A Highland Werewolf Wedding (21 page)

She wrung some of the water out from her sweater. She was soaked to the skin, revealing
all, which for Cearnach’s consumption was fine. But for the lad, no.

“Logan, why don’t you go up to the keep and ask Lady Julia if she has something dry
that Elaine can wear?”

“Aye, I will.” Logan raced through the shower room.

“Walk,” Cearnach warned and shook his head.

“Were you like that at his age?” Elaine asked, her eyes and lips smiling as she wiped
the water from her face.

Cearnach chuckled. “And then some. Though I would have helped you to remove your sweater
and towel-dried you.”

She laughed, then began washing the mother dog. “Not if a man older than you was watching,
and he had some interest in the girl who was more the older guy’s age.”

“It would depend,” he said, joining her, unable to help his feral gaze from roaming
over her sexy, wet body.

He finished washing Sheba, then rinsed her off and took her into the drying room.
When Elaine joined him, he reached over and shut and locked the door.

Elaine frowned. “Logan can’t get in.”

“That’s the general idea.”

Elaine eyed Cearnach with intrigue as he secreted her away in the dog kennels’ drying
room. Smiling at her with lustful intent, he shifted his gaze to the wet sweater clinging
to her breasts. She smiled back at him. “What do you have in mind?”

“Helping to dry you off a wee bit, lass,” he said with a devilish glint in his eyes.

All the dogs were curled up on mats, some of them mostly dry and sleeping, some licking
their wet fur, others sitting and watching Cearnach and Elaine, their tails thumping
enthusiastically on their beds. Cearnach drew off Elaine’s wet sweater and tossed
it on a bench. She felt wickedly exposed as he towel-dried her breasts while warm
air from the heater vents swirled around them. The smell of citrus shampoo and wet
dog and a couple of wet shifter wolves filled the room.

“You’re nearly as wet as me.” She reached up and touched the damp shirt outlining
his hard muscles. Wanting to expose his brawny chest, she’d tugged his shirt barely
past his navel before he took charge.

He yanked his shirt off and tossed it on the bench with hers. She picked up another
clean towel and ran it over his beautiful pecs and abs—beach-body perfect, making
her think of him lying on Pensacola Beach with her, enjoying the sun and surf.

“I’ll never wash the dogs again without thinking of you in that wet sweater, or like
this, half naked in the drying room.” He cupped her breasts, then ran his fingers
over the extended nipples, taut and sensitive. Her breathing suspended as she gloried
in the sweep of his fingers against her flesh. “There’s a room off this one for the
person who stays with the dogs when they have new pups. The sheets have been changed
since no one’s slept in here for the last month.”

Thank
God
for
that!
She could envision pushing a wolfhound off its damp bed to make room for two wolves
who wanted to find a soft spot to make love—yuck!—or having to run back to his bedchamber
in the castle in wet clothes in the chilly breeze in front of those working on the
grounds and inside the stone building. Cearnach kissed her lips gently, then moved
her into the room where a twin bed covered with a light blue blanket and comforter
sat against a wall, a wooden table and a chair beside it. Shades were pulled closed
over the one window, and she noticed a sink and toilet in a half bath off the room.

Just as Cearnach reached for Elaine’s jeans zipper, they heard movement beyond the
locked drying-room door.
They
froze.

“Cearnach, I’ve got the lady’s clothes for her,” Logan said, trying the door to the
drying room, the doorknob twisting back and forth. “Cearnach?” Then the lad grumbled
under his breath, “She is
too
your girlfriend.”

Cearnach grinned down at Elaine. “Leave them on one of the dry benches, Logan. You
can come back in half an hour and exercise the dogs,” Cearnach said.

Elaine and Cearnach waited, listening, until they heard Logan slosh across the wet
floor, then slam the door to the kennels.

Cearnach smiled and shook his head.

Elaine pulled off her jeans in a hurry, worried someone else would interrupt them,
as Cearnach quickly shucked the rest of his clothes. Then he lifted her in his arms
and carried her to the bed.

Pulse quickening, she smiled up at him, loving the heat of his naked chest pressed
against her, the feel of his hard muscles bunching as he laid her on the bed.

He stretched out on top of her, claiming her—all that sinewy strength and virile heat
rubbing against her. Kissing her mouth, slowly, luxuriously, he moved his body against
hers, working his stiff cock against her mound. She groaned with feral need, wanting
him inside her now.

She slipped her arms around his neck, pulling him close, holding him against her.
Spreading her legs, she willed him to enter her, her tongue teasing his smiling lips,
his eyes already clouded with desire. She loved his passion, the way he couldn’t seem
to get enough of her, the way he loved her just as much as she loved him.

“Elaine,” he groaned as she pressed her tongue into his mouth. She felt the heat between
them building, his body rocking against hers, his erection pressing against her damp
heat, urgent, relentless, not entering her yet, but close.

So close.

She angled her hips, trying to capture his erection so that she could sheathe the
throbbing part of him that would join them together as one.

His hands shifted again to her breasts, cupping, massaging the flesh. His fingers
toyed with her nipples, making them hard and sensitive and just as needy for his touch
as the rest of her. She arched against him, aching for him.

He bent his head and licked a nipple, then the other, while her hands moved down his
back, stroking, touching, loving the feel of his heated skin, his hard-working muscles.

Then before he seemed ready, she bent her knees, digging her heels into the mattress,
willing him to penetrate her. Cradled between her legs, he reached between them and
stroked her sweet spot, harder, faster, until she was soaring toward the burning hot
sun, ready to explode. Then it hit her. Shudders of fine ecstasy filled her body as
her heat enveloped him.

Sweet wolf, he was everything she ever wanted in a man, someone who could give her
the sun and moon and love her as she did him.

She wrapped her legs around his back, locking her ankles together, urging him to fill
her with his cock, to find his own release deep within her.

He slid slowly inside her, saying her name in his sexy Scottish way, which turned
her on all the more. He drove deep, trying to satisfy the savage hunger, then pulled
out slowly. As soon as she lifted her hips to take him back inside her, he moved inside
her again, deepening the penetration, burying himself to the hilt while he kissed
her neck and throat and chin.

Her pelvis met his as they continued to rock together, the bed squeaking, their hearts
beating frantically as he pinned her against the mattress. Urging him on, she felt
his body working, his thick cock sliding into her. Pleasure. Rapture.

All of a sudden, he held still, buried deep, and then he increased the plunges, racing
to the end. Taking her with him. A starburst of delicious fulfillment shot through
her as he spilled his seed inside her, jerking with release. She sagged beneath him,
satiated as the waves of contractions moved through her, loving him and the pure joy
of being with him.

He pumped into her several more times as if milking every last drop, depositing a
wolfish treasure deep inside her, then moving around so that she could rest on top
of him on the small mattress.

For a long while, he lightly stroked her arm as they lay there, their breathing ragged,
their hearts beating wildly as they cuddled. She ran her finger over his chest. “What
are you thinking about, Cearnach?”

He leaned down and kissed her head, then wrapped his arms around her in a bear hug.
“How I should never have lost you the first time I saw you in St. Andrews. And how
I’m going to love making up so much lost time between us.”

She couldn’t agree more.

Cearnach snuggled with Elaine, nearly falling asleep on the small bed, the warm air
circulating around them. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d been happier. But he
had to get dressed before Logan returned to walk the dogs.

He again considered that bastard Rafferty and his crew. Elaine said she’d killed a
couple of them that had been guarding her, but he couldn’t stop wondering what had
become of the rest of them.

She kissed his chest and looked up at him. “What are you thinking that has you frowning
so?”

“Do you know what happened to the rest of Rafferty’s men?”

“I’d heard that some had died at sea during storms, some due to encountering ships
that had more guns, some due to hangings. Three were murdered near where I relocated.
I don’t know about the rest. If they didn’t make the newspapers, I had no way of knowing.”

“The stolen goods your uncles had hidden?” He combed his fingers through her silky
hair.

“They may be long gone by now,” she warned. “What was the merchandise that my uncles
stole from your ships?”

“Pearls, twenty hogshead barrels of sugar, gold dust, indigo, silver plate, emeralds,
silk. All very valuable back then. Some just as valuable today.”

“Oh,” she said.

“You had no idea?”

She shook her head. “I thought the joke might be on Robert if the treasure was something
perishable, like the sugar. I can just imagine what centuries-old sugar would be worth.
Are the goods so valuable now that you still want the treasure that badly?”

“Only to keep it out of Kilpatrick’s hands because
he
wants it so badly.”

“Why, after all these years, would they want the treasure? For me, I wanted to see
what my uncles thought so precious that they risked their lives to obtain it. Like
you, I agree that Robert doesn’t deserve it. So if anything, I want to keep him from
having the spoils as much as possible.”

“I understand. The MacNeill merchandise might not have been hidden in Scotland, though,”
Cearnach said. “It became my duty to learn why your uncles had sailed to St. Andrews
when I witnessed what happened to them and to see if that shed any light on where
you’d vanished to. Had they had business there or elsewhere? We assume that was just
where they docked. Beyond that, they could have had business at some other location.”

She closed her gaping mouth, and he realized she really hadn’t known what her uncles
had planned for her. Perhaps they had wanted to see their relations, ensure that one
of them would suit her as a mate, and leave her with the family to give her a chance
to be with someone other than Kelly.

“The Kilpatricks and McKinleys were in the city of St. Andrews when your uncles arrived,
as if the meeting had been planned. Had your uncles intended to rendezvous with them?
But circumstances prevented it?” he continued.

“They said nothing about what they intended to do,” she said, then studied the ceiling
as if trying to recall the voyage and everything that had been said between them.
“Yet they seemed… disquieted. I thought it was because I was aboard ship.”

“Some believe a woman on a ship can bring disaster.”

“So I’ve heard.” She cuddled against Cearnach, idly stroking his naked chest while
he brushed his fingers over her silky hair, delighting in the feel of her molded against
his body.

He took a deep breath and exhaled. “You said you thought Kelly Rafferty might have
murdered your parents. Did you ever learn the truth?”

“I believed he did. I questioned everyone I could, even his men. They told him I had
been looking into my parents’ deaths and what I suspected. He took it out on me—for
questioning his honor. I even asked him when he was in a drunken state if he’d done
it, figuring he was too inebriated to realize what he was revealing to me. He hadn’t
been drunk enough, and I paid dearly for it with a broken jaw and wrist.

“Even after word reached me that he’d died, no one would tell me the truth, as if
his ghostly person would come back to haunt them. I admit that for years I feared
he’d return and take up where he’d left off. I had nightmares about him forever, about
his brutality, both physical and emotional. I know he had my parents murdered if he
hadn’t actually done the deed himself.”

Angered that anyone could do violence against her, he caressed her arm, her body pressed
against his, wishing he could take away all of her past pain.

“The whole scenario was a little too convenient. My parents’ carriage suddenly veered
off into the river when they had been on their way to a party that night. For what
reason? No one ever knew. The carriage sank so fast that they were unable to get out.
But the horses were saved. The horses, as if they were the only thing of value and
not my parents’ lives. That’s partly why I believe he had something to do with the
carriage
accident
. The horses were safely returned home, and neither was wet.”

“My God, Elaine.” He took her hand in his and found that her fingers were ice cold.
He held her hand against his chest and rubbed it to warm her. Again he regretted having
lost her all those years ago and felt sickened that he couldn’t have protected her.
“What about the other half of the details that would lead to the loot? Isn’t it with
your suitcase or purse?” The game would be lost, but why would Robert still want Elaine
to meet with him?

“In here,” she said, tapping her head. “He won’t get it from me.”

“I wonder if the stolen goods could be hidden on one of the properties you own.”

Elaine frowned. “Wouldn’t Robert have learned of them and already investigated?”

“Possibly.”

“Then he wouldn’t need me for finding the treasure.”

She snuggled closer to Cearnach, loving the sound of his heartbeat beneath her ear
and the way he was caressing her hand. She hoped Cearnach wasn’t condemning her too
much for not standing up more to Kelly Rafferty. She’d always felt she was a caught
animal, unable to get free of his men when he was away and terrified of him when he
was home, yet she had tried to show him her alpha side.

Sometimes he loved bullying her to show she wasn’t as alpha as he. Other times he
seemed to love that she’d stand up to him and he would leave her alone.

“I’m sorry for letting you get away from me the first time,” Cearnach said, hugging
her tight.

This was where she belonged. With him. Like this.

“I ought to get up and get dressed before Logan returns,” Cearnach said, not sounding
like he wanted to let go of her.

“Yes,” she murmured.

Before they could leave the small bed, Cearnach turned his head in the direction of
the door.

“Someone’s coming,” Elaine whispered, hearing the sounds of footsteps.

“Logan,” Cearnach guessed.