Page 8 of To Wed a Highlander (A Highland Magic Collection #3)
Chapter 8
I f Morgana lived through all this, she planned to encase those magical lips of his in bronze and display them as gloriously as she dare on her mantle. Words most men would eschew coalesced in her mind as she and her Berserker savior devoured each other in a kiss that should have set their cool lake aflame. Luscious. Uncomprehendingly sweet. Wet, warm, and seductive. All descriptions she would have pegged as feminine, and yet they applied to this warrior, but only to his unparalleled mouth.
Theirs was a kiss for the ages. Full of wordless promises and new, untried emotions. Morgana didn’t dare allow herself time to examine them; only let them wash over her like the incoming tide and pull her back toward their depths.
The hot stroke of his tongue destroyed all resistance. At the animal sound of pleasure he produced in his throat, she forgot all about things like magic, duty, and foreboding prophecies, replacing them with temptation, instinct, and lust. Crashing over her like a storm surge, Morgana couldn’t tell if the genesis for this overwhelming desire was him or her, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. All she wanted was his warm hands on her cool flesh. She wanted to finish what they’d started in that mossy grove in Yorkshire. Now that she’d had a taste of the pleasure his hands could provide, she wanted to experience all of him.
Most especially that sinful mouth.
A part of her knew that once he returned to himself, however that was possible, there would be consequences to this wanton behavior. But for now she was in the clutches of the beast, surrounded by her element, and entirely absorbed by the wicked impulses they created together.
She closed her eyes, focusing all her being on where they connected.
Their lips.
His hands, which finally ventured from her shoulders to explore the parts of her submerged in the crystalline water, were rough, yet careful.
She didn’t dare move, for fear she would break this spell not of her casting, but one woven by a force stronger than she could ever hope to be. Fate? Destiny? She didn’t believe in these things, did she? Though, as his fingertips spread wellsprings of desire wherever they endeavored, she somehow knew this connection was more than magic. More than a mating. Just…more.
She expected him to drag her against his hard body. To clutch and paw at her in accordance with the desperate surges of primal lust she could feel tearing through him. And, yet again, he surprised her.
When his hands encountered the ripped dress hanging off her elbows, he finally broke the contact of their mouths as he used the buoyancy of the water to gently relieve her of her soiled garments.
He didn’t let her sink into the obscuring depths of the lake again. Instead, he lifted her body so she floated on her back, her entire pale, wet length exposed to his demon-black stare.
The absolute worship she read on his face infused her with a current of desire and power and Morgana could swear that the water heated around them. His eyes devoured her as hungrily as his lips had, touching on the rivulets of water finding intimate crevices to escape back into the loch. The caverns beneath her breasts, the creases of her hips, the hollow of her neck. When his eyes found the nest of dark curls between her thighs, his tongue reached out to wet his full lower lip, and the motion sent slick desire rushing from her body.
Feeling mischievous, Morgana parted her legs and opened her arms, but only to prepare for a strong stroke through the water, surging her away from him.
But the beast was too fast. His hand lashed out and caught her ankle in an iron grip, dragging her through the water back toward where it lapped at the wide swells of his shoulders. Without preliminaries, he hooked her legs over his shoulders and imprisoned her thighs open with his big hands, utterly exposing her.
Morgana felt like she should struggle, that she should give some maidenly protestation to his bold treatment, but the pure awe affixed to his brutal features gave her pause. He looked at her, at that most intimate part of her body, with the eyes of a demon and the reverence of a saint. He swallowed once. Twice. And then licked his lips again with an anticipatory noise that reverberated through her like the roar of thunder.
A deep tremor overtook him, as though his barely leashed beast was about to be splintered by desire. His hands felt heavy against the tender skin and muscle of her inner thighs as he turned his head to press a kiss against the sensitive flesh above her knee.
Morgana’s ears echoed with the beats of her heart as she watched the last vestiges of evening light slide along the wet layers of his dark hair when he bent his head. His mouth drifted to the inside of her thigh, pulling her toward him in dangerous increments, his hands moving to make way for his venturing lips.
Her breath caught at another kiss, higher this time, where the skin was sensitive and thin, where blood and nerves scattered incomprehensible sensations through her entire body.
Morgana spread her arms to keep her upper half afloat, feeling as though she watched his ministrations from far away, but felt them through her whole being. Her skin felt both scorching and freezing all at once, gooseflesh blooming and tightening her already aching nipples as her heavy breasts bobbed weightless atop the water.
She gasped as his rough palms began to explore her hips with excruciating slowness. A shuddering weakness stole her ability to move. Paralyzed by desire, she allowed him to push her legs wider and secure her hips above the waterline.
A hot current of longing escaped the place that now quivered for his touch. For his mouth. Her bones felt as though they might melt like steel in a forge. A liquid fire snaked through her, followed by moist and languorous pulses of need.
Finally his hands spanned the place where her hips met her sex. His thumbs stroked through her fine hair, parting the folds of humid flesh.
A sob ripped from her throat as the heat of his reverent exhale caressed her, followed by the pressure of his lips. A soft lick was followed by a gentle tug at just the correct spot, and the throbbing need she’d felt instantaneously released into a flood of searing, luxuriant pleasure. His tongue was silk against the satin of her body, slipping playfully among her intimate flesh, finding places that made her buck and caused her feminine muscles to clench around emptiness, demanding to be filled.
He tested the entry to her body with his tongue, then split her with a sinuous lick, latching on to the exposed nub of pure sensation, abrading it gently as his long, curious finger replaced his mouth. She was so wet, so incredibly slick, that he glided in with no resistance. This seemed to further excite and encourage him. He withdrew, and his second finger joined the first, stretching her body in a pleasurable test.
The growl of approval he gave propelled her to a screaming climax. Morgana bowed back, submerging her head under the water and released her scream in an explosion of bubbles. It was impossible for her to drown, and so she just allowed the water to assist the unparalleled bliss to flow in, through, and around her. It was a flash flood powerful enough to shatter dams and overflow the banks created by the mere encasement of her sinew and skin. Pleasure came in wave after title wave of ecstatic sensation, and her Berserker’s worshiping mouth stayed with her until he’d wrung every last shuddering drop of bliss from her bones.
Her Berserker .
She floated back to the surface boneless and unhurried, enjoying the little pulsating aftershocks of pleasure vibrating in her core. What she saw when she broke the surface stole all sense of reason.
Hunger. Possession. Dominance. All the things she’d wanted to avoid before because of the answering intensity they released within herself.
He split her legs even farther apart and eased them down his wide shoulders, sliding her body down his torso with a diabolical slowness that both aroused and unsettled her. Once his mouth could reach her breasts, he bent his dark head to them, imprisoning her ribcage with his rough hands. Taking the tip in his mouth, he held the wet and chilly nipple in his teeth and stroked it with his tongue, again asserting just the right pressure to make her arch in ecstatic response.
She clutched at his arms, his shoulders, and finally plunged restless fingers into his length of thick hair, holding his scalp in a wordless demand. Needing the feel of his skin against her, she wrapped her legs around his hard, naked torso, surprised to feel that he must have shucked his trews before walking into the loch.
She was going to take him, or he would take her. Either way, Morgana knew that their bodies needed to join, that she needed him to fill her, to flow within her, to connect them as one. Drifting down his muscled body, she didn’t stop until the hot brand of his cock rested against her cleft.
He sealed his mouth to her once again. His kisses both rough and sweet. And she felt lost in a sea of sensation, like a vessel with no oars, adrift and out of control. Their mouths fused with a sort of ravenous compulsion, refusing to separate. Her exhale became his next breath. His groans of need suffused her lungs with life.
She let a hand drift down his chest to the obdurate muscles of his stomach, meaning to guide him exactly where she wanted him.
As usual he was faster, caressing up her thighs and then parting her slick folds beneath the water.
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.”
His senses were the problem. They honed in on the fresh scent of her warm skin, the lilting brogue of her voice, spinning him about and tempting him to abandon all reason instead of her.
He met her swirling blue eyes with the hardest, coldest stare he could muster. “Do what you will,” he challenged. Better that she leave him here to freeze to death than make him care anymore than he already did.
She crossed defensive arms beneath the water pushing glossy cleavage together for his eyes to feast upon. “Bring him back,” she ordered.
Bael knew she was referring to his Berserker. “Why, so he’ll do your bidding?”
“Nay,” she mulishly denied. “Well—yes, but it’s very important bidding. And he doesn’t seem to mind.”
“ I mind!” Bael roared, swiping for her and falling short as the water carried her out of his reach. “This body is mine . How dare you beguile my beast with your magick and take me against my will.”
The ice climbed his torso, threatening to squeeze the air from him.
“How dare you accuse me of using my magick to seduce you? I did no such thing!” she sputtered indignantly. “You ripped the dress from my body, you kissed me, and you threw my legs over your shoulders and had your way with me. I had nothing to do with that.”
“Horseshit. That wasn’t me, and you know it. I wasn’t in a place to deny you. You used my beast to bring you here.”
“I said please !” she spat. “And you— he— seemed more than happy to oblige. And don’t for one moment think that you can make me feel like I took advantage of you. Do you really mean to convince me that you or your Berserker beast, possibly one of the most lethal creatures in existence, is vulnerable to the likes of me?”
That was exactly what he meant, but hated the way her words made it sound. “Isn’t everyone vulnerable to magick?” he volleyed back.
In a fit of incense, she splashed him, and the cold lake water felt like a thousand tiny needles of feminine ire against his skin heated by lust and anger.
“You dare insinuate that I used my magic to force you against your will? I am a Druid of Moray. I stand for all that is good and light in this world. I would never —”
“Never. What?” he interrupted, motioning to his prison of ice.
Her lovely eyes widened as she flushed a tempting color of pink. “That’s different… I…You… Ugh!” Throwing her hands up with a noise of sheer frustration, she turned from him and threw out her fingers, whispering a few words that brought her torn, soaked dress to her from where it had been floating in a sodden heap on the still water.
As she stalked toward the shore, Bael couldn’t stop himself from savoring every inch of pale skin revealed by the retreating loch surface. Her long, mahogany hair, glistening with water. The drastic indent of her waist. The dramatic flair of her hips. The lush globes of her round ass swaying over soft, sloping thighs and tempting, dimpled knees.
He clenched his fists below the water, realizing that all the ice in the world couldn’t cool the inferno of lust she evoked within him.
She used some kind of witchcraft to draw all the moisture from the fabric of her dress with irate movements. Bael had the impression that anger didn’t come often or easily to her.
What would it be like to be a creature of serenity, as still and tranquil as the glassy pond in which he stood? Ponderously, he brought a palm to the surface of the water, letting it flow through his fingers and ripple over his skin.
No tangible element existed as soft and malleable as water. It sustained life, made that which was heavy more buoyant, and cleaned away rot and blood. Bael’s eyes flicked back to the witch—er—druid as she yanked her dry, worn garment over her head and clutched at the ripped bodice, grumbling to herself.
And yet , he thought with a wry smirk, who could withstand the force of a flood? The sheer strength of a tidal wave? The raw power of a sea gale? He pictured the mountains and canyons of his homeland, carved by colossal glaciers. Of the fjords that shaped the landscape over untold millennia. Water did all that, sometimes with the patience of the ages, and sometimes with the immediacy of devastation.
If he was a mountain of a man, Morgana de Moray was the river that could carve through his defenses, shape the very essence of his being, and flow through the heart he’d carved of stone, chipping away at his soul drop by relentless drop.
That made her unspeakably dangerous.
Struggling and fighting against his frigid bonds, Bael strained this way and that, flexing his muscle and surging against ice as unyielding as rock.
A crack in the ice encasing one of his legs caused a flicker of victory that was quickly extinguished as he realized Morgana was standing over him, on top of the water , her dress lifted away from the moisture revealing her shapely ankles at nearly eye-level.
She didn’t give him time to ponder why the view of that ankle was more arousing than a thousand naked women. Instead, she held out her palm, and regarded him with the most serious expression he could imagine on a sweet face like hers.
“I’ve come to strike a bargain with you, Berserker,” she said with mysterious stoicism. “Take me home to Dun Moray, and I vow on the Goddess that if you still want to die in battle, my brother, Malcolm will gladly put you in the ground.”