Page 17 of To Wed a Highlander
Kenna’s entire body tightened, arching and bucking against his mouth, releasing a rush of wetness against his fingers. For a moment nothing but the draw of his mouth existed. Nothing but the thrust of his fingers and the pulses they created surged through her body like a firestorm. She sang her pleasure in breathless screams that only lovers could hear as her soul burned with liquid desire.
“Fuck,” Niall swore against her intimate flesh, his eyes burning as he watched his glistening fingers withdraw from her. “I was going to do this for hours,” he mourned. “But if I don’t take you now, I’ll be unmanned. You’re too fucking sweet.”
He was on her again, big and demanding, drawing her beneath him and clamping her legs around his waist. “Take me now, my mate, take my body and my power. Take my heart along with my cock. It is all yours.”
He sank inside her and Kenna moaned with relief. Tears pricked her eyes as she felt their connection deeper than before. Faster. His power was already transferring, fueling the inferno he’d ignited within her.
He was deep and she was tight. And they were bound. Not just as mates, but as two people with a common goal. One that reached beyond pleasure, beyond tonight, and past tomorrow that may be or never be.
The heat became hunger, then demand, and then was a lust so powerful Kenna came apart beneath it. His thrusts were rough and pulled a pleasure and pain that had simmered beneath her skin to a scorching rush through every nerve.
She could feel him weaken, and still he thrust forward, his jaw setting with a determined emotion that both frightened and humbled her. “Take me,” he gritted through clenched teeth. “Take it from me.”
She took it while he came, roaring and convulsing on top of her like the great, ancient predator he was. His power spread from her loins to her blood, kicking her into a climax that spun her through the stars. The candles flared and melted and for a blissful moment she couldn’t think. Couldn’t fear. Couldn’t even breathe as her entire body locked with a fusion of the carnal and the divine.
In the moment he collapsed to the floor, words of surrender and adulation on his lips, Kenna felt her heart melt and knew she was dangerously close to losing it.
She tested her own limbs and felt a sense of strength and power she’d never before imagined. It was something like masculinity and invincibility combined with the feminine force of her own magick thrumming through her veins with a rather intoxicating, almost inebriating potency.
Sliding off the window seat to kneel next to him, Kenna used her thin shawl to clean them. She hated seeing him like this, such a large and dominant creature powerless and immobile. But, the look in his eyes seemed so soft for such a hard face, full of satiation and reverence, and an emotion she couldn’t identify. Something deep and abiding.
Words that terrified her rushed to her tongue and choked her throat, making speech impossible. She should say something, shouldn’t she? About how grateful she was for his trust and power. About how he would feel better soon enough. Or maybe about how she was feeling hopeful for the first time in a long while, because he’d given her perspective and perhaps a future worth fighting for.
She opened her mouth, but the crash of the library door against the wall cut off her reckless words.
Mother Superior stormed in like an avenging angel, all wrath and righteous indignation, followed by a black entourage of habits that milled into the room and surrounded her. “Youdareto bring a demon into this house of God,” she screeched. “Then you fornicate with him in this holy place, even as the minions of the devil are at our gates.”
Kenna snatched her shift, holding it in front of her. “Mother Superior, I can explain.” She looked for a friendly face in the crowd and found none. No Judith, or anyone of her ilk. “He gave me his power so I could protect you. It’s the only way.”
“Bite your tongue, slut,” the old nun cursed. “There will be no tribunal for you. No inquisitor. You will burn for this, as will this barbarian and his savage men.”
“What have you done?” Kenna demanded.
“I have reclaimed this abbey for God.” Fanatical fire lit in the woman’s rheumy blue eyes, and it sparked Kenna’s temper. “All I have left to do is cleanse it of your evil.” Mother Superior stepped forward, as though to seize upon her.
“Careful, old woman,” Kenna warned, stepping protectively over Niall, who struggled to regain the use of his muscles. With a twitch of her fingers, the candles flared causing the women to start and scatter about the room in alarm. “My powers are no longer bound, and I won’t allow you to get in my way. So if you want me to save you from a magick far more ancient and malevolent than mine, I suggest we cooperate.”
Instead of being intimidated, Mother Superior curled her age-lined lips in the smug ghost of a smile. “I don’t need you to save us from the Wyrd sisters,” she sneered. “I already have.”
Niall choked a warning, just as pain exploded in the back of her head and down her spine, and the world pitched into darkness.
Chapter 8
The smell of smoke, acrid to most, was like a perfume to Kenna. She could pick the scents of pine and larch trees from their smoke with the relish of a wine connoisseur. Her nose tickled with it, her throat filled with the taste of ashes and soot and she lurched into consciousness with a frantic jolt.
She was tied to one of the large stakes that had been where the whip had torn into her flesh. Firewood and kindling piled high to her knees. Her head pounded like the inside of a bodhran at Beltane, but the sight of Mother Superior carrying the torch toward the adjacent pyre upon which Niall stood was enough to force the pain into the background.
Vikings sprawled across the courtyard, though whether dead or unconscious, she couldn’t tell.
Flames licked at Kenna’s feet, but they didn’t burn, only fed her ire, and the Berserker’s power surging through her veins. Fire might not be a danger to her flesh, but it would kill Niall, especially in his weakened state.
“What have youdone?” she called above the crackle of the flames.
Mother Superior turned at the sound of her voice, buying Kenna precious seconds. “I have done what I must to protect those innocents under my care.”
“By killing everyone?” Kenna asked, incredulous.
“Those pagans are not dead, only under the influence of the belladonna we slipped into their wine.” A shadow of smug victory hung above her smile. “We hadn’t the time to build enough pyres, but we will deal with the rest of them in due course.” She lifted the flames to the firewood beneath Niall’s feet as he struggled against his ropes as ineffectually as a mortal man might.
