Page 13 of Highland Warlord (The Highland Magic #7)
He looked at her askance, which she was pretty certain he’d been avoiding since their little interlude by the other loch, both mile and hours past. His eyes skittered away from her, then back.
“My cousin, Kenna, can wield fire, but not ignite it,” she mused. “How incredibly useful a Berserker would be to her.”
She’d said the wrong thing. Again. She caught the distinct chill in his eyes before he turned away from her. “I’m going to get food,” he informed her.
“But, I can call fish from the loch,” she protested.
He was gone.
Berating herself, Morgana padded to the water’s edge and crouched down, meaning to pull some fish with her magic, just in the unlikely event that Bael’s hunt was unsuccessful. The glint of the firelight danced off the still loch, and the past called to Morgana like a wayward siren.
It seemed like an invasion of privacy, somehow, but as she cupped her hand in the water and held it up to the light, she knew that what she would see in this pool would give her the key to unlocking the Berserker’s heart.
A woman with hair the color of a spring poppy wove a tapestry in a longhouse adorned with scroll work and animal furs.
She hummed to herself a lovely tune while motes of dust and wool glinted in the late-afternoon sun.
Her tranquility never faltered even as a giant warrior, his tattoos glowing from skin the color of burnished copper, ducked inside and stalked to her, hauling her to stand and pressing her against him.
“Accept me, woman,” he crooned against the hollow of her neck, pausing to press a playful kiss on her rosebud mouth. “Or must I spend another night persuading the words from your lips on sighs and screams?”
“Bael,” the woman laughed, glancing surreptitiously around the longhouse, as though checking if they were alone. “What are you doing here in the middle of a training day?”
“What do you think I’m doing?” Bael’s shoulder flexed with a movement of his hand, and the woman’s bodice was untied. “I am seducing my mate.”
She pushed at him, ineffectually. “Won’t they miss you at the temple?”
Bael paused in his passionate exploration of her clavicle to pull back and look at her. “What do they have left to teach me at the temple? I’m their fastest warrior. One of their deadliest. They would rather I focus on claiming my mate. It makes me less of a liability.”
“About that.” She reached up and pulled her bodice together fingers stuttering as she worked to retie it. “I don’t think we should be together during the day like this, someone might see.”
Bael’s dark eyes lit with suspicion, and beneath that, fear. “My Berserker accepted you as his mate last night,” he said more seriously. “Once you accept me, you’ll live in my house, sleep in my bed, bear my children. Who cares if anyone sees us? Let them stare.”
She turned back to her weave, strumming lines of wool. “Our children,” she murmured. “Won’t they be dark, like you?”
Bael crossed thick arms over his chest. “Does that matter?”
“Of course it matters. Do you want your children to be laughed at? Do you want them to be outcasts—Persians— like you are?”
“I’m a bastard, not an outcast, Heida. And I’m only half Persian.”
She didn’t look at him as she said the words that distinguished the light in his eyes. “Do you think someone… like you should be having children? Should even be mated at all?”
Bael seized her arm, forcing her to meet his dead gaze. “I am mated. To you. Or don’t you remember begging me to pledge my life to yours last night as I fucked you into oblivion?”
“I wasn’t thinking,” Heida’s fingers blithely worked on her weaving, and she lost herself to the project, effectively shutting Bael out. “And truly, you should have known that a daughter of Jarl Thorsen would never be allowed to mate with a Bastard. Berserker or no Berserker.”
Bael’s eyes widened with panic and rage. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he grit out. “I’m bound to you. For the rest of your life. There can be no others for me. Only you, until you die, or I do. Do you understand what that means?”
“I understand that you can prolong my life exponentially,” Heida postulated.
“It means that if you do not accept me—”
Placing a finger over Bael’s mouth, the woman managed to look both condescending and cold with a tinge of regret for show.
“Maybe that’s for the best. You can devote yourself to the temple, and visit me from time to time should you like to lie together.
But when I marry, it will be to someone worthy of a daughter of Thorsen.
I have heard today that Prince Bjorn of the Vale is looking for a wife, and may ask me to be his. Which would make me—”
Morgana cried out as her hands were seized in an iron grip, the water showering everywhere with the force of the movement. Bael’s lip curled into a snarl as he finished the cruel, selfish woman’s words. “A Princess .”
Sensing somehow that a struggle would only incite him further, Morgana curled her hands into fists. “I’m not like her,” she declared.
“You’re more like her than you think,” he growled. “You bound me to you against my will. You manipulate me to do what you want.”
She jerked ineffectually, trying to free herself from his unyielding grip. “I may be a Princess, but I don’t care about your parentage.”
It was clear from the look on his face that he didn’t believe her. “Your brother would. Your father would have. And you would bend to their will once they found you a lordly husband with overflowing coffers and pretty manners.”
“You obviously don’t know me very well.” Morgana rolled her eyes. “I find pretty manners boring.”
His eyes flared in the firelight. “You would rather me treat you like the barbarian I am? Because let me warn you, Princess , I doubt you could handle the demands I’d make of you.”
Impulsively, Morgana lifted to her toes, bringing her lips as close to his as she could, letting the tips of her breasts, bared by the torn dress, tease the smooth flesh of his chest. “Try me,” she challenged in a throaty whisper as her heart rate spiked in tandem with his.
She didn’t miss his intake of breath, nor could she ignore the violent response of his body to the nearness of hers.
“You’re toying with a dangerous beast,” he warned.
“I’ve already tamed the beast,” she shot back. “Now I just need to persuade the man.”
“ Never ,” Bael vowed before his lips took hers with quelling force.