Authors: Hannah Howell
Highland Hunger (21 page)
She nodded. His voice created shivers that went over her entire frame before centering somewhere deep within her. Calling to something primitive and earthy that stirred and came to life in her very core. Something she’d never felt before. One thing she believed about this story was his prowess with women. The man’s voice created pleasure, his touch generated energy, and his frame and size guaranteed sexual satisfaction. She could well believe centuries of women swooned over him if the sensation matched what he did to her. She only wished she had the fortitude to deny it.
“We doona’ just take our pleasures, love. We give them. You ken?”
“I . . . don’t believe in . . . vampires, Iain.”
“I dinna’, either.”
“You’re crazed, Iain. Mad. Someone should’ve warned me. The family curse is insanity, isn’t it? This is why you chose an impoverished English girl to betroth.”
“
Leannan . . .
look to me.”
Leannan . . .
look to me.”
Look? Without light?
The glow was back, diffusing gold-washed light onto the walls. Tira rolled her head along one of his chest mounds, reached a shoulder, and tilted her head back before doing as he asked. Her eyes went huge and her breath caught at the opened lips, sharp teeth, and the absolute power seeming to hum from him, filling the enclosure with energy.
“These are fangs, love. For drawing lifeblood. Go ahead. Touch. Feel.”
“Iain . . . I—”
Do it!
The command went right through her consciousness without his voicing it. Tira trembled as she reached to run a finger along one long spiked tooth. She felt the oddest prick in her own bottom lip at the same time.
“Iain . . .”
“Now, touch your own.”
Her heart was blocking her throat. That had to be the obstruction lodged there, impeding her breathing and her swallowing as she did what he ordered. Tira found two like spikes protruding from her upper teeth. They were sharp enough to cut her index finger, and she pulled it away to stare at the pin drop of dark blood.
“This . . . can’t be.” Her voice shuddered, matching the tremor overtaking her entire body.
“Tira, I—”
“This is . . . a nightmare. It is. It has to be! Please? No! This isn’t real! It isn’t! How could you do this to me? Oh, Iain . . . no!”
There was more, sobbed with a voice that broke along with her words. She lifted from him or got lifted. The space was black again, everything was. But Tira didn’t see it. She clamped both hands over the horror that was her face . . . the horror he’d made her visualize and then feel. He didn’t stop her. He didn’t even touch her. But she knew he left. She didn’t see it. She knew only one moment he was there, and the next, he’d vanished.
Chapter Twelve
Iain looked down at the moon-tipped waves with unseeing eyes and waited. He’d sated to such an overfull state his ears rang with the infusion of blood into his veins. He couldn’t remember when he’d last taken so much, perhaps back when he’d first turned and found the taste ambrosia to the senses. He’d been insatiable then, too, but with a different result. Back then, he’d leave animals near death and shepherds begging for assist with their flock. Not now. Gluttony of this magnitude required precision and skill. All of which he’d practiced to such a fine art not one animal noted the pricks, nor would any consequence be visible in the morning.
And so he waited out here in the dark for his body to absorb the feeding. He’d done it for a reason. His bride was going to need sustenance, and she wasn’t going to take it easily.
Iain pondered his situation in the soulless waves, growing high enough to wash the deck occasionally, wetting his boots and the bottom of his
feile-breacan
. He’d waited the last few years to go to her because he feared the demon within him. He lacked control of it—and the last thing he’d wanted was an eternity with a fledgling girl at his side. He’d wanted her full-grown, educated, and ready . . . and happy.
feile-breacan
. He’d waited the last few years to go to her because he feared the demon within him. He lacked control of it—and the last thing he’d wanted was an eternity with a fledgling girl at his side. He’d wanted her full-grown, educated, and ready . . . and happy.
Iain sighed and reached for the railing. He was lying to himself. He wasn’t waiting for his body to absorb the volume of fluid. He was out here because he was afraid. Him: Iain Duncan Evan James Alexander MacAvee, fourth Duke of MacAvee. Earl of Glencairn and Blannock, chieftain of Clans MacAvee, MacGruder, and two other clans. He admitted it. Freely. But only to himself. Iain was out here on a wave-washed deck, watching the black of an ocean until it disappeared, because he was afraid of facing one little woman.
If he possessed a gilded tongue, he’d have used it already, begging her forgiveness with words such as the English seemed to spout—at any time and for any reason. But he didn’t have the gift. No MacAvee did. They were known for reticence. The past was filled with tales of victory and conquest and ruthlessness, all accomplished with few words and no emotion. That was another thing. A MacAvee didn’t show emotion because it was said they failed to possess them. Made it easier to attack and deal with the responsibilities and spoils of victory. Taking a man’s land and his castle and his clan required overseeing and controlling it. There wasn’t a need of regret, emotion, or words. And in those, Iain did his ancestry proud.
He’d grown up with the tales and then he’d added to them. MacAvee lairds were all large men, handsome, fearless, descended from Highlanders that defeated more than one wave of Norse marauders. A MacAvee sought ostracism before dishonor, maiming before capture, and death before defeat. They acted with courage and valor. Honor. Pride. They were revered and feared by everyone, including their Honor Guard. It was part of the legend and one Iain added to with alacrity and a great sense of accomplishment and pleasure.
And now . . . it was all as dust in his mouth, tasteless, and endless. Joyless. Because of one woman.
The waves beneath him grew large. Not enough for worry, but enough to tell of the weather ahead. The moment they’d turned north, it changed. As if every portion of the ship and everything on it knew they left civilization and the stricture of massed groups of people behind and replaced it with untrammeled beauty and freedom. All you had to do was open your senses: Hike through a forest, run across a moor, ford a glen, climb along a dale . . . do any of these things, and you’d know beauty and freedom and happiness like no other. Scotland was filled with the grandness of men and women who’d lived and died for it. All you had to do was inhale it.
Iain pulled in a large breath and forced the experience into his consciousness; the moist feel of rain-laden air just waiting to release, the slight brine smell of seawater; the perfect blend of moonlit quiet and pending wave-borne fury. It was as it always had been, and would continue to be. And he was still out here, waiting and afraid. And alone. Iain exhaled slowly and twisted his hands into claws about the iron rail.
The view blurred into a mesh of ocean and cloud-laden sky. Iain shuddered and blinked and kept at it until everything went back into focus. Distinct and lonely. He sniffed, and then he watched in disbelief as the ocean blurred again. And then he pulled every muscle in his body into a mass of coiled anger, his back aching with the effort while braided iron marks got imprinted into his palms, until the weakness faded and then passed. And then got buried . . . as he should have been nearly three hundred years ago.
Iain frowned. And then he snarled. He was the MacAvee chieftain. He couldn’t afford an exhibition of weakness. Ever. MacAvee lairds passed judgment, made war, granted favors, assumed full responsibility for their clans, and they never admitted regret. They were immune from human frailties, including something so close to weeping he’d kill the man who even hinted at it.
Iain looked to his right and left to make certain he’d had no observers. And that’s when he saw her. This time he gripped the iron so hard, the ends loosened and it rotated one-quarter turn before he stopped. She was wearing the seafoam green gown, and there wasn’t a mark on it, despite the damage he’d done. Her hair was unbound, sending a red-hued draping all about her as wind tossed the strands. She wasn’t aware of her powers, yet, or she’d not be approaching, her steps doing little to alter the drape of her gown as it skimmed her legs. . . .
“Your Grace?”
At Grant’s voice, Iain swiveled his head to the other side and glared at the man for daring to witness his Tira. Then he turned fully to face his second-in-command, blocking everything.
“You’d best have a verra good reason for being here, Grant. Damn good.”
“Her Grace is asking for you.”
Iain swung about to see nothing save open deck getting washed with wave water. He blinked twice and still found nothing. That’s when he got the first glimpse of her power.
“Iain. Oh . . . Iain. Iain?”
Tira writhed on the bare mattress, trying to get as much of her skin into contact with the ticking as possible. Her existence was becoming a nightmare. From the horror of that story he told her in that black cubicle beneath this bed to the sip of water she’d taken. All of it was horrid and getting worse. Her skin was too tight, the nightgown she’d donned impossibly restrictive and confining and creating sweat where it stifled her flesh. Tira tore at the material, hearing the rip of seams and clatter of buttons peppering the wooden floor as she worked at it.
She was thirsty, tired, hungry, with a massive appetite nothing assuaged. One sip of the water she’d ordered his men to bring her, and she’d spit it out in disgust, and then agony. Blisters erupted inside her mouth, closing off her throat and sending spikes of pain all through her until nothing assuaged the latest hurt.
“Iain . . .”
Tira yanked the shreds of fabric that had been her nightgown from her, shoving the jagged strips over the sides, seeking succor that only the bare mattress seemed to provide. Tira put her open mouth to the ticking and inhaled, sensing a cool sensation that she knew had no measure of reality to it, but she could have sworn her throat eased slightly, allowing breath. Each tormented breath seemed filled with the same name. Over and over, she’d called to him, and then finally he was there.
“I’m here, love.”
The mattress dented with his weight, rolling her into the well of space created at his knee, and then she was clasping her arms about his neck and arching up into him, willing his essence into her as the only way from this newest torture.
“Iain . . .”
“What have you eaten?”
Tira shook her head.
“What have the fools given you?”
Light from dead candles flared into being at his words or the anger behind them, paining her eyes with the brilliance before it subsided into normalcy.
“They . . .”
“I’ll have his head!”
Daylight wasn’t as vivid as the spear of light accompanying his threat, and Tira lunged up from the mattress to cling to him, holding him even as he went to his feet and breathed with huge heavy movements.
“They wouldn’t bring me anything! Oh . . . Iain . . . it pains.”
“What,
leannan?
What?”
leannan?
What?”
“Water.”
“They gave you
water?
” He strode for the door, one arm holding her to him while the other reached for his sword.
water?
” He strode for the door, one arm holding her to him while the other reached for his sword.
Tira shook her head and started speaking, slurring the words around the obstruction of teeth and not even noting the blend of Gaelic and English. “They wouldn’t bring me anything, Iain . . . and I begged for it. . . .”
“How did you get water, sweet?”
He’d stopped and was still glaring at the door, a pulse pounding in his neck right at her eye level, and Tira narrowed her eyes at it.
“For a bath.”
“You got water to bathe in?”
She nodded, moving her cheek along his shoulder, although her attention was caught and held by the bluish tint of fluid right beneath his skin. . . .
“And you tried to drink it?”
Tira surged upward, opened her mouth, and sank her fangs right into his throat, earning a groan of reaction from the man holding her, as well as the sweet flooding through her mouth and down her throat, cooling the blisters that had been there. And then it got better. Tira trembled with the sensation of bliss, seeming to throb everywhere at once.
“Slowly, love. You must—oh, my sweet!”
The sword dropped, gifting him with another arm to hold and support her. Tira heard the sound of metal hitting plank floor, and the next moment she got lowered onto her mattress again, where the cool feel against her back collided with the warmth everywhere else. And then she felt a prick on her neck and slight suction before he lapped at the skin with a tongue motion that twined her innards into knots. Tira couldn’t contain the sensation. She pulled her teeth free of his flesh, threw her head back onto mattress, and keened a cry into the air about them. And then she latched on to a shoulder, sinking her teeth deep and sucking pure rapture from him. Wool scratched at her skin and she pushed at it, shoving and pushing at his kilt thing until Iain shimmied it out of her way.
That was the catalyst. Tira moved and he let her, rolling so she was astride him, gripping one of his thighs between her knees as she ran her hands all over revealed skin. Her palms and fingers came alive with thousands of sparks of sensation. And then she used her lips. The man beneath her groaned and trembled as she slid her canines along his chest, slicing a thin cut the entire way. She reached his upper belly and teased the ropes of muscles with her tongue, toying and enjoying every movement they made before she shoved her spikes into him to take from there as well.
Iain lurched upward, lifting them completely from the mattress for a moment before falling back, sending flecks of down fill into the air from the landing. Crimson color added to the glow imbuing the chamber. Tira pulled free of his belly flesh and lapped at the holes, watching with narrowed eyes as the puncture wounds sealed slightly with every tongue swipe. The reddish haze he’d put into play gave her full view of hard male, readied and prepared, and aching for what she could give him. If she so deigned.
“Ah . . . Tira . . . love.”
Iain ran his hands along her spine, his fingers losing contact with every bump, and she felt every one of them as vividly as if it were her fingers. It was another odd sensation and another new experience. And it was getting hotter and wilder and more erotic with every moment that passed. Never had she felt so alive, so urgent, and so violent.
“Don’t you dare stop me, Iain.”
“Stop you? Are you crazed?”
“Then lift your hands from me.”
“Lass . . . please!”
“Now, Iain. Now!”
He answered her command with an indistinct curse, garbled from somewhere deep in his throat, but he did as she ordered and released her. Tira moved lower, suctioning her mouth to his side and tightening her knees about his leg, holding as he turned into a churning creature whose every thrash threatened to toss her. Tira breathed onto flesh slickened with moisture as she moved lower, her tongue grazing goose-bump covered skin. She pushed his rod out of her way, holding from it as if it had little value, and laughed at his snarl.
“I hate you, Iain MacAvee. I hate this.”
“Lass . . . I—”
“I hate what you do. And I hate what you make me do.”
“Then . . . why—”
“Shut up.”
Tira opened her mouth to its fullest, felt her teeth elongating with the strangest feeling, and that gave her weapons to spear him in one side of his buttock. Deep. Intently. Fully. Iain’s resultant yell filled the chamber, followed by the thunder of his heartbeat, and then the pounding of his hands at the edges of the mattress as he hammered full handfuls of it into the bed frame. Tira laughed at his antics, unlatching her teeth. That was just stupid, making it easy for him to move his grip from the mattress to her arms, biting into the flesh as he hauled her up into position, and then lowered her onto a shaft that was thick with need and want. And this time his bellow matched her moan.
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