Chapter 5
V ían turned her shackled wrists this way and that, testing the security of the iron and her ability to slip out of it. Of course, it would figure that Malcolm’s chains would hold fast, that his dungeon would be as absolute as the void had been. It was almost worse, because she could mark the passing of time through the narrow barred window at the top of the tall stone wall. The sunlight crept in a moving square across the floor, and every moment it passed was a moment she could mark her failures.
It had taken some considerable reworking of the wards to allow her into the castle, and still keep the Wyrd Sisters out. The power of the de Moray Druids was nothing like the dark workings she’d seen from her captors. Their spells were lyrical chants and prayers and even songs. Their runes pulsed with light instead of darkness, and their Magick was fortified with love rather than hatred.
But the wrath in Malcolm’s eyes had been dangerous and terrifying. More frightening than any of the atrocities she’d witnessed as a captive of the Wyrd Sisters. In fact, it was the dark-haired, black-eyed Berserker, Bael, who’d shackled her and whisked her to the dungeon.
Because Malcolm couldn’t bear to look at her, didn’t trust himself to touch her without causing her harm. He’d said as much.
And who could blame him? He’d offered to make her his queen, and she’d betrayed him.
The irony weighed on her chest like a load of bricks.
As the shadows grew long, and the meager light from the outside began to dissipate, Vían fought an encompassing, paralyzing panic. Her chains became heavier, the stones colder and more unforgiving. The scuttles of vermin, unseen or just imagined, were more frightening than the complete isolation of the void.
You’ve failed us, Vían. Badb’s voice hissed on the wind. We’re coming with the Grimoire, and if you don’t take what we bade you when we break the wards, then you’ll be returned to the void for eternity. But first we’ll make you watch as we toy with your lover, and slaughter everyone he loves…
“No,” she whimpered, dropping to her knees. Even in this dungeon she wasn’t safe from their evil. The darkness always found her. That was her curse. She’d traded her soul to it, and now had to live with an eternity of tormented regrets.
The sound of the heavy bolt and the scrape of the door against the stones brought Vían to her feet. Never let it be said that she faced her fate on her knees.
Never again. Not even before Malcolm de Moray.
His climb down the dungeon steps was long, as though he didn’t want to reach the bottom any more than she wanted him to. Golden light from his torch spilled over the stones from the entry a moment before his wide frame filled the archway.
Vían’s heart leapt into her throat and stayed there, rendering her mute, as she watched him mount the torch in its sconce.
Gone was the gentle, patient lover of the prior night. Gone was the noble, beloved ruler of the Pictish people. The man who stalked into her prison trembled with a fury that covered wounds. Wounds that she’d created. Scars she’d ripped open.
As he loomed over her, a creature of cold rage and hot blood, one word ripped from his lips that surprised them both.
“ Why ?”
The question encompassed so much, and yet Vían didn’t know where to start. He had such control, and such power. She realized now that the Wyrd Sisters, as potent as their dark Magick was, underestimated this Druid.
“You have no right to ask me that,” she answered, cursing the tremor in her voice. “My reasons are my own.” And they were many.
“I have every right!” he exploded, the walls of the prison trembling with the force of his emotion. He captured both her shoulders in a brutal grip, and pulled her to him so his eyes burned down into hers. “But I wasna asking why ye’re a minion of those evil hags.” He gathered a cold, lethal calm back into his voice. “I was asking why I still desire ye as desperately as I do. Even after everything ye’ve done.”
Vían didn’t have time to process the question as he crushed his lips to hers in a punishing kiss. He didn’t plunder or explore, didn’t give her time to respond, but instead kissed her long enough to bruise her lips and then ripped his mouth from hers with a sound of aggravation.
“Damn ye,” he forced through gritted teeth, and bent to kiss her again.
“No!” Vían cried out, her chains scraping the earth as she lifted her hands and pushed against his chest. “Damn you ,” she spat. “Damn you for making me care!”
They circled each other like suspicious wolves, but her shackles restricted too much movement. Emotions swooped and flew about them like bats in a cave, blindly searching for a safe place to rest and finding none.
“You know what it’s like as their prisoner,” she accused. “Can you blame me for doing anything they asked to escape their wrath?”
“Ye could have told me. I would have protected ye.”
His words both touched and angered her at the same time. “How can you be so arrogant? They threaten me even now, within these walls. I am not their prisoner as you were Malcolm, I am their possession . They own me, body and soul.”
Malcolm froze in place, his eyes daggers of emerald fire within the sharp planes of his masculine face, his chest lifting and falling as though he’d run a league at full speed. “The only way that could be is if ye…”
“ Yes ,” she hissed, a bit of her soul flickering and dying like a candle in a storm at the disgust and disbelief in his eyes. “Yes, I made a deal with them. I sold my soul, more than a century ago, and I became one of their minions , as you call it.”
He took a step toward her and opened his mouth, but Vían backed away, holding a hand up against him.
“Don’t you dare ask me why,” she warned. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Just comfort yourself with the knowledge that whatever happens here tonight, whether you win or lose this battle, I’ll be thrown back in the dark void that has been my personal hell for the rest of eternity.” Her voice wavered on that last sentence, so she kicked her chin up a notch. “You’ll be done with me forever.”
“I’m not done with ye,” he growled. “I’ll never be done with ye.” Tearing off his shirt, Malcolm tossed it to the stones. This time he stalked her like a predator, reaching out and dragging her against his hard, corded torso with punishing force. “Ye’ve bewitched me, somehow,” he accused, giving her a shake for emphasis. “Ye canna belong to them, Vían, because ye are mine .”
Oh, how she wished that could be true.
Even if her soul were to be set free, she’d instantly die. “Malcolm—”
His fingers pressed against her lips. “Doona speak,” he commanded as his lips descended once more. He had to know. The tension in his muscles, the bruising desperation of his lips told her that he realized the futility of their connection, but refused to accept it.
It was the anger of a man who was a Druid in his spirit and a King in his land. He was used to controlling his environment. To bending others to his will.
But she was something he could neither control nor possess.
With a frustrated groan, he shoved her tattered shift above her waist, baring her sex. In an astonishingly graceful maneuver, he turned her to the bars and forced her to cling to them as his kilt hit the stones at their feet.
His body was a muscular mass of coiled strain behind her as he gripped her ass with bruising fingers and maneuvered his erection to her entrance.
She went wet for him, panting as alarm and shock heightened the blood and lust racing through her veins. His growl of possession drowned out her whimper of submission and he surged inside her with a powerful stroke.
Pleasure rocked her, flooding her limbs, and she threw back her head with a moan.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped, as he thrust forward again, harder this time. Deeper.
“Shut up.” He wrapped her hair in his fist and secured her neck in place as he shoved inside her with such force, her teeth clacked together.
“Forgive me,” she panted.
“ Never .” He thrust forward again and again, his hips bucking against her ass with jarring force. It took all her strength to brace herself against the bars, so the power of his body didn’t crush her against them. Her arms trembled and burned with the effort, and sweat bloomed on her skin.
He thrust so deep he evoked sensations she’d never before experienced. Her body wanted to thrust back, to seek release and to meet his need. But his relentless rhythm was too brutal and too fast, so Vían helplessly took what he gave her. His growls became groans, and the friction intensified.
“Come for me, temptress,” he commanded against her ear, tugging on her hair in a way that caused her inner muscles to clench with a spiraling pleasure. “Scream my name as ye knew it all along.”
She obeyed. Pleasure seized her in its unrelenting hold and his name poured from her lips again and again. First as a plea, then as a prayer. And at last a worshipful gasp as wave after wave of bliss pulled her from the void and lights exploded even in the darkness behind her eyelids.
When the climax began to fade, the Wyrd Sister’s cruel threat permeated her pleasure with a raw pain.
We’ll toy with your lover, and slaughter everyone he loves…
Inside her heat, Malcolm grew impossibly thicker, hotter, and his breath sped with his approaching climax. Conjuring her courage, she squeezed her eyes shut once more and whispered the words Badb had made her memorize. Three times. She had to whisper them three times and it would be over.
Her life would be over. Freedom beckoned.
“ Blackened blood and tainted soul, from this Druid Magick pull.
Into the nether set it free, then by darkness grant unto me—”
His strong hand clamped over her mouth as his movements became jerky and frenzied. The entire castle seemed to tremble with the strength of his roar, and for a long moment, Vían feared that the stones would bury them both.
Maybe that would be for the best.
Lightning singed the air and screamed through the night as it touched down close by.
Malcolm withdrew with a groan and lowered his head to her back, running his cheek along the rough fabric of her shift as their breaths exploded into the silent aftermath.
They’d just entered the eye of the tornado, and neither of them had an anchor.
“They’re here,” she whispered, dropping her forehead against the cold bars, her lungs seizing with despair. “They’ve come for us both.”