Chapter 9 #3
“Shall I unlace my gown?” Una asked softly. “Or do you mean to throw up my skirts?”
Kelso jerked away as if she’d doused him in boiling water. “You wretched schemer, to do such to me. You wish me harm you so you may run to Elspeth and tell her I’m a brute.”
She should have denied it, and called him an eejit for thinking thus, but that would mean admitting that she wanted him for herself. She’d also given her friend enough time to reach her own bed chamber without being meddled with again.
He looked as if he might do her harm, and then he spun on his heel and marched out, slamming the door behind him.
All the strength went out of Una’s legs as she staggered over to her lonely bed.
She dropped on it and buried her face in the pillows, suddenly tired.
The wetness on her cheeks had to be sweat, not tears.
The throbbing ache in her chebs, echoed by the damp place between her thighs, had been brought on by the fact that she hadn’t bedded anyone in months.
You wish to ken what she’s missing, then, chamber maid? Do you covet my hefty cock for yourself?
She rolled over onto her back, telling herself she didn’t care what Kelso McKeran thought of her.
He was like everyone else at Dun Talamh, all too ready to condemn her because she’d been a wretch in the past. Only now she couldn’t stop thinking about the way he’d kissed her, with so much hunger he’d nearly made her swoon.
The aching of her chebs made her unlace her bodice and ease it open to let the cool air soothe her swollen mounds.
Oh, but what it would be like, to bed such a man.
Una closed her eyes as her weariness overcame her unfulfilled desires, and she fell into a deep slumber. Suddenly awakening, she sat up to see Kelso closing the door to her chamber and dropping the bolt bar.
Why did you return? She demanded. You’re no’ welcome here. She lifted her hand to point to the passage, and gasped when she saw her skin had gone dark brown. What did you to me?
Naught yet, my sweet hoor. Kelso came to her, a length of sashing in his fist, and gripped her wrists together to bind her with the silk.
Dealing with Harper when she was completely pickled by whiskey should have been easy for Rory.
Since she had swooned he didn’t have to answer her ridiculous questions as he carried her through the passages to his old bed chamber.
When he shoved open the door and brought her inside she suddenly woke up, and wriggled out of his arms to stand swaying on her feet.
She then looked around in wide-eyed wonder at the sparsely furnished room and the tool racks he’d mounted on the walls.
“Wow, I like this. It’s so smithy.” Harper skipped over to the bed, sitting down and bouncing on the ticking. “This smells like herbs and spices, and has a nice spring to it. Is this straw filled? ‘Cause that stuff pokes through and scratches my butt.”
Rory knew Doon wouldn’t have allowed Harper to drink a jug of whiskey by herself, so she likely had no tolerance for spirits.
She must have been changed so much by the melia that she’d been rendered exactly like them.
Chomha had warned him that the tree-dwelling Fae sometimes became pished eating berries and tree fruits that had begun to ferment on the branch due to certain weather shifts. His lady must be exactly the same.
My lady believes I’ve given my heart to Ava.
She peered around and then whispered, “If I get scratched tonight, you can’t use a bowl for your oregano treatment. My butt is too big. Look.” She patted her hip. “Tub-size, dude.”
To keep her from trying to leave Rory dropped the bolt bar on the door, removed his belt and draped it over a rack, and then started approaching the bed.
He needed to keep Harper calm and safe until the effects of the whiskey dispersed.
That would take some time, and she would likely grow sick soon.
“Oh, wow, it’s that night, then, huh? Time for us to trade in our V-cards.
Excellent.” She opened her blouse and started on the odd strap contraption she wore over her chebs, but her fingers proved too clumsy to remove the latter.
“A little help here would be nice, Blue Eyes. I’m all thumbs. Or did I grow some new ones?”
Rory took hold of her hands, climbing onto the bed and dragging her back so that her head lay against the pillow and her knuckles pressed against the iron rungs of his headboard. He then tugged free the thong holding his long hair back from his face.
“You’re so hot I’m going to catch on fire,” she told him, looking entranced now.
“I should tell you, you don’t have to worry about protection, because I’ve never messed around with anyone and there’s no way I can have your kid.
I’ve also never done bondage—or anything kinky or otherwise with a guy—so just be patient with me, ‘kay?”
He watched her close her eyes and purse her lips, as if begging for his kiss. He used that moment to cinch the thong around her wrists and tie her hands to the rungs above her head.
“Hey, what?” She looked up and frowned. “Shouldn’t you undress me first? Do you want me to call you master? I don’t know if I can do that. It makes me want to laugh and that will totally put you off the deed, huh?”
Rory climbed off her and stood beside the bed looking down at her. He wanted to apologize, but he knew that would be meaningless to her in such a state. He needed to move away from her.
“Why do you look upset? I told you, I don’t know how to do this stuff. Not like I’m whining.” Harper squinted at him. “Right. You didn’t tie me up to have sex with me. You just tied me up. You great big meanie.”
He turned his back on her and went over to add more wood to the fire. He heard her trying to free her hands, and knew she would quickly discover the knots he’d tied would only get tighter.
“This hurts. I can’t—argh.” She grunted several more times before she went still. “I don’t like you anymore. I want to go to that other room where they told me to sleep. Come here and untie me, right now.”
Rory put the fire screen back in front of the flames and went to stand in front of the window slit. His heart ached, but he couldn’t look at her or he would release her.
“Hey, come on.” Harper made the bed frame thump as she struggled against her bonds.
“This is cutting off my circulation, you know. Tomorrow morning Dr. Ben will have to cut off my dead cold hands.” She fell silent for a long moment, and then said in a low, angry tone, “Look, I’m sorry I insulted you or whatever I did.
You can go and kiss up to Ava, or dream about that dead lady you loved, be my guest. Just untie me first. It’s not funny anymore. ”
He did nothing.
She repeated her request in a much harder tone, and then she yelled it, and finally she shrieked it. The bed rocked and jumped and slammed against the wall as she fought her bonds.
When he smelled blood he glanced back at her, and saw how she’d rubbed the skin off her wrists, causing them to bleed. She was also weeping in anger and frustration.
Guilt flooded him as he went to her.
“I take back every nice thing I ever said to you,” Harper muttered, turning her head into her right sleeve and then the left to dry her tears.
“You’re a louse. A big, nasty louse. A huge, horrible, conniving, unsympathetic hairy louse who will never have sex with anyone for the rest of your life because no woman will ever put up with your crap.
” She bared her teeth as he bent closer to survey her wounds.
“Don’t you dare untie me, unless you want to die. ”
Rory sat down beside her and brushed the hair back from her eyes. She looked so miserable his own throat tightened, and his eyes stung, but he didn’t untie her.
“Tell me about your first memories of the world before the world,” he murmured to her.
“Why should I tell you anything about that place? I can barely remember it anymore.” She pouted like a bairn. “I didn’t remember it at all until Ava showed me my mom crawling into that forest ditch and disappearing.”
Rory nodded and waited.
“It was someplace like this, okay? Weird-colored sky and plants that grew super fast and water that came out of nowhere and like snaked through the forest, like it was alive. There was a strange lady there with pointy green things for eyebrows. Mom was afraid of something and stayed there to have me.” She took in a shuddering breath.
“Then after she didn’t want to let us out of there, so we stayed there a long, long time. ”
Harper told him everything, starting from the way she became aware of herself and her mother before she was born.
That awareness hadn’t faded after she’d been birthed in that small world with the green sky and endless forests.
She described a beautiful melia with the green hair and strange spiky eyebrows who had taken care of her and Cheryl, cooking for her mother and caring for baby Harper.
“She was really nice, but not really.” She didn’t react to him untying her wrists, she simply stared past him with a faraway look as she spoke.
“Do you know how wonderful someone can be when they also scare you half to death? That’s what she did to my mom when she said I was growing too fast and she wanted to take me back to live in our world.
That green eyebrow lady got angry with her.
She said because I had been born there it had changed me, and there were other special people who would know that I didn’t belong or deserve it or something.
Those people would hate me and try to kill me if they could because I was dangerous to them. ”
Harper recounted how her mother Cheryl had waited seven years for her chance to escape.
The melia had been lulled into believing they were happy there, and one day told them she had to go and visit a friend.
Cheryl took Harper and secretly followed her, escaping from the hollow before the door between worlds had closed.
Waiting just out of the melia’s sight, Cheryl had run away with Harper in the opposite direction.
“We always kept on the move after that so that lady couldn’t find us,” she said, sounding exhausted now.
“I made myself forget about her and the hollow, but Mom never could. That’s why she kept moving around with me.
That’s why those things hunted her down and murdered her.
” Weary-eyed, she met his gaze. “Will you hold me?”
He fetched the supplies he kept to treat his own wounds and gently cleaned and bandaged her wrists. Stretching out beside her seemed odd for all of two heartbeats, for when she shifted closer she fit perfectly against his side, as if she had always been a part of him that had gone missing long ago.
Mayhap ’tis why I love her.