Desire in Tartan: 2 (Highland Vampires) (8 page)

Sometime during the long, cold night Alice slept, cuddled within Dugald’s strong embrace. But as the gray fingers of a chilly dawn managed to poke into their grotto, she was awakened by a creak and then a snap.

She opened her eyes to see Dugald half-crouched, twisting the metal gate caging them in his sturdy grip. He pulled the bars from side to side, up, down and around until they freed themselves from the rusty hinges in a series of squeals and cracks.

He winced at the sound. “‘Twill bring the carrion crows upon us, I fear.”

“You don’t seem afraid.”

He glanced over his shoulder at her. “I am afeared for ye, mistress, not me. Tuck yourself into the back of this little cavern and doonae come out, ye hear? Stay quiet as the little mouse ye fancy yourself.”

She nodded and he pushed hard at the metal as pounding footsteps came toward them. The gate gave way and he flung it into the cave. Alice heard a whack and a screech. She realized that the gate had hit someone. She grinned as she obeyed Dugald’s command. She was curious but she believed in him with all her soul. If he gave an order, he had a reason.

She looked around for something, anything she could use as a weapon if necessary. Nothing much except a sharp stone, p’raps one of the several that had jabbed her in the back all night long. Fortunately she’d been distracted most of the time.

Screams and shouts outside her grotto told her that Dugald had found their enemies. She shrank to the cave’s farthest corner and huddled there while a series of bangs, crashes and shrieks turned her blood into ice. But she didn’t hear Dugald’s voice and was grateful.

Nothing bad is happening
, she told herself.
He’s just banging a few heads together, like men at an inn do when they’re in their cups.
But she remembered a snatch of their conversation.

She’d asked, “B-but how will we get away?”

“Och, lassie, that’s nae the question,” he’d said, smiling.

“Umm…what is?”

“The question is, how might they get away?”

Alice guessed that they—the Beans—weren’t getting away. In hindsight, she realized that Dugald had allowed himself to be “captured”.
’Twas far easier for me to trick them into taking me to ye,
he’d said. At the time they’d talked, what he’d said had been clear but she hadn’t been hearing, or listening. Frozen by fear, she supposed.

But after spending the night with Dugald—from where had she gained the courage to do such a shocking thing?—she had total confidence in his ability to protect her. Certainly he’d timed his escape carefully. He could have freed them at any time but had picked the dawn. She knew that normally she slept most deeply at dawn. Her father had also. P’raps many did.

His plans seemed to have been good, because after only ten minutes or so he returned to their grotto. Blocking out the light, he called, “Mistress Alice? Alice!”

“I’m here.” Her voice was steady, which startled her. She crept forward to the lip of the cave to see him wiping his sleeve across his mouth. The cloth came away red. “You’re hurt!”

“Nay, mistress, ’tis naught. But what’s this ye have?” He pried the pebble from between her fingers, looking startled. “Do ye fancy this wee stone?”

“Uh, no, I thought…I thought I might have to hit someone with it.”

He laughed. “Och, weel, ye have missed your chance. No one’s left to hit. Doonae ye look, now. ’Tisn’t a pleasant sight.” Placing a hand over her eyes, he helped her out of the little cavern and onto her feet.

“What isn’t?”

“Death. Can ye nae smell it?”

“I’ve been smelling it since they…took me.” Her knees quivered a little.

He supported her with a brawny hand on her shoulder before lifting her into his arms. He pressed her face against his chest, but not before she’d caught a glimpse of the large cavern.

When she’d seen it first, it had been strewn with garbage, old clothing, sea wrack and the like. Now it was strewn with bodies.

Scattered bits—heads, arms and so forth—were tossed willy-nilly. Blood oozed, its stench mingling with the miasma of rotting seaweed. Bile rose in her throat and her body convulsed.

Dugald sprinted for the cave’s mouth. She heard the splash of water beneath his boots, heard the crash of waves. Turning her head away from him, she gulped in a deep breath of fresher air. Her muscles loosened as she relaxed.

He carried her to a patch of clean, dry sand and bade her, “Rest here a wee mite. I’ll look for yer clothes.”

“And my boots, please,” she called after him.

“And yer boots.”

The beach was deserted except for herself, seaweed and…the remains of a bonfire. She gulped. She didn’t dare walk over to inspect it, guessing from what Dugald had said Malcolm had been cooked and eaten there.

Instead she looked toward the water. A fish jumped. The sun was rising behind her and she wondered how even a tendril of its light had reached into the cave. P’raps it had reflected off the water, for although fog lingered over the shore, pink pearly light touched the sky.

It was going to be a beautiful day—the best day ever. She stripped off her shift and left it on the dry sand before running toward the water. She had never done such a thing before, swimming naked in the sea, but it seemed necessary to celebrate her life by doing something different.

And, she discovered when the seawater stung her cunny, Dugald had left his mark. Most definitely. Brownish streaks on her thighs—dried blood—revealed her lost virginity. Bruises from where he’d held her tight were darkening on her hips. No doubt that the stony floor of their little cave had scraped her bottom. None of that mattered. She was alive. Every itch and prickle told her so.

Shivering, she nevertheless dipped into the water up to her neck and slid cautious fingers around her cunny. Tingly, but she preferred to be clean. She had a little bump on her head from when she’d banged it in the cavern. Her neck was a little sore, also, and she remembered that Dugald had bitten her.

She shivered. Murdo and Malcolm had also bitten the street whore on the neck. Evidently that was something men liked to do to women. She wondered if she would like to do that also.

She rinsed her mouth before she rose and walked through the waves toward the beach. A whistle caught her attention. She turned her head to behold Dugald emerging from the cavern, burdened by clothes and boots. She thought she saw her green habit in the pile that he dropped onto the sand before heading in her direction with determination written all over his pale, handsome features.

As he came, he stripped off his shirt, stopped to remove his boots and trews. His cock jutted out of a thicket of black, curly hair. Alice stared, fascinated. So
that
was what he’d put inside her. Mother of mercy, ‘twas huge. No wonder it had hurt.

But it had also felt…well, it had felt better than anything ever.

As he approached her, his cock rose toward his belly, growing even larger.

Her mouth dropped open. “You…you put that…in me?”

“Aye, and I would like to do it again. Unless you say me nay?”

She gulped. “I…uh…that looks…painful.”

“Well, ’twas the first time. But it should be fine, now.” He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a winning smile.

She drew back a little to regard him and put a tentative hand on his hard, broad chest. “In truth, I do not know where to start.” The chest she’d admired through his whisky-wet shirt at the inn was sculpted like one of the statues she’d seen at the university, and as white but for the dark hair scattered over his admirable muscles. Flat nipples, slightly darker than his flesh, ornamented his torso.

Below, more muscles ridged his belly. And then, of course, there was his cock. She touched it and it leaped in her hand, like the fish at dawn. She curled her fingers around it to hold him still while she looked lower. A furry sac with two balls. His cods. Ah. Legs, long and muscled, with the same midnight hair that dusted him elsewhere.

She raised her eyes to his face and found that he was examining her as closely as she’d been looking at him. His hands also roved, up and down her sides, one coming to rest between her legs to caress her cunny while the other fondled her breasts, paying special attention to her nipples. Usually pale pink, she noticed that their tips had reddened.

“I’ll swim,” he told her, “and then I would lie with ye.”

Her eyes widened.

“I willnae come to ye dirtied by the
roiseán
of that foul nest.” He released her, turned and strode into the sea. When he was waist-deep, he dived forward into an oncoming wave, swimming ably as a dolphin.

She shivered and walked out of the water onto the sand, stretching her arms up toward the light. Not very warm, but she’d let the sun dry her rather than getting salty water all over her clothes.

Dugald emerged from the ocean, long dark hair streaming with water, the flat planes of his body gleaming in the pale dawn light. Like Poseidon, but with a spear between his legs not in his hands. She stifled a giggle at the thought, but his tool was far less threatening after a drenching in cold seawater.

How had a drab like her attracted a man like Dugald Kilburn?

Mayhap he had other women. The thought was deflating but logical. He hadn’t said a word about marriage, merely stating, “I’m your man.” Though that statement was quite definitive.

She swallowed her hesitation and stepped toward him, meeting him with outstretched arms and a willing kiss. His embrace was colder than the ocean but as ardent as the crashing waves. He crushed her to his wet body, dampening her, and as they kissed, her body undulated against his like an eel, smooth and sleek.

She felt beautiful when she was with him like this, naked and free, beautiful and bold as the morning. He pushed his tongue into her mouth as he picked her up, one hand on her shoulders and one beneath her rump. She wrapped her legs around his waist to support herself.

He gave a rumble of agreement. “Aye, that’s right, lass.”

Her cunny rubbed against his burgeoning cock. She hadn’t planned the action but welcomed it nevertheless. Welcomed it but was surprised when his rod’s round head slipped inside her with little warning. She had not known she was so open to him, so ready.

He lifted her a bit before letting her down and her channel, tight and wet from the seawater, parted to admit his length. She gasped at the unaccustomed intrusion. Again, he stopped and waited. She breathed heavily, moved tentatively and, following his lead, also waited. Waited until her body said yes to his, a condition heralded by a tingling sensitivity in her cunny, a feeling that drove her to grip his shoulders and slide herself up and down on his pole.

Ahhh…she flung her head back and panted, pleasure washing through her like the waves sweeping the sand. His hand slipped, its side resting in the crack dividing her bottom.

He gripped one buttock firmly. Again a new feeling, the side of his hand nestled deeply into tender flesh no one else had ever touched.

Her first instinct was to protest. Wasn’t that place dirty? But another part of her argued,
not on me
. She’d just washed in the ocean. And everything that Dugald and she had done had felt good, if…different.

So she didn’t ask him to move his hand. Rather, while he had her, and she him, she wriggled so his hand teased that mysterious, forbidden, enticing spot.

Leaning forward, she kissed him, shivering with a peculiar mixture of desire, heat and, yes, cold, for the morning was chilly as was his mouth and his hands. Could she reach the pinnacle she’d climbed last night?

She didn’t know if she could until Dugald walked over to the pile of clothes he’d previously dumped and laid her upon them. She sprawled over finery of all sorts—satin and velvet, brocade and golden trim. Her bottom rested on a silken scarf while she fingered fine lace. She sniffed suspiciously, but contact with the air outside the cave had swept away the cavern’s stink from the fabrics, replacing it with an oceanic freshness.

Still inside her, looming over her, Dugald leaned his weight on one elbow and picked up a chain with his other hand. He trailed its end across her naked breasts. Another new feeling—one she liked, for her nipples had been sensitized by his loving. She was drawn to her breasts as much as he was and so she cupped them, giving them a squeeze so they appeared larger, the nipples higher, tighter.

“I like that. I like watching you touch yourself.” His voice was husky. He bent his head and licked her offered nipples before sucking them. “Mmm, salty.”

“Are they?” She was absurdly delighted. “Are they good?”

“Aye, and I imagine that this is sweet.” He slid down her body until his head rested near her mound. He parted her legs with a gentle hand. “Your cunny is more pink than last eve.”

His candor unaccustomed, she giggled. “It’s…umm, she’s had more attention than ever before.”

“Aye, and it willnae be the last time.” He bent his head and kissed her softly, parting the folds with his lips before taking her with his tongue.

She opened her legs wider and reached down to guide his head to the spot that would please her the most, that little bump atop her slit. He obliged, licking her there while sliding a finger inside her channel.