“He had two blades,” Keenan said (3 page)

Keenan, a loyal Scot down to the marrow of his bones, despised English rule as much as any other Scot. Having met the untried Prince Charles Stewart, Keenan couldn’t support the radical Jacobite cause, either. His opinion didn’t matter anyway since his laird supported the Prince.

Sworn to perform his duty to his family, Keenan needed to make certain Gerard made it home tonight and that the contents of his pocket remained intact. Keenan leaned against the trunk of a wide oak. One last onerous task to perform before heading back at dawn to his beloved Highlands. One more step closer to fulfilling his duty to the prophecy that ruled his existence.

The slow music increased in tempo before the hushed crowd.

A performance. Another drunk stumbled into him.

“Bloody hell,” he cursed beneath his breath, his eyes searching the crowd near Gerard. He should carry the man out of here before their pockets were picked clean.

The audience remained motionless, entranced. Even bawdy Gerard studied the performer in stunned silence. Perhaps the dancer had talent. Keenan looked over a sea of heads towards the fire.

A woman danced from around the leaping flames. Her hair reflected the red of the fire with such intensity that it seemed to move as a twin flame. She wove her slender arms around her body; white gloves were the only cloth to hide the perfect skin of her limbs. The loose folds of fabric swirled around her naked calves above delicate leather slippers. Silk swathed her middle, the fabric so thin and supple that it showed her softly rounded stomach as it moved like a wave under her flexible stays. The bells sitting low on her waist shook in time with the music as she snapped her hips. Her seductive, half-closed eyes scanned across the crowd but did not connect, as if she saw none of them. Her lips parted. As she whirled with the increased tempo around the fire, her full breasts rose and fell faster with her breath.

Keenan watched her sensual movements. His gaze ran the contours of her face. Her high cheekbones flushed, her translucent skin sparkled.
“Mo bhean,”
Keenan said in Gaelic. “My woman.” The words filled his mind, thrumming through him with the sound of blood rushing in his ears. “Mine,” he whispered roughly.

Keenan’s thumb rubbed against his other fingers as if feeling her softness. Her skin would feel like the unblemished hide of a doe, tender, soft. “Mo bhean,” he said again and took a step forward as if under a spell. Keenan’s eyes followed the glimpses of her long bare calves, the taut muscles flashed by as she whipped the skirts back and forth. His hands fisted against his sides, and he shook his head, pushing out the ridiculous urge to hoist her up into his arms and carry her away. As if he was entitled to take her. As if she was his.

He could not turn away. Her arms held strength as she raised them up high. She was no young girl just blooming. She was a woman. Her body was shaped and rounded for the caress of a man. She rolled her head back, causing fire-colored hair to wash all the way down below her hips. It would run silky in his rough hands and smell of fresh night air and womanly warmth. Keenan felt a deep tightening in his loins. Bloody English trews gave no room to grow.

She danced toward the edge where Gerard stood. The bastard leered at the woman and licked his salivating lips.

“Move,” Keenan demanded, his voice low and threatening as he elbowed through the dense cluster of people.

The dancer whirled away from Gerard’s clenching fingers. But it was close, too close. Keenan wouldn’t allow the bastard to touch her.

“Move aside,” Keenan repeated.

Angry glares met his chest before climbing up to his fierce expression. The crowd parted. Keenan acknowledged none of them, but kept his attention on the dancer as he came alongside Gerard.

“Mmm, she’s a luscious tart, she is,” Gerard garbled and reached out once more.

It took all of Keenan’s strength not to yank Gerard backwards. Instead, he stepped in front of him, blocking him with his body. “Get your arse out of my way, you bloody buffoon,” Gerard called from behind him.

Keenan stood right along the perimeter as the dancer moved from side to side a few paces away on the other side of the bonfire. She swung her heavy tresses again, and Keenan could almost feel them. Like sun-warmed silk.

Keenan barely noticed Gerard’s attempts to shove him aside. His entire conscious state focused entirely on the sensuous woman who pulsed like a flame, body bending as if an invisible lover swayed her. Keenan ran his hand roughly through his hair. “Insanity,” he grumbled and closed his eyes for a long second. She was just a woman, a gypsy. He opened his eyes again. A gypsy woman who didn’t look like any gypsy he’d ever seen before.

As long as the music played, Serena would continue to dance as the flame. She never tired as the serenity of the blazing ribbons of fire and the dance kept the voices, the unending thoughts of others, at bay. She heard them only as a whisper, saw them only as a blank wall surrounding her on the edge of light. Around and around she moved, watching with half seeing eyes the web of thoughts held out at the edge. She leaned against it evenly to keep the thoughts from seeping inward, into her circle.

As she rounded the fire once more, pushing against the wills of her audience, a hole in the wall appeared. Curiously she danced toward it. Reaching out with her mind, Serena leaned into the hole. Her mind fell through it, and her protective wall shattered. “No!” she whispered frantically.

Images bludgeoned her. Naked flesh, her naked flesh, pressed from behind, shoved into beds. Her mouth on the men, her lips skimming over sweaty skin.

“No,” she gasped as if for air. Quickly she flung hard at the shards of carnal images. She took a wrong step, her body flailing. She felt it, or rather didn’t feel it, the void. She fell against it, against him. She stared up at the dark, silent mountain holding her.

The man was a giant. He stood taller than any man she had known. His face glowed with the light of the fire, accenting a slash across his left cheek from his ear to his jaw. The scar accentuated the square set of his serious face. His eyes stared back into hers, they were light, but she couldn’t tell the color. They narrowed as if trying to read her. Read her? Shocked, Serena realized that she could not read him. Not at all, as if he were a hole, silence in the noise of thoughts flowing around her.

His arms steadied her as he gazed into her eyes. “Who are ye, lass?”

Serena was mesmerized. Never before had she met someone who was blank to her. Someone with whom she could not read their thoughts, their emotions.

“Lass, are ye hurt?” he asked, his sensual mouth forming the deeply accented words.

Serena glanced at his hands wrapped around her bare upper arms. Nothing, she read nothing from him. Serena snatched off her glove. His scar. Scars, chiseled into skin during battle, were extremely powerful. Even her defenses could not block the gruesome details.

Serena held her breath as she traced her finger down the length of the slightly puckered skin from his ear hidden in waves of dark hair to the rough squareness of his chin. The muscles in his jaw jumped at her touch. His lips opened on a ragged breath.

No jolt shot down through her arm and up behind her eyes. No visions of bloodstained iron, muddy grime and anguished cries of war victims. Just the void. He was the first person she had ever met whom she knew absolutely nothing about.

“What are you?” she whispered. “A demon?”

The man’s face relaxed. “Some have called me worse.”

Was he serious? She couldn’t tell. Serena had never needed to learn the subtle ways a body tells when it speaks lies or jests. She had always been able to tell even before the lie was uttered. But now, now she was lost.

“What are ye called?” he asked, releasing her. The gently rolling brogue reminded her of the mountain people up north on the edge of the sea.

“Serena.” She wondered what her name would sound like on his tongue.

“Move over, you oaf,” said a man from behind who nearly fell trying to push by the giant. “It is my turn to meet the lovely,” he slurred and leered at Serena.

“Gerard, leave the lass alone. I ken it’s time to take ye home, man,” said the ruggedly sensuous giant. He smelled of open air, pine perhaps, leather, and warmth. It was strange to engage her other senses, but she tried. There wasn’t enough time to fully study him, his smell, the deep roll of his voice, the feel of his muscles. Her other senses took much longer to fully see a person. She hadn’t realized how easy it had been to sum up a person with her powers.

Serena’s gaze moved over broad shoulders which pressed against the material of his shirt and then traveled down his chest to muscular thighs.

The one called Gerard grabbed Serena’s bare hand and slid his clammy lips across her knuckles. His tongue snaked out and licked a trail of spittle across her hand.

She gasped. Waves of darkness rolled over her; lust, fear, pain, death. The ground wobbled as her vision blurred and she fell toward the void, somehow knowing, without knowing, that the void would catch her.

The giant caught her against him. “Bloody hell, Gerard, let her go,” he said and clasped the man’s arm.

“Listen, lovey, I have more money than this Scottish boor could even dream of having. And I know you Rom ladies like a little coin,” he insinuated.

The giant finally pulled the lecherous hand from hers. Serena felt strangely numb, and pinpricks of light sparkled against the darkness. Just as her knees began to buckle, one strong arm went under them, and she was pulled up against a solid chest. Serena rested her cheek against the warmth and closed her eyes, relaxing in the strange silence that radiated from him. His warm, masculine smell enveloped her. Even without knowing him, Serena felt safe. Foolish, she thought, but kept her head against him and listened to the strong heart beat.

“Bloody damn Scot!” Gerard cursed after them as the mysterious man walked with her away from the fire toward the dark wagons.

“Put her down, now, English,” Serena heard William say, and she lifted her head against the man’s shoulder.

“I’m na English, lad.” The arms holding her tensed.

“Whatever the hell you are, put my sister down,” William demanded. Serena could feel the angry thoughts of her brother. As William brushed against her, she shivered. A slick inkiness surrounded him in her mind. Serena lifted her head and looked back at Gerard as he drank from a tankard. It had something to do with that man.

“William, this man helped me.” She wiggled slightly to let him know that she wanted down, but he remained wrapped around her. She looked up into his face. His clear eyes studied her. “I’m fine now. Please let me down.”

Slowly the giant let her slide down the length of his hard body. The friction against her torso and thighs let loose a slow flow of heat down into her stomach. She forgot to breathe as the tingle spread. “And what are you called?” she asked a bit breathlessly.

He stared a moment before speaking, as if weighing whether or not he should reveal his name.

“Keenan Maclean.” Her stomach flipped. “Keenan Maclean,” Serena repeated, slowly tasting it and trying to draw any information her senses could from his name. Pain in her chest, she must breathe. “Do you know my thoughts?” she asked softly. “What I’m thinking?”

His eyes narrowed slightly, his forehead furrowed. This was a look of confusion, wasn’t it? He shook his head slightly. “Nay. Do ye ken my thoughts?” he asked and raised an eyebrow. Was that surprise? Maybe jesting?

“No,” she said and frowned. Was he telling the truth?

“And this is troubling?” he asked. His hard eyes searched her face, but a faint grin played on his lips.

William stepped up beside her, his chest puffed outward. “Thank you, Maclean, for helping my sister. I will take care of her from here.”

The Scot ran his eyes over William. “She is yer sister?” he asked and looked pointedly between their obvious physical differences.

“Not by blood.” Serena felt the defensiveness in William. “But by every other way a man could be my brother.”

Mari walked around the edge of the wagon. She stopped in front of the Scot and threaded her hand through the crook of her daughter’s arm. To an onlooker it may have looked as if Serena held Mari up, but Serena felt the strength radiating alongside her, allowing her to lean gently into the warmth of her mother.

Mari scrutinized the man silhouetted by the campfire. She smiled pleasantly, but Serena felt her senses try to tune in to him.

The Maclean stood with his legs braced apart, his arms crossed. His eyes moved from Mari back to Serena, studying them. He wore English garb. An outer jacket of deep blue came down to his knees. His deeply muscled calves bulged sleekly in the fashionable court hose. The hilt of a short sword flashed inside his jacket against his ribs. He dressed the part of an English courtier, but his hair was his own, natural and dark, not powdered. Although handsome in the courtly attire, he looked too rugged for such finery. His physique and the scar marked him as a warrior.

“Thank you, for helping my daughter,” Mari said and paused. “Sir?” She reached out to touch his arm, waiting for him to fill in his name.

“No ‘sir,’ just Keenan Maclean.” The warrior tipped his head in response but did not smile. The firelight flickered shadows across his features. He looked fierce, dangerous, and incredibly powerful. Serena shivered.