Indecent: The Moray Druids #2 (Highland Historical) (3 page)

As soon as Niall could move
someone
was going to die. If only to prove to himself that he could still spill blood.

“Please,” the witch called to Ingmar against the door, pressing her back to it in a way that made her breasts jiggle enticingly with each knock. “Please, leave us. He’ll be down directly, I promise.”

A speechless pause ticked off several seconds, which was a first since Niall could remember in Ingmar’s intrepid company. The door rattled with another explosive knock. “Niall, if you want me to leave threateningly growl once, if you need me to break this door down and skewer a witch, threateningly growl twice.”

The woman’s amber eyes widened and she bit her lip.

Ingmar was used to Niall’s Berserker, and had come up with a few strange tricks with which to stay alive around him, and even communicate upon occasion.

A genius, his wily general.

Niall opened his mouth to give a command, but only a pleasured groan escaped.

“Very well,” came the disgruntled reply. “But let it be known that I’m going downstairs to stir malcontent among the men.” Niall could hear every word as Ingmar retreated down the hall, even through a closed door and walls of stone. “Fucking orders
us
to touch nary a nun, and then has his way with the first pair of soft tits he sees. That’ll hold as much weight with the lads as a fart in a whirlwind.”

Who in the name of the All Father would interpret a weak groan as a threatening growl? A fucking imbecile, his general.

Chest depressing on what appeared to be a relieved sigh, the witch padded toward him with a regal grace very few naked women could attain. Kneeling at his shoulder, she pressed a hand to his forehead and then his cheeks. They were warm against his skin.

Mine
, his beast purred.

If he didn’t kill her first.

“I’m sorry,” she crooned to him in a musical, lilting voice that reminded him of sex and mead. “I’ve always known I could take too much. I could have killed you, actually, but it’s never happened before. Not with anyone.”

Unable to tell if he was angrier about their dangerous sex, or that she’d had such amazing dangerous sex with others, Niall glared his fury at her.  

“I know, I know,” she soothed. “But just lie still for a few minutes and focus on breathing. Your strength will begin to return to you, and after some water and a hearty meal, you’ll be back to your barbaric, pillaging self soon enough.”

She had the breasts of a much larger woman, and they swayed and bobbed on her petite frame in such a way that made it impossible to keep any focus on his anger. With his sex still slick and aching with the aftermath of their unparalleled joining, and strange sense of well-being vibrating beneath the weakness in his limbs, Niall tried to breathe. She certainly didn’t make it easy for him, with her bosoms brushing against his arm as she toured his jaw with those soft, warm hands.

Niall had the absurd thought that, in his experience, women tended to have chilly limbs. Her warmth was a pleasant change. A welcome one.

“I know you didn’t realize what you were doing for me, but regardless, I want to thank you for…” She paused, blinked soft copper lashes against cheekbones kissed by a few freckles, and sucked her soft lower lip into her mouth before continuing. “I really don’t have much of a gift for healing,” she continued conversationally. “That is my cousin Morgana’s realm of magick, but you are a very powerful man. I’ve never felt so…”  A slight peach tinged her pale skin in a shade so pretty, Niall had to look away. “So
alive
. So full of vigor and potency. It’s rather intoxicating.”

Not as intoxicating as her fucking nipples rasping intimately against his shoulder as she reached to move a lock of his still-damp hair off his forehead. Though his body felt incapable of movement, his cock twitched and grew, ready to be inside her again.

Shit.

She noticed his growing arousal, her blush deepening, and knelt back, the sight not doing much to diminish his lust. “You should be able to speak now… Niall. That is your name, is it not?”

He liked his name on her lips. He wanted to make her moan it. He wanted her to use it while begging him in erotic supplication.

And he would, before they were through with each other.

The thought seemed to fill his muscles with a renewed energy, and he was able to lift his hands and push himself into a sitting position with her help.

“They whipped you, because you are a witch?” he asked carefully, testing the rasp of his voice.

“Aye,” she confirmed, sadness touching her eyes.

“How?” he queried, trying to make sense of madness. “With power such as yours, you could subjugate them. You could make them respect you. Fear you.
Obey
you. You could visit harsh and torturous vengeance on them, bend them to your will.”

She smiled as though he’d said something amusing, which irked him more than a little. “I could do that, I suppose,” she acknowledged. “But I choose to forgive them, instead.”

He turned and spit into the hearth, the sizzle hissing his disregard. “Forgiveness is a Christian concept. Are not our Gods more ancient and ruthless?”

“Yours certainly are,” she murmured diplomatically. “But my Gods prefer different ways. Ways in which you leave people their own will, and bend the elements to yours, instead. You see, respect is not fear. Respect grows from love and trust. As does power.”

Niall snorted, shaking the cobwebs from his head. “Woman’s logic,” he scoffed.

In a huff, the witch stood and pulled a shift from a small trunk at the foot of a bed that wouldn’t have held the weight of his armor, let alone him.

“That logic comes from a man. A
powerful
man. One whom I both
love
and
respect
.”

Once Niall found the name of this man, he would slaughter him. But first, he’d have to regain the use of his legs. Once a shift hid the lovely nun’s perplexing breasts, Niall was able to think more clearly, or was it the effects of her siphoning magick wearing off?

“What did you do to me, woman?” he demanded, holding a hand to his head.

She glided to the fire in that graceful, regal way of hers, which made her tiny self seem much taller, though her copper brows drew together with sincere regret.

“The explanation is a little complicated, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll tell you I’m a fire Druid, and fire needs fuel. Fuel which you
amply
provided.” Her eyes drifted across the expanse of his body in a slow, appreciative caress before she reached to her small fireplace mantle for an earthenware bowl. Murmuring words he didn’t understand, she tossed a handful of what appeared to be dried herbs onto the fire, causing it to flare treacherously.

“Kenna,” a dominant voice crackled through the flames. The fire seemed to distort it, but couldn’t hide the thick brogue of the Highland people. “Do ye realize what ye’ve done? Do ye have any idea the danger ye’re in?”

“I have every idea, Malcolm,” the witch, Kenna, said patiently. “’Tis why I can risk contacting you now.”

“The Grimoire, is it safe?” the disembodied voice demanded.

“Of course,” the witch assured him. “It is hidden away.”

Niall couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He wasn’t a man prone to fits of panic, and he was also used to idea of magicks, but this was bordering on the fantastical. Before he could demand an explanation, the powerful shape of a man’s torso and head appeared in the flames, congealing into a shadow, and then an actual specter of flesh and blood. Where Niall was broad and bulging, this man was lean and raw-boned. Yet his druid robes hung from powerful shoulders, and a short russet beard accentuated an angular jaw clenched as though he’d worn his teeth down to nubs.

A crown encircled his brow, one shaped like the broken antlers of the sacred elk.

Every man from Nordland to Rome knew who
this
man was.

Malcom de Moray, King of the Picts and Warden of the Highland peoples.

“What about ye?” Malcom’s green eyes, shrewd to the point of pitiless, traveled Kenna’s body with what might have been concern on features less cruel. “Are ye hurt?”

Niall had to suppress a growl. Was this the witch’s man? Was he going to have to hunt him down and kill him in order to claim his mate? Breath escaped him as the full extent of his situation nearly knocked him back flat. He’d gone into Berserkergang around this woman, lay with her, and not tried to kill her. Not even once. That could only mean one thing.

Mine.

“I was hurt,” she evaded. “But… someone helped me to heal.”

Niall actually bristled. He did a bit more than just fucking
heal
her.

“How did ye get the power to do so in a nunnery—Ye know what, I doona want
those
details,” the Druid King snorted in disgust. “But I demand an explanation for why ye just used enough magick to tickle the spine of every Druid from here to the shores of Inverness. And the reason had better be a good one, Kenna de Moray, for ye may have doomed us all.”

Niall had a mind to rip the crown from the Pictish King’s head and make him eat it.

 “It wasn’t my fault,” Kenna remained calm in the face of the shrewd man’s royal ire. “But now that it’s done, I’ll be needing you and Morgana to come to my aid.”

“If the fault isna yers, who’s is it?” the angry king demanded.

Biting her lip, Kenna stepped aside, allowing Malcolm a full view of Niall’s hunched and naked body. “It’s his,” she said, as matter-of-factly as though she was telling her King about the weather. “And he and his men are going to help us fix it.”

Kenna had seen many powerful men interact in her life, lairds and warriors, chieftains and kings, sages and druids, even a shape-shifter once. But the look of utter contempt, challenge, and disgust that passed between the naked Berskerker on the floor and her beloved cousin and Liege lord beat them all.

“Kenna,” The wrath in Malcolm’s voice would have shriveled the manhood of the bravest of champions. Good thing she was a woman, and therefore immune. “Do. Not. Tell me. That ye mated. A
fucking
Berserker
.” Malcolm only spoke with such annunciation when truly infuriated.

She waved an impatient hand to cover a whispered spell that would trap the voice of the Berserker on her floor until she could get rid of Malcolm. “No, no, no,” she soothed. “Not mated to just…borrowed from. He’s quite…potent.”

“Och, I canna know that!” Malcolm made the same sound of disgust he did as a boy. The only manner left about him that would ever remind anyone of those lovely, innocent days of their childhood. The days before Macbeth. Before the Wyrd Sisters. Back when her Uncle Duncan de Moray was still King and his sister, Kenna’s mother, was alive. When mornings belonged to the mists, afternoons to Druid instruction, and evenings to laughter, play, feasting, and family.

“What have I done that the Gods curse me with lumbering, ungainly, ham-fisted Berserkers everywhere I turn? Tupping all the women in my family. It’s not right.” Malcolm lamented pinching the bridge of his nose as though nursing a headache.

Kenna put her fists on her hips. “Well, I don’t think that’s called for. I mean, I know he cocked up our plans, but in his defense, he couldn’t have known he was raiding the abbey where the Doomsday Grimoire was hidden. It’s not really his—wait,” the full meaning of Malcolm’s words widened her eyes. “What do you mean, everywhere you turn? Have you been raided as well?”

Malcolm heaved a heavy sigh. “After a fashion.”

Kenna gasped. “What happened? Are you alright? Is Morgana—”

“She
mated
him, the bleeding oaf, and now ye canna lay yer eyes upon my sister without a dark shadow the size of a Roman wall looming behind her. Bloody irritating.”

“Upon my word,” Kenna sighed. “A Berserker.” She turned to look at Niall, who was currently glaring daggers and attempting to regain his feet with what looked like murderous intent. He probably didn’t take too well to the silencing spell.
Oops
.

“That can’t be a coincidence, now can it?” she asked, which was more rhetorical than anything.

His look told her that when he regained his balance, he would
coincidentally
punish her in ways she’d never considered. It wasn’t that she was a mind reader; only his intent was
that
unmistakable.

Turning back to Malcolm, she focused on the business at hand. “I’ve been hiding at—”

“I know ye’re at Westmire Abbey,” Malcolm said. “I felt it when ye used yer magick. Which means if I know, the Wyrd sisters know, and they’re coming for ye and the book.”

“What do I do?” Kenna tried to hide the terror in her voice from not just her cousin, but the Berserker as well. “I can’t fight them on my own, and there are innocent women here. And Vikings,” she added. Not so innocent, but she didn’t necessarily want them dead. They’d been pretty accommodating and rather gentle, as raiding Vikings went.

 “Have the Berserker and his men secure the Abbey, and ye stay with the Grimoire no matter what.” The calculation left Malcolm’s eyes for only a moment, and he gave her a look touched with affection. “I know I’m supposed to tell ye to guard the Grimoire with yer life,” he rumbled. “But… I doona want ye hurt, Kenna, do what ye can to stay safe. We’ll be there shortly after sundown tomorrow.”

“Sundown?” Kenna asked. “But Moray Castle is nearly two days ride. How can you possibly get here so fast?”

Malcolm made another face, this one almost comically baleful. “Doona ask and I willna tell.”

That brought a smile to Kenna’s face, despite the circumstances. If she had to make a gamble, she’d bet it had something to do with Morgana’s Berserker. She was excited to see her cousins, and hoped to live long enough to ask her closest friend about her new husband. Or mate, as it were.

“Hurry,” Kenna pressed. “I’ll get everyone here as ready as possible for what is to come.” Though it wouldn’t be easy, protecting a pagan relic in a Christian abbey.

“We will,” Malcolm promised, his specter fading. “And whatever ye do, do
not
kiss that Berserker!”

“I won’t,” she vowed, then turned from the fire, which was now devoid of Druids, and ran headlong into a wall of muscle and rage. Oh dear, this Berserker had recovered quite a bit faster than she’d expected.  

She waved her hand, releasing the silence spell, and prepared to defend her actions.

His features distorted into so many different emotions, Kenna couldn’t distinguish them all. Some resembled outrage, others awe, but one she’d never seen before, at least not directed toward her.

Possession
.

It was the last thing she saw before he crushed his lips to hers.

***

Niall had meant to punish her, to threaten her with unthinkable consequences if she ever used her magick against him again.  He wanted to curse and berate, to rage and bellow, to shake her… to spank her.

Perhaps he’d still do that, eventually.

He’d
wanted
to escape this tiny, spare chamber, with the Christian god watching their every sin from the cross above the bed, before he did something stupid.

Like binding his soul to hers for the rest of their natural lives with a kiss.

But she’d whirled from the fire with contrition in her eyes lit by sparks of amber mischief, and he’d been lost.

Mine
, his beast had growled, and Niall had to completely agree.

Here was a woman who could not only take him, but tame him. One who could bring him to his knees with her magick. Who was he kidding? She could accomplish the same with only a few sultry words from her generous mouth. Her body tempted him like no other had. Her voice transfixed him in a way he’d never imagined. Their sex had pleasured him beyond comprehension.

And when he listened to her talking to Malcom de Moray with affection and respect, Niall knew he had to do
something
. Possessive instinct surged even before the Pictish King’s warning against kissing him burned in his ears. Upon hearing that, Niall’s body, soul, and beast came to a decision they could never retract.

He was not one to take orders, and neither would his mate.

Niall kissed her with the unrestrained hunger of an untried boy. He’d used his lips for many wicked, lustful things, but never this. The pure, bacchanalian delight he found in the sweetness of her mouth both aroused and humbled him.

He’d never known.

Gods be damned
how could he not have known that pressing his mouth to that of his mate’s would feel as though his heart might spill out of his chest and expire from the sheer pleasure of it? How could the illumination of just a simple act seem to resonate through him and radiate outward until it surely reached the sight of the Gods?

Every moment he’d lived, every drop of blood he’d shed, had lead him to
this
, to this woman, and how she was
his
.

When he dipped his tongue inside her warm mouth to taste her, exaltation didn’t begin to describe the sensation. She was honeysuckle and cinnamon. She tasted of summer and smelled of sunshine, even through the rainwater.

He imagined it would be especially delightful when she decided to kiss him back.

Ah well, one thing at a time.

With a sound of protestation, she ripped her lips from his and pulled away, her eyes round with shock and accusation. “Why would you do that?” she gasped, holding trembling fingers to her bruised lips.

Niall shrugged shoulders now mobile with returning strength. “I wanted to.”

“But—but doesn’t that mean…”

“We’re mated,” he finished for her, smiling as her eyes went impossibly more round.

“Did you not just hear what Malcolm said? I promised not to kiss you!”

“In all honesty, I think you’ve kept that promise.” Niall advanced on her with what he hoped was more charm than threat. “But, I’m hoping for more response next time.”

Her lovely features filtered through a slew of emotions right before him. Shock melted into confusion, which quickly transformed into anger.

“I don’t think your king’s intentions are honorable,” Niall continued. “He loves you. He likely wants you for himself.” Jealousy was a new emotion, one he was sure to get used to with a mate as lovely as this one.

His woman regarded him like he’d just fed her Lutefisk for the first time. “Don’t be disgusting. He’s my cousin.”

“I’ve heard about you English and your cousins.”

“I’m a Pict, and a Druid one at that!” she spat, outrage flaring in her eyes and heating the air in the room to a temperature that steamed the last of the moisture out of his hair. “We’re
not
English, and we know better than to marry cousins.”

“As you say.”

“And furthermore, Malcolm doesn’t have the capacity for love. He’s too busy, to studious, too… damaged. He barely tolerates Morgana and me, and we’re the last family he has left in the world.”

“And now he has two Berserkers to add to the count, the lucky Druid.” Niall wondered to whom the King’s sister was mated. Berserkers didn’t usually stray far from the Nordic countries, and nearly all of them eventually found their way to the temple of Freya. Some took mercenary work abroad, and then there was the odd bastard or two.

“Nay, he does
not
have two Berserkers because
we
are not mated,” she insisted, crossing two huffy arms beneath those fantastic breasts, lifting them to strain against the thin material of her shift.

“I am,” Niall corrected, not missing the way her eyes followed the more intimate muscles of his body as he bent to reach for his trews and put them on. “And you
will
be.” Just as soon as he talked her into it.

“Don’t be so sure about that.”

“What cause have I to doubt?”

She regarded him as though he were touched in the head. “The fact that I’m actively refusing you should lend you some pause.”

Niall wasn’t one to let something like that get in the way of eternal happiness. If she underestimated his tenacity, that was her fault. “You refuse me now, but I have time to seduce you. And from what I can tell, you’re an easy catch, especially for a nun. I just had to lie there and you gave me your body. I don’t imagine it’ll be too much harder to win your heart.”

He ducked as a book sailed past his head and the flames flared so high they shot up the thin chimney and heated the bricks of the walls. “You—you arrogant, thieving, base, wicked villain…you… you…” She seemed to run out of names, and this being a nunnery, projectiles were in blessedly short supply.

Niall didn’t mind the name-calling, as all the words she hurled at him did generally apply.

“Did you not hear the conversation Malcolm and I just had?”

 
His little mate asked questions when she was angry
. Niall shelved this information for future reference.

“There
is
no time! And even if there was, I would
never
—”

“Never is one of those words you
always
end up regretting,” Niall interrupted her.

“
Ne-ver.
Accept
you
. As my mate,” she finished with a very similar annunciation pattern as her cousin.

Niall just smirked at her. If there was one thing he’d learned about women in his half-century of life, it was that they never meant it when they said
never
.

“Tell me about this Grimoire,” he prodded, hoping to distract her from her ire. “And these Wyrd sisters. Why are you in danger?”

“Why am I in danger? Because of
you
, that’s why,” she snipped.

“We’ve established that. But if my men and I are to protect you, which we will, we’ll need to know from whom and what for.”

She glared at him for a moment, but then seemed to cede the point. “I barely know where to begin,” she sighed. “On top of everything, the whipping, that kiss, this Viking raid… oh and let us not forget the pending apocalypse, I’m rather overwhelmed.”

“Start with everything and go from there,” Niall urged gently. They’d address the kiss again, of that she could be certain. Hopefully many times, and whilst naked, those breasts pressed against his—oh, she was speaking, he should pay attention.

“If you know of Malcolm, then you must know that his father, King Duncan, was killed by Macbeth, who usurped the throne and banished Malcolm to Goddess-knows-where, and gave Morgana, his sister, to the English King Harold for his own self-serving purposes.” she began.

“I’ve heard as much.” Niall eyed the bed upon which she sank to perch, and decided to remain standing.

“Well, Macbeth’s actions were prompted by three de Moray witches who are known as The Wyrd Sisters. They’re elemental Druids, like Morgana, Malcolm and I, except they use dark, evil magick and they were supposed to have died two hundred years past.”

“Why are they still alive?” Niall asked. “Do Druids have longer life spans than usual?” If Berserkers did, it made sense that other powerful pagans would, as well.

Kenna shook her head. “I know not by what dark power they prolong their life, but the fact that they’re here puts the survival of all the world in danger.”

“How so?” he queried.

Scooting to the edge of her small bunk, she used lithe and nimble fingers to wriggle free a brick from her crumbling wall, then another, and another until a pile of a dozen stones sullied her bed.

Niall noticed that she didn’t seem to care, as though she never expected to sleep there again.

Sobering thought, that.

She reverently extracted a tome that appeared ancient, even by his standards. The leather was too light to be animal, too thin to be sea creature, and tinted in only a way that a man who’d seen as much death as
he
would recognize.