Tall, Dark and Kilted (30 page)

And he hadn’t yet even neared her sweet female heat.

He paused, his grip on her bottom tightening as he braced himself to nibble and lick his way closer. Already the scent of her hot, musky arousal rose between them, tingeing the air and absolutely intoxicating him.

Opening his eyes, he looked right at her, treating himself to the beauty of her glistening golden curls. The soft and slippery temptation of her sleek, wet need and the way she quivered beneath his stare.

He swallowed hard, his own need straining against the tightly wound tartan.

He swore, disguising it as a groan.

Almost hating himself for the need, he blotted his mind. With all his strength, willing himself not to see the lush golden triangle only a breath away from his eager tongue. Instead, he imagined the pile of bricks and stones generations after him had used to deface his beloved home.

Closing his eyes to give the image more power, he lowered his head and licked, using pure male honing instinct to run the tip of his tongue first up, then down the damp and fragrant center of her.

“Ah-h-h!” Her legs stiffened and she near shot off the little bed.
“Hardwick!”

His name on her tongue nearly broke him.

His eyes snapped open. The sight of her splayed wide—and so close before him—took his breath, leaving only a blazing fire that scalded his lungs and left him wondering why he didn’t burn to a crisp.

Then she rocked her hips, the movement bringing her nakedness higher so that her soft wetness brushed his chin and the wild tangle of her damp, musk-scented curls tickled the tip of his nose.

“Living saints!”
He jerked his head back, his restraint almost shattered.

Desire exploding, he yanked his hands from beneath her, fisting them against the chaise bed’s rich blue cushioning. Needing her desperately, he opened his mouth over her, drawing hard, sucking fiercely on the whole of her until only his need to breathe made him tear himself away.

“Oh. My. God.” She looked right at him, glaze-eyed and panting. Her soft, well-curved body glowed in the candlelight, her wide-spread legs thrashing as she sought to open herself more fully.

He groaned. Again and again, he licked her, only stopping to give her most sensitive spot the quick little circling swirls he knew she needed. Or to give himself the pleasure of dipping his tongue inside her, probing her deepest heat and letting himself drown in the hot, stirring wetness of her.

She trembled from head to toe, shivering with pleasure.

He shook with the taste of her. Her clean, tangy scent flooded his senses, making him burn. He daren’t risk the like again. As it was, his every muscle strained with the effort of squelching his arousal.

“Please.”
She twined her fingers in his hair, clutching him to her.

Somewhere, something ripped—he heard the tearing cloth—but he no longer cared. The taste and scent of her on his tongue made him wild. So he growled, something he couldn’t recall ever having done, then set to pleasing her one kiss, lick, and tongue swirl at time.

He released his fierce grip on the bed cushioning to run his hands over her breasts, plumping and squeezing, using his fingers to roll and toy with her swollen nipples. He, too, felt swollen. But he also felt the strength of the plaid wrapping holding him back, some small part of him realizing that it’d been the blue bed covering that he’d torn.

His binding, painful as it was, held firm.

His lady was unraveling.

She needed release.

So he slid his hands beneath her again, cupping her bottom and lifting her hips. “Spread your legs wider, lass.” He locked gazes with her, wanting her to see him pleasure her. “As wide as you can and keep them that way. Look on as I lick you.”

“Oh, God . . .” She bit her lip, but nodded.

“See me touch my tongue to your most sensitive place.” And he did, not taking his eyes off hers as he lowered his head and licked the tiny, pulsing bud he knew would send her sliding into ecstasy.

Again and again he circled his tongue across her special place, every few swirls easing back just a breath to lick down the length of her. He let his tongue glide and probe, then return again to flick at her little lust-spending nub.

And with each honeyed whirl, he envisioned another stranger’s brick or stone marring the face of his home.

One brick, one heated tongue swirl, as he imagined the defilers taking the brick from the pile. A new stone, another slow, lascivious lick down his lady’s cleft, tasting and relishing.

Beads of sweat began dotting his forehead, so great was the strain, but he couldn’t stop if his life—or
un
life—depended on it.

Truth was, he’d devour her till the end of time if he only could.

But before he’d gone through even half his imagined piles of bricks and stones, she arched her back and tossed her head, crying out her release.

“Agggghhhh . . .” She jerked and then fell back against the little chaise bed, gasping. “Hardwick . . .”

Seagrave . . .

A second voice called for him, too. High-pitched, female, and cacklelike, it came from the deep shadows near the undercroft’s stairwell.

Beneath the table, Leo snarled.

Hardwick’s blood chilled.

Not wanting to, but unable to do otherwise, he looked down at the little dog. Not surprisingly, the dachshund’s hackles were raised and his brown gaze was fixed in the exact direction Hardwick had suspected it would be.

Leo knew.

And, saints help him, so did he.

His gut clenching, Hardwick swiveled his head toward the stairs. But they were no longer there. And the woman—the hell hag—who’d called to him wasn’t alone.

She stood front and center in a great gaping hole where the softly lit stairwell should have risen to Dunroamin’s kitchens. Uncountable look-alike crones crowded behind her, the lot of them jostling and shoving to peer and jeer at him.

“Seagrave . . .” The first hag lifted gnarled hands to rip open her cowled black robes, the withered flesh beneath curdling Hardwick’s innards. “We’re waiting for you. . . .”

Another stepped forward. Baring her thin, pendulous breasts, she lifted them in offering. “It’s been so long since we’ve had a man,” she trilled, her lips curling in a horrid, gap-toothed smile.

Then the vision was gone.

The warning.

Leo’s growls subsided, turning slowly back into snores.

And Cilla’s hand was inching beneath his kilt, her questing fingers curling round his thighs and gliding provocatively higher.

So high, she almost reached the bottom edge of his tartan binding.

“Nae!” He jerked back, leaping off the little blue bed. “Dinna touch me. No’ now!”

He’d ne’er dreamed the creatures would come so close. That they’d manifested so fully in the same room as Cilla—even if she hadn’t seen them—frightened him more than anything ever had, in both his earth life and the long centuries of his ghostdom.

“But why?” She looked at him, her eyes luminous in the candle flame.

Her breasts were still flushed with passion, her nipples hard and thrusting.

The scent of her arousal hung heavy in the air, headier than wine.

Confusion and hurt flashed across her face and, seeing it, Hardwick flinched. He dropped back down onto the little bed and drew her into his arms, cradling her as best he could without letting himself truly
feel
her pressed against him.

A next-to-impossible feat, but not near as difficult as what he must do.

“It has naught to do with you, sweetness.” He cupped her chin, risking a soft kiss.

He prayed she’d believe him.

“What we did—what I did—was wondrous beyond telling.” He sat back, smoothed a hand down over her hair. “Were the world different or were my life, if we can call it such, other than it is, I would spend every waking hour making love to you.”

She frowned at him. “But?”

“But”—this time he let the word go—“we should ne’er have gone so far. I should have known better. There are dangers greater than I thought and I canna allow them to seep into Dunroamin more than they already have.”

“If you think I’m afraid, you’re wrong.” She slung a leg over his lap, scrambling onto his kilted thighs.

She wriggled on top of him, all hot, slippery woman. For one heart-stopping moment, he’d have sworn she lowered herself onto him. Slick, burning heat, tight and wet throbbed around him, the glory of it almost blinding. But then he felt her wetness glide across his naked thighs and he knew he’d been mistaken, his desire for her letting him imagine.

Much as he’d let her imagine his hand pleasuring her earlier.

Almost hating himself because it couldn’t be otherwise, he gritted his teeth, thinking again of bricks and stone. “It doesn’t matter how brave you are, Cilla,” he said, the words breaking his heart. “It was wrong of me to do this.”

“No-o-o!” She shook her head, looking frantic. “
Because
we’ve come this far, I refuse to let you go. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever.”

“Ach, lass.” He caught her arms when she tried to sling them around his neck. “I’ve told you of the curse. If you believe in me and”—he lifted her off his lap—“after what we just experienced, we both know that you do!”

He stood, needing distance. “That being so, you must also believe in the
spell
I’m under. I would no’ mention such matters if I did no’ respect them.”

“We can fight them together.” She pushed to her feet, coming after him. “I can—”

“I am no’ a piece of your broken china, sweetness.” He shoved a hand through his hair, almost wishing that he was. “You canna put me together again with a bit of your glue and molten silver.”

She frowned at that, her eyes brightening.

“And if I’d like to try?”

“There is nothing you can do, Cilla.” His heart twisting that it was so, he began moving around the undercroft, flicking his fingers at the conjured bits of his world until they vanished one by one.

He left the candelabrum and the little blue bed till last.

And then they, too, were gone.

His lady’s modern spotlights glared brightly down onto her worktable. And little Leo once again slept curled on the naked stone flags of the floor.

Hardwick sighed, feeling all the weight of his centuries bearing down on him.

“I must go, lass.”

“Go?” Her eyes rounded.

The way she said the word ripped him.

He took a great breath, knowing one of them needed to remain calm. “There is one chance that might help us. It’s a slim one, but I see no choice but to risk it.”

“By leaving?”

“Nae.” He shook his head slowly. “By pleading the Dark One’s mercy.”

Blanching, she clapped a hand to her cheek. “You’re going
there
? To hell?”

This time Hardwick nodded. “To the Dark One’s corner of it, aye.”

He’d go there, demand entry, and state his piece.

No matter the consequences.

“So you are not tired of women?”

The Dark One’s voice ripped through the whirling gray mist of the Great Beyond. Though yet within the walls of his massive stone temple, he spoke with authority and power, his every word deep as rumbling thunder and edged with the crackling sizzle of loosed lightning bolts.

Hardwick strode into the swirling gray, breaching the first rule of the Dark One’s inner sanctum by arriving at his own behest. As if personally affronted, the ever-present fog shimmied and thickened around him. Undaunted, he pressed on, his only concession being the hand he let hover close to the hilt of his long sword.

He could feel the Dark One’s displeasure at his boldness.

But he kept his hand where it was.

He did stop a respectable distance from the ring of thick-growing guardian trees surrounding the temple. Blessedly, there weren’t any naked beauties tied to them, bound by their hair and ropes of shimmering, unbreakable mist.

“I wait, Seagrave.” The Dark One’s voice cracked like a whip. “Are you weary of women or not?”

“I am a Highlander. We ne’er tire of women.” Hardwick spoke at last, even though the trees and the mist kept much of the temple from view. “ ’Twas the curse and its
requirements
that plagued me.”

Silence followed.

He imagined the Dark One raising a thin black eyebrow.

“Have you not found the peace you sought in your quiet Dunroamin, sequestered haven in the fair hills of Scotland’s far north?” The disembodied voice rose, booming loud enough to echo to infinity. “I see you do not carry your shield. Is it not enough to be rid of such a burden as you’ve suffered these centuries?”

“My shield is here if I need it.” Hardwick flicked his fingers and the shield appeared in his hand. “As for my burden”—he stood tall, willing to give thanks where it was due—“I am grateful it is done and by with.”

“But?”

Hardwick blinked, not trusting his ears.

For a beat, the Dark One sounded so much like Cilla that he almost laughed out loud.

Even more surprising, he thought he caught a soft chuckle coming from inside the temple.

But if he had, the Dark One’s next words ruined the image. “Then what of the peace, Seagrave? Did you find your heart’s desire at Dunroamin?”

Hardwick’s ears sharpened. “My what?”

Again he heard the soft noise that might have passed for laughter.

“Why, your desired solitude and boredom, of course.” A rustling of robes and a gust of icy wind indicated the Dark One had moved nearer. “Your days must be most empty and tedious there in the great wilds of Sutherland. . . .”

“They are anything but—as well you know!” Hardwick’s temper broke. “I have seen your minions scurrying about, watching me. I did no’ come here to dance around the fire with you. I’ve come for two boons and I’m no’ leaving until you grant them!”

“Two boons?”

The Dark One’s voice thundered through the inner sanctum, followed almost immediately by a loud noise reminiscent of Mac slapping his knee.

Around the sentrylike trees, the maze of exposed roots swiftly shifted into a troop of crouching, hissing dragons. Pushing up on their scaly, long-clawed feet, they swung black-glittering heads in Hardwick’s direction. Their angry red eyes and slashing tails left no doubt that they didn’t take kindly to boon seekers.