Haunting Warrior (14 page)

“This is not our agreement,” Tiarnan said angrily, his voice lifted to be heard above the commotion. “She’s a king’s daughter, a king’s sister. She’s a princess and she should be treated with respect, not like a cow yer going to milk.”

“I think it will be her highness who is milking this eve,” Cathán said. “And she better be at it quickly or I’ll know why.”

The words filled Saraid with a dread that went deeper than her soul. This was her fate. She’d known it, had accepted it. But she had not understood how it would feel to be standing on this cusp. A choice that was no choice, Colleen of the Ballagh had said, but it was only now, in this moment that Saraid fully understood.

The Bloodletter watched her warily, not daring to reach for her again. But soon he would, and she could do naught but let him.

The breath she released hurt as it burned its way from her lungs to her throat to the tight, sooty air around them. She looked down at the lacings on her dress and slowly began to untie them. Knowing modesty was a fool’s luxury, she wished she could turn her back to him all the same. But he would see her bared soon enough, and she was determined to show no fear. Gently she tugged the lacings free, noting her trembling fingers as if they belonged to someone else. She bit down on her lip, cursing the weakness that held her in its grip. She was Saraid of the Favored Lands, Saraid, daughter of Bain. A chieftain’s daughter and she would not shame herself. Not this day.

The lacings at last were free and with a feeling of surrendering a piece of herself that once lost could never be regained, she pulled her overdress off and stood in her thin white shift. Mustering her waning courage she lifted her gaze and stared defiantly into her husband’s face, a man she hated with every part of her soul.

The Bloodletter said nothing, but he caught his breath—a quick, sharp sound that danced over Saraid’s taut nerves. She shuddered, at once humiliated and strangely exhilarated by his light gaze stroking her body. It drifted from her eyes to her heaving chest, lingered on the shadow between her breasts, slid down to her ribs, brushed past her waist to settle at her hips and the shadowy outline of her legs.

Colleen of the Ballagh had said a man would come. A man in the guise of another. Saraid held tight to that thought, imagining him bursting through the long house doors, rescuing her from this fate. Was that why the old woman had appeared to her? To give Saraid heart at this time of darkness?

Praying it was so, Saraid vowed to keep fear and doubt from her heart. She would not give the Bloodletter that power. Still, her mouth was dry as she forced her shaky legs to the table, where she found wine in the jug and poured it. Her hand trembled so badly, she sloshed it as she lifted the cup and drained the bitter-sweet contents.

Behind her, the Bloodletter shifted suddenly, a restless noise that alarmed her. Had he removed his clothes? Would she find him stripped, engorged, and waiting to destroy any romantic illusions she might have? Well he would be disappointed, would he not? Because Saraid knew him to be a barbarian and she expected nothing less than agony and degradation at his hands.

As she turned, again something caught the corner of her eye. For an instant she thought once more there were two men waiting and her heart jumped in fear. But as she looked fully, there was only the Bloodletter looming large and fierce in the center of the room.

He had, indeed, removed some of his clothing. He stood stripped from the waist up, muscled and hard from the corded sinew of his neck to the solid strength of his broad shoulders. A light dusting of golden hair covered the hard bulges of his chest, leading down over a rigid, flat abdomen before disappearing into his trews. His was the body of a warrior, honed like steel, rippling with strength. She’d never seen a Roman, but she imagined Ruairi the Bloodletter would have fit among their ranks.

A long, nasty scar rippled the flesh of his ribs. Another puckered like silk at his shoulder, battle wounds survived.

She shuddered, slopping more of the wine onto the thrushes covering the floor.

The Bloodletter took an aggressive step forward, purpose darkening his eyes as well as something else. Was it anger? She’d done nothing to incite it, but then the Bloodletter rarely required provocation for his cruelty. She’d seen it enough times.

He reached for her before she could move back, and she braced herself not to cringe, not to anger him beyond whatever rage it was she saw simmering in his eyes. He took her wine, drained the cup, then tossed it aside.

“Have y’ bewitched me?” he demanded, his voice hoarse.

Saraid looked into his eyes and saw torment in them and a part of her swelled with the knowledge that she was not powerless after all. Let him think her a witch. Let him fear her magic.

“Aye, I have.”

He jerked as if stung and took a staggering step back.

Cathán’s voice boomed from the other side of the curtain, ridicule heavy in his tone. “ ’Tis much too quiet in there. Do you need me to warm her up, then? It would be a sacrifice to leave my good neighbors, but I’m willing to help if I must.”

Though spoken lightly, Saraid knew it was the last warning they would get. The threat spurred her to action and she advanced, taking the Bloodletter’s face in her hands, becoming the provoker herself, stunning him as she pressed her mouth to his before he could guess what she intended. The shock of his lips against her own nearly turned her to stone, but if she did not consummate with the Bloodletter, she had no illusions that Cathán Half-Beard would restrain himself from finishing the deed.

She moved her hands from his face to his hair, surprised by the soft feel of it against her fingers. It seemed everything about this man should be hard, and the silky strands were a contradiction that shook her. His neck was solid with muscle, the skin cool and smooth to the heat of her touch, but she was not fooled. There was nothing about Ruairi the Bloodletter that did not burn.

As if of their own volition, his hands circled her waist, their span nearly wide enough to meet thumb to finger. She drew him forward, feeling his shock, his resistance, his defeat. Even as he made to pull away, his hands were sliding down the slope of her spine in a warm and possessive stroke. Her legs bumped the bed and then they were both falling onto it, and once again she thought she saw two men where there was only one. But her sharp gasp was quelled by his heavy weight bearing her down into the soft ticking. There was only the Bloodletter crushing her beneath him.

She wanted to shift, to put some space between them, though she knew it was pointless. There was not time when at any moment Cathán might barge past the curtain and demand his chance. Perhaps that was Cathán’s motive for taunting them—for certainly he had one. Pressure them with his mockery . . . intimidate his son to the point where he could not perform his husband’s duties . . . or did he hope Saraid would deny the Bloodletter his conjugal rights because of the crude circumstances? For all his jibes to the contrary, did he want the union to be declared unlawful because she refused to bed her husband?

The outcome would be severe if he could prove such a thing. Women had power by their own rights, but a husband or wife who refused to couple with their partner was scorned by both Christian and pagan laws. How else would children be conceived? It was a sin to deny the act.

And how better to prove that this crime had been committed than with an audience eagerly awaiting the outcome? Cathán would cry foul, claim his offer of peace had been rejected along with his son, and the people would believe him. They would not stand in the way when he moved again to destroy them.

The Bloodletter shifted his weight, and she took a deep and grateful gulp of air. He propped an arm on either side of her and rose up to look into her face. The muscles of his arms and shoulders bunched with strength and suppressed power. She lowered her lashes so he wouldn’t see into her eyes, but he took his weight on his elbows and cupped her face in his palms, forcing her to meet his steady gaze. She saw what she expected in the glittering blue. Cruelty, rage, simmering resentment that he could barely contain.

But his hands gentled even as his eyes did not, and his fingers moved softly over her cheek and down to her throat. She sensed warring desires within him—one wanted to hurt her, the other to caress. His touch was tender, but beneath it was a violence she could taste.

He made a deep sound—not a growl, not a moan, but something of each—and his mouth followed his stroking fingers. He’d confused her and now she lay trapped in the snarl of his conflict. He touched her as if he’d waited his whole life to feel the softness of her skin, as if he hated her for the weakness it showed in him. Not for the first time since she’d looked upon his face this day, she had a feeling of duality. There were two men behind those blue, blue eyes, unaware of each other. She felt them converge with each caress, and the feeling went beyond superstition, beyond fear, and beyond comprehension.

He didn’t ask questions, didn’t hesitate. His fingers were in her hair, pulling it free from the braids, scattering flowers around them. Stroking it, fanning it like a halo. Then he was wrapping it around his hand, holding her captive as he covered her mouth with his own. His kiss was fierce, consuming. He used teeth and tongue, wielding intimacy like he would a weapon. There was no resisting; there was no surrender.

And beneath the onslaught she felt that yearning again, that need that he emitted like the hum of a bee. It lodged within her, finding some piece of herself that understood it when the rest of her could not. It caressed and coaxed and lured her to respond.

Her fingers spread against his back, her legs twining with his as she moved without thought, tempering his assault. His lips softened, enticed where they had punished. He kissed and nibbled, teasing her with his tongue until she opened for him, laying herself bare to his gentle onslaught. His hands moved over her as if he knew exactly where to touch, how to touch. As if he’d lain with her a hundred times before. His fingers were beneath her shift, inching it up until he pulled it over her head, leaving her stripped and vulnerable. Quickly he shed the remainder of his own clothing and then pressed his body to hers.

She made a soft sound in her throat that embarrassed her, but it came unbidden and unstoppable. They lay chest to chest, her belly flat against the hardened slope of his, his hips falling between her legs, making her want to lift them and wrap them around him, making her want to shift and wiggle and open her thighs as she had her lips. She’d prepared herself for violence and degradation. This seduction disarmed her completely.

She pulled back and stared into his face, and once again there was the shadow of another in his eyes, and suddenly Colleen’s words took on a new meaning.

Who are you?
she thought, for surely what she saw in his eyes could not be Ruairi the Bloodletter’s soul.

He shifted, moving his mouth down her throat to her breasts, dragging his fingertips gently over her ribs, past the softness of her belly to touch her with bold and demanding strokes. He found her wet and ready and pulled back to look into her eyes with something akin to pride. She was scared and trembling and furious and wanting.

“Who are y’?” he whispered the question she’d not had the courage to ask him herself.

Was it she who’d been bewitched?

“I am yer wife,” she said, and the words seemed to fill the oily smoke in the air.

The simple truth started a war behind the Bloodletter’s eyes, a host of contradictory reactions. He gripped her face, all tenderness gone. He could snap her neck without any effort and the both of them knew it.

He drove into her then, without warning, without care. With brutal force, he pushed himself deep inside her. She threw back her head and let loose a sharp cry at the invasion, at the betrayal of the harsh violation. Her eyes filled with tears she could not control.

He stilled as the sound of her pain washed over him. Buried deep within her, he hung his head so she could not see his face.

“I did not mean . . .” he whispered.

What he did not mean was unclear. But again, his touch was gentle, apologetic as he brushed his lips against the hammering pulse at her throat.

Gooseflesh broke out on his shoulders and arms as he held himself motionless in the strange union of tenderness and cruelty. He looked at her then, pulling her into the swirling color of his eyes like a bird to the sky.

“God’s blood,” he groaned, dropping his chin as he sucked in a shaky breath. Her own chest heaved with the effort to breathe as slowly her muscles expanded to accommodate him, this foreigner, this pillaging warrior.

Carefully, little by little, he began to move. He eased his hips forward, watching her for a sign to stop, to go, to give, to take. How she knew was a mystery, but somehow in this strange act they’d reached an understanding. He felt enormous, alien, and yet fitted in a way that mystified her.

She held his gaze as he pushed in and out of her, seeding a bond she neither understood nor accepted. She could no more fight it than ignore it. She felt his tension increase and an answering tightness in herself and then he shifted, bringing a hand down between them to stroke her as he slid in and out. It felt like something inside her exploded, something bright and hard and glittering. And then he was tensing and driving into her and she heard him make a sound so deep in his chest that it felt like it came from his very soul. He buried his face in her shoulder, his breath a burst of warm air, his scent, hot and clean, enveloping her.

Slowly he relaxed his grip on her, easing back to stare into her eyes. There was grim satisfaction in his face and something else behind it that she could not interpret. But there was no time for that, because as he stilled, propped up above her, a sudden movement came from behind the huge crest that covered the wall opposite the bed.