Page 3 of To Wed a Highlander (A Highland Magic Collection #3)
Chapter 3
I t was because she’d kissed him, Morgana realized with a dizzy sort of exhilarated horror. In bringing him back from the brink of death, she’d bound him to her for life.
The battle began to spill back toward the bridge, Vikings and Saxons alike using the trees across the river for cover and ambush. With an animalistic noise, the Viking stood taking her with him, and began a frantic search of the ground around them.
“Put me down, and I’ll bring you your axe,” Morgana offered. “You’ll be needing it.”
The Berserker reluctantly complied, and she yet again decided to forgo touching the river with anything but her feet as she commanded the heavy axe toward them.
“Do you think you could untie me?” she ventured.
Instead, the demon-eyed warrior shocked her by snatching his weapon from the blood-soaked river, securing it to his back, and gathering her into the safety of his chest before striding through the trees with unnatural swiftness.
“Not that way!” Morgana protested, renewing her fruitless struggles against her bonds. “It’s too dangerous. We should go downriver.”
She would have called the sound that escaped his throat a scoff if the idea that a beast like him making such a sound wasn’t so ludicrous.
The Berserker clutched her tighter as they broke from the tree line and crossed the near-empty west bank battlefield. Sickened, Morgana was grateful to turn her eyes away from the massacre and bury her face against the strength of his chest. Without a doubt, this place would become a graveyard of sun-bleached bones and drifting souls for centuries.
She heard the shocked exclamations of the few Saxons who stayed behind to thrust their swords through injured Vikings or to pull their wounded from the battlefield. Peeking from the safety of his chest, Morgana was astounded to see that even on foot, they moved with the speed of a galloping horse. Arrows sliced through the air, but none of them found purchase.
Before long, she and the Berserker had traveled west over countless fields of purple meadow thistle, and over short stone hedges of farmland. He never seemed to tire, his breath remaining even against her cheek. Morgana could barely contain the gratitude she felt toward him for helping her to escape the horrors of the English-Saxon horde.
The terrain gave way to rolling emerald hills and lush valleys of grazing beasts. The hills seemed to present a challenge for her transport, and a few grunts and hitches of breath escaped him when he climbed.
Cresting a hill, they spotted a stream winding through a vale lined with trees that were short but still thick with vibrant autumn foliage. As though he read her mind, the Berserker made for the copse of trees, his gait becoming increasingly uneven. Ducking into the cover afforded by low-hanging branches, he took her to the water’s edge and set her feet on the soft mossy ground.
Morgana felt a bit unsteady, and was glad when he didn’t move away. He crowded his massive body against hers, dipping his neck toward the crown of her head, and taking deep pulls of breath against her hair.
Though she wasn’t as afraid as she knew she probably should be, Morgana didn’t feel ready to meet those fathomless obsidian eyes again just yet. Now that they’d escaped the battle, just what did this beast of muscle and magick plan to do with her?
Or— to her.
The possibilities sent a trembling thrill of fear laced with a dark excitement washing down her spine and pooling between her legs. The puzzling reaction of her body to his nearness both troubled and stimulated her.
The breath in his chest shortened and hitched, as though he tested the air like a hound scenting something delicious. The sound he made was laced with sin and need, and Morgana found herself once again pulled against the wall of his body, the black voids of his eyes conveying the most unmistakable of intentions. Against her belly, the thick column of his sex pulsed behind the layer of his trews, full and hard.
He meant to have her. To take her.
“Wait!” She would’ve held up her hands against him, were they free of the bonds, and her shoulders tensed with the need to have them back.
He stopped. Though he grunted his frustration at her, and bared teeth just a touch too sharp to be human.
Morgana felt the blood drain from her face, but she met his savage displeasure with all the courage she could muster. If he treated her roughly, she could try the sleeping spell on him, and hope it worked upon another creature of magick.
“I-I don’t know if you understand me,” she ventured, realizing he might not even know her language, let alone any verbal form of communication. “But I would ask one more thing of you.” She stepped back and turned, offering him her bound hands. “Untie me?” she tried again.
He didn’t hesitate before reaching for her wrists and pulling her leather bonds apart as though he ripped a piece of spun linen.
Morgana turned and gaped at him, rubbing one wrist, and then the other as the uncomfortable tingle of feeling rushed from her shoulders all the way down to her fingertips. “I thank you, warrior,” she sighed, testing her aching shoulders.
He made an animalistic sound of distress, his hands shackling her forearms and lifting her wrists for inspection. The skin was raw and angry, but not broken. He growled at the marks, and then lifted them to his lips. Those soft, full crescents of skin brushed against the thin flesh covering the veins of her wrists, and her pulse flared beneath the slight pressure of his mouth.
His dark beard, only long enough to be soft rather than rough, provided an entrancing contrast in sensation as his hot tongue escaped to venture over her newly sensitized flesh in a long lick.
She felt that lick elsewhere, and her lips parted on a gasp of equal parts dismay and delight.
His eyes latched onto hers, and his grip tightened. She got the impression his gaze sharpened and dulled, like he fought to maintain his focus. His breath became more labored, and he blinked as though fighting something.
Doubt lanced through her, causing her to wonder if he only toyed with his prey before devouring it. Needing to be free and regain her bearings, Morgana tugged on her wrist, but he refused to relinquish it.
“Let me go, Berserker,” she ordered in a voice much stronger than she felt.
Again, he complied, a whisper of hurt furling his brow before he suddenly crashed to his knees with a hard grunt of unmistakable pain. A pool of blood had gathered around him, and Morgana noticed the bronze of his skin had taken on a pale tinge.
Only then did she remember his leg.
“Oh no ,” she cried. Her healing breath would not have reached the spear wound in his thigh. Only his lungs. He’d run with her as his burden all this way with such a deep and painful wound.
His torso swayed, his lids fluttering as though they battled consciousness. Morgana caught him as he fell forward, and did her best to lower his heavy trunk to the ground.
“I’ll heal you,” she promised, pillowing his head upon the moss before moving to tug at his trews. The wet animal skin clung to his boulder-sized thighs as though it had claws, but she didn’t stop wrestling with them, using her powers to pull the water from the material.
In order to save his life, she needed to get him naked.