Page 10 of Highland Warlord (The Highland Magic #7)

She gasped as he tested the clenching, demanding muscles of her sex. She writhed against him, hitching toward the hard shaft of flesh pulsing hot beneath the cool water.

“Now.” She’d meant to command, but the word escaped against his lips sounding like a plea.

He slid into her with a slow, heavy movement, his gaze alert, concerned, and amazed. Her eyes widened as he stretched her to the limit, and he withdrew at her first grimace of discomfort, only to start again, gaining a little more ground with each careful thrust.

It wasn’t the discomfort that brought a tear to Morgana’s eye, but the infinite care and restraint the Berserker showed for her.

His every muscle wound tighter than a bowstring, his body trembling with the force of the bestial need surging through his veins.

She could feel it, was consumed by it, and yet, the predator inside him was overcome by an awe-struck tenderness, a paradoxical sense of humble concern that she didn’t need to read his emotions to find.

It shown in the brutal planes of his face, in the softness of his drugging kisses, and in the supportive, yet gentle hold as he pressed himself farther and farther into her body.

Suddenly her tense muscles released, taking him fully, and Morgana let her head fall back in pure, blissful relief.

He kissed her throat, his breath hot against the cool skin, as he slowly moved inside of her.

Gasping, she pulled and grasped at him in a wordless plea for more.

His skin was smooth, roughened in some places by hair or by chill bumps.

But he would not heed her inarticulate demands as he pushed into and pulled out of her body with infuriating slowness.

She couldn’t put into words what she needed from him, what her body demanded.

More? Faster? Harder? She wanted that, and yet, she wanted him to do exactly what he was doing.

She squirmed, arched, and clutched at him, the noises she made sounding like they were ripped from a torture victim rather than a lover.

Her soft inner muscles clenched around his invading hardness, drawing his own tortured groans from his throat, and still he kept his rhythmic thrusts slow and methodical.

Regardless of her powers over water, it was impossible to find purchase in the loch unless she had her feet on the ground.

He had complete control, and he wielded it with complete discipline.

The feel of him inside her was delicious, voluptuous even, his hard body molding against her soft one. The loch stole away any traces of blood or violence, letting the water become their haven.

Morgana smoothed her hands up the swells of her Berserker’s arms, and wound them behind his back, displacing the water between them to wrap herself around him in the most intimate of embraces.

She didn’t even know his name, but she could feel a century’s worth of loneliness contained in the way his arms held her and it seduced her like nothing else ever had.

Each stroke of his strong hips told her a little more about him. Every soft nip of his teeth on her shoulder, nuzzle of her neck, or exploring caress of her spine with long, careful fingers conveyed a piece of his soul. Morgana understood that men, like beasts, communicated in such ways.

It was easier to settle disputes with fists rather than words, and easier to claim a woman with brute strength than with poetry.

But this man could use his gifted mouth for something other than words.

In fact, it didn’t seem like the Berserker beast had the ability to vocalize anything.

And he didn’t need to, because Morgana understood everything he felt.

Every impulse he had. And while in this…

form, for lack of a better word, his entire being seemed to be focused on her. Her needs. Her safety. Her pleasure.

Still refusing to quicken his pace, he gripped her ass in his hands and angled her in such a way that his every stroke glided along nerves she wasn’t aware she possessed.

She could feel every hot inch of his cock abrading inside her with aching precision, learning what made her moan and repeating it until she cried out.

Those cries eventually became screams of unadulterated rapture.

Her second climax built within her thrust upon thrust until it eclipsed the first and climbed higher still.

Her every muscle spasmed, her jaw locked with helpless pressure, and her hands clutched at his hair, pulling it with desperate strength and eliciting a growl of delight in response.

His great, heavy body shuddered in her embrace and his groan was a soft breath against her ear that contained too much.

It was a sound of relief, pleasure, pain, and joy, the force of which sang through her as her body milked him toward release.

He swelled within her, stretching her further, his arms tightening their hold and his hand cupping the back of her head with infinite tenderness even through the most gripping surges of his endless climax.

Morgana remained locked around him like a barnacle.

Her ankles hooked at his hips and her arms around his neck while her face nuzzled into the length of the soft beard at his jaw.

This beast had changed everything. She’d always wanted to do her duty, to protect the world from evil.

But now she wanted it for a different reason.

A gift. For her Berserker. She wanted to save the world for him, and then convince him of its worth.

Resolved, she placed a kiss on his neck, nibbled at his ear, and smoothed the wet hair down his back. She didn’t care how long it took to fill his empty heart; she’d show him the meaning of life.

Even if it took a lifetime.

It was always such a concentrated effort for Bael to beat the beast back into remission. He knew Berserkers who returned to themselves the moment blood was washed away from their vision. Others could sometimes control it in the heat of battle.

Not him, though. Once his Berserker beast took over, the damnable creature wrung every last moment of violent freedom before Bael could wrestle him back into his cage of rib and flesh.

Reason and consciousness turned the Berserker’s growl of pleasure at the tiny nip on his earlobe to Bael’s growl of fury. He awoke, for lack of a better word, inside the tight flesh of a woman.

His woman.

“Nie!” Chest burning with betrayal, he jerked out of and away from her. The water resisted his movement as he threw her as far from him as he could, ignoring her shocked little squeak.

Turning from her, he hid the shudder that resounded through his bones. Little aftershocks of a release so intense his body still sang with bliss. Bael tried not to think of how warm it had been inside of her. How soft and wet and inviting.

A furious sound exploded from his chest, and he stormed through the water toward the shore trying to wipe the intoxicating taste of her from his mouth.

“Stop. Wait!”

He ignored her breathy, desperate orders, closing his heart.

The mud grabbed his foot. No, not mud, too chilly for that.

Ice. It crawled up his calves, imprisoning them to the bottom of the loch.

With a surge of strength, Bael broke through one of the ice bindings, gaining a step.

But the other one thickened with alarming speed, and held him to the ground as the free foot again became entrenched within a block of solid water.

Bael struggled as it crawled up his thighs, and encased his hips, blessedly leaving his manhood unfrozen.

The loch carried his mate to him, without her making one move to swim.

“Release me, witch!” he snarled, doing his level best not to look at the pink blotches of skin where his beard had abraded her cheek. Her neck. Even her lips were swollen. Bael slammed his eyes shut, willing the twitching heat in his cock to abate.

A hand caressed his cheek. He couldn’t be more startled if she’d decapitated him with his own axe.

He still refused to look at her, this time because he couldn’t reveal whatever strange and vulnerable emotion she’d just dredged from the black depths of his heart with her touch.

“I’m not finished with you, Berserker,” she murmured in a voice husky with pleasure and sex.

Her words, obviously meant to seduce, encased his heart with ice. She may not be finished with him now, but she would be. Eventually. He’d serve his purpose to her and she’d toss him aside like so much unwanted rubbish.

They always did.

In that moment Bael hated her. Hated the sweetness of her sex still lingering like a tempting nectar on his tongue.

Hated the memory of pleasure too intense to be real sweeping through him and his beast, simultaneously, as he spilled himself inside of her.

Hated the way his skin seemed to ache for the tenderness of her embrace.

Hated the Gods for binding their Berserker creations to a mate. The promise of heaven twice denied was the worst form of torturous hell.

“Let. Me. Go ,” he ordered in a low voice, opening his eyes, but refusing to look at her.

She pulled her hand away from his face. The water froze even stronger around his muscles, and a shudder borne of cold rippled through him.

“And if I do, what then? You’ll abandon me, your mate, here in the middle of nowhere and toddle off to get yourself killed?”

“Probably,” he clipped, knowing he lied to them both.

“You would leave me here alone and pursued by my enemies?” She sounded aghast.

Never. “Yes,” he gritted. “It’s not as though you’re helpless.” He gestured to his imprisoned lower half.

“Let me warn you, sir, that if anyone is going to abandon anyone here, I will be leaving you .” The water around him stirred with indignant ripples. “You’ll not thaw until spring, which will give you plenty of time to come to your senses.”