Laird of the Mist (24 page)

“Callum, you would even consider such a thing?”

He dragged his gaze away from her breasts and grinned into her storming ebony eyes. “No’ until that day I was sealin’ yer wound and ye called me Clalum MacKreglor.”

“I would never allow you to do it!” she admonished him. “I would never allow you to deny what you love.”

He reached up and cupped her cheek in his palm. “Even if it meant yer life?”

Kate choked back a sob. She had become another responsibility to him. Dear God, she wanted to give him rest. She wanted to reassure him that no matter what happened, no matter what became of her, it was her choice. “I would give my life for you.”

Callum closed his eyes, unable and unwilling to bear the thought. “Kate,” he said, looking at her again, his voice a warm caress. “D’ye think lovin’ someone makes dyin’ fer them easier?”

She nodded. “Aye. Aye, I do, Callum.” When he shook his head and turned away from her, she touched his jaw, bringing his gaze back to her. “Or do you think you are the only one worthy to be willing to give your life for something you love?”

Callum’s heart pounded in his ears. Of course, he understood that any true MacGregor would be willing to die for his name. But he would not let her die for it.

He wanted her, needed her in his life. Every time she looked at him, every word she spoke to him, all worked at making him forget the injustices he and his clan suffered. How could he be angry at the world, when the world had given him Kate Campbell?

But she could be taken from him.

The thought chilled his soul and stirred the beast. She already loved him. She already declared herself a MacGregor. He’d made love to her, spilled his seed into her. But all hope was not lost. Nae, mayhap if he kept his heart silent, if faced with a choice for her life, she would choose to live. “I willna let ye die fer me, Kate.”

Well, it wasn’t a declaration of love, but he cared for her. She knew he did. She would worry him about it no more. She gave him a sympathetic pat on the hand and rose to gather her clothes. “I do not intend to die. When I return to my brother, I will—”

He snatched her wrist and pulled her back until she was sprawled over his chest. “Ye’re no’ returnin’ to him.”

“I’m not?” she asked.

“Nae.” He traced her features with his smoldering gaze, then drew his fingers over her parted lips. “Ye’re mine and ye’ll be stayin’ with me.”

“But I worry for my—”

“Katie?”

“Aye?” She smiled at the sound of her name spoken so sweetly from his lips.

“Ye talk too much, lass.” He devoured her mouth, capturing anything further she wished to say while his hands slid down her back and over her soft buttocks.

Chapter Thirty-One

T
HEY RODE BACK
to Camlochlin with Kate comfortably nestled between Callum’s thighs. They did not ride on the wind, but he kept his mount at a slow trot, enjoying the feel of her against his heart. It had been a long, torturous eternity since he held anyone so close to that sacred place. When he had told her he would die clutching a Campbell heart in his hands, he truly had no idea that heart would be hers. He had not been prepared, and doubted he ever would have been, to hand his heart over to her in return. Aye, he had tried to make her loathe him in order to save her life. For her life meant more to him than his home, his kin, his name. He had no doubt he would give up all for her. But ’twas his soul he had been trying to protect, also. He had lost it once because he loved. To lose it again terrified him.

Losing Kate terrified him even more.

Along the coastline on which they traveled, frothy whitecaps crashed in a rolling crescendo against the low, jagged cliffs, launching sea spray twenty feet into the air. Kate watched it, thinking how very much Callum was like the ocean, all turbulent and raging and powerful. She clutched his hand at her belly and leaned her head back against his chest, enjoying the wonderment of the day. The rains had ended and the sun shone like an orb of fire in the pale sky, but a brisk chill remained in the air, making everything smell clean and crisp and new.

A new day. Callum enfolded her deeper into his embrace and bent his face to the crook of her neck. He kissed her curls. She heard him inhale deeply, and the brawn of his body surged up against her like the waves to her left.

Kate sighed softly on an exhilarated breath. Her eyes slid to the east, where the forest had just begun to fall away in place of fallow fields where woolly cattle grazed with sluggish indifference on overgrown grass. Before her, the Cuillins rose up—a stone behemoth shielding its children beneath its vast black wings. A mist rolled over the sharp peaks and drifted downward toward the earth like a gossamer avalanche. Everywhere Kate looked she beheld power and beauty, land so achingly feral and beautiful it was almost painful for a mere mortal to gaze upon it overlong. Skies so vast she had the urge to spread her arms and bask in the freedom flying would bring. The Highlands and the people who inhabited them belonged to each other. Never was it clearer to Kate. She doubted one could survive without the other and wondered at the same time if this untamed land compelled its people to fight against attempts to subdue them, or if the people’s untamed will and stubborn resilience made the land so wildly breathtaking.

“Will we have children together, Callum?” she asked wistfully, suddenly wanting to bear all his bairns here.

“Aye. I want many sons.”

She turned to give him a haughty look. “Think you, you would allow me to bear some daughters?”

Humor fanned the flames of his eyes. “I would allow it only after a son.”

“Humph.” Kate swung around to conceal her smile, only to quiver in his arms a moment later when he parted the curls at her nape and spread his hot breath there.

“We could stop right here and continue our effort to make one.”

“I think not,” she said. “We are not even wed. And now that you mention it, I remember hearing Aileen and some of the other women talking at the castle, and they said that if a man wishes to have a son, he and his wife must wait until the waxing of the full moon. I think that is . . .” She counted on her fingers, then nodded. “Aye. A fortnight away.”

Callum’s head snapped up from its thorough ravishing of her neck, and he glowered at her raven curls. “I willna be denied fer a full bloody fortnight, Kate.”

“Och, but ye will, Callum MacGregor.” She imitated his thick Highland burr.

“Are ye makin’ sport of my speech, woman?” he asked, sincerely surprised that she would do so.

She laughed, a rich, beautiful sound. “I find your speech quite enchanting.”

Appeased, he allowed himself a smile. “There’s much to learn aboot the MacGregors.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the men, especially the laird, will no’ be blackmailed.” He yanked his plaid over his hard cock and, dropping the reins, curled one arm around her waist and lifted her gown over her hips with the other. He slipped his hand over her throat and pulled her close to rake his teeth across her skin. “I’ve wanted to take ye like this fer too long now,” he whispered huskily in her ear, then lifted her enough to thrust his silken lance deep within her without breaking stride.

His big hands on her hips guided her up and down on his steel shaft, making her feel every inch. His low groans along her flesh sent flames up her spine. When Kate looped her arms around his neck behind her, he shoved her down hard, then swept his palm over her belly and lifted her again. He dipped his fingers to her swollen bud and stroked her until she pitched against his chest.

“I say son.” He smiled into her nape and lurched upward. “What say you, Katie?”

“Twins,” she bargained and then laughed with him. He grew serious an instant later when he whispered how he felt inside her. Then he showed her by cupping her from front to back in his hands and sliding her up, almost over his thick, sensitive head, then back down to his hilt.

To say that he was gentle in his lovemaking this time would be sheer folly on Kate’s part. Her breasts ached, her neck felt delightfully bruised by his wicked teeth, and the backs of her thighs would surely bear the truth of his passion before the day’s end.

Sometime later, when his four most loyal warriors came upon them just before they reached the crest of Camlochlin’s glen, Kate’s hair looked as if she had been caught in a violent Highland storm, her cheeks were flushed, and her gown twisted almost backward on her shoulders.

Brodie grinned from one ear to the other. Angus belched and nodded his head as if his approval was all that was needed to complete this pair’s binding. Graham pulled up short on the reins and regarded Callum and the suddenly bashful woman in his arms with a measured look. Jamie was the only one in the group scratching his head, befuddled by their appearance.

“Where are ye all off to?” Callum looked each one of them over, adding a well-deserved scowl to Brodie’s knowing wink.

“Maggie told us ye barreled out of here like there was a fire on yer arse,” Graham told him, still unsure if his instinct was deceiving him. He had tumbled enough wenches to recognize when they’d been thoroughly tumbled. “What the hell happened to ye, Kate?” he asked her while she inconspicuously patted the last of her unruly curls into place.

Her cheeks went crimson almost instantly, and Graham would have smiled if the sight of her bruised face hadn’t made his blood go cold.

“Graham, if ye have a question to ask, ye’ll ask me.” Callum aimed his fierce glare on his commander.

“Verra well.” Graham switched his attention to Callum. “What the hell happened to her face?”

How had he forgotten that? “She was attacked on the road.” When they demanded the full tale, he told them. “I killed the whoresons.”

“Callum.” The braw tilt of Jamie’s chin struck Callum in the gut, and the laird arched his eyebrow and waited for Jamie to continue. “Ye canna be so careless to let her oot of yer sight again. I think I should watch over her when ye’re angry with her.”

Kate almost wept. She would have leapt off Callum’s horse and hugged the young warrior had he not visibly cringed when Callum inched his mount closer to his.

“So ye’re her champion now, are ye, Jamie? What of Maggie?”

Whatever resolve Jamie possessed a moment ago fair dripped off his shoulders until they slumped in defeat. ’Twas too late—he had started this, and now he knew he must finish it. He swallowed audibly, then cleared his throat. “Ye know that I would never let harm come to Maggie. But Kate needs . . . She needs . . .” Callum waited patiently while the young warrior fought to girdle up his loins again. “She needs . . . someone . . . to . . . to protect her,” he finally spat out.

Callum nodded and thought about it, taking his time and trying to subdue his amusement. “Verra well, Jamie. Yer duty is now to guard my sister and Kate when I’m unable to do so. But”—he leaned forward, fastened his piercing gaze on each of them, and then, miracle of miracles, began to smile—“there will be only one Sir Galahan fer this lady at Camlochlin. And that’ll be me.”

Jamie scrunched up his face. “Who?”

But Callum did not answer. He flicked his reins and left his men there on the crest, each one wearing the same gaping expression of astonishment on his face, save for Graham, who snatched Angus’s brew out of his large paw. He held it up to the couple descending the ridge, and his lips curled into a grin. “To knights, and the ladies who love them,” he toasted, then took a hearty swig of whiskey.

“It’s Sir Galahad.”

“Hmmm?” Callum set his gaze on his home and then on the back of Kate’s head. God’s teeth, he was so damned happy he was beginning to feel like a fool.

“Sir Galahad, not Galahan,” she corrected him, then angled her head to toss him a mischievous smile. “But you’ll do, MacGregor.”

Behind them, Callum’s men heard a sound they all felt quite sure they never heard before. It drifted backward and filled the glen with echoes.

“Did ye hear that?” Brodie slowed his horse, waited a moment, then slammed his fist into Angus’s shoulder. “What’s in that brew? I’m fearin’ ’tis made me daft.”

Angus reached out and near broke his cousin’s nose—which would have been the third time—with a hefty swing. “Next time ye insult me brew, I’ll rid ye of yer teeth, ye bastard MacGregor.”

“Yer no’ daft, Brodie.” Jamie stared on ahead, his huge blue eyes wider than twin seas. “I hear it, too.”

Angus jammed his finger in his ear and wiggled it. “I’ll be damned, I hear it.”

Jamie turned his awe-stricken gaze to Graham. “What does it mean?”

“It means yer laird is laughing, ye bunch of lackwits.” Graham kicked his mount’s flanks and raced after Callum and Kate, calling over his shoulder. “Have ye never heard the man laugh before?”

Jamie watched his brother ride away, then turned to the others and shrugged his shoulders. “Only before he aimed to kill someone.”

Angus tossed him his pouch of brew. “Here, drink up, lad. Things aroond here are aboot to change, I’d wager. Ye’re goin’ to need all the hair on yer chest ye can gather.”

Brodie laughed. “First he’ll be needin’ some hair on his . . .” He almost swallowed his tongue at the force of Angus’s palm striking behind his head.

“Mind yer tongue,” the burly warrior warned. And then Jamie took off after his laird, leaving both of his brutish friends on the ground, their fists flying.

Chapter Thirty-Two

C
ALLUM SAT IN THE GREAT HALL
with Graham and had just shoved a slice of bread into his mouth when Brodie dragged a chair across from him and sat. Callum looked up briefly, then set about finishing his meal. After another full moment had passed, Callum lifted his gaze again, quaffed his drink, and then slammed the cup down on the table.

“What the hell are ye starin’ at?”

Brodie didn’t blink. Instead, he rested his elbows on the table, moved slightly forward, and peered at Callum more intently. Graham snickered and pushed his chair away from his friend’s, not wanting to be in the way when Callum started trouncing the poor fool. And by the looks of it, Brodie had been trounced already this day. The bruise around his swollen eye was already turning an interesting shade of purple. Angus most assuredly, Graham decided with another smirk.