Page 15 of To Wed a Highlander (A Highland Magic Collection #3)

Chapter 3

H eat raced through Kenna’s veins, settling as a familiar and insistent throb between her legs. If her own reaction to the very idea of lying with this man was so powerful, she could only imagine how the act would feel.

The Berserker made a low sound, half warning, and half disbelief. Then another sound permeated the air, this one a rip, and the rest of her soiled dress slid to the floor.

“Nay,” she whispered softly, trying to think beyond the haze of pain and lust and heat now permeating the chill left by the rainstorm. “’Tis you who should disrobe.” She gestured to his layers of woven linen and leather armor belted and strapped with sharp-looking studs.

He didn’t speak. Not once. And Kenna got the impression that it was impossible for him to do so in this form. But the look he gave her as he tore through the buckles of his armor—not stopping to undo them—could have steamed the rainwater from her skin.

She’d done this before, shared her passions with a man, taken his sex, his essence, to feed her power, but never with a man this potent. Never with one this lethal.

The skin of her back felt shredded and swollen and it protested movement, but as the beast in front of her peeled his armor from his body, the pain faded beneath a surge of heat.

His light hair, darkened with rain, streamed glittering rivulets of water into the deep tracks of muscle he uncovered. He hissed great lung-fulls of air through his bared teeth, his abysmal gaze devouring the sight of her bared, chilly flesh. His long, water-spiked lashes lowered, those midnight eyes snagging on her nipples, puckered tight with the cold.

His muscles were not only large, but long, stretching over his bones as though holding together a frame as big and potent as his took a great deal of strength.

Unable to help herself, Kenna reached for him, enjoying the way his pectoral jumped and flinched beneath her hand as though even the lightest touch caused him pleasure. His skin was warm, burning, despite the chilly water, and the heat drew her forward. His armor hit the floor with a loud noise as she pressed her body against his hardness. The tension radiating from his body was hungry, predatory.

He bent to drag his mouth against the curve of her neck, drinking in the salt and rainwater he found there. The noise he made could have come from the throat of a wolf. A growl of need. A gentle threat.

Hurry , it warned, I’ll not be leashed for long .

Right , Kenna thought. To business .

But this wasn’t business, this wasn’t just duty and magick and the cost of regaining her druid power. In the past, she’d been able to separate the fire of her passions from those few men she’d shared it with. Her emotions remained locked behind cold stone, and only her flesh and theirs were used as a conduit of pleasure, heat, and magick.

That would be nigh impossible tonight. Not only was her flesh raw and bruised, but her soul seemed to be, as well. And the fact that this big and lethal warrior—a deities’ instrument of death—was now lavishing her skin with his tongue instead of spilling her blood was beginning to mean more with each passing moment they spent alone. She felt… exceptional, cherished somehow, by this man whose name and intent remained unknown. Indeed, his sense of honor was very much in question.

And she was about to take him into her body.

Kenna drew in a deep breath as excitement and lust flared beneath her misgivings. She’d just need to make sure to keep him out of her heart.

The delectable movement of his lips against her throat became more insistent, demanding, his teeth finding places to nip and gnaw that left her breathless. His hands bypassed her back to find her ass, pulling her in tighter against him to thrust the incomprehensibly sized erection burning from behind his trews against her belly.

The sound he made this time was no longer a gentle threat, but a savage one. And then his trews were gone, and Kenna knew they weren’t going to make it to her small bed.

Suddenly she had difficulty breathing, the air in her cramped, spare room turned so hot, it scorched her lungs. To say he was magnificent would be as ridiculous as calling the Highland seascape beautiful. It applied, of course, but any of the descriptions she tried to conjure sounded trite and inadequate.

The effect was eerily similar. That rare moment a vision overwhelmed the eyes with its incredible, almost impossible perfection. When beauty stole the breath and quieted the mind, making one wish they could experience the sight with all the senses they possessed.

Laying both her hands on his powerful shoulders, she pressed him down. The thought of this hard, lethal beast on his knees before her caused a rush of desire to expel from between her thighs. She was slick and ready for him.

And well he knew it.

Allowing the gentle pressure of her hands to guide him down, he trailed his hot mouth over her rain-soaked skin, pausing to fill his hands with her breasts, to press a hot lick and a gentle tug against her nipple before leaving them with obvious reluctance. Before he could nuzzle at her sex, as it looked as though he wanted to do, Kenna sank down with him, splitting her legs over his hips and pushing him to the floor.

The heat radiating from him was alternately incredible and unbearable. His hips scalded her thighs. His chest burned her hands. His cock branded her belly as she slid it between their bodies.

Kenna almost felt sorry for what she was about to do to him. She felt guilty for taking power from a man so indescribably powerful.

But what choice had he left her?

Above that, how could she pass a man like this, with a body like his, without sampling the pleasure he could give her, and the bliss she could give him back?

They needed each other. The refugee and the marauder. The future held something for them, something they had to attain together. Kenna knew this with the certainty that she knew all things. And the exhilaration of the knowledge drove her to the brink of sanity.

“Lie still, Berserker,” she rasped, lust lowering her voice by entire octaves. “Do not thrust.” She had to control this, to make sure she knew exactly how much power she siphoned from him. Not too little, and not too much. The former would be useless, the latter, dangerous.

To them both.

His cold eyes speared her, reminding her he was not one to take orders, and yet he complied.

“You, who are so used to taking from others will know what it is to be taken,” she drawled, caressing the heat of his flesh with the slickness of hers. “And you will be a willing victim of the flames. I will use what I take from you to save you and your men.”

His lips parted as he began to pant, his big hands curled against her thighs in silent but insistent demand. She didn’t think he heard her, or maybe he didn’t mark her words, so intent was he on her breasts. Long, rough fingers ventured higher, seeking intimate flesh, but Kenna didn’t wait long enough to let him find her sex.

Her back ached and stung as she rose above him. So to block out the pain, she focused on the feel of his hot, blunt sex stretching her slick passage as she impaled herself inch by agonizing inch on his cock.

His bold fingers didn’t stop their questing just because she’d willed them to. Instead, they found the thin skin at the juncture of her thighs, so delicate and sensitive, and then reached even higher, to part the satin folds of her penetrated body.

She jerked with the shock of pleasure that thrilled through her at his touch. The muscles of her sex tightened with the movement, pulling a strangled sound from the Berserker’s throat.

If she’d thought she’d been aroused before, she’d been lying to herself.

As the pad of his thumb brushed the sensitive, swelling nub of sensation, her sex drenched his with an embarrassment of slick moisture as she encompassed the pulsating column of his manhood with delicious difficulty.

Her body stretched to accommodate him, the pain a sharp burn that dulled to a pleasurable ache.

Goddess, but she’d never been so aroused. Her body never so eager to take a man. All of him.

His eyes were no longer cold, but burned with black fire as he bared his teeth in a hiss of pleasure. Though his gaze was lost, his clever fingers knew exactly what they were doing, drawing the moisture of her body toward the tight nub of sensation above where their bodies joined.

It took two lifts of her thighs and a few flicks of his thumb before Kenna was seized by a climax so quelling and unexpected all she could do was jerk and shudder on top of his cock. Her every movement was involuntary, her every breath a sob, as frantic pleasure coiled and broke upon her in relentless waves.

Somewhere, a dim part of her noted with some tingles and itches, a stitch and a burn, her back knitted itself together. The rent flesh and welts cauterized and mended until it was as though they had never been.

It had begun. She drew on him like a vampire, feeding on his passion, his need, and his brutality. His magick. It wasn’t like her Druid magick. It was different, more of an ability, really, but it fed her like a gluttonous royal, filling the cracks and fissures in her body and soul.

The orgasm didn’t ebb until she was red-faced and dazed with shock and repletion.

Beneath her, black-eyed and perfect, a sheen of moisture gave the Berserker an almost metallic patina in the fading light. The evening drew shadows along the paths carved by thick veins beneath his skin, gilding his frame with strength and vitality. As though he could feel her healing, he lifted himself until he could test the new, smooth skin of her back.

With a victorious snarl, he pulled her more tightly down over him, angling up in a demanding thrust.

How foolish she’d been to think he’d let her have control.

Before she could form a coherent thought, she was beneath him. He drew her knees up and thrust forward in strong, angled strokes.

Kenna panicked for a moment, feeling the force of his power surge within her. She was losing control of this quickly, but somehow, the delicious feel of his masculine weight pressing her hot flesh into the cold, clean floor seduced her as nothing else had.

He didn’t hold back, didn’t take care, but pounded all his desire, need, and passion into her body with fast, driving command.

Kenna didn’t want him to stop. Couldn’t allow him to continue. It was too much, too soon. He would give her more of his power than he could stand. She would take from him what he was not willing to part with.

“I can’t,” she whimpered, then cried out, pushing up against him with her hips and her arms. Her intimate flesh gripped at his cock in spasms that she fought, but they came upon her with hot, crushing inevitability.

He gave no quarter, his rhythm increasing. His brows drew together as though he was in pain, his eyes disappearing behind his lids. His muscles trembled, and still he took her.

And she took him.

She had to stop this, before she took everything from him.

Digging her foot into the floor, she bucked up with her hips and twisted, using the strength she’d siphoned. Rolling, she gained the top once again, barely breaking their rhythm as the sensations igniting in her core and flaring in her limbs burst into an inferno.

She groaned as her very soul caught fire and the searing bliss singed its way along her nerves like she’d never before experienced, or even imagined.

He shuddered beneath her, his hips arching, his hands grasping and finding nothing. His roar that of a beast facing immolation and giving into it. One last time, he shoved deep and held there.

She could feel the heat of his seed deep against her womb. The burn of his power deep within her soul.

And right as they culminated into a rush so intense it could have lit the night ablaze, a fire burst to life in the fireplace. The first to have warmed her since she’d arrived at the abbey.

* * *

Niall shuddered with a pleasure so deep, it seemed to brand itself into his bones, leaving the runic markings of magick and fate in their wake. But that pleasure replaced power and vigor that he could feel ebbing away the longer he stayed locked within the velvet sweetness of the witche’s body.

Lifting arms that felt as though they were bound to the floor by invisible cords, he reached to push at the succubus riding him, but couldn’t summon the strength. His mind screamed that he was in danger, but his body demanded he stay right where he was. That the sheath of her body now was his home.

Mine .

The witch’s skin glowed in the firelight like the gossamer wings of a dragonfly. Creamy and iridescent with tiny veins visible at the places where her skin was most delicate and thin. Her wrists, the undersides of those lush breasts, the insides of her thighs, her neck.

A neck that should be encircled by his hands while he demanded that she return his—his—whatever it was she’d stolen from him that had weakened him so. Honey had replaced the blood in his veins. His bones had turned iron, anchoring his heavy body to the ground. His thoughts were sluggish and disturbingly…untroubled.

Her pulsating sex was a sweet prison, pulling the life from him, caging his Berserker beast, and turning him into a willing participant in his own death.

And what a glorious way to die , he thought watching the firelight set her hair aflame with embers of russet and copper as she gazed down at him through eyes drugged with pleasure and power.

His power. Power she’d stolen from him.

A sharp noise against the door and a familiar voice permeated the silken haze of Niall’s thoughts. “Niall! Niall Halvard Thorsen, are you behind this door?” Ingmar’s panicked question drove the witch off of his body with a gasp of pure feminine shock and mortification.

Niall wanted to call out to his general, but he couldn’t seem to find his voice in order to do so.

The witch threw her tiny form against the door as another great succession of knocks caused the hinges and lock to tremble.

“Niall, you berserk bastard, answer me, or I’m coming in there, and you’ll have to live with the guilt if you eat me alive,” Ingmar called. “Is that what you want? To have to explain to my mother how you killed me? Who’s going to talk you off the ledge for killing that poor nun if I die?”

As soon as Niall could move someone was going to die. If only to prove to himself that he could still spill blood.

“Please,” the witch called to Ingmar against the door, pressing her back to it in a way that made her breasts jiggle enticingly with each knock. “Please, leave us. He’ll be down directly, I promise.”

A speechless pause ticked off several seconds, which was a first since Niall could remember in Ingmar’s intrepid company. The door rattled with another explosive knock. “Niall, if you want me to leave threateningly growl once, if you need me to break this door down and skewer a witch, threateningly growl twice.”

The woman’s amber eyes widened and she bit her lip.

Ingmar was used to Niall’s Berserker, and had come up with a few strange tricks with which to stay alive around him, and even communicate upon occasion.

A genius, his wily general.

Niall opened his mouth to give a command, but only a pleasured groan escaped.

“Very well,” came the disgruntled reply. “But let it be known that I’m going downstairs to stir malcontent among the men.” Niall could hear every word as Ingmar retreated down the hall, even through a closed door and walls of stone. “Fucking orders us to touch nary a nun, and then has his way with the first pair of soft tits he sees. That’ll hold as much weight with the lads as a fart in a whirlwind.”

Who in the name of the All Father would interpret a weak groan as a threatening growl? A fucking imbecile, his general.

Chest depressing on what appeared to be a relieved sigh, the witch padded toward him with a regal grace very few naked women could attain. Kneeling at his shoulder, she pressed a hand to his forehead and then his cheeks. They were warm against his skin.

Mine , his beast purred.

If he didn’t kill her first.

“I’m sorry,” she crooned to him in a musical, lilting voice that reminded him of sex and mead. “I’ve always known I could take too much. I could have killed you, actually, but it’s never happened before. Not with anyone.”

Unable to tell if he was angrier about their dangerous sex, or that she’d had such amazing dangerous sex with others, Niall glared his fury at her.

“I know, I know,” she soothed. “But just lie still for a few minutes and focus on breathing. Your strength will begin to return to you, and after some water and a hearty meal, you’ll be back to your barbaric, pillaging self soon enough.”

She had the breasts of a much larger woman, and they swayed and bobbed on her petite frame in such a way that made it impossible to keep any focus on his anger. With his sex still slick and aching with the aftermath of their unparalleled joining, and strange sense of well-being vibrating beneath the weakness in his limbs, Niall tried to breathe. She certainly didn’t make it easy for him, with her bosoms brushing against his arm as she toured his jaw with those soft, warm hands.

Niall had the absurd thought that, in his experience, women tended to have chilly limbs. Her warmth was a pleasant change. A welcome one.

“I know you didn’t realize what you were doing for me, but regardless, I want to thank you for…” She paused, blinked soft copper lashes against cheekbones kissed by a few freckles, and sucked her soft lower lip into her mouth before continuing. “I really don’t have much of a gift for healing,” she continued conversationally. “That is my cousin Morgana’s realm of magick, but you are a very powerful man. I’ve never felt so…” A slight peach tinged her pale skin in a shade so pretty, Niall had to look away. “So alive . So full of vigor and potency. It’s rather intoxicating.”

Not as intoxicating as her fucking nipples rasping intimately against his shoulder as she reached to move a lock of his still-damp hair off his forehead. Though his body felt incapable of movement, his cock twitched and grew, ready to be inside her again.

Shit.

She noticed his growing arousal, her blush deepening, and knelt back, the sight not doing much to diminish his lust. “You should be able to speak now… Niall. That is your name, is it not?”

He liked his name on her lips. He wanted to make her moan it. He wanted her to use it while begging him in erotic supplication.

And he would, before they were through with each other.

The thought seemed to fill his muscles with a renewed energy, and he was able to lift his hands and push himself into a sitting position with her help.

“They whipped you, because you are a witch?” he asked carefully, testing the rasp of his voice.

“Aye,” she confirmed, sadness touching her eyes.

“How?” he queried, trying to make sense of madness. “With power such as yours, you could subjugate them. You could make them respect you. Fear you. Obey you. You could visit harsh and torturous vengeance on them, bend them to your will.”

She smiled as though he’d said something amusing, which irked him more than a little. “I could do that, I suppose,” she acknowledged. “But I choose to forgive them, instead.”

He turned and spit into the hearth, the sizzle hissing his disregard. “Forgiveness is a Christian concept. Are not our Gods more ancient and ruthless?”

“Yours certainly are,” she murmured diplomatically. “But my Gods prefer different ways. Ways in which you leave people their own will, and bend the elements to yours, instead. You see, respect is not fear. Respect grows from love and trust. As does power.”

Niall snorted, shaking the cobwebs from his head. “Woman’s logic,” he scoffed.

In a huff, the witch stood and pulled a shift from a small trunk at the foot of a bed that wouldn’t have held the weight of his armor, let alone him.

“That logic comes from a man. A powerful man. One whom I both love and respect .”

Once Niall found the name of this man, he would slaughter him. But first, he’d have to regain the use of his legs. Once a shift hid the lovely nun’s perplexing breasts, Niall was able to think more clearly, or was it the effects of her siphoning magick wearing off?

“What did you do to me, woman?” he demanded, holding a hand to his head.

She glided to the fire in that graceful, regal way of hers, which made her tiny self seem much taller, though her copper brows drew together with sincere regret.

“The explanation is a little complicated, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll tell you I’m a fire Druid, and fire needs fuel. Fuel which you amply provided.” Her eyes drifted across the expanse of his body in a slow, appreciative caress before she reached to her small fireplace mantle for an earthenware bowl. Murmuring words he didn’t understand, she tossed a handful of what appeared to be dried herbs onto the fire, causing it to flare treacherously.

“Kenna,” a dominant voice crackled through the flames. The fire seemed to distort it, but couldn’t hide the thick brogue of the Highland people. “Do ye realize what ye’ve done? Do ye have any idea the danger ye’re in?”

“I have every idea, Malcolm,” the witch, Kenna, said patiently. “’Tis why I can risk contacting you now.”

“The Grimoire, is it safe?” the disembodied voice demanded.

“Of course,” the witch assured him. “It is hidden away.”

Niall couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He wasn’t a man prone to fits of panic, and he was also used to idea of magicks, but this was bordering on the fantastical. Before he could demand an explanation, the powerful shape of a man’s torso and head appeared in the flames, congealing into a shadow, and then an actual specter of flesh and blood. Where Niall was broad and bulging, this man was lean and raw-boned. Yet his druid robes hung from powerful shoulders, and a short russet beard accentuated an angular jaw clenched as though he’d worn his teeth down to nubs.

A crown encircled his brow, one shaped like the broken antlers of the sacred elk.

Every man from Nordland to Rome knew who this man was.

Malcom de Moray, King of the Picts and Warden of the Highland peoples.

“What about ye?” Malcom’s green eyes, shrewd to the point of pitiless, traveled Kenna’s body with what might have been concern on features less cruel. “Are ye hurt?”

Niall had to suppress a growl. Was this the witch’s man? Was he going to have to hunt him down and kill him in order to claim his mate? Breath escaped him as the full extent of his situation nearly knocked him back flat. He’d gone into Berserkergang around this woman, lay with her, and not tried to kill her. Not even once. That could only mean one thing.

Mine.

“I was hurt,” she evaded. “But… someone helped me to heal.”

Niall actually bristled. He did a bit more than just fucking heal her.

“How did ye get the power to do so in a nunnery—Ye know what, I doona want those details,” the Druid King snorted in disgust. “But I demand an explanation for why ye just used enough magick to tickle the spine of every Druid from here to the shores of Inverness. And the reason had better be a good one, Kenna de Moray, for ye may have doomed us all.”

Niall had a mind to rip the crown from the Pictish King’s head and make him eat it.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Kenna remained calm in the face of the shrewd man’s royal ire. “But now that it’s done, I’ll be needing you and Morgana to come to my aid.”

“If the fault isna yers, who’s is it?” the angry king demanded.

Biting her lip, Kenna stepped aside, allowing Malcolm a full view of Niall’s hunched and naked body. “It’s his,” she said, as matter-of-factly as though she was telling her King about the weather. “And he and his men are going to help us fix it.”