Chapter Ten #3
She dusted her skirts and made no move to tuck her breasts back inside her torn bodice.
Buckie padded up to her, pressed his great bulk against her soiled skirts.
Ronan let his arms drop. “I will see you safely to Eilean Creag.” The words formed before he could stop them. “Anywhere, so
long as you are afforded safety.”
“Pah!” She cut the air with a hand. “I am where I wish to be.”
Ronan scoffed. “You live on dreams, methinks!”
He scowled at her.
She bent to retrieve the fallen armlet, her breasts still swinging.
Straightening, she let her eyes speak the words her lips held close. “I know you would not hurt me,” she did say, watching
him. “Nor am I frightened by whate’er menace caused you to push me.”
“Sweet lass, I am the menace —”
“Nae, you are my raven.”
Ronan’s gut clenched at her innocence. “You err, lass. I am —”
“I believe you know what you are.” She lifted her chin. “To me and, aye, what I am to you!”
“ Lass —”
“Even so,” she cut him off again, “there are things about me that you need to know.”
On the words, she set the armpiece on the rough-planked table and whipped up her skirts, revealing a sgian dubh strapped to her thigh.
“The wee blade I gave Hector was not my only one.” She looked at him, her color high. “Ne’er think I walk about unprotected!
Much as I cherish our legends and tradition, I am not some large-eyed, song-trilling milkmaid born on the hill who trusts
in naught more than charms and saining rituals to keep her safe.”
Reaching for the deadly blade, she withdrew the dagger a few telling inches from its fine leather sheath. The brightly gleaming
steel shone wickedly narrow, its razor-sharp edge clearly honed to kill.
Ronan narrowed his eyes on the weapon, glad for something besides her naked, still-jigging breasts to focus on.
“My mother — a master at knife-throwing — gave me this dirk.” She kept her chin raised, her eyes glinting as bright as the
sun on the lochan.
“She learned the craft from her brothers,” she hurried on, caressing the richly tooled sheath as she spoke.
“And you learned well.” Ronan was sure of it.
She nodded, clearly proud. “Mother taught me well. She also ne’er let me forget that her skill once saved her life.”
She paused then, her fingers stilling on the dirk’s sheath.
Ronan felt a sharp pulling in his loins, wondered if she knew how much the play of her fingers on that long leather sheath
was rousing him.
As was every other part of her!
He bit back a groan, his blood heating. Ne’er had he seen a more tempting creature.
Her breasts gleamed in the day’s soft light.
Her nipples puckered in the chill air. Hued the exact shade of dusky-rose he’d imagined; he could scarce bear looking upon
them.
Nor, saints preserve him, could he resist.
Heedless, she flicked a clinging twig from her skirts and tossed back her tangled, flame-bright hair. “Like Mother, I, too,
would ne’er hesitate to use my talents to safeguard myself or those I hold dear!”
Ronan grunted.
He believed every word she said, but the wind was freshening. Light gusts tugged at her up-hitched skirts, lifting the edges
and giving him brief, tantalizing glimpses of her red-curled femininity.
And the sight — so unwittingly revealed — was nigh unmanning him.
Quickly, before he did something they’d both regret, he reached and yanked down her skirts. Not wanting to risk helping her
adjust her bodice and thus, inevitably, touch her flesh, he shrugged off his great travel cloak and swirled it around her
shoulders.
“You will catch a chill if you dinna cover yourself.” The excuse sounded ridiculous even to him.
She lifted a brow.
Her lips quirked then curved into another of her dazzling smiles.
“My health is as stout as yon Highland garrons.” She glanced at the two horses, quietly grazing side by side near Buckie’s
onion creel. “I ne’er take a chill.”
As if to prove it, she lifted her hands and removed his cloak, slipping out of it quickly before his warmth and his scent
bewitched her so thoroughly she couldn’t ever bear to be parted from it.
Already, her heart was skittering and it was all she could do not to clutch the thing against her breasts, branding his heat
and the clean, manly essence of him into her skin.
Instead, she folded the cloak carefully and placed it on the trestle table’s cushioned bench.
Then she drew a breath, opting for honesty. “I know you covered me so you wouldn’t have to see my breasts.”
To his credit, he didn’t deny it.
He did, however, look more miserable than she’d yet seen him.
“Lass —”
“Dinna say it.” She looked down, tied her bodice laces as best she could with fingers she pretended weren’t trembling. “I
have eyes, see you?”
Her task complete, she brushed the grass and dirt off her skirts. She needed to busy herself lest she burst into tears — or
great gales of laughter — at the futility of her gown-fastening efforts.
Retied, her already-dipping bodice once again covered her, but only just.
Her breasts strained against the ripped cloth, the generous swells barely contained. And, much to her horror, her right nipple
was poking through a jagged little tear she’d somehow overlooked in her haste to redo the laces.
Indeed, she looked more scandalously naked than before!
A truth plainly evidenced by the Raven’s tight, hard-set expression as he struggled not to glance any lower than her carefully
lifted chin.
“You have much more than eyes, sweetness. I would that you didn’t.” He took a step closer; his voice came rough, husky. “And
you shouldn’t have —”
“What I shouldn’t, husband mine, is allow you to keep telling me you are a menace.” She snatched a jug from the table, sloshed
a measure of wine into a cup, and thrust it into his hands. “Drink,” she urged, drawing herself up, “perhaps Valdar’s fine
Gascon wine will loosen your tongue.”
Pray that ne’er happens, she was sure he said beneath his breath.
She shoved a curl off her forehead, her heart thumping. “I know our union was meant to be. You know that I have visions and
I have seen you in them!”
He stared at her, wine cup poised at his lips, his face an unreadable mask. But a muscle jerked in his jaw, its sudden appearance
giving him away.
He knew.
She was sure of it.
“You know this, I am thinking!” She tossed back her hair. “Know that you’ve come to me as a raven and as . . . yourself! That
you reach for me, dragging me against you and kissing me. So why” — she jammed her hands on her hips, her voice rising — “when
we are together, myself nigh unclothed, do you look on me with such coldness? Why —”
“Och, lass, you err.” He shook his head, his eyes darkening. “It has naught to do with you. ’Tis me, only me, I swear to you.
Ne’er have I —”
“Do I have the breasts of a crone?” She tore at her bodice ties, yanked her gown open. “Am I so undesirable that you —”
“Nae!” He threw the wine cup to the ground. “Ne’er you even think it!”
“But —”
A sound, deep, masculine, and elemental came from somewhere and then she was in his arms, crushed hard against him, held even
more tightly than in the visions.
“Lass, lass! You are more desirable than any woman I have e’er known.” He drew back to look at her. “E’er, I say, do you hear
me? Ne’er have I been more tempted!”
“ But —” The ground seemed to tilt beneath her feet and a blast of chill wind stole her protest.
She bit her lip, her heart thundering wildly. His gaze pierced her, dark and feral.
Heat blazed between them, alive and crackling, a sizzling rush of need so fierce her knees buckled and she would’ve plunged to the ground if not for his iron-bound grip on her.
“If you desire me, then make me yours!” She saw the want glinting in his eyes and it spurred her on, making her bold. “I am your wife. Do not shun me!”
She thrust her fingers into his hair, twining them in the thick raven strands as she pressed into him, aching, burning for
his kiss.
But rather than oblige her, he stiffened, already pulling away from her.
“No- o-o!” She clung to him, holding tight. “I won’t let you do this —”
“I have already done the unthinkable.” He tore free of her grasp, agitation shimmering off him. “And, aye, you deserve the
truth, though I’d give anything to have spared you.”
“Then speak true.” She put back her shoulders and stood tall. “See that a MacKenzie does not melt in the rain — or crumple
upon hearing words she’d rather not!”
“Ach, lass.” He blew out a breath. “Let me tell you this much,” he began, starting to pace. “Torcaill told me how powerful
your gift is. He sensed it and, aye, deep inside, I was no’ surprised, as I have had . . . dreams.”
He rammed a hand through his hair, glanced at her. “ ’Twas just as you say. Me, holding and kissing you, needing you more
than the air I breathe.”
“Then why do you reject me?” She came after him hot-foot, chin raised and breasts bouncing. “There can be no reason. Especially
if you know —”
“There are scores of reasons!” He whirled to face her, the weight of Creag na Gaoith pressing on him. “Do you see yon scarred
and broken crag?”
He flung out an arm, indicating the dread heights, the mass of rubble at its foot. “Tell me, lass, if you are blessed with
the taibhsearachd, why did you choose such a maligned place for your feasting-in-the-wild?”
She blinked. “Why not this place?”
Her confusion hit him full-on, a white-hot knife twisting in his heart.
She glanced at the lochan, its shining water clear and bright in the cold afternoon sun. “I’d ridden for hours and saw nowhere
more pleasing.”
“And so it was . . . once.”
“Once?”
Ronan nodded, finally seeing Creag na Gaoith’s bogle peering at him from amidst the fallen stones.
A pale, almost-too-faint-to-see image, his first wife, Matilda, stood there, delicate as a spring bloom. But watching him
all the same, her flaxen-blond hair unmoving in the wind, her sky-blue eyes calm, trusting as always.
Ronan blinked and she was gone.
But his guilt — and his dread — remained.
“My first wife died there,” he said, speaking quickly before prudence stayed his tongue. “We came here often and were walking
there, on the other side of the lochan, when a sudden rockslide took her life. We’d only been wed a few days.”
“Dear saints!” The color drained from his new bride’s face. “I am sorry. How horrible it must have been for you.”
“It was, and the guilt haunts me still.”
“Guilt?” Her voice was shocked. “You couldn’t have prevented a rockslide.”
“Say you?” He reached to finger one of her glossy curls, needing her vibrancy, the light and warmth that seemed to glow from
within her.
“To be sure I say it!” she charged, a flush staining her cheeks. “How could you have —”
“Perhaps” — he released the curl — “because in that very moment, as we strolled along beneath Creag na Gaoith, I thought to
myself that I loved her so desperately I would ‘move mountains to please her.’ ”
“What?” Her eyes widened. “Don’t tell me you blame yourself because of a thought?”
“That is the way of it, aye,” Ronan confirmed, the truth sending bile to his throat. “I am cursed, see you. My thoughts sometimes
take on frightening shape and form, the darker — or more irresponsible — ones causing irreparable damage if I do not marshal
them quickly enough.”
“I do not believe that.” She frowned at him, her chin more stubborn than ever. “And even if it were true, I know that —”
“It is true, I assure you. There are many —” he broke off, his eye caught by a movement at the edge of the clearing.
Something large and grayish-white crashed through the heather, its massive head lowered and its great curving horns the most
deadly he’d ever seen.
“A bull!” Gelis clapped a hand to her throat and stood frozen.
“That’s more than a bull!” Ronan lunged and grabbed her, once again shoving her aside. “Hold Buckie!”
And then the unholy creature charged, bursting from the trees with a terrifying bellow, the thunder of its hooves blistering
the air, its earth-shaking speed leaving no time for finesse.
And totally ruining what could have been a moment of revelation.
Spinning round, Ronan seized one of the Viking tent’s support poles. He ripped it from the ground and ran forward into the
bull’s path, couching the pole like a lance.
Behind him, Gelis screamed.
He ran on.
And then his world split, breaking apart on the bull’s outraged roar as it hurtled toward him, head low and horns weaving,
a murderous glint in the creature’s eyes.
Eyes red as fire.