Reclaimed (A Highland Historical Trilogy) (The MacKay Banshees 1-3) (37 page)

To be cruel, he danced around it. Using his lips and tongue to torture her to the zenith of yearning need, only to deny her when her body tensed in the anticipation of her release.

“Soren.” His name became a demand. Her fingers gripping and pulling at his hair with insistent pressure. His smile curled against her glistening sex as he looked up over her mound, the quivering muscles of her belly, and through the narrow valley of her breasts. The look in her eyes would follow him into the eternities. The sweetness had vanished. The charming naiveté gave way to a new creature. This one as primitive and selfish as he.

He wanted to meet this creature. Wanted to mate with her, as well.

“Do not make me beg,” she warned in a voice that was too husky with sex to be stern.

His chuckle vibrated against her, causing her to dig her heels into the soft ground as her entire body tensed and trembled. Before his mouth drove her to a long and loud final release, she’d not only begged for it, she’d pled, entreated, and beseeched.

Finally able to breathe, Kamdyn adjusted her exhausted legs as her Berserker beast crawled up her body with predatory grace. He left slick kisses on her belly, on her ribs, her breasts, and in the hollow of her throat.

In such a short time, he’d become her world. She was aware of the fragrant Scottish earth beneath her and the rare blue autumn sky above. In between existed only him, only them, pressed so close together that she’d thought they’d melded into one form of pleasure and flesh even before he sank inside her welcoming body.

Though a storm of frenzy raged within her, she was grateful that his movements within her were torturously slow. The same storm turned his eyes from the color of ice to the color of an angry sea as they locked onto hers. She felt every slick, heavy inch of his length as he pressed it in and retracted. His hips were the only part of them that moved, the rest clutched in an embrace that each feared to break.

When she could no longer stand the open, naked emotion in his eyes, Kamdyn buried her face in his neck and buried her fingers in the flesh of his back and shoulders. She undulated beneath him, not only opening her body to him, but her heart, her soul.

Neither of them said a word. They communicated in thrusts and moans and the short, curious noises exclusive to love-making. When she felt the web of nerves threading through her moist flesh begin to sizzle and pulse, she fought her release. She willed it to die, needing him for longer.

Forever.

But her traitorous body pulled taut and a ragged warning cry accompanied the first clenching, unparalleled sensation. His large, strong hand clamped over her mouth before she realized that her screams of pleasure had become a Banshee keen. Her muscles locked as the storm broke upon her in wave after wave of dizzying, crippling ecstasy.

He followed her into that place, his movements becoming shorter, stronger. The pulses wracking the whole length of him until he curled over her, uncovering her mouth to replace his hand with his lips.

She tasted herself on him but didn’t care. His kiss was the sweetest, most lovely thing she could readily imagine. Even after the storm passed, they stayed like that for an eternal moment. Their hands caressed and explored the other’s face as though to commit it to memory, only punctuated by languorous kisses.

Eventually, Soren rolled to his back and pulled her to rest against his chest. His other arm bent behind to support his neck. He yawned like a big cat and blinked down at her upturned face.

“You’re still not…afraid?” she asked once more, placing her hand on his chest.

“Of course not, little Banshee,” he said, pulling her closer. “I already told you that.” And proved his point by promptly falling asleep.

Kamdyn lie in the warmth of his arms for a long time, her hand pressed to where she could feel the strong, sure beat of his heart beneath her palm. Any moment, a quick and lethal bolt could leave her skin and enter his, stopping that heart forever. Gasping, Kamdyn pulled her hand back as though his flesh had burned her. His muscles twitched, but he remained relaxed, his eyes closed and breaths even. It was her fault he was so exhausted. She’d kept him awake most of the night. He’d Berserked at least three times in the past day, once to fight and win an entire Clan battle. Despite his unparalleled strength, he was still for all intents and purposes a human.

Kamdyn smiled a little. He was so unapologetically
alive
. How could he not fear death? She was terrified of it. Not her own, of course, but of his.

He couldn’t leave her. Not now. Not when she’d begun to—to what? Love him? Logic still insisted that such a thing was impossible in so short a time. But he’d professed the emotion for her in such a way that made complete and unfathomable sense. She had a feeling that lifetimes wouldn’t contain the experiences she wanted to share with him. Even though he was a marauding criminal, at his core he was an incredibly decent man. If only she could be given the time to nurture that part of him. But their time had run out, and if she didn’t kill him now, the consequences would be intense and far-reaching, and not just for her. For her family and Clan.

“I can’t,” she whispered, curling her deadly hands into fists. “I
have
fallen for you, and now I’m at a loss for what to do. If it’s not me, it’ll be some other Banshee she sends... But I can’t bring myself to—” Gods, she couldn’t even bring herself to say the words anymore. She just knew she couldn’t kill him.

“Even though you’re a massive, arrogant, and violent brute. You’re
my
massive, arrogant, and violent brute and I plan to keep you. Even after everything you’ve done. I accept it. I accept you, all of you, for all that you are. And I’m going to do what I can to get you out of this so you can right your wrongs. So you can make it better, and leave a legacy that is separate from the Laird of Shadows.” Her fist clutched tighter. “I swear it.”

Chapter Thirteen

Soren had wanted her heart, and she’d given it to him while he fought through the fog of sleep, and then she’d promptly disappeared. It was enough. She’d accepted him, without being told what it meant. Without fanfare or ceremony, she’d accepted him and it was all he had needed for the Berserker mating to be complete.

He wanted to do all the things that would make him great in her eyes. He wanted to build a legacy she would respect.

Now he was doing the only thing he could to prove to her that he’d changed. He could die without her. Soren didn’t struggle as Finn MacLauchlan and his brother Connor led him into their courtyard in chains. This was the one final thing he could give to Kamdyn. She didn’t have the heart to slay any man, let alone the one she loved. But Soren comprehended the dangerous consequences for her if the terms of the pact were not kept. So he did the one thing he could think of that would release her from all danger and distasteful responsibilities.

“I’m trying to decide if it was courage or recklessness that drove ye to show yer face at Castle Lachlan,” Laird Connor growled. “This is where we keep our mates, where we raise our wee ones.”

Soren didn’t correct the Laird. It was neither courage nor recklessness.

It was love.

He smiled to himself, admiring the sturdy castle with its lovely fountain and strong battlements. “It was pride,” he told them. “So best take my head and be done with it, then.”

Standing side by side as they were, Finn and Connor resembled a golden-hued angel and a dark satyr, but they intently studied Soren with identical green eyes.

“We heard about the battle at
Druin na Coub
,” Finn said. “What we can’t figure out is why you would fight for Clan MacKay against the Sutherlands when one of their own is contracted to slay you.”

Soren knew that news traveled with startling speed in the Highlands. Though he hadn’t expected it to travel faster than a Berserker. He’d just left
Druin na Coub
. “You sent a tiny girl to kill me because you couldn’t find me.” He shrugged, doing his best to keep his features blank and unaffected. “So here I stand, ready to give you a chance to regain your honor as men by doing the deed yourselves.”

Connor had a pole axe in his hand poised beneath Soren’s chin in the space of a breath, his eyes swirling black with barely leashed anger. Oh, to be a fully accepted, mated Berserker. The powers were, indeed, mighty and impressive. Soren only regretted he wouldn’t get the chance to fully explore them. His beast called for him to fight, and he nearly trembled with the control it took to allow the Laird’s contempt to go unanswered.

Finn put a staying hand on his half-brother’s arm, scrutinizing Soren through narrowed eyes.

“Ye are the only one here without honor,” the Laird snarled, then glanced at Finn. “He lies. I can sense it. I say we put him down.”

Finn shook his head, a curious frown drawing his flaxen brows together. “We sent the Banshee after him some time ago, and it’s still unclear
why
he’s alive.”

“What does it matter?” Connor asked.

“The
why
of it is simple,” Soren explained. “I didn’t want it to be known I was defeated by a tiny woman. Not an appropriate legacy for the Laird of Shadows.”

Finn leaned forward, his eyes boring into Soren’s with leashed meaning. “We
both
know it isn’t that simple.”

Soren bared his teeth. He was finished with this conversation. Every moment alive without his mate was like an eternity of torture. Every beat of his heart created new anxiety about her survival if she broke the terms of the pact. He had to goad them into finishing him. His death was the only way to ensure her safety.

“The years have made you soft, Finn the Bastard.” Soren arranged his features into the most mocking, condescending expression he could. He remembered the ferocity of Finn’s defiant eyes back at the temple, more than two decades ago. His lack of bloodline had made him a pariah among his own kind. He’d been fed with the dogs. Beaten regularly by the temple Elders. Shunned and mistreated by his own kind. He’d become one of the strongest, most fearsome Berserkers in their history. And they’d still sent him to kill his own Celtic half-brothers, or die.

Soren was younger than Finn. But he remembered the Gael’s disgrace, and wasn’t above using it to goad him to violence. “’Tis no matter. I imagine even you Highlanders can find the strength between the two of you to kill a man with his hands chained behind him who refuses to defend himself.”

Finn’s eyes flared with a shadow of his former rage, but he made no move against him.

“I could still kill ye if
ye
were armed and
my
hands were bound behind me, boy,” Connor threatened. “Or don’t ye remember the battle we fought all those years ago? The slaughter we wrought upon countless other Berserkers? Our only mistake was letting ye survive.”

Soren lunged toward the pole axe, and was astounded when Connor pulled it safely away from his flesh. “Here’s your chance to correct that mistake,” he urged. “End me here and keep your precious Highlands safe from me.”

Finn shook his head, folding stubborn, massive arms over MacLauchlan colors. “First, I want to know
why
you showed up here, asking for death but not a fight. You are not the Soren Neilson I remember.”

“You look good in a Highland tartan,” Soren sneered again at the handsome, golden-haired Berserker who shared his native tongue and half his heritage. “You’re lucky your brothers let you wear their colors even though your mother was just one of their father’s discarded whores.”

The moment Finn’s temper overwhelmed his curiosity and his eyes swirled with onyx and wrath, a very small figure dashed from the doorway.

“Soren!” To his complete and unfailing shock, Kamdyn stood in front of him, her curly head barely reaching his chest and her arms flung wide in a protective stance. Soren would have laughed at the preposterousness of it all had he not been so astounded to see her there. “How could you
say
something so hateful?” She glared over her slim shoulder at him with unreserved censure.

“What are you
doing
here?” he demanded. He’d thought to protect her from his death, not have his executioners step around her wee body to cleave him in half. Blood would stain her new pretty Fae robes.

Again.

“He’s
very
sorry he said that,” she addressed the two irate Berserkers, all the while standing in front of him.

“I am
not
sorry,” he argued.

Her heel stomped down on his foot with such force he suppressed a wince.

A third dark-haired MacLauchlan brother appeared in the doorway and they blinked from her to him in unison, their shock only somewhat less apparent than his own.

“Ye were just telling us, wee Banshee, that he’d reformed his ways and deserved for the pact to be rescinded.” The newcomer, Roderick, lifted an unconvinced eyebrow.

“Aye…” Kamdyn cast another scathing look over her shoulder, but kept a solicitous smile fixed on her mouth for the sake of the scowling brothers. “Um… you see…”