Dark Embrace (14 page)

He breathed hard, panting. “Dinna touch me, Brianna,” he said.

And she felt him clearly.
He was afraid of her touch—and desperate for her to touch him, too.

Of course he was. Had any woman touched him with true love and affection in sixty-six years? Brie cupped his jaw and stroked her thumb along the hard ridge there. He cried out, but instead of pulling away, his thick, dark lashes fanned out.

His desire stabbed through her. Inhaling, Brie covered the slab of one pectoral muscle with her other hand. She ran her hand across his spectacular chest. He moaned, arching back. His desperation consumed her, thick with explosive heat and desire. This man was starving for love and affection, she thought.

“God,” he whispered.

Brie trembled, aching impossibly now, and stood on tiptoe, kissing each nipple slowly in turn. He cried out, jerking back. “Cease.”

Their gazes clashed, his wide with alarm.

He was going to vanish into reality.
Instantly she put her arms around him and held him, hard, letting her love cloak them both.

He did not vanish. His desire soared.

“It's all right,” she whispered.

His pleasure spiraled wildly as she held him. She thought she might shatter soon, but she stepped back, caught his hand and kissed it with the love consuming her. Then she brought it to her breast.

His eyes held hers, shimmering oddly.

“It's all right,” she said again, meaning it.

His hand closed slowly, tentatively, on her breast. Then his palm scraped her hard nipple and swept up over her shoulder. “I must go.” He turned to leave, and he was massively aroused.

She caught his hand, aware that his tension was about to break.

He slowly faced her.

Brie took his face in her hands again, heard him gasp, “No,” and ignored him. She pressed her mouth to his.

He went still, lips closed, as she began kissing him with all the love in her heart. His mouth softened. She licked the seam of his lips and kissed him again, and he finally opened for her.

Brie kissed him deeply, and Aidan moaned long and low, tragically. It was the sound of a man who had been lost and alone for a lifetime.

Suddenly his hands caught her shoulders and he claimed the kiss, deep and wet, openmouthed and frantic.

He kissed her as if he had never kissed a woman before, and he cried out.

Brie felt him come to that mighty precipice just as he turned away from her. She wrapped her arms around him from behind, aware of him battling the explosive pressure. She couldn't stand it, either, she thought. Then he gasped, seizing her hands and clenching them tightly against his abdomen. And he exploded.

Brie felt as if she was soaring through the stars, stunned and holding him tightly. She whirled, shocked by such empathy, as he gasped again and again until he finally calmed and sagged in her arms. Breathing hard, her body still on fire, she felt his body become still.

He had not been able to withstand her touch, not when it was infused with her love.

He was suddenly facing her, flushing. “'Tis but a dream.”

And she sensed what he intended. “Don't leave me now, like this.”

His hard blue gaze held hers. “I am sorry.” He vanished.

Brie cried out furiously, in dismay. And instead of the pale walls of her loft, she stared into the dark shadows of the night.

Her pulse was pounding, and she was feverishly hot and aching everywhere. Owls hooted. The wind sighed. Brie realized she lay in a small bed beneath heavy wool blankets and a fur. She blinked. She had been dreaming.

It had been so real.

It had been so strange.

In that instant she recalled every moment of the dream encounter. Uncomfortable and alarmed, she sat up abruptly, glancing toward the open tent flap.

Aidan was silhouetted in the shadows. It was obvious he was staring at her.

Had that been a dream or not? “Aidan?” she whispered roughly.

He turned and walked away.

She leapt up and ran after him. He had paused by a small fire, and he turned to watch her approach. Across the darkness, their eyes met.

Brie slowed. She should be furious at him for watching her while she slept and for watching her while she had a very private dream.
If
he had been watching her dream. Because the dream remained incredibly vivid and terribly strange. He hadn't made love to her, but she had made love to him, in a way. He had been
desperate
for her touch and her love.

She knew damn well that dreams often held secrets that were meant to be revealed or were harbingers of the truth. When had he last been loved, really loved, by any woman?

“Ye willna recall the dream in the morning,” he said harshly.

“Don't you dare enchant me,” Brie cried furiously.

“Go back to sleep.” He walked away.

Brie turned back to the tent and was suddenly confused. What was she doing, wandering about the Highland camp in the middle of the night? Had she just spoken to Aidan, and if so, about what?

Had she been dreaming?

 

T
HEIR ARMIES MET AT FIRST LIGHT
. It was midday now. Initially both bowmen and artillery had fired upon their opposing foot soldiers, mowing down the marching front ranks as the two armies inexorably approached one another. But the fighting had become vicious at last, and it was the kind of fighting Highlanders lived for: hand-to-hand and sword-to-sword combat.

The sun was high, and it beat the bloody earth. Vultures soared. Wolves waited. Dead archers and gunners, Highlanders, slain knights and their chargers littered the fields. Only a few dozen men remained, all locked in mortal combat. Aidan finished a royal soldier, welding his sword right through the man's armor. As the man went down, Aidan turned.

The flame-haired warrior coming at him was a giant with an ax and sword, and a mace and spiked ball. The rival was a head taller than Aidan and his black eyes were soulless, which savagely pleased Aidan. He wasn't ready to retire from the field—oh, no.

Aidan laughed at the warrior, lifting his broadsword.

The giant grinned back and began twirling the ball on the chain.

Aidan lifted his double-edged broadsword higher as the giant said softly, “Mayhap you should have taken power last night, instead of pleasure from a virgin in her dreams.”

Aidan froze as the spiked ball spun at him. And his sword gave way, for his arm could not break the surprising velocity of the blow. He gasped as the skin was flayed from wrist to elbow, but he somehow kept a grasp on the huge sword.
Who was this?

The ball swung back at his chest.

Too late, Aidan roared, putting his entire might against it, using the sword again. The ball struck hard on the blade and skidded across it, digging into flesh and bone before bouncing away. The pain surprised Aidan and brought him to his knees.

“If you prefer virgins, my son, it can be arranged.”

Aidan looked up at the giant, and there was no mistaking his eyes. No longer black, they were blue.
They were his father's eyes.

Aidan lurched upward as the giant swung his mace at his head.

He caught the blow with his shoulder this time, grunting.
The giant had his father's strength because Moray had possessed him—as no deamhan had ever possessed a human before.

There was no time to understand how the giant could look at him with Moray's cold eyes. And before Aidan could defend the next blow, the spiked ball ripped across his chest.

Almost blinded by the pain, he finally struck at the giant, cutting a swath from his throat to his navel.

The huge monster towered there, reeling as if in a wind. “Ian lives,” the giant said softly, and he viciously struck the mace at Aidan's knees.

His kneecaps seemed to shatter as he went down hard on his chest and face.

The giant said again, “Hallo, a Aidan,” and there was no mistaking his father's voice now.

There was no mistaking his father's mocking laughter, either.

On the ground, Aidan roared in fury and swung his broadsword across the giant's ankles, severing his feet from his legs.

The giant grunted, staring down at Aidan in surprise, and then began to topple over.

Aidan dropped his broadsword, his short sword and his dagger in his hands. He stabbed his dagger into the giant's heart, but his father laughed at him again. The sound did not come from the giant, and Aidan realized his father's power was independent of this body. He drew his shortsword across the giant's neck, panting. And he stood staggering over the body, watching the giant's head rolling across the rocky ground.

More laughter sounded, but from above.

Aidan stiffened, still reeling. His knees seemed useless, and he had to fight to stand. He looked toward the cruel, taunting laughter, and saw a black energy spiraling into the sky. Aidan had just beheaded an inconsequential being—and his father's power remained intact.

Moray had returned. But what was he, now?

 

B
RIE PACED OUTSIDE OF
A
IDAN'S TENT
. It was growing dark. Most of the men had returned from the battlefield after noon, all bloodied, many wounded, but the majority of them pleased, clearly having enjoyed a bloody battle to the death.

Where was Aidan?

She had been vomiting all afternoon. The brutality of the battle, the cruelty and death, swirled over her, through her, making her dizzy and faint. So much violence was on the plain below that she couldn't block it out, nor could she isolate what was happening to Aidan. Her empathy was a curse she might not survive. She thought she had felt every blow delivered that day.

God, where was he?

She began to shake with the depth of her fear for him. It would be dusk soon. She had expected some kind of brief engagement, but the sound of medieval artillery—the explosions made by mortars, the clash of swords, the screams of horses—had awoken her at dawn.

Now the camp was raucous, the men celebrating. Fires were roaring, instruments like flutes and fiddles were playing. Women laughed, the men were drunk and loud and some were actually fornicating out in the open with the camp women, who seemed to be enjoying it.

Brie ran up to almost every soldier who passed, begging for word on Aidan. Every reply was the same. “He still fights, lady.”

But she knew the battle was over, because she couldn't hear swords clashing, or gunfire, or cannons. And suddenly she couldn't stand upright.

Brie collapsed, screaming, the skin on her arm burning as if it had been torn off. And then another terrible lash seemed to flay her chest and belly, leaving it raw and burning, as if on fire. She clutched her abdomen. Looking down she expected to see blood, but nothing was there except the tunic she'd belted over her modern clothes.

Aidan was injured.

And then her knees seemed to break into a million pieces. She went down, moaning in agony. Suddenly Will was beside her. “Lady? What passes? Is it poison?” he cried.

She was briefly blinded by the pain. After all she had withstood that day, she was incapable of movement, incapable of making a sound. Brie stared up at Will. Aidan had just been terribly wounded. Her vision blurred with tears.

“Dinna move,” Will said.

Brie closed her eyes, finally breathing. She did not know how long she lay there, but at some point she opened her eyes, meeting a blue-black night sky that was winking with stars. The moon was nearly full tonight, and it was starkly white. The torment was fading.

Will sat beside her and cried, “Thank Jesus.”

Brie sat up, aching in every fiber of her being.
What had happened to him?
“Is Aidan back?”

Will's face tightened.

Brie covered her face with her hands—and then she heard hoofbeats.

Will stood, surprised. “'Tis the black stud. He bears our master!”

Brie staggered upright and saw the black stallion cantering toward them, Aidan astride. She cried out, rushing forward, overcome with relief.

But her relief was short-lived. The horse halted, and Aidan stared down at her. She took one look at his blood-soaked tunic, then at his crimson left arm, and became faint. “Can you get down?” How utterly calm she sounded.

“Aye.” He slid from the horse as if he had a sprained ankle, nothing more.

She now saw his swollen, black-and-purple knees. “Oh, God,” she gasped.

“I'm fine,” he said. He handed Will the horse and strode to the tent, not even limping. The flap closed behind him.