The Highlander (33 page)

Her body quivered at his words. Her muscles clenched and seemed to swell inside of her dress. Her hand went from tentatively resting on his arm to gripping it desperately, as though to keep herself upright.

When her face lifted to his, her jade eyes shimmered with unshed tears. The bleak despair surprised and confounded him. Of any effect he'd anticipated his words to have, this was most definitely not it.

“I—I must confess to you something that might change your feelings.” Threatening tears lent her voice an even lower register, and Liam spun her away from the dancers and the musicians to occupy the shadows next to a deserted table piled with two empty casks and countless empty tankards.

“There is nothing you can say—”

“There was a man,” she said fervently. “Back in London, he—”

Liam pressed a single rough finger against the ripe ridges of her lips. “I know this,” he soothed.

She turned her neck and twisted her face away from his touch. “No, you
don't
. You can't possibly know. He laid claim
already,
don't you understand? He hurt me, Liam, but he didn't force me. I let him.
I had to.
He did things to my body, to my soul, that changed me utterly.”

Liam's demon rose within him, and he did his best to fight it back. “Give me his name, and I'll see his bloody, broken corpse delivered at yer feet.”

She shook her head, taking a step back against the rage that must have gathered on his features. “No.
No,
don't you see? My only means of escape is to be other than I was. You
know
I have a secret. A terrible secret. You can't imagine the depth of it. The scope of it. You don't know who I am … what I've become. To tell you would be the end of me.” Her last words escaped on a broken voice.

He reached for her, pulling her close. He wanted to erase every bad memory from her tortured thoughts. To ease every fear she had and smite all her dragons. He wanted to destroy this man who'd caused her such pain, such shame. If only she'd give him the means with which to do so.

Unable to go to war, as was his first instinct, he tried to give her some modicum of peace, instead. “I have secrets of my own, lass. Terrible ones. The kind that will damn me in the end. Let us leave our secrets to the past where they belong, and let us have this moment. Tomorrow is tomorrow, yesterday is yesterday. But tonight. Tonight is for us.”

She searched his eyes as though his was a face she didn't recognize. “Don't you remember what we talked about that day in the chapel? The past isn't just the past. It stays with us, it makes us who we are. The sins we commit tonight we will have to answer for in the light of day.”

He reached out, brushing his knuckles against the downy softness of her cheek, right below where her ugly bruise used to be. “They say the past is etched in stone,” he murmured. “But ye've made me believe that it isn't. It's merely mist and mirrors, lass. Time passes and it becomes cloudy and unclear, and we can learn to leave our pain behind.”

“But certain things linger, don't they?” she asked bitterly. “Like the acrid smell of peat smoke. The choices you make … there are so many that are impossible to escape.”

“Ye told me once that evil can make itself seem light. Good can do the same.” He leaned down to her, crowding her with his body against the table, pressing his cheek against hers as he gathered her close. “Ye make me yearn to be a good man. Let me show you how redemption can be found, even in the darkness, lass. Doona let tomorrow dawn, with all its dangerous unknowns without having let me love ye. For it canna be a sin beneath such friendly stars.”

A tear dropped onto his bare skin, scalding him as it ran into the grooves of his chest. “Don't you understand what I'm trying to tell you? I'm not a
virgin
.”

“Hush, lass,” he soothed, pressing a kiss to her brow. “For I will share a confession of my own.” He tilted his head down toward hers, his hot breath hitting her ear. “Neither am I.”

Something about the obvious absurdity of his answer caused her a small hiccup of laughter. The thought of another man above Mena, inside of her, tightened every possessive instinct with such a force he thought he would snap beneath the weight. And yet …

“It changes nothing about the fact that I want ye,” he told her. “I am not a man who holds his women to an impossible standard of chastity. That's not been our way out here in the Highlands. This is a place of handfasts and fishwives, we like to be certain of our desire before we bind our lives.” He pulled away, using a few fingers to lift her unsteady chin up toward him.

“Look into my eyes and say that yer body does not call to mine. Tell me ye doona want me.”

Her eyes shone brilliantly from her porcelain skin. “I—I can't.”

“Then go to the north woods in five minutes. I'll wait for a few minutes, so we are not marked as leaving together, and then I'll find ye.” He'd not only find her, he'd assault her with such pleasure, he'd wipe the memory of any other man from her mind.

Permanently.

 

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

The Highland woods were a mystical place on any given night, but to Mena, Samhain had taken on a distinct dreamlike quality. An iridescent mist crept in from the sea and settled on the soft floor of the forest. The dense fog, turned an eerie shade of blue by the moonlight and some unexplainable force of nature, carried the scent of loamy brine and evergreens.

Mena's skirts displaced the vapor as she picked her way through the thickest parts of undergrowth, wondering just where she should pause.

And wait for him to come for her.

Dear Lord, what was she doing? It had been easy enough to look deep into Liam's dark eyes and to drown in the desire she saw burning there. To let the scent of him arouse and intoxicate her. Soap, whisky, autumn spices, and that masculine essence that was so unique to him. The one that told her she was safe.

Or that she wasn't.

Whatever it was, she knew that scent—her soul knew it—and she'd inhaled him deep, as though she could hold a memory in the most minuscule fibers of her body, like she could a breath.

How a man like him could seduce her so easily, so absolutely, still astounded her. He was an enigma. A man with a great deal of sense and the temper of a demon. A good man with a frightening past. A violent man with a wish for peace.

It was the paradox that drew her. He was a puzzle, a complication, someone whom she didn't understand and who was not at all like her but who, in his own way, arrived at the very same conclusions she did. About many things.

It worried her how incompatible they were.

It amazed her how perfect they were for each other.

Liam was a hero who'd come to hate himself for the sins of his past, and she was a refugee with a secret shame. How fitting that they should find redemption in each other's arms.

And passion, one couldn't forget that.

She'd never known a man with such passion. Riddled with so much fathomless need. She'd never been the object of such ardent, fervent attentions. Mena shivered more from the memory of his touch than the chill in the air. Some womanly instinct whispered that the passion he'd shown her thus far was merely the surface of a roiling volcano. The pressure was building, boiling, and churning the air between them until it'd reached the point of eruption. There was simply no containing it anymore.

No denying it. He was relentless, the Demon Highlander. He would not be resisted. He would not be deterred. And Mena was tired. In the absolute way that even her bones felt tired of supporting not just her body, but the weight she carried within her soul. Tired of pretending not to want him, tired of fearing what may occur in the morning. And above all, tired of being alone and afraid.

There was going to be a moment when she regretted the decision to surrender to Liam Mackenzie. But tonight was not that night, and this moment was not that moment.

Mena stumbled upon a small clearing. As she drifted into it, soft mosses cushioned her boots, muffling the sound of her footfalls. A rock the length of a tall man leaned against two shorter, hulking stones in such a way, it reminded Mena of an altar that she'd seen in one of the Great Hall tapestries.

This was the place.

The moonlight slanted down on the tiny glen, lending its azure magic to the enchanted atmosphere of the site. Mena felt every bit the sacrificial virgin being led to meet her fate at the hands of some demanding god. The altar would be the perfect spot to make herself into an offering.

Virgin or not.

For if ever a pagan deity roamed the earth, he surely would take the form of Liam Mackenzie.

A ripple of anticipation seized her, followed by a chill of apprehension, and the mist seemed to respond, swirling as though scattered by a form much bigger and stronger than she. His name escaped her lips on a husky whisper, and she turned to greet Liam, her would-be lover.

Red eyes stared back at her from a face so hideously disfigured, that revulsion rose just as suddenly as terror. Both reactions closed her throat against a scream.

The Brollachan.

He wore no hood this time, no cloak to cover the horror that was his face. The creature had no nose to protect the two dark slits beneath the bridge between his eyes. A gleaming web of flesh dripped down the right side of his head. The left was oddly flat, as though he'd lain on one side for an eternity, and the skin had decided to melt in that direction after a time.

“How sad, lass, that ye didna heed my warning,” the demon hissed from behind lips that couldn't really close, and thereby didn't deserve the distinction. “For now, I fear, it is too late.

The demon seized her, and the scream of fright turned into a cry of pain as he wrenched her around and yanked her neck to the side. He pressed her back against his chest, as he twisted one arm painfully behind her in a brutal hold.

“Scream all ye like, lass,” he hissed, drawing another desperate sound from her throat as he pulled on her arm hard enough for pain to rip through her shoulder. “Yer screams are just what he wanted to hear tonight. And we should oblige the Demon Highlander, should we not?” An unmistakable metallic grind was as loud as any scream to her ear. Mena knew what that sound meant before she felt the kiss of his unsheathed dagger beneath her neck.

Frozen against the very hard, very real body of the specter who'd stalked the shadows of Ravencroft Keep since she'd arrived, an absurd question permeated the cold terror coursing through her.

What would a demon need with a blade?

Now that Mena knew he wanted her to scream, to summon Liam, she pressed her lips together. The hold he had on her arm wasn't immobilizing, but the dagger point he held beneath her throat certainly was.

She found it a mercy that she didn't have to look at him, that his horrific features wouldn't be the last thing she saw in this world.

“He's not coming for me,” she lied, hating how small and frightened her voice made her sound. “You're mistaken. He remained at the festival.”

It was the dark chuckle that confirmed to Mena who he was. Rough, caustic, full of rasping masculinity and devoid of any humor. Only three other men on this earth had ever made a sound like that.

Liam Mackenzie, Gavin St. James, and Dorian Blackwell.

Brothers
.

“Hamish,”
Mena whispered. “You're alive?”

“And ye're a clever sort.” His serpentine head lowered so that she could hear the slight whistle of air through the pitiable slits in the center of his face. “Though not so clever as ye think if you consider
this
a life.”

The blade against her throat radiated the chill of the evening, paradoxically burning against the soft, tender skin of her throat. Mena was terrified, but felt oddly detached. A frigid chill that put the ice baths to shame washed over her, but instead of seizing her mind with those fingers of ice, it somehow liberated her.

She'd survived violence before. She'd been struck, threatened, choked, and terrorized. Somehow, through it all, she'd learned to keep her head in a dangerous situation. To cycle through the fear and pain threatening to cloud her thoughts, and pluck from the nebula of knowledge, instead.

Her newfound strength would be priceless in this situation.

Mena knew she wasn't his true quarry, that she was a means to an end. Which could prove to be her salvation, unless
she
proved to be useless to him. First she must ascertain what his motives were, and then she could formulate a plan.

“That night I thought I dreamed of you.” A chill speared her at the memory, and she had to straighten her spine to keep it at bay. “You were in my bedroom?”

“I tried to warn ye then, woman,” he confirmed. “I told ye to run. I had revenge to reap and ye were in my way. I regret it had to come to this.”

“It still doesn't have to,” Mena ventured. “You said that night that Liam promised you something. That you felt he owed you.”

“He
does
owe me,” Hamish insisted, his pressure tightening on her neck, the blade biting into the soft skin right beneath her chin.

“What?” The question sounded shrill and desperate, even to her. “What did he promise you? I'm certain he'll give it, he's a man of his word.”

A crack sounded in the woods beyond the feeble reach of the moon. The snap of a tree limb, perhaps?

Mena's heart caught. Could it be Liam? She both desired and dreaded the sight of his sinister features.

Hamish had heard it, as well.

“I know ye're out there, brother.” That terrible, almost beautiful laugh vibrated the air around them, and seemed to even disturb the mists now rising past their knees and inching up their thighs as though meaning to swallow them.