Released (10 page)

“It is you who must be certain, Rory,” she countered.  Her dark hair swirled around pale shoulders, blown by unearthly wind.  “For once I have hold of you, you’ll be at my mercy.”  She drifted forward, her glow intensifying.  “And when have you known me to be merciful?” 

An alien sound escaped his raw throat.  Something between a gasp and a growl.  Every muscle tensed in anticipation the instant before he lunged. 

The moment their flesh connected, Katriona became a part of him.  She coalesced into something less ethereal and more corporeal.  Her strong legs wrapped around his middle, her arms clasping him to her smooth, chilly body.  Hands plunged into his hair, fingers raking his scalp as their mouths met in an explosive melding of need. 

Her tongue met his with matching desire, sparring wetly as he staggered the few paces to his bed.  

“Have ye been taken before?” he asked, needing to know what care to use with her.  Because, though a feral beast of demanding lust was about to swallow them both, he couldn’t bring himself to cause
her
fear or pain. 

At least, not until she begged him for it. 

“Aye,” she admitted, pulling back a little, but allowing their breath to mingle.  “In moments of desperate, spinsterish loneliness, I gave myself to another.”

Rory closed his eyes, awash with equal parts relief and jealousy.  He didn’t have to worry about maidenly concerns, but he instantly hated anyone else who’d tasted of her passion. 

He tossed her toward the bed, loving the way her glow reflected like sunshine on the animal furs.  He would erase from her memory any thoughts of another, filling her with himself.

As the night sped toward inevitability, Rory felt parts of himself stripping away with his boots and kilt.  He bared to her not his body, but his soul.

Nay, perhaps it didn’t go that deep.  Or perhaps it went deeper.  All the learned artifice of titles, responsibilities and birthrights— indeed, courtesy, dignity, formality, and propriety, lay in shreds at his feet.  Kicked beneath the bed he was about to debase. 

Damn his soul, but he didn’t care.

Rory rose above her, electrified by the lightning that flashed within her eyes. 

His growl was the answering thunder as he took her lips again and settled atop her. 

Distantly, he knew what was happening.  Piece by piece, he was being disassembled by Katriona.  When she took his mouth with her tongue, he lost the title of Laird.  When she bit his lower lip, he forgot his family name.  When she scored his back with her nails, his childhood disappeared. 

He was born into this moment.  With little promises of pain sweetened by unparalleled pleasure, she ripped away his being, leaving only a creature of base instinct.  Driven solely by need and lust and hunger. 

“I must have ye,” he rasped, forcing a knee between her perfect, pale thighs.

“When have I let you have anything you wanted?”  She bared her teeth in a predatory smile before surging her hips beneath him, unsettling his balance, and using that propulsion to roll on top of him. 

Her legs wedged over his hips, grinding his cock against her sex.  There she was wet, and she was warm.  The heat of her shocked him compared to the coolness of her touch. 

“I will do the taking, for once, MacKay.”  Her hand on his chest held him prisoner beneath her.  Her small, pert breasts tantalizing his eyes as she lifted her hips.

He rose to meet her, to fill her body with him, to drive himself home.

The white hot burn of her power sliced straight to his cock and ripped a cry of panic from him.  Not because of the pain, but because he feared the gathering of release he could already feel in his belly. 

Her eyebrow rose.  “This moment is mine,” she informed him.

He lifted heavy arms and wrapped them around her ribs.  “Ye said ye’d deny me nothing,” he reminded her.

She made a soft sound and lowered her succulent mouth to suck at his earlobe.  “I lied,” she whispered before her sharp teeth bit down, eliciting a hiss from him before she drew back “It is
I
who will not be denied.”

She took him then, sheathing him in one rapacious thrust.

Rory trembled with the effort it took to let her adjust to the feel of him inside her body.  Her mouth fell open.  Her breathing labored, she held him down, flexing her powerful inner muscles around his hard flesh. 

If her magic couldn’t kill him, this just might. 

He knew it would be like this with her.  No womanly self-consciousness.  No coy batting of eyelashes and pouting of lips.  Just frank, open appreciation of the pleasure he could give her.  She gave no quarter, no mercy, and expected none in return. 

She’d accept no less than all of him. 

The hungry animal he’d become began to writhe beneath her, moaning warnings and demands.  

She put both hands on his chest, leaning all her weight upon it, her hair falling forward, blotting out every feature but those bright, Banshee eyes. 

“This is what you want?” she asked, lifting and impaling herself again. 

“
Aye
,” he gasped, his fists curling at his sides. 

She did it again.  And again.  In excruciatingly slow movements, stretching her feminine skin around him and testing the angles of his penetration with soft, surprised notes of pleasure. 

Rory had thought she’d reduced him to as witless a life form as was possible before this, but he’d been wrong.  His head lashed from side to side, sometimes lifting and straining to seek her mouth, which she held out of his reach with a throaty laugh that vibrated through her body.

Rory cursed her.  He praised her.  He said things he never thought a man should say.  And still she maintained her slow pleasuring of herself upon him, never creating enough friction.  Never allowing him to rise above a throbbing, aching, torturous desire. 

“Kat…” he groaned, sweat blooming on his skin.  “I… need…”

This time the darkness in her laugh matched his own.  “I know what you need,” she purred. 

She reared back, opening herself to his gaze and speeding her thrusts until she rode him like the wild thing he’d become.  With pure, vicious intent, her hand dropped to his hips and with the same power with which she’d taken him apart, she proceeded to recreate him. 

His first release was a transformation.  He became naught but flesh and fire, flayed open by a thousand white hot needles contracting each muscle until it seized with pleasure that surpassed the pain; and when it became too much, it subsided but only enough to allow him the option of awareness. 

And yet, Katriona stayed true to her word.  She continued her relentless assault on his body, on the organ that remained hot and hard and straight within her.  A sadistic pride shone on her face, a wildness he’d not seen before. 

She fell forward, both her hands landing on his chest, her radiant body thrusting and contracting with punishing force.

Rory opened his mouth to stop her, to tell her it was too much, that he needed to recover, but only throaty commands escaped him. 

Harder.

Faster.

Fuck me.

Own me.

She took none of his directions, or all of them.  He couldn’t tell. But the force of a release teased his nerves and he strained every muscle to find it.

“Do it again,” he begged.

Her smile chilled him.  Soothed him.  Frightened and excited him beyond capacity.

She used both hands this time. 

Rory became more than his flesh.  He became the pain.  He melded with the agony ripping through him.  It no longer held him prisoner.  It released him from any bond he’d ever submitted to, and the ones he fought.  He grasped Katriona’s hips with punishing fingers, slamming upward until their bones connected.

She squeaked in surprise, a high-pitched sound of sex and submission.  Yes.  They would both dominate each other before this night was through. 

They ground together, their sounds frenzied and unnatural as Rory forced her to find her pleasure.  Her eyes widened with surprise.  With the loss of control and a momentary trepidation of what was to come.  But then her head whipped back and she let a keen that split the sky and caused the stones of his manor to quake.  She clenched around him, pulsing with release heightened by the vestiges of her own punishing magic. 

Watching her, Rory gave himself over to his own pleasure.  His muscles jerking and quivering with the force of her magic and the strength of his release.  He emptied himself into her, drilling home with powerful thrusts until her cries became human again. 

And so did he.  Returning to himself with more clarity than he’d ever before possessed.

Katriona collapsed atop of him, her forehead resting against the base of his neck, her hair spreading about his chest and ribs in soft waves.  “I love you too,” she panted.

His heart was broken, but it sang. 

They’d always been meant for this.  And duty.  Death.  Even the Fae couldn’t keep them from the other’s arms. 

At least not tonight.

Chapter Nine

Until the pounding began on the locked chamber door, Katriona was only aware of their labored breathing scissoring through the stillness of the night.   

“Rory!”  Lorne bellowed though the heavy oak.  “That keen was heard in the Lowlands!  Are ye all right?  Are ye slain?”  A loud crash shook the rafters, as though the large man had hurled his body against the barrier.  “Rory MacKay, answer me, damn you!”

“Go away,” Rory groaned from where he lay still trapped and spent beneath her. 

“It’s my fault,” she whispered.  “They heard my scream.”  Lifting herself away from Rory’s slick, magnificent body, she ghosted to the dark corner so Lorne would be unable to see her. 

“If ye’re dead in there, I’m going to…”  Lorne paused, then the door trembled again beneath the force of his weight.  “
Rory
!”

 The Laird in question heaved himself from the bed.  “Lorne, get ye back to bed!  I’m unharmed.”

A few beats passed.  “I’d rather see for meself, if ye doona mind,” came the muffled, dour reply. 

Rory unlatched and wrenched open the door, but only wide enough to reveal his rumpled head and bare chest.  “There, do ye see?  Now go to bed, the Banshee is gone.”

A smile found Katriona as she watched the firelight play off the golden skin of his muscular backside.  It was a might paler than the rest of him, rarely seeing the sun, and for some reason, it endeared that part of his anatomy to her greatly. 

“This plague of Banshees is going to end me before it’s through,” Lorne muttered.  “I sent all the Fraser’s back to their quarters for their safety.”

“Tell them that everything’s fine.  They can go back to sleep,” Rory assured him.

“What have ye been doing in there?”  Lorne’s voice turned suspicious and Katriona smothered a giggle.  “I’d guess ye had yer intended with ye for a tup, but I just spied the lass in the hall in white as virginal as the holy mother.”

Rory sighed so hard he seemed to deflate.  “I’ve gotten little sleep tonight.”  The admission sounded like a complaint, but Katriona could hear the slight bit of mirth behind it. 

“Aye well, refresh yerself for the nuptials tomorrow.”

Rory nodded and shut the chamber door.  “I plan to.” he turned back to Katriona with his eyes full of mischief. 

“I don’t want to talk about the wedding tomorrow.”  Katriona’s thoughts escaped her before she could rein them in. 

“Nor do I.”  The gleam dulled and suddenly his heart shone through.

Katriona could see he felt all that she did.  That he saw the same endless, lonely span of years stretched before them.  Their arms full of purpose, but achingly, despairingly empty.

“Kat—” his voice broke, but he strode toward her, reaching out.  “I need—”

She went to him, her needs mirroring his.  Folding herself into his embrace, she lay her cheek on his chest and clung to his waist, listening to the sure, strong beat of his heart.  She did her best to not let her emotions spiral out of control.  The injustice of it all galled her, frustrated her.   She could drown in “only if” and “should have been.” 

She raised her face and kissed him, her breath choked off by a lump of misery and loss. 

Luckily, she didn’t need to breathe.  She was already dead.  An insurmountable barrier to a life with the man she wanted. 

Rory pulled away and cupped her face with tender, roughened hands.  “Let me make love to ye, Katriona.  We’ve enough of pain and punishment and much more yet to come by our parting.  Let me show ye with my hands and mouth how very much ye mean to me.”

And he did.  Their tears sometimes turned their kisses salty.  The slow, tender sweetness of his regard became its own kind of torture.  And he did not release her until the stars began to disappear, succumbing to the silver light of dawn. 

Rory smothered another yawn behind his hand, earning him a sharp jab with Lorne’s elbow.  “If I was yer wife, I’d kill ye for yawning through the entire ceremony and now the bride’s dance.” 

He turned to meet Lorne’s disapproving scowl.  “If ye were my wife, I’d save ye the trouble and kill myself.”