Page 16 of Highland Warlord
“Probably,” he clipped, knowing he lied to them both.
“You would leave me here alone and pursued by my enemies?” She sounded aghast.
Never.“Yes,” he gritted. “It’s not as though you’re helpless.” He gestured to his imprisoned lower half.
“Let me warn you, sir, that if anyone is going to abandon anyone here,Iwill be leavingyou.” The water around himstirred with indignant ripples. “You’ll not thaw until spring, which will give you plenty of time to come to your senses.”
His senses were the problem. They honed in on the fresh scent of her warm skin, the lilting brogue of her voice, spinning him about and tempting him to abandon all reason instead of her.
He met her swirling blue eyes with the hardest, coldest stare he could muster. “Do what you will,” he challenged. Better that she leave him here to freeze to death than make him care anymore than he already did.
She crossed defensive arms beneath the water pushing glossy cleavage together for his eyes to feast upon. “Bring him back,” she ordered.
Bael knew she was referring to his Berserker. “Why, so he’ll do your bidding?”
“Nay,” she mulishly denied. “Well—yes, but it’s very important bidding. Andhedoesn’t seem to mind.”
“Imind!” Bael roared, swiping for her and falling short as the water carried her out of his reach. “This body ismine. How dare you beguile my beast with your magick and take me against my will.”
The ice climbed his torso, threatening to squeeze the air from him.
“How dareyouaccuse me of using my magick to seduce you? I didnosuch thing!” she sputtered indignantly. “You ripped the dress from my body, you kissed me, andyouthrew my legs over your shoulders and had your way with me. I hadnothingto do with that.”
“Horseshit. That wasn’t me, and you know it. I wasn’t in a place to deny you. You used my beast to bring you here.”
“I saidplease!” she spat. “And you—he—seemed more than happy to oblige. And don’t for one moment think that you can make me feel like I took advantage of you. Do you really meanto convince me that youoryour Berserker beast, possibly one of the most lethal creatures in existence, is vulnerable to the likes of me?”
That was exactly what he meant, but hated the way her words made it sound. “Isn’t everyone vulnerable to magick?” he volleyed back.
In a fit of incense, she splashed him, and the cold lake water felt like a thousand tiny needles of feminine ire against his skin heated by lust and anger.
“Youdareinsinuate that I used my magic to force you against your will? I am a Druid of Moray. I stand for all that is good and light in this world. I wouldnever—”
“Never. What?” he interrupted, motioning to his prison of ice.
Her lovely eyes widened as she flushed a tempting color of pink. “That’s different… I…You… Ugh!” Throwing her hands up with a noise of sheer frustration, she turned from him and threw out her fingers, whispering a few words that brought her torn, soaked dress to her from where it had been floating in a sodden heap on the still water.
As she stalked toward the shore, Bael couldn’t stop himself from savoring every inch of pale skin revealed by the retreating loch surface. Her long, mahogany hair, glistening with water. The drastic indent of her waist. The dramatic flair of her hips. The lush globes of her round ass swaying over soft, sloping thighs and tempting, dimpled knees.
He clenched his fists below the water, realizing that all the ice in the world couldn’t cool the inferno of lust she evoked within him.
She used some kind of witchcraft to draw all the moisture from the fabric of her dress with irate movements. Bael had the impression that anger didn’t come often or easily to her.
What would it be like to be a creature of serenity, as still and tranquil as the glassy pond in which he stood? Ponderously, he brought a palm to the surface of the water, letting it flow through his fingers and ripple over his skin.
No tangible element existed as soft and malleable as water. It sustained life, made that which was heavy more buoyant, and cleaned away rot and blood. Bael’s eyes flicked back to the witch—er—druid as she yanked her dry, worn garment over her head and clutched at the ripped bodice, grumbling to herself.
And yet, he thought with a wry smirk, who could withstand the force of a flood? The sheer strength of a tidal wave? The raw power of a sea gale? He pictured the mountains and canyons of his homeland, carved by colossal glaciers. Of the fjords that shaped the landscape over untold millennia. Water did all that, sometimes with the patience of the ages, and sometimes with the immediacy of devastation.
If he was a mountain of a man, Morgana de Moray was the river that could carve through his defenses, shape the very essence of his being, and flow through the heart he’d carved of stone, chipping away at his soul drop by relentless drop.
That made her unspeakably dangerous.
Struggling and fighting against his frigid bonds, Bael strained this way and that, flexing his muscle and surging against ice as unyielding as rock.
A crack in the ice encasing one of his legs caused a flicker of victory that was quickly extinguished as he realized Morgana was standing over him,on top of the water, her dress lifted away from the moisture revealing her shapely ankles at nearly eye-level.
She didn’t give him time to ponder why the view of that ankle was more arousing than a thousand naked women. Instead, she held out her palm, and regarded him with the most serious expression he could imagine on a sweet face like hers.
