Unwanted (20 page)

His face was brutal as he took her, but other things swirled in the miasma of his eyes.
 
Passion, of course, but also awe, wonder, need, and a sort of worshipful desperation that brought tears to
Rhona’s
eyes.
 

Release found her faster than she could have imagined.
 
With no building ache, no straining to capture it, it claimed her body as swiftly and unexpectedly as he had.
 
Her fingers clutched and scraped at his unyielding shoulders as she lifted her chin and screamed her liberation to the shadows thrown by the flames at the ceiling.
 

His roar engulfed hers as liquid warmth bathed her womb in strong jets, and he tensed and trembled against her, his thrust becoming jerks of straining pleasure.
 

Rhona
sagged against the strength of his arms as the pulses lessened and died away.
 
She expected for her sweet Northlander to her return to her, his green eyes sated with pleasure as they’d been last night.
 

But as she returned to the moment, darkness still claimed the depths of his gaze and she knew the Berserker, so long deprived, wasn’t finished with her.

Pulling them both from the wall, he withdrew from her and tossed her to her back on the bed.
 
He dropped the tartan from his hips and rent her dress clean in half with one commanding tug.
 

Standing above her, he took a moment to take in her nakedness.
 
The possessive gleam in his unnatural eyes thrilled and humbled her and she took a moment to appreciate the cords of muscle and ropes of strength that made up his form.
 

His cock stood full and gloriously erect from his powerful hips.
 
It glistened with the aftermath of their joining and
Rhona
knew he meant to take her again.

Right now.

He climbed up her body with the grace of a predator, stopping to kiss the tender flesh of her knee or the thin skin in the crease of her thigh, and the quivering muscles above her navel.
 

A flash of other men pressing her into a mattress for their pleasure seized
Rhona’s
thoughts and she flinched.
 

Finn froze, looking up from her body and meeting her eyes through the valley between her breasts.
 
She thought he was growling at first, a low rumble suddenly emitting from somewhere deep within him.
 

His eyes were warmer somehow, devastatingly needy as they searched hers.
 

Rhona
realized the sound was not a
growl,
it was something like a purr.
 
A deep ticking vibration that thrummed his satisfaction through his whole massive frame.
 

His lips parted in a wicked smile, made all the more alarming by the serration of his teeth.
 
But he held still, waiting for her to make up her mind.

Suddenly, the past melted away.
 
The future didn’t exist.
 
This moment belonged to them.
 
To her.
 
And she meant to have it.
 
Anyone before had taken enough from her.
 
They would not dominate this moment she meant to share with her Berserker.
 

Opening her legs beneath him, she reached for his body, which he stretched over her like some kind of great, primal cat.
 
She wrapped her legs around him as he entered her with a slick, slow thrust.
 
Lowering himself completely, he kissed her again.
 
As though he couldn’t get enough.
 
His lips explored the corners of her mouth, her cheeks, her chin, her nose,
her
eyelids; all the while his hips pleasured her with movements she’d never imagined possible.

She called out his name to the Solstice moon as he thrust her over the edge again and again.
 

Finn MacLauchlan.
 
Her mate.
 
 
 
 
 

Rhona
awoke next to Iain and realized that Finn was gone.
 

Evelyn had brought the babe to her in the wee hours of the morning, apologizing profusely.
 
But he’d been hungry and inconsolable.
 
Rhona
, in turn, had to apologize for the damage done to Evelyn’s fine dress.
 

“
’Tis
nothing,” Evelyn assured her.
 
“
A common occurrence in a Berserker keep
.
 
What we need is a seamstress here all the time.”
 
She left a smile and a warm glow in
Rhona’s
heart.
 
She could be needed here.
 

Wanted.

Finn had caressed
Rhona’s
skin as she fed Iain, watching the process curiously and asking adorable, ignorant questions about babies and child bearing.
 

They’d laughed together as she gently teased him, enjoying the quiet winter morning and their warm bed.
 
Then still exhausted from her vigorous night, she’d fallen back to sleep nestled in the love of her new family.

Rhona
lay
watching Iain slumber for a few precious minutes while her body finished deciding to wake up.
 
He truly was a precious gift.
 

A few new muscles ached and she smiled, entertaining a powerful urge to lounge in bed and soak up the warmth of last night’s memory.

But she wanted to find Finn.
 
To start the first day of the rest of their lives together.
 

To kiss her mate again.
 

A soft knock interrupted her happy thoughts.
 
She slipped on the nightdress Evelyn had lent her this morning and padded across the room, expecting a summons to breakfast.
 

A burly man stood at the other side of the door, dressed in a tunic and the MacLauchlan tartan, his russet hair tied back from a wide, austere face.
 
Rhona
recognized wary eyes the color of a dark lager beneath suspicious brows.
 

Jamie, the gate guard, held firewood under one oafish arm and a bundle beneath another.
 
He scowled at her and motioned with his consignment.

“I’m sent to stoke
yer
morning fire and give
ye
garments to wear.”
 

Rhona
narrowed her eyes.
 
“Aren’t there chambermaids to handle those responsibilities?”
 
She glanced down the dark, empty hall.
 

Jamie shrugged.
 
“
’Tis
dangerous times.
 
I’m the one they sent to take care of
ye
.” He looked as happy about the prospect as she was.
 
 
Which was to say not at all.
 

“Please be careful, the baby is still asleep.”
 
Rhona
took a step back to grant him entrance and he stalked to the fireplace, setting the bundle of wood down like it had been a heavy weight.
 

Finn would have hefted the wood like it was a sliver with which to pick his teeth.
 
As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she felt guilty.
 
It was unfair to compare his strength to that of a Berserker.
 

She joined him at the fireplace, accepting the rolled white wrapper he offered her and turning her back to him to put it on.
 
It was heavier than anything she’d owned and so warm she could have worn it outside.

As she slid her arms through the sleeves and belted it at the waist with a silk cord, a movement of shadow warned her a moment before darkness bloomed in front of her eyes.
 
The pain exploded behind that, blinding her completely.
 
She was dimly aware of being crudely hefted over Jamie’s shoulders before she succumbed to oblivion.

***

“You must have a spy in the keep,” Finn speculated as he strapped his axe to his hips over his tartan.
 
He had to admit, he enjoyed the freedom and ingenuity of the Scots garb, though he’d have to get used to the draft.
 

The accessibility was an added bonus, he thought with a secret smile as he remembered the frenzied passion of the night before.
 
He’d left
Rhona
sleeping like an angel in a pillar of early morning light.
 
The riders had returned at dawn.
 
One Northern longboat had been spotted off the Firth of Clyde.
 

Now they prepared for war.

“A spy?
 
Impossible,” Connor decreed, picking a serrated pole axe from his impressively stocked armory.
 
“Everyone employed here is a MacLauchlan.
 
This is one of the oldest clans in the Highlands.
 
The MacLauchlan line reaches back hundreds of years and my people are fiercely loyal.
 
Besides, I think I’d be able to tell if anyone meant us harm.”
 
He tapped on his temple, signifying his gift.

“Maybe.”
 
Finn remained unconvinced, but didn’t want to anger his brother.
 
“But it was no Berserker who watched the goings on here and reported it to Magnus,” he said carefully.
 
“I was told it was someone close to you.”

Connor flinched, his hand tightening around his weapon.
 
“It makes sense,” he said in a voice made of gravel and suspicion.
 
“I just
doona
want to believe it.”

“You have no idea who it could be?”
 

“We have many allies and many enemies,” Roderick cut in, running an oilcloth over his blade.
 
“But the clans surrounding our lands are friendly.
 
We’ve even made peace with the new Laird of the
MacKays
and they’ve been our bitter enemies for years.”

“How did you achieve that?”

A meaningful look passed between the brothers.
 
“We killed his father and brother,” Connor said with a smirk.
 

Finn’s brows drew together.
 
He was no Highlander, at least not yet, but slaughtering a man’s family didn’t exactly seem like a good way to go about making allies. “You’ll have to tell me about that sometime.”

His sensitive ears pricked to Iain’s cries coming closer through the castle’s labyrinth of halls.
 
Lord but that boy did have a set of lungs.
 
He was glad for it, though, as he thought
Rhona
must be bringing the babe to see him off.
 
His heart lifted at the thought.

If he returned from this, they would begin their lives together as man and wife.
 

As
MacLauchlans
.
 

It was Lindsay’s dark head that poked around the corner of the armory arch.
 
She clutched Iain to her as though holding a child was rather foreign.
 
“Have any of you seen
Rhona
?” she queried.
 
“I went by her chambers to collect her and found this one on the bed crying his wee eyes out.”

A frigid alarm, hard and icy as the glaciers that guarded the northern fjords, crept between Finn’s shoulder blades.

“Did ye try the
garderobe
?” Roderick suggested.
 

“Or the kitchens?”
Connor shrugged.
 
“I’ve heard a woman gets mighty hungry when she’s eating for two.”

“I’ve hauled this angry darling everywhere.
 
The armory is the last place I checked.
 
I’d hoped she was here with you.”
 
She turned to Finn, who felt as though the ground had sucked him into its stony depths and he stood shorter and immobile with a paralyzing terror.