Page 4 of To Wed a Highlander (A Highland Magic Collection #3)

Chapter 4

B ael returned to consciousness with the aimless drift of a feather upon a breeze. To fall was inevitable, but the journey was unhurried. Small perceptions permeated his senses one at a time. His nose twitched at the smell of earth and moss and clean water. Though, something else drifted upon his breath. The aroma of ripe fruit and exotic spices. Cinnamon, maybe. He filled his lungs to the brim, catching the unmistakable scent of a woman.

A maiden of Valhalla, perhaps? Or a Valkyrie come to lead him to his eternal glory in the halls of Freya?

His hearing returned second, pricking to the tranquil sound of a stream and the wind rustling through trees and across blades of summer grass. A soft song harmonized with the soothing sounds, the voice achingly sweet and dripping with innocence. Bael didn’t recognize any of the words, but then he had not yet learned the language of angels.

Awareness of his body came next. He was on his back, pillowed by soft ground and moss. His skin bared and roughened by a gentle, yet chilly breeze. Though his thoughts were sluggish and muddled, he felt clean and vital and—powerful. Coursing with more magick than his usual fledgling abilities, he felt as though he could run until he ran out of earth.

Opening his eyes, he found a blanket of stars winking through a canopy of trees. Night in Valhalla? Did the Gods sleep? Or did they use the darkness as his body obviously wanted to now? For fucking.

His dark vision was unchanged in this place, honed to shades and shadows, but just as sharp as in the daytime. A moon hung heavy in the sky and painted the night an eerie blue.

How could this be?

He turned toward the sound of the brook and the chanting sing-song voice, and knew he must be dead, because his heart stalled and his breath froze for long enough to kill any man.

The bathing woman knelt in the shallow brook, her back to him, cupping water and splashing it over her shoulders. Her skin looked soft and luminous in the moonlight, and Bael’s eyes couldn’t help but follow the glistening rivulets as they ran down the column of her spine. She was the culmination of every warrior’s desire. Nothing but soft curves and pale skin. The opposite of his own utilitarian body, her every lush dip and round flare was meant to please, entice and satisfy.

Bael stood. His mouth flooded and his sex pulsed impossibly harder, fuller, and more insistent than ever before in his life.

At last. This bathing siren was his for the taking. His reward for a century of loneliness, war and bloodshed. He’d done everything asked of him by the Berserker elders, even those younger than himself. He’d endured the censure and disgust of those who cursed his tainted blood, and stood as a dark stain among a horde of fair-skinned, light-eyed warriors.

There was a myth among the Berserker temple, one that promised the most fearsome, and most valiant warriors would be led into Valhalla by one of Freya’s handmaidens. Before being welcomed into the hall of the All Father, Odin, the handmaiden would first bathe him while he rested his battle-weary bones, and then fulfill his every sexual desire, no matter how dark or inconceivable.

Now that he’d died in battle, fighting for the survival of his Nordic kin who would never truly accept him as one of their own, Freya had granted him the gift of her handmaiden.

Bael could hardly believe it. For a long time he’d yearned for death, for a release from his empty prison. If he’d have known heaven would be so sweet, he would have invaded England by himself to ensure his demise decades ago.

His desires were neither dark nor devious, they were simple and they were few. He had no use for exotic rituals or the increasingly shameful pleasures sought by the men in his army. He merely yearned for the feel of a woman’s flesh so long denied him. For a touch of softness in this hard and brutal existence. To feel her lie beneath him and cradle him inside her warmth until he lost himself. He craved both acceptance and release. And here was the woman who would grant him a taste of that, if only for a night.

Mine.

Bael’s beast growled a claim so strong, a dawning stroke of need and elation lanced through him, followed by a crippling wave of lust and possession.

No , Bael thought. Things were different here in Valhalla. He wouldn’t have to worry about mating.

The woman’s song died on a gasp, and she blindly turned toward him, the tips of her full, luxuriant breasts covered by wet and heavy hair.

He’d never been driven to his knees by any living soul, no matter how hard they tried, but the eruption of frenzy those full breasts released nearly buckled his legs from beneath him.

Staggering forward, Bael splashed into the stream, yanked her up from where she knelt, and stole the protest from her mouth by sealing it with his own. She tensed against him at first, but then melted with a sound of surrender. Her body was cool and damp from the stream against his heated flesh. She felt good. Invigorating. Her lips seemed soft and familiar, as though he’d kissed them before, sampled their sweetness, and reveled in their pliant warmth.

It had been decades since he’d felt the touch of another. Fifty years since a woman had pressed herself against him as she did now. Bael had almost forgotten what a woman felt like, but he knew without a doubt that no other woman he’d ever touched came close to the sensual perfection of the one in his arms.

The scent of her, ripe fruits and spices, frayed the edges of his sanity.

With a moan, equal parts pleasure and torture, Bael ran his hands down the dramatic slope of her back as it dipped into a narrow waist and flared into an ass that overflowed his kneading palms. Gods, she couldn’t be any more perfect than this. He cared little to feel bones beneath a woman’s flesh. He wanted substance and softness. To fill his big hands and feast his eyes on every inch. He much preferred the luscious shape of her body to the hard, muscled shield maidens of the north, or the skin-and-bone whores his men paid for.

The way her flesh slid along his as she drew her hands up his arms and across the span of his shoulders to twine about his neck, unstitched the last fibers of his self-control. Digging his fingers into her ass, he hefted her against him and split her legs to wrap around his trunk.

Bael even liked the way she gasped in shock and clung to him with her arms and knees as though his actions surprised her.

Yes . Her long legs would be wrapped around parts of him until morning dawned in Valhalla. His waist. His head. Bael planned to feast on her flesh and her sex. To feed her his own. To take pleasure in the sweetness of her voice as she came for him and spill his release inside her again and again.

Gods, it had been so long. A lifetime.

Carrying her to the soft mossy bank without separating their fused mouths, he lowered them both to the ground and covered her body with his.

Tonight was his gift from the Gods, and after a century of sacrifice and denial, he was going to take full advantage of his reward.

* * *

Morgana had felt the Berserker awaken, could sense him even in darkness. But she’d been unaware that he’d moved until he’d snatched her from her bath and lay claim to her mouth.

Now she lay beneath this fiercely masculine creature, his pulsating erection hot and hard against her belly, her knees clutching at his flanks as though inviting him inside her.

She was aware of the danger of their precarious position, but couldn’t seem to tear her mouth away from those magical lips of his. It wasn’t their contrast to the unmitigated hardness of the rest of him, nor was it the arousal that flooded her the moment their flesh had connected.

Not entirely, anyway.

What kept her latched to him was the pure and raw emotion emitting from his every pore. She’d fallaciously assumed he was a beast of rage, need, and impulse. But the signature his aura blanketed about them proved her wrong. He bled a lonely sort of anger that hid within it a longing born of deprivation.

Morgana had never before touched someone so—alone. She could read his almost reverent awe as he explored her. Was charmed by his elated joy when she’d wrapped her legs around him. And was seduced by the dominant strength of his arousal mixed with the careful way in which he avoided using that strength to harm or subdue her.

Not that she’d needed to be restrained.

For some alarming reason, her body responded to him with the same kind of violent intensity. In his arms, she became a creature of primeval desires and pure instinct. Thoughts of consequence and reason flowed away from her like driftwood in a strong current.

He was nothing but a large mass of shadows and angles backlit by a blue moon. Some silvery light shredded against the sharp slash of his cheekbone, or caught the sheen of his dark hair, but his eyes remained a mystery to her. His expressions hidden. She didn’t need to see them to understand what she needed to know.

The Berserker meant to make her his mate, in the most fundamental sense of the word.

Unless she stopped him. And she should—stop him—any moment now. There was too much she didn’t know. The man drawing his lips down to worship the sensitive hollow of her neck had only just yesterday slaughtered a hundred men. He was dangerous, nay, lethal. And she couldn’t afford another enemy right now. Not one as powerful as this.

But, oh, those lips. Those wicked, mesmerizing lips. How could she stop them when they left a trail of devastating desire in their wake? Every inch of skin he explored came alive as if for the first time.

His hands didn’t remain passive, either. They spanned her naked flesh with the exuberance of a novice and the skill of an incubus, summoning storms that drenched her with desire and drowned her in sensation.

Feminine muscles clenched as long, venturing fingers reached between their bodies and stroked along the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh. Thrills danced along her nerves and jolted up her legs to settle into moist folds of her sex.

Morgana had been aroused before. Had explored her passions with bold lads in her highland clan, but never had the threat of a touch affected her so intensely. Her blood sang for it. Her body vibrated with need. Her skin flushed with anticipation.

A sound of pure masculine delight rumbled from his throat as his probing fingers slid through the slick cleft of her sex to brush along the quivering place that shot pure bliss to the most miniscule fibers that comprised her very being.

Her arousal was such that he didn’t even need to manipulate the soft aperture of flesh to elicit pleasure. But he did. With a possessive nibble at her shoulder, he worked his strong fingers in a circular motion, his lips branding their way down her chest to nuzzle at her trembling breasts.

Morgana’s breath ebbed and flowed with the sure movements of his hand. Her beast touched her as though he found as much pleasure in the act as she. His cock became hotter and fuller against her thigh, but he didn’t move to claim her, seeming content in the slick unhurried movements of his strong fingers against her.

Pressure built quickly, and her hips jerked and bucked beneath him. That pressure dissolving into a pleasure so intense, she couldn’t hold in her panting cries of release as it crested and crashed like the tidal waves of a gale storm. When Morgana wound so tight she thought she might break, the Berserker slid a finger inside her, his thumb remaining to thrum at the nub of pliant flesh.

Stars exploded behind her closed eyes. The intrusion was just a finger, but his hand was big, his fingers long. She climaxed on a pulsating quiver that caused her legs to clench around his hips as though to imprison her to him. Her cries must have rung through the night and scared any lurking creatures away, so transcendent was the sensation.

“Yes,” she gasped in a strained whisper, feeling the sensations begin to ebb, not ready to be through with it yet. “Don’t stop! Don’t ever stop,” she begged.

He stopped. Rearing back as though she attacked him, his shadow loomed over her like the devil’s own angel of wrath.

“ Hvorfor snakker du i den engelske tungen ?” he demanded in a voice as sharp as the blades of his axe.

Perplexed and drugged soporific by the pleasure he’d just given her, she could only stare up at his shadow in puzzlement. How could she answer him in a language she’d never learned? Oh dear, this just became way more complicated. What did he want? What had angered him?

“I’m sorry, warrior,” she ventured, her chest fluttering with panting breaths. “Do you not speak English?” It was almost certain he didn’t speak in her native Gaelic tongue.

“This heaven is for the Northmen,” he growled back at her in perfect English. “You sound like a Pict and speak in the English tongue.”

Brows drawing together, she lifted herself up on her elbows. “I am a Pict,” she confirmed. “And, while Yorkshire is a lovely place, I’d hardly call it heaven .”

“Yorkshire.” He tested the word as though it were alien to him. Then sprang off her with a feral curse, and snatched up his axe and swung it toward her. The blade came to a halt in the valley between her breasts, kissing her sternum but not breaking the skin.

“What are you?” he demanded. “And if you lie to me, I’ll spill your blood.”

“You can’t spill my blood, Berserker.” Morgana said calmly, trying to maintain composure while she gathered her wits and clenched her thighs together. “I am your mate.”