Reclaimed (A Highland Historical Trilogy) (The MacKay Banshees 1-3) (6 page)

Pressure built. Her loins clenched and Katriona caught herself wondering if the thick length of his manhood would feel just as searing inside of her.

Rory’s lips strayed from hers, exploring the curve of her chin, the column of her neck.

Her hands gripped the hard, straining muscles of his shoulders as though preparing for that searing pleasure that could only be seen on the far horizon, but barreled toward her with all the awesome power and inevitability of stampeding wild horses.

“Christ.” Rory’s moaned expletive ended with a nip on the sensitive skin at the hollow of her throat. “I canna believe ye’re here with me.”

Katriona couldn’t believe it herself. Grinding beneath her, feasting on her skin was Rory MacKay. The man she’d sworn to kill. The twin of the brute who murdered her sisters. The same blood as the monster who’d violated Kylah…

Reality permeated the haze of warm passion.

The Laird who would be married in a few days’ time.

Nay. This was
wrong
. Even now, her sisters lurked among ruins with her mother in the perpetual cold. Trusting her to find a way to carry out her duty.

“Wait.” Her command came out as a groan. “I shouldn’t.”

“You will.” He thrust against her, harder this time, the echoes of pleasure growing stronger.

“
No.
” She forced a surge of magic into his shoulders and he instantly bowed beneath her.

“Katriona,” he panted. “Stop… Not yet… Ye haven’t…”

She was relentless. If she stopped now, she’d give into the violent instincts of her traitorous body to follow every moist thrum of thrilling sensation he elicited in her. She just couldn’t allow it.

“Kat…” his plea gasped from between clenched teeth, his amber eyes glowing with desperation. “I can’t…”

Waves of water sloshed over the rim of the tub as his powerful body heaved and bucked. Raw, torturous sounds ripped from deep in his throat and his eyes clenched shut as every muscle bulged and strained.

Between her legs, he pulsed hotter, larger, in the exact same rhythm his entire body did. This was different than the other times she’d jolted him. Perhaps this time, she’d succeeded in truly hurting him.

He was beautiful like this, Katriona noted almost dispassionately. He was like an animal. Stripped away of all artifice. No code of honor. No past or future. Just pure, desperate sensation coursing through a large, potent mass of sinew and flesh.

In this moment he belonged to her.

Katriona closed her eyes, a wave of pain and loss suddenly squelching her other senses. All moments were fleeting, and disappeared before their time.

With a final jerk, Rory collapsed as though released from a bond, though her power still flowed into him. Spontaneous twitches of muscle belied that he still felt pain, but his face relaxed and his head lolled against the rim of the tub.

Katriona realized she’d been jolting him long enough to kill a hundred men, at least. Releasing him, she drew back, looking down into his achingly handsome, strong features.

“Ye didna find yer pleasure,” he accused in a husky voice, chiding her softly from behind heavy lids. “Let me—”

“Nay.” Katriona wrenched herself away from him. His arms tightened as though to hold her prisoner, but she used her Banshee ability to levitate away from him, above the water. “Nay, that shouldn’t have happened.” She’d not meant to cause him such extreme pleasure; he’d found it on his own.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m here to
kill
you, not kiss you,” she snapped.

A lazy smile slanted across his lips. Katriona tried not to look at them, to remember how they felt on hers. “Well, if ye canna do one, what’s wrong with the other? I’ve wanted to do that for longer than ye can imagine.”

“With the woman you are bound to marry a few doors away?”

Rory winced, a hand coming up to rub new lines that appeared in his forehead. “All of that was set into motion before yesterday, before I knew ye were still—”

“
Alive
?” she bit out. “Because I’m not, Rory. I’m dead. And there’s nothing in our past or future
but
death.
Yours
if I have my way.” Despite what they’d just experienced, the debt of vengeance still had to be paid. The blood of her sisters called for it.

And hers still did too, didn’t it?

“But… ye canna kill me. Ye said so yerself.”

“When did you die?” She repeated her earlier question. How in the bloody hell had they strayed so far from her purpose?

“What does it matter?” He sat forward in the bath, all the remnants of pleasure drained from his features and shadows took its place.

A part of Katriona mourned the loss. Her emotions felt much like the water in the tub, displaced by Rory’s unrelenting mass until they spilled over.

“
Tell me,
” she keened, her Banshee voice splitting the air between them like a blade.

Rory cringed and held up his hands. “All right, I’ll tell ye what I think happened,” he promised.

Katriona crossed her arms, valiantly keeping her eyes on his face and away from the enticing curve of each individual stomach muscle as they flexed and glistened with his movement. She’d never forget what it had been like to have all that power beneath her. At her mercy. And that fact irritated her to no end.

“I was a lad, maybe all of sixteen or so,” Rory began. “Angus and I were boar hunting on Cape Wrath.”

Lip curling at his brother’s name, Katriona bit back a snarl.

“I’d had so much to drink the night before and it’d been the first time I’d—” Rory’s gaze snagged on hers. “We’ll I’ll say my head wasna on the task.” He shifted in the water, his eyes sharpening.

“We’d cornered the boar between a rock crevice and a sea cliff. We had to climb down to kill it. I lost my grip on a mossy hand-hold and fell some distance onto the rocks below hitting my head and breaking my arm.”

A bleak distance blanketed the observant clarity in his features. “I remember floating above it all, looking down at my brother and wondering why he was so afraid. He skidded down the rocks, screaming my name. Then, he hoisted me over his shoulder and carried me up the cliff face to the safety of the grasses.” Rory shook his head and let out a mystified breath. “I weighed at least a stone more than he, even then. It should have been impossible for him to lift me, but I’ll be buggered if he didna.” A sad, wry laugh burst from his chest, and his gentle sorrow released something inside of Katriona that reminded her of when the frozen Highland lochs thawed and broke into jagged pieces of floating ice.

“It was in that moment I truly I realized that I was watching him try to save my life, from
outside
my skin. I felt the pull of my body, but also the presence of a nether world. It terrified me, that dark unknown, and I knew I wasna done here, that I had to live. So, when Angus jumped on his horse and went for help, I decided I needed to be
inside
my body when they returned.” Rory shrugged. “That’s the last thing I remember for a full month. Maybe more. That entire summer’s a wee hazy.” He reached up and massaged the back of his scalp, perhaps finding a familiar scar beneath his thick, wet hair. “I was told that I let everyone know what I saw. Maybe I even heard that word before,
An
Dìoladh
, though I canna remember it.”

Katriona snorted. “Perhaps your head wound was worse than you thought if you remember watching the likes of Angus save your life.”

Rory’s eyes narrowed on her face. “Angus was always so angry. So incredibly cruel. But he shared a womb with me. He laughed only with
me
. He rode, hunted with, and fought beside me. He
loved
me. And regardless of what happened after… that day he saved my life.” His gaze slid to the fire. “It ended up being one of his biggest mistakes.”

“His
biggest mistakes
were viciously raping Kylah and burning my family alive. Or raiding and pillaging across the Highlands, wreaking unspeakable terrors upon those who wouldn’t cower to his demands,” Katriona hissed. “Or how about dividing our clan and making us weak, turning kin against kin until every death was a MacKay death.” Katriona advanced. “How
dare
you mourn him.”

Rory stood, proud and completely nude. His jaw locked and a storm gathered in his eyes. “I ordered his
death
, Katriona.” His low voice a dark contrast to her Banshee wails. “My own brother.
I
put a stop to his evil.” Stepping out of the bath, he reached for a plaid and wrapped it around his hips, hiding his glorious male flesh from view. “That doesna mean I doona mourn the child Angus was, or the man he could have been.”

Katriona could see the pain and shame etched into the lines around his eyes. The weight of his deeds straining the muscles of his heavy shoulders. She felt a swell of pity for him, but tried to crush it beneath a wall of ice.

“Our father he was… cruel to us both, but Angus got the worst of it. I suppose because he was the eldest and next in line to be Laird.” Rory squeezed at his forehead again, a now familiar sign he experienced unpleasant memories. “The degradation that we—the humiliation… It’s no wonder he became a creature of pain and perversion.”

“You excuse him in
my
presence?” Aghast, Katriona recoiled farther away from him.

“Not an excuse.” He held up his hand as though to ward off her anger. “I just—”

“Just
nothing.
” Katriona could feel the Banshee rage gurgle from deep inside what little soul she had left, squelching what tendrils of warmth remained from his touch. “You were subject to the same upbringing as your brother. Based on your logic, don’t you have the potential for the
same
evil?”

“Aye, it’s possible. But I
choose
to be different. I want my clan to be strong and prosperous.” Rory hit a fist to his chest, amber flames flaring in his eyes in response to the frost forming in hers. “I want the word of a MacKay to mean something in the Highlands again. And, most of all, I want to pay for my
own
sins and not the deeds of the Lairds before me!”

“You
enjoyed
the pain my magic wrought, didn’t you?” Katriona sneered. “It brought you pleasure? Is that not a perversion? Do you enjoy inflicting pain with the same excitement that you receive from it?”

Muscles heaving with fuming breaths, he advanced on her. “You
know
I would never.”

Katriona let out a dry sound that may have been called a laugh if it wasn’t so full of contempt. “I know no such thing. What other sins do you hide from the fools in our clan who love and trust you? What price will they ultimately pay for their innocent willingness to forgive?” What price would she pay? Or her sisters? And was it already too late for them all? For even as she hurled accusations at him and watched the darkness gather on his features, she yearned to be back in the warmth of the water with him, forgetting anything about the past and the future. Living, as it were, only for the next moment and the new sensation it would bring them. A part of her knew she was being unfair, but she’d rather it be so than be deceived by a MacKay Laird.

“Ye really have the audacity to lecture me about the well being of my clan?” His voice gained volume, as did the heat of his glare. “When ye let yer anger at me and mine punish the
innocent
ye seem so worried about?”

Was he really turning an accusation on
her
? “
We
were not finished living either, but the choice was ripped from us. We died innocent, and we
remain
innocent!”

“Tell that to Kevin when he’s starving without his herd. Or the village over the hills from
yer
washhouse where the milk is spoiling. I mourn for what befell ye and yer family, but yer Fae curse is spilling into the lives of Strathnaver and I’ll not have it!” Rory stalked forward and only then had Katriona realized that she’d been drifting back in the wake of his anger. “I’ll do whatever it takes to stop ye.”

Stunned, confused, and enraged, Katriona warded him off by releasing a wailing keen of such incredible pitch that the tub shattered. Rory dropped to his knees, holding the sides of his head and baring his teeth at her. She watched in despair as the water that had brought her the first touch of warmth she’d felt in as long as she could remember flooded the chamber, soiled and chilled by the stones.