Revenge (Clan Fraser #2)

Chapter 13

Chapter

Thirteen

R uari sent the stallion over a creek, up an embankment, then across a silvery landscape beneath the moon as it rose in the night sky, plying a hiding game with the clouds, the loch gleaming as the distant hills spread before them.

Wild. Reckless. Terrifying. He rode as if the devil himself chased them, but couldn't outrun the clouds that gathered against craggy hills.

The storm caught them. Wind and rain whipped at her hair, soaked her gown, and slid icy fingers beneath her tunic. She should have been afraid that the stallion would lose footing and send them both crashing to the ground, broken in hundreds of places, possibly dead. She'd never felt safer in her life, her arms wrapped around his waist, his heat beneath her cheek pressed against his back. She had no idea where they were going, and didn't care as long as she was with him.

The countryside gave way to rolling hills, beyond the clan encampments, beyond the village, then into the forest.

The pace slowed only slightly as he checked the stallion then sent him over a fallen tree, weaving through low branches, plunging through the darkness, but always on some invisible path as if both the man and horse knew this place.

Low limbs grabbed at her hair and brushed her legs. She held on, feeling the bunch and shift of muscles beneath his shirt that hadn't been there weeks before when he first returned.

Their pace slowed eventually and he guided the stallion across a wide stream, letting the stallion drink briefly, then continuing on, through thick stands of elm that gave way to pine as they climbed, then ducking beneath the spread of low hanging branches, the air thick with the smell of rain and pine. He pulled the stallion up as they emerged into a clearing.

"Give me yer hand."

She slipped her hand into his and he lowered her to the ground, soft beneath her boots with loam and spongy moss, soaking the leather of her boots. He swung a leg over, then dropped down beside her. He unfastened the reins and slipped the bridle from the stallion, securing it at the saddle. The stallion stretched its long neck, then lowered its head, nipping at the grass that grew there.

Through the misty rain she made out the crumbled remnants of a stone wall, what little remained of an opening and wood beams where the roof had partially rotted away and fallen in.

A startled deer, suddenly bolted past, flattening her against the sagging entrance. Ruari's arm went around her and he moved ahead through the opening.

"Best see if there are other wild things about." He stepped past her inside the crumbling walls.

"The beasts come in at night for safety," he explained. "Especially when the weather sets in. I've seen a half dozen here and more."

"You have been here before."

He looked up, his mouth curving in a half smile that had once been so much a part of him.

"Aye, first when I was young and had angered my father, or Gabhran. As soon as I learned to ride, I would disappear and pretend to be anything I wanted--a warrior fighting off another clan, a hunter stalking wild beasts in the forest, or doing battle with the gruagach ."

She had been raised on the same stories of the ones who haunted a place according to stories the old ones told--she could imagine that. He would be fearless and if he confronted one of them, he would have laughed at them. That was then, the game play of a child.

She had not known him then, it was a time before she came to Lechlede. She wrapped her arms about her against the wet and cold.

"Did you ever see the gruagach?"

He had stripped the saddle from the back of the stallion and set it to the floor of the crumbling structure.

"Once." He paused, set the rolled fleece atop the saddle, that half smile reappearing.

"The old ones spoke of Cailleach , and I was determined to find the old hag."

She knew the tale, all children knew of the old woman who would come if they disobeyed their father or mother, terrifying everyone and wreaking havoc.

There were stories the old hag appeared in the midst of a storm. There were some who said she was responsible for them and that she brought the thunder and lightning down on the Norse hordes who invaded centuries earlier, drowning them.

He retrieved a skin of water and handed it to her. But the liquid that warmed her throat was not water, the wine stealing into her belly and warming her there. She handed the skin back to him.

"Did you find her?"

His expression was thoughtful, different from the Ruari she had once known who seemed not to have a serious thought in his head. Then just a hint of a smile.

"I found Nighean ."

She smiled. It was like him, the one she had once known so well, that he would instead set out to find the beautiful daughter of the forest, who supposedly appeared in the mist just before dawn, elusive, hiding, bewitching those who saw her.

"What did she look like?"

The smile broadened. "She had teeth like a horse, a wart on the end of her nose, and eyes that went in two different directions. And she was very forward in her ways."

She burst out laughing.

"Forward?'

"She tried to seduce me."

"You were just a lad," she exclaimed.

"Ah, when you have teeth like that and a wart on the end of your nose, you take what you can get even if it's a lad of ten years. Or it might have been that her eyes played tricks on her."

This was the Ruari she had once known, teasing, with laughter in his voice, before... Before he was outlawed and sent away for his own protection against a sentence of death, before all the years in between, before Calais.

"What did you say to her?" she asked.

"I pleaded for mercy. A lad doesn't want his first time to be with a creature like that."

Through those years, when she thought of him, which was often, she wondered if he had found someone who had cared for and loved him, as she had.

She was not naive. She'd heard men of the clan speaking of women they'd been with when they were deep in drink, or challenging one another at the practice yard--encounters that had meant nothing beyond the few hours they had spent with those women, soon forgotten except for some afterthought or comment when the men were among their kinsmen and shared such things, laughing among themselves, an elbow thrust into the ribs of another.

"Eh, Angus, remember the woman when we rode with the chieftain to the borderlands, two axe handles across she was, but verra welcoming."

"Aye, and pleasing enough to look at. She gave young Hamish a good ride. Bounced off a couple of times, but he finally got the way of it."

"Made a man of him that day."

She knew Hamish. He had openly flirted with her on more than one occasion after the chieftain and the clan returned from the borderlands. But after hearing the tale, she couldn't look him in the eye without almost bursting out laughing with visions of him ' bounced off' in the midst of 'getting the way of it'.

He had hand-fast with a young girl from the village the winter past. They had wed quickly as soon as the priest from Beauly Abbey returned from his travels to other villages about the countryside. The girl, Callie, was already with child. It seemed that Hamish had very well 'gotten the way of it '. Alix had helped deliver a baby boy in the spring.

Was that what Ruari's first time had been? With some woman in one of the far places he had been? France? Or beyond? The old kingdom, she had heard him telling of it to the chieftain? Had he perhaps loved a woman in one of those far places?

She stepped inside the crumbling entrance to the stone shelter, her eyes adjusting to the darkness within. The rain gathered and ran the length of the fallen timbers, pooling at the base of the inside wall.

"What is this place?"

"It is the shelter my father's great grand-father built when he and his warriors were given this land-hold by King William of Normandy for their service to him. But being given it was one thing, defending it was another."

Over two hundred years, Alix thought.

"So long ago. "

Ruari nodded. "Several generations of Fraser blood has soaked this land."

"Is that the reason you came back?" To soak the land with his blood.

She shivered at the thought, or it might have been the cold, her gown soaked, clinging to her, the cold deep inside the crumbling stone hut.

He frowned. "There are things, places that live in your soul. I did not understand it until I went away... to Anjou, and other places." He was thoughtful.

"I always thought that when I died, I would be here, not in some faraway place."

It was difficult for her to imagine. She had never known another place as home, having lived the whole of her life at Lechlede.

"My grandmother is the only family I have ever known. Lechlede is the only home I have ever known," she replied. "To know your family must be a powerful thing. It tells you who you are, binds you to others, to a place." She was thoughtful with old questions.

" I do not remember my mother and father, and Morna has only spoken of them when I insisted on knowing a thing. It always seemed to bother her when I asked, so I don't ask anymore, but I think it must be a verra important thing to know where you come from." She heard him moving around the hut.

Ruari shook his head. "Perhaps." There was an odd sound at his voice. "I never knew my mother," he said almost with indifference, of knowing a thing cannot be changed and there was no need to mourn the fact.

"She was English. It was an arranged marriage. I am told she hated this place, and my father."

He took a deep breath and breathed in the sweet smell of green things, rocks, and the damp earth at his feet. He closed his eyes, the feel and scent of it in his blood, and once again for a moment he was the child who had asked questions for which there were no easy answers at the loss of the woman who was only a shadow in his memory.

"She kilt herself when I was very small," he slowly opened his eyes and stared across the tumbled stones.

"She hated the cold and barbaric ways of Scotland I am told. She left Lechlede one morn and didn't return. She was found, dead on the banks of the loch. Afterward, my father never spoke of her. I learned of it from Gabhran. Afterward, the clan was my family, even when I was sent away as a child." He looked over at her, sharing things he'd never spoken of before with anyone, and no idea why he shared them with her now.

"My father thought to change my wild ways by sending me to train for the priesthood."

Even in the steeped darkness, she saw the flash of a smile at the humor of it, but it was a shadow of a smile, like a ghost that peered out at her from the Ruari she once knew, and there was something in his voice as he spoke of that time, of dark things that made her shiver.

Ruari frowned. "You're cold."

He gathered bits and pieces of twigs, dried bark and branches that had fallen through the roof. Some of it was dry. He piled the pieces beneath the portion of the roof that still stood, then took two stones from the leather pouch at his belt.

She reached for the stones. She looked over at him when he refused to let her have them at first.

"I know the way of it," she told him. "Gabhran taught me."

"That old badger," he commented, still holding onto the stones. "I can manage just fine."

"I know," she replied. "More hands make light work."

"That's yer grandmother talking."

"Lady Brynna," she informed him. "With the three bairns, she needs six hands. and an extra pair of eyes."

Something in that fierce blue gaze shifted. He threw back his head and laughed."

"That she does."

He let her have the two pieces of stone. She struck them over the pile of pine needles and twigs. The third time a small spark fell into the pile followed by a spiral of smoke. She blew on it, a flame suddenly appearing. He fed in more dried leaves and pine needles, then larger twigs. He smiled at her across the growing fire, flames licking hungrily up through small pieces of wood. He put broken pieces of timber from the roof in next. The flames burned higher, light spreading across the crumbling walls.

She shivered as she moved closer to the fire.

The smile gone, Ruari cursed. "You're soaked through."

He made another sound, followed by another curse as he stepped past her to where he'd laid the saddle against the near wall. He returned with a thick roll of fleece that had lain across the front of the saddle. Amazingly it was dry, the thick fleece having shed the rain. He shook hit out.

His first thought was to wrap her in it. He changed his mind at the sound of her chattering teeth. Stubborn. He cursed again.

"It was wrong to bring you here. I should not have allowed it." Nor was it acceptable for a young lass to be with a man who was not kin or husband.

"Allowed?" she said, clenching her teeth tight to keep them from chattering.

"I d-d-don't need p-p-permission, Ruari Fraser."

Sassy, stubborn

"Aye, you do!" he replied, then made a decision.

"Yer gown will never dry with you wrapped up in the fleece. You'll likely catch yer death of the cold and I'll have yer grandmother to answer too. Take it off."

She'd dealt with fevers and their kinsmen taken with lung complaints too many times not to know the risk of it. Her fingers shook from the cold as she unlaced the front of the gown, and heard another curse as he held up the fleece to shield her.

She stepped out of the soaked gown then removed her wet boots until she stood only in the thin shift. He glanced at her over the top of the fleece, then wrapped it around her. He retrieved her gown and boots, and set both before the fire to dry.

She sat on a fallen timber nearer the fire, the warmth of the fleece driving away the cold. He looked over as he added more pieces of timber to the fire.

"Not too close," he cautioned. "You don't want to set the thing on fire, or you'll have nothing left but yer shift, and Morna will likely take a cleaver to me."

The warmth gradually spread as she watched him from across the fire. The thick woolen shirt lay against his shoulder, clinging to him beneath the equally thick vest.

"Yer soaked through, as well."

He shrugged. "I've had worse."

She frowned. "But not so soon after yer wounds."

That light blue gaze narrowed on her.

" Raleuse !"

She frowned.

"Nag!" he translated.

"Aye, the nag who saved yer life!" she flung back at him.

He nodded. She had him there, whether he was grateful that she had saved it, or not.

"Aye, that you did."

"And I'll not save yer miserable life again, if yer foolish enough to go about with wet clothes!" She angled a sharp look at him.

"Do ye want me to hold up the fleece for you?"

"One day that sass is going to get you in trouble with someone who objects to that sharp tongue of yours."

"I say it like it is."

"Aye, you do. No one could ever say you spread honey on yer words. But it's what I like about you. You're honest, and God knows there's little enough of that."

He reached for the leather that bound the fake arm and hand.

Alix gathered the fleece about her and went to him. She brushed his other hand aside as he fumbled with the stiff leather and the metal buckle, then dropped the fleece, using both hands to work the leather through the metal clasp.

"You are a stubborn one," he said, watching her as she unfastened the first buckle, then worked to loosen the second one.

"Tis necessary with some who think they know best. Even if it kills them." She flashed him a glance, her meaning well taken, as she finally pushed the leather strap through the clasp.

He continued to watch her as she worked the last buckle at the leather that secured the damned thing at his chest.

"You should not be here."

Her gaze met that piercing blue one, the flames from the fire reflected there, the teasing and laughter gone.

"Why should I not be here?"

The last buckle opened and she started to pull the leather from his shoulder and upper arm. His right hand closed over hers, his fingers warm in spite of the damp and cold. He gently brushed her hand aside and removed the fake arm and hand.

"There are things you don't know," he began thoughtfully, trying to explain. "Things I've done."

"Aye, outlawed by the king."

She had heard the rumor for years, bits and pieces of conversation between Gabhran and James Fraser. There had been much anger in the old warrior's voice.

"The lad spoke the truth, I'll not believe different. For all his wild ways, he is not a liar. The mon shoulda burned in hell for what he did. But tis the lad who must pay? Self-righteous bastards. May they all burn!"

That blue gaze hardened now as Ruari looked at her. He needed her to understand. He was no longer a reckless lad with that for an excuse, and she was no longer a child. There were long years between then and now, but it followed him.

It had followed him to France. It would always follow him, though he had tried well enough to exorcise the demon more than once on those distant battle-fields with little care if he lived, or died. Until now, and that was the reason he needed her to understand all of it.

"Aye, for murder," he replied, sparing her nothing. "For killing a man; a man of God," he said and would have laughed at the irony, if he wasn't so determined so make her listen, to see the way of it, the seriousness of it.

"Do you understand what that means?"

She needed to be frightened, to know the truth about what had sent him to France. He needed for her to hear it, to be horrified by it, to see him for what he was, the lad she had once known dead long ago by the choices made, the things he had done, and now nothing more than an empty shell, as empty as the metal that was all that left of one arm.

He could ride a horse, he could wield a sword once more and carry a shield, but like that empty metal that was attached at his shoulder, void of any feeling. He was empty. And when dawn came he would go with the others to Stirling, and if it ended for them all there, as Robbie feared it might, so be it.

Alix shivered again but not from the cold.

'Dark things that lived in a man's soul ,' old Maisel once said of a clansman with neither kith or kin, who had simply taken himself off alone into the hills in the midst of winter.

He was found the following spring, what was left of him frozen, sitting upright against a huge stone, his sword in one hand, shield in the other, as if he fought some invisible enemy to the end.

It was a tale told to frighten small children and prevent them running off on their adventures. She had thought it sad and wondered what the man's thoughts were in those last hours as the cold and the dark things took him. And wondered now, what dark things haunted the man who stood before her. What brought the anger that lashed out at her as he stared into the flames?

For several moments there was only the hiss of the fire as the flames found pockets of sap, suddenly flared, and burned like the rage that flared in that gaze that bore into hers.

She laid a hand against his cheek as she had countless times as he lay wasted by fever from the wound at his arm, offering comfort when nothing more could be done but wait and hope, and pray. But the wounds she saw in the depth of his eyes were the sort that couldn't be healed, but festered on a man's soul.

"Ye canna change a thing once it's done," she told him. "What you did, was to protect those who could not protect themselves. The guilt and shame for it is for the one who caused such misery and pain. Tis not yours to carry."

Absolution. From a girl who had slipped past his defenses, past the wall he'd built around everything he felt until he was certain there was nothing left of him to feel anything.

"You are a stubborn one," the words caught in his throat. He held her hand there.

"You should not be here," he said again, his voice filled with another sort of anger, wrapped in some other emotion. Regret?

It was like the night of the summer feast. Raw emotion filled his face, anger and some other emotion that darkened his eyes and he swore, the words lashing at her. If all he would give her was anger, she would take it.

"Why should I not be here?" she replied once more, her eyes closing at the warmth of his palm against her cheek with a longing that welled inside her.

His voice was raw, fierce, and then broke.

"Because I want to touch you."

Nothing else he could have said would have stunned her as those few words.

"And I cannot."

She laid her hand over his. He pulled his own away.

He fought himself, fought the need to feel her hands on him, gentle, healing hands, that refused to let him go, refused to let him die.

"You don't understand."

"I can't understand what you won't tell me. I can bind broken bones, but I canna read yer mind."

He looked at her again, filled with twin emotions of self-loathing and something he'd fought since returning, since he first felt her hand at his fevered flesh, and tasted with that kiss the night of the summer feast.

"Is it that I'm not good enough for ye? Is that what ye think?"

"Not good enough?"

He couldn't believe she would think that. Never all those years before, never once had he ever thought it. She was always his Alix-- brave, strong, sassy, and true. She was still his when he returned near dead and she was the first person he saw, the only one that mattered.

His, and that was the curse of it.

"It's because of what I am, what I've become. This!" He raised the stump of his arm.

"I am not the same as the young man you once knew! You deserve a man who is whole, who can provide for you, and protect you. Not a man who has been outlawed. Not half a man!"

The anger was back, wrapping around words, meant to cut at her as surely as the wounds he carried. His anger tore at her but not as he intended. The tears came then, that he believed she would think him less a man, less than the brave young warrior she had first known who tolerated her pranks, rescued her from more than one misadventure, and indulged her by letting her win at chess.

Aye, she knew he had let her win, more than once, and she had loved him for it in a way she hardly understood at the time.

"Ye dammed fool! A man's worth is not measured by how many arms or legs he has," she needed to make him understand.

"It is who he is in his heart, the care he gives others, the strength and courage he gives them by his own strength and courage. Ye are more a man than any other because of what ye've been through. And I'll not let ye think different."

She was furious at him, and at herself for the tears she had sworn she would never let him see.

"You'll not let me?" he asked, anger slipping in spite of the need to hold onto it. By God she was a rare beauty, and more so when she was angry as she was now.

"I didna spend days and nights since ye returned, fighting to keep you alive, and now ye think ye deserve pity? Well damn ye to hell and good riddance, Ruari Fraser, for the ungrateful swine that ye are!"

She whirled around and would have gathered up her gown with every intention of leaving him there and letting him walk the long way back to Lechlede, except for the hand that wrapped around her arm and stopped her.

Ruari spun her around. He dragged her arm behind her and pinned it there.

"I am not ungrateful! I owe you my life. And it's a debt that can never be repaid. It's just that..."

"What are ye sayin'?" she demanded, pinned against him, and that made her all the more furious.

His head went back, eyes closed. He swore in French, then swore again. The expression at his face when he looked at her then was bleak, filled with some other emotion that seemed to drain the strength from him.

"Tell me," she insisted, refusing to let him retreat into silence.

He rested his forehead against hers. The anger slipped in spite of his need to hold onto it, like a shield against the battle that raged inside him, a battle he had fought these past weeks and was now dangerously close to losing.

It was easy to convince himself that the feelings that stirred whenever she was near were those of gratitude and friendship, the friendship they had once shared all those years before, that what he felt at her touch whenever she changed the bandages at his arm, was no more than the comfort she gave others when the fever and pain tore through him.

But as the weeks passed and the wounds healed, her touch was like one of her soothing balms, that he needed in ways he could never explain, so that when he finally was strong enough to leave the upstairs chamber and regain the strength that was lost, he needed to feel her touch and to share those few moments with her--with her laughter, with the spirit that was so much a part of her even her stubbornness, with a need that he hadn't even known existed until that day when he returned to Lechlede more dead than alive.

Somewhere over the past months that need had become something more, something that had exploded in anger at Eben McGinley the night of the summer feast, at her, and at himself for the feelings that surfaced then and now, far more than gratitude for the care she'd given him, something he never expected to feel. And then the anger at those unwanted feelings when he'd never needed anyone else, and at himself with a sort of helpless rage. And then he'd turned it on her, someone he could never hurt, and she had thrown it right back at him.

What was it?

He knew and it terrified him. He wanted her. Not the friendship of the young girl she had once been. He wanted the woman she had become, with her courage, that fierce temper, and her strength. He wanted more. He wanted all of it, but in the wanting of her, he was terrified that he would lose her.

His silence frightened her. She didn't know him now. Always before, she knew his laughter, his teasing, his arrogance. But this was a side of him she had never seen, not even when he was wounded and weak, barely alive, when he had thrashed about with fever and spoken of things that made no sense.

He was the same, but different, changed by what he had experienced. She loved the young man who left Lechlede all those years before with a sort of infatuation for that arrogance and wildness that she had admired in him. And now he fought another battle. She sensed it in expression at his face, the curse, and the way he looked away.

"I want ye as a man wants a woman." Honesty for honesty. "I want you more than I've ever wanted a thing in this life. But I cannot bear the look I will see on your face... I cannot bear yer pity."

Pity? How could he think that of her?

She untied the laces at the front of his woolen shirt. He stopped her, fingers closing around her wrist. The expression at his face was filled with emotion, not the least was anger. She knew him well enough, had seen that same emotion before. Who was it for now?

For her? Or himself?

"Alix... " He warned, eyes closing as he fought the anger, and that other emotion that burned through him, far more dangerous to her.

Always before when changing the linen bandages, she had seen what was left of him--thin, with hardly enough flesh on his bones, so very weak at first, barely able to lift the claymore, she had seen him at the practice yard, stripped to the waist, but had given him only a passing glance, certain that he would collapse from weakness and need one of her strengthening tonics.

Now, she saw the change those long hours and days had made in a dying man who was no more than a rack of bones, sliding her hands down the length of both arms, one with his fist tightly clenched, the muscles at the shoulder of his other arm tensing as she gently moved down what was left of his other arm. When he would have pulled away, her fingers closed around the scarred flesh that was what remained of his arm and hand.

Through of the woolen shirt, she felt the ridges of newly healed scars as she had felt them a hundred times over the past months. But this was different. He was different.

He was no longer weak, dying, unable to fight back. The strength was there, from long hours, days, weeks in the practice yard, driving himself against some unseen enemy, forcing himself past exhaustion, as if something deep inside him forced him to keep moving, keep striking back at whichever kinsman opposed him on any given day, until darkness fell and the man begged off.

She took hold of his arm, pressed her cheek against it, the strength she felt there, the warmth. Her lips brushed the tangled scars that were part of him, but did not define him, could never define who he was to her.

"You are a fool," she whispered.

His fingers trapped her, tightened at her chin, forced her to look at him.

Stubborn, fierce. It was there in her eyes--unafraid, refusing to look away, seeing... him. Not with kind words or awkward silences, but simple truth. The truth that had always been there between them-- all those years before, then when he returned thinking only to die there and she had refused to allow it. And now.

With that same honesty, and fierce stubbornness.

He pulled her against him then slipped his right arm under her knees. Her arms went around his neck and he carried her to the far side of the fire where the rain and time had not rotted away the roof timbers. It was dry there and he laid her across the thick fleece where it had fallen.

Aching, the pain deep, twisting inside, starving with a hunger that reached for her, Ruari kissed her, driving deep, needing to taste all of her--the softness of her, the faint scent of pine and the green things she gathered filling his senses, the fierceness of her in the slender arms that went round him, her hands at his shoulders, fingers that had gently healed, now healing his soul with her strength, her fingers slipping back through the tangled mane of his hair, her body arching against his.

She felt the anger, tasted it, then felt when it all changed, when he changed, when the hand in her hair softened, when his mouth softened, and on a deep, almost painful sound asked, "Are you certain?"

She nodded and would have called him a fool again, but his hand skimmed the edge of her shift, his fingers warm, and there was no other thought, no other awareness except for the sensations that poured through her wherever he touched.

His mouth gently brushed hers, and she tasted the wine, and him--strength and vulnerability, sweetness and fire, and the promise of so much more. And then he took her there, his hand slipping back through her hair, pulling her closer, holding her, then slipping inside.

Soft and sweet. He was prepared for that. He wasn't prepared for the fire, for the heat that seemed to burn through her and into him, the sound she made, and the way her slender body arched against him, holding on, reaching out, reaching for him.

He wanted her, wanted her every way a man could want a woman. He wanted the feel of her body moving against his, he wanted that moment when her woman's heat wrapped around him. He wanted to lose himself in her, to feel her slender legs about him. But he wanted more.

He wanted all the moments that came after, wanted those last hours before dawn when she would lay beside him, wanted the softness in her eyes looking back at him where the sins of the past, the things he'd done, had no place between them.

She gasped as his hand closed over her breast, then felt the heat of his mouth stroking through the thin linen of her shift.

Sensations she'd never known slipped through the darkness and then deep inside her at each tender stroke. Then his hand slipped across her shoulder, at her neck, then at her cheek as he kissed her in a way she'd never experienced before, then slipped inside.

She trembled, not from the cold, but with an inner fire. He was the fire, moving over her, burning her with slow, maddening touches until she moved with him, knowing, yet not knowing.

He could feel it at her skin, taste it at her mouth. And heard it in the sound she made.

"Ruari... !"

He pulled the shirt from his shoulders.