Bride of the Beast (34 page)

But first he wanted to hold tight to the bliss he'd found a while longer. A sated smile, wondrous in the peace and contentment it brought, tugged at the corners of his mouth.

And all because she'd wanted to show him the night sky.

Instead, he'd taken her to the stars... which is exactly where she'd wanted to go.

And what a glorious journey it'd been for them both.

**

Many leagues away, on the other side of
Scotland
, a new day dawned bright and crisp. Nary a ripple marred the glassy surface of Loch Duich, and a fine dusting of frost
coated the mountains hugging its shores. Even Eilean Creag's stout walls gave themselves quiet and unthreatening in the clear, blue-white light of the icy cold morn.

But inside those walls, the stronghold's master with fury. and prepared himself to threaten any fool, man or beast, who dared to happen across his ire.

His hands clenched at his sides, Duncan MacKenzie stood in his empty hall, frowning blackly at the sweetly scented layer of newly-strewn floor rushes, sheer roiling murder in his heart.

"Fergus”
he bellowed, full aware none but the scrawny shouldered, impertinent seneschal bore responsibility for the hall's tidy appearance.

For his bed had disappeared from the raised dais, and his fair lady wife was glaringly absent.

"Hie yourself in here, you old bandy-legged old goat, lest I—»

"Lest you what, laddie?" The object of his wrath bristled from the concealing shadows of the screened passage.

One of his favored hidey-holes.

And where he'd no doubt been lurking simply for the pleasure of spying on
Duncan
's distress.

Taking his time, the old man shuffled forward, his scraggly-bearded chin thrust out in brazen defiance. "Lest you shout down these walls with your bluster?"

"Where is my wife?'
Duncan
put all the dread in his heart into the shouted words.

His concern for her, his
fear,
working him into fine, fuming rage, he aimed a pointing finger at the raised dais which, once again, held the innocently mute high table.

"What have you done with my bed?" he roared, not even tying to contain his fury.

The seneschal folded scrawny arms and glowered back at him.

And said not a word.

Duncan
glanced up at the hall's vaulted ceiling and began hunting.

At length, and in somewhat better control of himself, he turned his attention back to his grizzle-headed seneschal.

"The bed—and my lady—were here before I left to make my rounds not an hour ago," he said, his deep voice calmer.

A little bit calmer.

But not enough to pry answers from Fergus's ancier tongue.

Duncan
heaved a great sigh. "Sooo, Fergus, you've restored notable order to the hall," he said, trying to imitate a certain one-eyed lout's winning manner with servitors by spouting praise and resting a hand on the seneschal's knobby shoulder.

"And I see you've had the last of Strongbow's frippery hauled down to the boat for our last trek to Bal—"

Breaking off,
Duncan
narrowed his eyes at the recently emptied front section of the hall.

Not a single stick of furniture or stack of prized gewgaws blocked the entrance.

Everything was gone ... piled high in Eilean Creag's largest galley to await transport.

A sick feeling in the pit of
Duncan
's belly joined the heated tightness banding around his ribs, comprehension washing over him in cold and hot waves.

Tearing his gaze from the spotlessly tidy entrance vestibule, he looked back at Fergus.

The slight quivering of a muscle in the old man's jaw told
Duncan
the truth: His bed
and
his lady were, even now, happily ensconced on the galley, jammed in amidst the remainder of Strongbow's household wares and nonsense. Awaiting the journey to
Balkenzie
Castle
. In blatant defiance of his orders. "By—all—the—saints—and—apostles!"
Duncan
released all his savage wrath in one ear-splitting bellow.

"'Twas her own doing," Fergus dared to extract himself from the dark deed. "You ken how persuasive she can be, and she swore it was time—"

"Time?"
The very word curdled
Duncan
's blood. "Time for the bairn? And her planting herself and our wee one in a
boat?"

Fergus shook his head. "Nay, time for the Sassunach to
return."

"And she thinks to await this glorious day at Balkenzie?"
Duncan
shoved a hand through his hair. "And you assisted
her in this foolery?"

"She said if I didn't, she'd find some other way to get
there."

With great effort,
Duncan
fought back his temper. "And
the bairn?"

For the first time that morn, the old seneschal smiled. A fearsome sight... his gap-toothed grin not for the
faint-hearted.

"The bairn, a fine and healthy what-she-told-me-but-made-me-promise-not-to-tell-you, will be born at Balkenzie," Fergus declared, his thin chest swelling at being the bearer of such privy news.

"She saw the whole of the birthing with her gift," he added, the moist gleam in his eyes revealing how pleased he was that Linnet MacKenzie had trusted
him
with her secrets. "You will soon have a braw new bairn, laddie."

Duncan
's shoulders sagged even as his heart swelled with joy. A braw and strapping babe, lad or lassie, was well worth the short boat ride across Loch Duich.

And certainly worth looking a fool for ignoring his own
orders.

"Then, come, you old buzzard,"
Duncan
conceded defeat, "let us not keep the lady waiting."

And then Duncan MacKenzie, dread laird of Eilean Creag, and his fool-grinning seneschal, made their way down to the stronghold's little jetty for the passage across Loch Duich to Sir Marmaduke's Balkenzie Castle.

But not before
Duncan
wiped his own silly grin from his handsome face... and replaced it with a dark frown worthy of his formidable reputation.

sometime in the
hushed stillness before dawn, Marmaduke woke to find a slender thigh, sleek, warm, and smooth, draped over his legs. His new wife's head rested on his shoulder, her unbound hair spilling free in glorious disarray, its silken warmth caressing his chin ... its scent, of fine summer days, delicate and light, a gift to stir his senses.

And set his pulse to racing.

Other parts of him stirred as well. Darker, more beastly urges, for still another warmth pressed against him. Unashamedly close, infinitely soft, and deliciously hot.

His wife's feminine heat.

Remembrances of their encounter in the night, of stroking and petting her, swept through him like a blaze of liquid fire.

Whatever vestiges of sleep still clung to him, took instant flight, scattered with startling ease by the searing sleekness of her woman's flesh, the lush tangle of curls crushed so intimately against him.

Raw, pounding need poured straight into his groin. Shockingly urgent waves of sheer, rampant sensual awareness.

Unbridled want.

But even as his blood roared, he took equal bliss in the simple stirring of her breath against his shoulder.

Both pleasures, the carnal and the tender bonding, blended to weave an inescapable cordon around his heart. Silken chains of passion and promise, tying his very soul to her, and filling him with untold contentment.

A precious and rare joy he wasn't quite ready to relinquish. He slanted a sidelong glance through the half-opened bed curtains, the corners of his lips lifting in satisfaction. The coming morn hadn't yet spread beyond the deep alcove of the window embrasure.

The rest of the chamber still lay in cold and silent darkness. Ample time remained of the early hour's calm for him to relish the intimacy of Caterine's soft warmth wrapped so sweetly around him.

A comfort he'd well savored throughout the small hours after he'd gathered her into his arms and carried her, sleeping, from the window seat.

And somewhere in the splendor of the night, something magical had happened. The wonder of it firmly closed a door on all the hurts and regrets of other days, and banished the emptiness of countless lonely nights.

A moment, a touch skin-to-skin... her supple length stretched languidly beside him... and all his demons had fled.

Or so he could almost believe.

Hope.

A wild and giddy joy he'd never thought to find again, but he had, and the miracle of his good fortune filled him with awe. He drew a deep breath of the chill morning air, and let his mouth curve in a slow smile.

A smile that glowed bright and true deep inside him and warmed him clear to his toes.

He loved her.

The words spoken in passion on the turnpike stair hadn't been frivolous, born of the moment... he'd truly given her his heart.

He, Sir Marmaduke Strongbow, Duncan MacKenzie's man, friend and mentor to many men, staunch defender of women and small children, and soon-to-be lord of
Balkenzie
Castle
, had fallen irrevocably, maddeningly, wondrously in love again.

With every fiber of his being, every face he had: the handsome one wrested from him so long ago, the scarred one now blighting all his waking hours, and the as-yet-unknown one he'd wear in years to come.

Aye, he loved her, and the enormity of his discovery made him want to leap from the bed, run to the windows, and shout his jubilation clear to the distant horizon.

That she yet lay beside him, beckoning with the satiny warmth of her skin and the shining glory of her golden hair, opened up horizons of a wholly different nature. Ones he burned to savor to the fullest degree. And now was as good a time as any to continue what they'd begun in the star-studded magic of the night.

With all the finesse he'd mastered, he smoothed his hand along her side in a light, barely there caress. Her blue eyes flew wide just as he splayed his fingers over the curve of her hip to urge the silken heat of her woman's flesh tighter against him.

She gasped, the sweetness of her sleepy-eyed confusion going straight to his heart. "W-what are you—" "Slaying more of your dragons," he lied.
Slaking his lust was what he was about.
"Last night we only tossed out our first challenge to them," he said, caressing her alluringly rounded bottom in a manner designed to put her at ease ... and to enflame her blood to the same degree as his own.

"Beginning this morn, we shall launch a full assault," he promised, nuzzling his cheek against her unbound hair, pressing kisses into its glossy length. "But you must will their demise, too, my lady."

He grazed his lips along the smooth line of her neck. "Do you?”

"Did I not prove last night that I am desirous of having... certain dragons addressed?" she gave back, now fully awake. Wholly unabashed—even angling her head to give him better access to her skin.

"And have you not already begun? Slaying them?" Her words came on a soft, sensual sigh. "Your touch pleased me well, sir. You—"

"Pleasuring you with my fingers is not what I meant, my sweet, and I believe you know it."

The deep smoothness of his voice sank into her, flowed around her ... seductive as the tip of his tongue flicking at a sensitive spot just beneath her ear... tantalizing as his fingers moving so wickedly over the rounds of her bottom.

Faith, he even trailed a bold finger along its crease, that dark intimacy sending a bolt of hot, licking desire streaking through her.

"All of your dragons will be dealt with soon, my lady. That I assure you," he breathed, nipping at the lobe of her ear.

"And it is the dragon that dwells here—" He slipped his hand between her thighs and, very slowly, traced the tip of one finger along the center of her heat. "—that I burn to address this moment."

Caterine sighed, writhing, his intimate touch as breath-stealing in its intensity as she remembered from the night. His caress ignited a pulsing ache in the deepest part of her wily. A weighted tension potent enough to send undulating Waves of delicious tingles rolling across her woman's flesh, and into her very core.

The shrill, twisting birth of true desire.

And the wonder of it ripped through her, wild, insistent, and glorious.

Heady and sublime.