Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 02] (28 page)

Pleased when some of the worry left her brow, Iain shifted his position and lifted her legs, settling them over his shoulders. His own need now an acute, pounding ache, he looked straight into the glory of her, savoring her beauty.
He inhaled deeply of her rousing female scent, pulled in great, greedy gulps of her essence. “Jesu God, but you undo me,” he said, his deep voice husky with arousal.
Consumed with the need to possess her, he lowered his head until his lips hovered just above her fragrant heat. His breath coming hot and ragged, he parted her lush curls and touched his tongue to her, flicking its tip oh-solightly up and down the soft crevice between her thighs.
“I shall ne’er let you go,” he breathed against her silken warmth. He laved her now, dragged his tongue again and again through her pleasure-dampened sweetness.
“I do not want you to let me go, and ’tis you who are beautiful,” Madeline whispered, stretching her fingers through the heavy spill of his hair, holding his dark head close to her center. “Ne’er have I— . . . oh!”
She cried out, arching upward, pressing hard against him as he circled his tongue around and over a maddeningly sensitive spot near the top of her woman’s mound.
“So sweet, so sweet,” he whispered against her pulsing flesh. He licked her slick, female heat with long, wide-tongued strokes, drawing his tongue over her with exquisite, bone-melting slowness.
“Sweet, aye,” Madeline gasped, looking down, incredibly roused by the sight of him between her thighs, by what he was doing to her down there, the way he seemed to revel in drawing in her scent, her taste.
Wave after wave of sheerest tingling pleasure streamed through her, and her entire body quivered with desire. Ne’er had she known such languid deliciousness, ne’er had her heart felt more full. Her very soul, for he touched her that deeply.
Her need began to lift and soar, her body tensing, stretching for something bright and beautiful spinning ever tighter deep inside the part of her he was kissing. A wild pulsing began at her very center, an astonishing intensity about to shatter, the pleasure of it saturating her.
“Heart of my heart, I adore you,” Iain vowed, rubbing his cheek against the tender flesh of her inner thigh. He rose then, stretching himself atop her, his weight on his arms. Easing her thighs wider, he settled himself between them, let his hardness rest against her as he reached down between them to keep stroking her soft, female heat.
He slipped his fingers into her damp curls, returned to the tight and throbbing nub there, stroking gently with concentrated, circling strokes. “Ne’er doubt that I love you,” he murmured, his passion almost breaking when she parted her legs farther, opening them full wide beneath him. Her soft whimpers, and the gentle rocking of her hips, inviting him to make her truly his.
“And I you,” she gasped, reaching between them, circling her fingers around his hardness, guiding him to her. “I believe I have since I first felt you deep within my heart. Mayhap even before. Aye, I shall love you until the end of all my days.”
“Our days and beyond, my minx,” Iain corrected, at last lowering himself into her heat, pausing only for a heartbeat at the thin barrier of her virtue. “Naught-shall e’er-part-us,” he half groaned the words as he pushed inch by slow inch into her honeyed depths, losing himself in the satiny tightness of her. His heart split wide, cracking full open to absorb everything she was to him and he to her.
Everything they were to each other.
And always had been.
“You-are-glorious,” he managed, waves of molten pleasure crashing over him as he moved inside her, rocking gently, and taking her with him to the most wondrous place he’d e’er been.
Unable to withhold himself a moment longer, he drew back, then plunged full inside her, capturing her cry with his lips, kissing her deeply as their hearts and bodies came together in a blinding burst of brilliant, colored need.
She arched high against him, her fingers digging into his shoulders, clutching at him in fullest abandon, her glory in their union stealing any discomfort and banishing any last doubts about the rightness of their joining, as he cried out her name and collapsed against her, fully spent and wholly hers.
This night.
And for all time to come.
Regardless of the morrow and its fast-approaching shadows.
Chapter Sixteen
N
OT LONG AFTER FIRST LIGHT, on a dark and dreary morning, Iain and those who’d accompanied him drew rein in the shelter of the wooded uplands some distance behind Abercairn Castle. Cloud-cast and gray, the day’s imminent threat of rain and drifting sheets of fine, whitish mist created a welcome cloak to shield their number from any observant guardsmen patrolling Abercairn’s impressive curtain walls.
Heavily battlemented, Abercairn’s strength loomed atop a distant ridge, and even at this early hour, the castle appeared anything but dark and sleeping. Pale, flickering light shone in many of the stronghold’s narrow rectangular arrow slits, and glimmered in some of the larger, upper floor windows. Lit beacons blazed on the parapets, their orange-glowing flames eerie in the gray-washed and watery morning, and even at this distance, men could be seen moving about on the wall-walks.
Rolling pastureland dotted with whin and broom bushes stretched between their hiding place and the castle walls, but much to Iain’s relief, the only thing stirring about on the ground ahead appeared to be a few fat and slow-moving bullocks.
Turning in his saddle, he cast his gaze over the little band of men who’d accompanied him. Gavin MacFie and approximately twenty of his kinsmen dashed about hacking at the gorse bushes, collecting great bundles of the prickly branches and tossing each armful into three ruined cothouses set conveniently near the banks of a fast-running burn.
The firing of the heather-thatched cottages would provide a fine smoke screen, yet were too far from the castle walls for any stray flying sparks to catch fire and damage Madeline’s home. The rushing burn would provide water to douse flames once Abercairn had been taken.
A feat only possible if Beardie and Douglas succeeded in getting MacNab to send a good-sized host of his best fighting men.
His lady, who unquestionably ought not have sat on a horse so soon after the night’s sweet diversions, and her friend, Nella, the lass who apparently had e’er claimed to receive ghostly visitations, and now, thanks be to him, truly had, made up his only other sets of hands until the arrival of the MacNabs.
The ladies helped without complaint, patiently piling bundles of cut gorse and heather, and even gathering whatever rusted farming or domestic implements they found that could be clashed together to cause a din.
Appearing eager to make a ruckus of her own, Madeline crossed the short distance from the three little cothouses to where Iain sat his garron.
He leapt down from his saddle, bracing himself for another bout of the ongoing discrepancy of views they’d been exchanging ever since she’d learned she wasn’t to ride with him to the castle’s main gates.
Reaching him, she planted fisted hands against her hips. “The old smithy’s is—”
“—The best place for you and Nella to await the outcome,” Iain finished for her. He began counting off the reasons the two women ought best wait at the smithy.
“The forge is abandoned and hasn’t been used in years,” he cited its first advantage. “You said yourself no one has neared it in years. Its location outside the curtain walls and the village will enable you and Nella to make a swift and undetected escape if aught runs amiss.”
If aught went amiss, she’d just as soon not escape.
Ignoring any such possibility, she turned to Nella. “What say you?” she asked, only to regret the bother the instant she saw Nella’s annoyingly
practical
eyes.
“I think as little of two women standing about in the midst of a castle siege as I did of us traipsing across the land disguised as postulants,” Nella said in a mild and reasonable tone as annoying as her calm expression.
“Ahhh . . . a woman of my own heart,” Iain declared, nodding. He folded his arms. “I, too, think little of disguises, my lady.”
Madeline whirled to face him. “You were disguised as a pilgrim!” she reminded him. “And a poor one, too. Ne’er have I seen a man less likely—”
He shrugged. “But, lass, I
was
on a pilgrimage of sorts . . . doing penance, as you ken. And the pilgrim disguise was for the protection of the priceless relic I must yet deliver to Dunkeld. You can rest assured I was not fond of donning that fool garb.”
Unable to dispute his reasoning, Madeline shot a frustrated glance at Nella. “I suppose you think we should lock ourselves in a musty old forge that is very likely swimming with bats and vermin?”
“Better the dust of steel shavings and the reek of mold than take a fire arrow in the back or to accidentally get in the way of a fast-arcing blade, my lady,” Nella said, with a shrug and a grating little smile.
“No man, friend or foe, would harm a lady,” Madeline objected.
Iain rested a hand on her shoulder, squeezed lightly. “You seemed to feel otherwise when Silver Leg’s henchmen were coming your way in the common room of the Shepherd’s Rest, my sweet.” He dropped a kiss on the top of her head to soften words he knew would vex her.
“Ho, Iain!” Gavin rode up, appearing suddenly out of the drifting mist. He led the women’s two mares behind him, and a great smile split his red-bearded countenance. “MacNab’s men have been spotted! A great host of the bastards and riding fast. They ought be here forthwith.”
Iain threw back his head and whooped. “All the saints!” he roared, “I knew MacNab would come through.” Digging in the leather purse hanging from his belt, he pulled out a length of thin rawhide and, reaching behind him, used it to tie back his long hair.
Madeline blanched.
He didn’t want his thick, waist-length tresses to get caught in the path of an enemy’s swinging blade.
Or have his unbound locks hamper him in the wielding of his own steel.
Swallowing hard, she watched a transformation take place. Her shadow man, her magnificent and tender Master of the Highlands, was becoming a
warrior
before her very eyes.
A hard man, ready to spill blood for what he believed in, and willing to shed his own for the same cause if need be.
She glanced at the two garrons, considered defying his orders about the forge. But she would heed his wishes and ride with Nella to the ancient and out-of-use smithy.
And, as he’d bid her, she would stay there until he came for her.
Or sent Gavin in his stead . . . a possibility she didn’t want to consider.
Before she could think further, the fast-approaching thunder of iron-shod hooves on dew-drenched and stony turf split the damp air. From the sound of it, a great many horsed men moving fast. Gusty wind carried the rapid jingle of harnesses and the rhythmic creak of saddle leather, too.
But most joyous of all was an indistinct humming . . . the low swell of men’s excited voices.
The MacNabs.
It was time.
Only Madeline wasn’t ready, especially if she had to wait in a musty old rotting hulk of a forge. Even so, her breath caught in her throat and hope swelled inside her as the sounds of the nearing horsemen grew louder.
Truth to tell, she didn’t really care about being spirited away to wait out the outcome. Nor did she harbor any earnest doubts in that regard. Deep within herself, she knew Iain MacLean would emerge unscathed, regardless of what happened.
Shadow men lived on in dreams, and Masters of the Highlands were too bold to be bested.
Nay, ’twas her father’s fate that frightened her.
Frail old men did die.
And having to face the finality of accepting his passing a
second
time, now that she’d let a wee spark of hope rekindle in her breast, would be agony beyond bearing.
She
wanted
to believe Iain MacLean, wanted to trust that mayhap her father had been spared. Learning otherwise would be like having her soul ripped out.
Iain turned back to her then, and her heart slammed against her ribs. Something about him was different. A more stunning change than she would have imagined, even if she couldn’t see what subtle nuance made the difference.
His dark eyes softening, he took her by the arms and drew her close. “I thought you had faith in me?” His deep voice, smooth and calm, spilled the familiar golden warmth all through her and took away some of the chill icing her veins.
“Did I mistake? You look so doubtful.” He cocked his head, studied her. “Have you so little confidence in my sword arm?”
Madeline lifted her chin, forced a little smile. “I do have faith in you,” she said, not wanting him to think she doubted him. “’Tis my father’s fate that worries me.”
“He, too, will be found alive. I know it within me.” Taking her hand, he pressed the flat of her palm against his heart.
Releasing her, he took her face a bit roughly between his hands and slanted his mouth over hers in a deep, searing kiss, pulling away from her much too quickly.
Madeline gasped, almost sagging against him. Her entire body trembled. She tried to cling to him, but before she could even blink, he’d hoisted her onto the garron mare’s back.
He did the same for Nella . . . only without the kiss, then he gave their mounts a rough slap on the rump. “Off with you, now! And be of great heart, lassies. All will be well!”
Whether from the stinging slap or his resounding order, the two garrons surged forward, spurring away into the shadows of the surrounding birchwoods and bracken.
“Godspeed!” Madeline thought she heard him—or someone else with a deep, rich-timbred voice call after them, but it wasn’t until a short while later when she and Nella reined in before the abandoned forge, a semi-ruinous open-sided structure with an ancient stone walled enclosure behind it, the old smithy’s cottage, that she realized what it was that had been so strikingly different about Iain MacLean.
Every last shadow had vanished from his eyes.
The MacNab had outdone himself.
On and on his warriors came, a great host of bold, high-spirited Highlanders approaching at fullest speed. A bloodthirsty lot when raised to battle, they appeared over the crest of the rolling, heathery slopes, a veritable panoply of weapons sheathed at their sides, hanging down their backs, or tucked wherever a place to secure a dirk or mace or battle-ax could be found.
As they rode forward, the impressive array of metal glinted dully in the early morning’s gray light and their ruddy complexions and wild-maned reddish hair hinted at fiery tempers and mean-swinging sword arms.