Warrior's Moon (30 page)

“Aye?” he bit out.

“Have you made me into shape-changer without telling me?”

He seemed to be counting off something in his head because his lips moved silently, forming numbers in sequence. “You believe I would do that?”

“You did not tell me the truth six years ago. You did not tell me about your
conriocht
until you had to show me.”

Caelis’s entire demeanor went from barely contained annoyance to tired frustration in the blink of an eye. “Let us discuss this in your chamber.”

“I don’t think so.” Letting him into the room where the
bed was didn’t seem to be the most intelligent move she could make this night.

“Then we will not discuss it.” He turned away from her and sank back to the fur he had placed on the floor, letting his head rest against the wall and his eyes close. “Go back to bed, Shona.”

“I wasn’t sleeping and you are well aware of that fact.”

“I cannot help that.” The weary defeat in his tone confused her.

“You will not just dismiss me.”

“We cannot have this conversation in a hallway.”

He was right, of course. What had she been thinking to speak so openly about his secret in a passageway anyone might walk down? “I apologize.”

She had no doubts, however, that he would have been aware if anyone were near enough to hear their words. She might lose sight of where they were, but she did not believe he ever did.

He nodded, though his eyes remained shut, his head turned away.

“You will not look at me?” she asked, bothered much more deeply than she wanted to be by the slight.

He must have heard the quaver in her voice she’d done her best to suppress because his eyes snapped open, their blue depths fixed on her. “You are my mate.”

“And that makes it all right to ignore me?” If so, that was an aspect to mating that would not endear the practice to her at all.

“I am not ignoring you.”

“Really?” she asked mockingly.

He flipped back his kilt, revealing his sex, dark and swollen with need. “I want to be in that room with you under me, our bodies joined.”

“We need to talk, not copulate,” she said from a suddenly dry throat.

He wasn’t the only one affected by the strong pull between them. She wanted to touch and be touched, which
was exactly why she’d refused to retire to her borrowed room to talk.

“You need to go back into the bedchamber and bar the door.
Now.
” His hands were curled into fists at his sides, a fine sheen of sweat gracing his upper lip and temple.

His hardness lay heavy against his thigh, the kilt outlining it lewdly. But she was not horrified as a proper lady should be.

No, she wanted to touch it, taste the clear drop of fluid pearled on the tip.

Whatever else he was feeling, there could be no doubt that Caelis wanted her with a need so fierce it was all she could do to deny him.

“I can smell your feminine desire,
mo toilichte
. Get you gone before I do something you will rant at me for tomorrow.”

Before she could promise she would not, she hurried back into her room and slammed the door, leaning against it as she heaved deep, near-sobbing breaths. How could she go from anger to hungry desire so quickly?

“Bar it,”
he instructed in her mind.

She nodded. Yes, that was what she needed to do. But she did not move.

She could not.

The sound of his head thumping the wall made her jump, even though it was hardly loud.

“I want you,”
he said in a barely understandable tone inside her mind.

The very intimacy of the mindspeak making her ache all the more for the man she was on the brink of admitting would always be her beloved. Even that knowledge was not enough to cool her ardor.

“I am touching myself and thinking of your hand on me as I do it.”

She moaned, the image in her mind near impossible to resist.

Were the sounds of pleasure he made in her mind or was
she hearing them through the door? Fevered desire burned through her, making her thighs clench together, the moisture there so great she could not ignore it.

Could he smell her need through the barriers of stone and wood even? She turned to face the door, but made no move to drop the bar into place.

Shona leaned forward, her hands pressed into the wood.
“Tell me. Am I like you now?”

The sigh that came across their mental link filled with vexation, but was it because he was angry with her or frustrated by his sexual need?
“Nay.”

“You are telling the truth?”
She was not one of them; she could not smell a lie.

Oh.
“I cannot smell a lie.”

“Nay.”

“I am still as human as I ever was.”

“Aye.”

Relief poured through her—not that she was not Chrechte, but that he had not hidden anything else from her.

Or at least she thought he hadn’t. How would she know? So much had been withheld from her to this point.

“Are there any more secrets?”

He said something in her mind that sounded like a curse, but she did not know. It had been in that ancient language he spoke with the other Chrechte.

“What?”
she asked.

“Every word you speak increases my arousal.”

“But that’s not possible.”

The sound of his groan definitely came through the door.
“I assure you, it is.”

“You are still touching yourself.”

“Aye. But I would rather be touching you.”

There was something wrong with her. She should be scandalized, but the knowledge excited her.

“You should stop.”

“You should keep talking to me so intimately.”

“I am not saying anything of an intimate nature.”

“Every word inside my head is confirmation of our bond.”
His voice was replete with satisfaction and sexual urgency.

He was going to climax from the stimulation of their mental bond. Again, she should be appalled, but she could feel nothing but gratified by the possibility.

“Secrets,”
she said in a desperate bid to turn the tide of her own thoughts and desires.
“Are there any further secrets?”

She could feel the pain of unfulfilled desire so strongly, it felt like her own, but she knew it was his. Was this another effect of the true mate bond?

“You have worked out for yourself that I plan to return to the MacLeod and take over the clan, have you not?”

She nodded against the door, her heart contracting at the thought of Caelis fighting Uven for the right to lead the clan. Even in a marginally fair fight, there was no way that Uven could come out victorious.

But the man was a weasel and no fight with him would be without treachery.

“Shona?”
Caelis asked in her head, his voice strained.

She knew the source of that strain and did her best to ignore it.

“I am here,” she said aloud, knowing he would hear her through the door.

“I must do this thing.”

“I know.” And she did.

Uven had to be stopped, for the sake of their clan, but also for the good of all Chrechte. He was an evil man who would do untold damage if he was left to continue his current path. She was not sure how she knew that to be true, but it was a certainty inside her she could not shake.

“You have not dropped the bar.”

“No.”

“If you wish me to remain out here, do so.”
His desire reached out to her through the thick wood and found a corresponding need in her heart.

She could not admit to it, but neither could she make herself drop the thick plank of wood that would keep Caelis on the other side. She didn’t want him touching himself. She wanted to be the one giving him pleasure.

The door began to move inward and Shona stepped back, her heart in her throat.

C
aelis stepped inside, his big warrior’s body vibrating
with the desire darkening his gentian gaze and the fur he’d been resting on dangling from one big fist. “You should have barred the door, mate.”

“You should have asked me to marry you six years ago.” It was not what she’d intended to say, but she would not take the words back if she could.

They were true and he had to know it.

Tension she did not think had anything to do with his sexual need emanated off of him now. “Aye.”

“I would have said yes then.”

He winced. “I ken.”

Saints above, where was she going with this? Why was she saying these things? Her physical craving for him had not diminished in the least and yet her mouth spewed forth with things completely unrelated.

Or were they?

“I am leaving for Balmoral Island tomorrow.” She made the decision as the words left her mouth.

“You are rejecting me now as I did you then?” he asked, the ever present hunger warring with anger in his blue gaze.

Shona shook her head decisively. “You may come with us and make your intentions known to my family.”

“You know I have other commitments.”

She shrugged. Yes, she knew. Just like six years ago, Caelis had duties and intentions that superseded his promises to her.

“You will not be moved on this?”

“No.” She’d compromised for this man before, and her life had been all the more unhappy for it.

Once again, his jaw appeared hewn from rock. “You know I must return to the MacLeod.”

“And
you
are fully aware that is the last thing I want to do.” Part of her knew that she might well end up living among her former clan again, but she would not do so on a whim. Nor would she return there as anything less than his fully legal wife.

“I cannot refuse my destiny. I am
conriocht
. That means I am protector for my people.”

“And you believe protecting the Chrechte requires you to take over as laird of Clan MacLeod.”

“I know it does. It has been foreseen.”

Was she supposed to be impressed? She was. A little. Mayhap even a great deal more than a little, but that did not mean she would dismiss what she knew needed to happen to give a mating between them a foundation she could believe in.

“Do you know if too much or too little sand and loose rock is mixed into the soil of a motte, over time it will sink and the keep along with it?” she asked him.

He stared at her as if she’d gone mad, but she could not allow that to bother her.

“I know this because the baron told me once, rather gleefully, as he recounted the collapse of another baron’s keep. The entire structure, which had taken four entire years to build, was utterly destroyed.”

“Your marriage to the old man is something we would both do well to forget.”

“That is not possible.”

“Aye, it is.”

“No.”

He frowned down at her, clearly wanting to argue further.

She forestalled him.

“I hated every moment the baron touched me, but I love my daughter. I can no more forget her origins than I could Eadan’s.”

And if Caelis could not tolerate that, then there was truly no hope of a future between them. No matter what his Chrechte law said about sacred mates.

“She is mine,” Caelis claimed fiercely. “Just as you are, if you were not too stubborn to admit it.”

“You cannot undo her parentage just by willing it to be so.” Any more than he could simply will Shona to be his mated wife.

“He is dead. I am alive. I am her father, now and forever.” Utter conviction rang in his voice.

She shook her head in disbelief. “You’re a very possessive man.”

“I was not possessive enough six years ago, but I cannot regret that fact now.”

“You can’t?” Shona asked, shocked and more than a little dismayed.

“Marjory is meant to be ours, however she came to be. Can you regret your daughter?”

He’d asked her this once before.

She understood his motive better for doing so now. “Never.”

“Aye.”

“Making a family takes more than just claiming everyone belongs together.” It required more than mere legal documentation as well.

“Aye, it takes some cooperation on your part.”

And his, if he would but acknowledge it. “When a motte
sinks, the wall joints loosen and eventually, the entire keep will come down.”

“We are back to mottes again?”

“Listen to me, Caelis. I will not be the keep that crashes under the burden of my sinking foundation.”

“You are not a building,” he said, exasperation thickly lacing each word.

“No, but our mating is like the keep that seeks to protect those who live within it.”

“You admit we are mates.”

“I have never denied it.” Not once.

He spun away, slamming his open palm against the thick stone wall. “How can our mating protect our family like this fabled keep you go on about when you live on Balmoral Island and I live with the MacLeod? Keeps do not straddle two holdings, much less an entire sea.”