Page 8 of To Wed a Highlander
Mine.
The witch’s skin glowed in the firelight like the gossamer wings of a dragonfly. Creamy and iridescent with tiny veins visible at the places where her skin was most delicate and thin. Her wrists, the undersides of those lush breasts, the insides of her thighs, her neck.
A neck that should be encircled by his hands while he demanded that she return his—his—whatever it was she’d stolen from him that had weakened him so. Honey had replaced the blood in his veins. His bones had turned iron, anchoring his heavy body to the ground. His thoughts were sluggish and disturbingly…untroubled.
Her pulsating sex was a sweet prison, pulling the life from him, caging his Berserker beast, and turning him into a willing participant in his own death.
And what a glorious way to die, he thought watching the firelight set her hair aflame with embers of russet and copper as she gazed down at him through eyes drugged with pleasure and power.
His power. Power she’d stolen from him.
A sharp noise against the door and a familiar voice permeated the silken haze of Niall’s thoughts. “Niall! Niall Halvard Thorsen, are you behind this door?” Ingmar’s panicked question drove the witch off of his body with a gasp of pure feminine shock and mortification.
Niall wanted to call out to his general, but he couldn’t seem to find his voice in order to do so.
The witch threw her tiny form against the door as another great succession of knocks caused the hinges and lock to tremble.
“Niall, you berserk bastard, answer me, or I’m coming in there, and you’ll have to live with the guilt if you eat me alive,” Ingmar called. “Is that what you want? To have to explain to my mother how you killed me? Who’s going to talk you off the ledge for killing that poor nun if I die?”
As soon as Niall could movesomeonewas going to die. If only to prove to himself that he could still spill blood.
“Please,” the witch called to Ingmar against the door, pressing her back to it in a way that made her breasts jiggle enticingly with each knock. “Please, leave us. He’ll be down directly, I promise.”
A speechless pause ticked off several seconds, which was a first since Niall could remember in Ingmar’s intrepid company. The door rattled with another explosive knock. “Niall, if you want me to leave threateningly growl once, if you need me to break this door down and skewer a witch, threateningly growl twice.”
The woman’s amber eyes widened and she bit her lip.
Ingmar was used to Niall’s Berserker, and had come up with a few strange tricks with which to stay alive around him, and even communicate upon occasion.
A genius, his wily general.
Niall opened his mouth to give a command, but only a pleasured groan escaped.
“Very well,” came the disgruntled reply. “But let it be known that I’m going downstairs to stir malcontent among the men.” Niall could hear every word as Ingmar retreated down the hall, even through a closed door and walls of stone. “Fucking ordersusto touch nary a nun, and then has his way with the first pair of soft tits he sees. That’ll hold as much weight with the lads as a fart in a whirlwind.”
Who in the name of the All Father would interpret a weak groan as a threatening growl? A fucking imbecile, his general.
Chest depressing on what appeared to be a relieved sigh, the witch padded toward him with a regal grace very few naked women could attain. Kneeling at his shoulder, she pressed a hand to his forehead and then his cheeks. They were warm against his skin.
Mine, his beast purred.
If he didn’t kill her first.
“I’m sorry,” she crooned to him in a musical, lilting voice that reminded him of sex and mead. “I’ve always known I could take too much. I could have killed you, actually, but it’s never happened before. Not with anyone.”
Unable to tell if he was angrier about their dangerous sex, or that she’d had such amazing dangerous sex with others, Niall glared his fury at her.
“I know, I know,” she soothed. “But just lie still for a few minutes and focus on breathing. Your strength will begin to return to you, and after some water and a hearty meal, you’ll be back to your barbaric, pillaging self soon enough.”
She had the breasts of a much larger woman, and they swayed and bobbed on her petite frame in such a way that made it impossible to keep any focus on his anger. With his sex still slick and aching with the aftermath of their unparalleled joining, and strange sense of well-being vibrating beneath the weakness in his limbs, Niall tried to breathe. She certainly didn’t make it easy for him, with her bosoms brushing against his arm as she toured his jaw with those soft, warm hands.
Niall had the absurd thought that, in his experience, women tended to have chilly limbs. Her warmth was a pleasant change. A welcome one.
“I know you didn’t realize what you were doing for me, but regardless, I want to thank you for…” She paused, blinked soft copper lashes against cheekbones kissed by a few freckles, and sucked her soft lower lip into her mouth before continuing. “I really don’t have much of a gift for healing,” she continued conversationally. “That is my cousin Morgana’s realm of magick, but you are a very powerful man. I’ve never felt so…” A slight peach tinged her pale skin in a shade so pretty, Niall had to look away. “Soalive. So full of vigor and potency. It’s rather intoxicating.”
Not as intoxicating as her fucking nipples rasping intimately against his shoulder as she reached to move a lock of his still-damp hair off his forehead. Though his body felt incapable of movement, his cock twitched and grew, ready to be inside her again.
Shit.
