt.
And yet, that still didn’t encompass the reason he was now taking a bride home rather than searching for the Grimoire as he was bound to do.
The moment he’d seen Vían trembling and wounded on the ground, something inside him had shifted. For so long, he’d been consumed by his work, by the responsibility of being the king of a proud and clannish people, and by the charge he’d been tasked with by the Goddess.
A de Moray Druid.
With her soft amethyst eyes and skin that seemed as though it had never been kissed by the sun, Vían made him feel like a man.Justa man. A creature of blood and bones and hunger and lust. Nothing more.
In truth, he could have stayed with her in that hovel and lived out his days roaming the forest, fishing the lake, and planting wee babes in her belly every night by their fire. They’d tell stories, shape clay, weave baskets, and let the forest help them to forget that an Apocalypse loomed on the horizon.
“Is that Dun Moray?” Vían’s question shattered his brooding fantasy as they broke over a rise and the Moray valley spread out beneath them. It shimmered like an emerald in the autumn sunlight, the village alive with activity.
