A Faerie Fated Forever (24 page)

Nial’s brow lifted as his lips quirked the sensual grin that was his alone. “I'm certain I told you that before. But words, as they say, are cheap.” He wiggled his brows as he leered at her. “I'll be glad to take you upstairs for a thorough demonstration of all the kinds of love I have for you at this moment.”

He bent to follow through and she laughed as she shook her head no. “Behave. We’ll be up all night to finish our packing as it is. Perhaps you would relent and allow us a day or two longer before we depart so that the household might catch a wink of sleep tonight?”

Stubbornly, he shook his head, saying, “Sweet, the only thing that would make me happier than shaking the dust of England off my shoes tomorrow would be doing it tonight.”

Her family surrounded them after the dance. Nial found their amazement insulting and said so. “Heather is my love and my life. How could such a small thing as they way she chooses to dress alter that? If she shows up for breakfast garbed like this every day, I will love her. If she shows up garbed as the temptress of the last few weeks, I will love her. Most of all,” He said, thinking that Bonnie deserved the embarrassment for having such a low opinion of him, “I will love her each night in our bedchamber when she is garbed not at all.” Bonnie blushed and then winked at him, knowing she had been repaid in kind.

The rest of the night passed in a whirl of joy for Heather, marred only by Viv sneaking into her bedchamber after the ball for a private word.

“I’ll not be going with you to Skye, Heather. Later tonight I will receive a fake message that my maiden great-aunt Genevieve in France has fallen ill and needs me to tend her. The family will think I am there for some months, which will allow me time to make the crossing to America. I have everything set there and I can’t wait. I feel that my life is about to begin.”

Viv would not be swayed from her firm intent, and seeing her happiness, Heather knew she could not betray her confidence. She worried about her cousin, but perhaps it was time for Viv to spread her wings. Her fate might await her in America.

With hugs and tears and promises to write, the cousins reluctantly parted.

As much as she would miss her English relations, Heather was anxious to go home. She too wanted to make Nial hers in the ceremony that would be respected under the laws of every country in the world. All the lasses who panted after him might not respect the ceremony, but Heather had every confidence that she could take care of them.

After all, Nial and the faeries were on her side.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The first day of the journey, Nial was crammed into a coach with Heather on one side, Boz on the other, and Bonnie and Carrick across from him. Peter rode with his parents, as did the dowager duchess. The Harrison children stayed in London with nursemaids. In honor of his long-anticipated victorious return to his homeland, he wore his kilt. He loved his kilt and everything it symbolized. Before they traveled half a day however he heartily condemned it to purgatory.

The problem? His lady liked to touch him. Her touches were not obvious or blatant. They were subtle and ostensibly appropriate. They were also driving him batty. While she and Bonnie had a long discourse on the menu for the banquet that would follow the wedding, Heather stroked his forearm. With each stroke, Nial’s tarse jerked awake and quivered at the ready until she ceased the contact and he was able to cool off by imagining horrific images of violence, or that he was in a long, rambling discourse with the elders.

Just when his bloody arousal calmed, Heather would resume her touches. Each time, the gluttonous monster woke up and lingered in a semi-aroused condition until her touch ceased and he had to think himself calm again. By early afternoon he pretended a voracious appetite simply to get out of the carriage. He voiced a suggestion that he ride his horse the rest of the day but Heather’s expression grew so downcast that he couldn’t bring himself to desert her.

About mid afternoon the MacIvers dozed off and Heather curled into him, placing her head on his shoulder. That posture caused her gown’s neckline to widen, and when he glanced down, he had a generous view of her left breast. As she drifted towards sleep, her hand curled into his lap and his member pumped as his arousal grew from a low groan to a roar. She moved her hand around, and his staff stretched and lurched until his kilt was badly tented and he couldn’t sit still. The pressure of her hand would not allow his thoughts to calm his body, and soon his entire body shuddered with the burning pressure of strident desire.

He grew so desperate that he closed his eyes and prayed to the almighty for Boz to join the others in slumber. If his cousin would just close his eyes, he could put Heather’s hand where it would ease his distress. In his current condition, it wouldn’t take much. The damned duke looked suspiciously not tired, and as Nial’s furtive glances grew harder to ignore, the dratted man leaned over and said, “I never nap during daylight hours, old boy.”

“Pretend,” Nial gritted out from between clenched teeth. Boz gave a deep sigh and closed his eyes. Nial reached for Heather’s hand just as the carriage hit a hefty rut and jolted Carrick and Bonnie awake. Unfortunately it didn’t jolt Heather awake, it just caused her to start and grip what she was holding tighter. Nial ground his teeth together and prayed for nightfall and five minutes alone with Heather. Eventually he got one but not the other.

******

Between the leisurely pace of travel and the days of deprivation before they left London, it had been well over two weeks since Nial’s copious passion had found safe-harbor within Heather by the time they docked at Skye. Even burdened with lust, he managed a slightly strained smile as they stepped ashore on their island home. A morning mist clung to the sky and shaded the peaks of the Cuillins, and the flowers of every hue grew in wild and untamed beauty that soothed the hearts of the travelers who had been gone too long.

He ignored their companions and paused for a moment to plant a far-too-heated kiss on his lady’s lips and to whisper against them, “Home with my fate in my arms. I need nothing else from life.”

Heather reached a tender hand to his cheek and he pressed against it before he planted a kiss there and with a long-suffering sigh, turned to greet the masses.

In the eternal manner of the secret grapevine that passed such news along, word had gone out that the lairds of Clan Maclee and Clan MacIver would return today. A large party waited at the landing to greet the group. Among them were a fair number of ladies come to sigh over the natural treasure of the island returned at long last. Nial kept Heather carefully within the circle of his arms.

The lasses frowned at her suspiciously, since none of them recognized the interloper who took far too much of the laird’s attention. It was not their unnoticed glares of resentment that occupied Nial’s attention. Rather, it was the fomenting interest of the young men whose eyes glistened with admiration at the beautiful temptress. The women pressed forward to lure Nial’s interest, and the men pressed forward to obtain Heather’s and the crowd thronged until the couple separated.

Nial felt a female hand on his bum and another on his chest as one of the bolder young widows he had favored in the past leaned close and said, “There is an empty spot in my bed and between my thighs for you Laird Maclee.” The comment was definitely overheard by Heather, who was too busy with young men jockeying for favor to respond verbally, but the daggers in her glare would have been response enough for a woman with any degree of intelligence. Unfortunately, it had never been the widow’s mental acuity that concerned the laird.

The Maclee glanced over to see that four young bucks surrounded Heather. That meant eight eyes roamed over the bounteous bosom her neckline exposed. One of the more intensely interested had taken hold of her hand to kiss it and was by God nibbling on her fingers. That was the particular straw that broke the camel’s back for Nial.

With the same expression of challenge in his eyes that opposing warriors saw in the heat of battle, Nial pushed aside every form that separated him from his lady as he shouted at the top of his lungs.

“Enough!”

He reached her side and wrapped an arm tightly around her waist and used the other to jerk her hand away from the admirer. Her eyes twinkled in amusement at his clearly possessive gesture, but the twinkle stopped abruptly when she realized that a female hand cradled his tush. She mimicked his gesture in reaching behind to remove the offending talons from the bum that belonged to her.

“Hey,” objected a male voice.

“Hey,” objected a female voice.

“Back off,” was Nial’s surly command. Not used to having Laird Nial’s voice directed in anger, as he was generally more tolerant of a degree of groping on the island that he never allowed elsewhere, the crowd was puzzled. The threat in his tones convinced them to step back a pace or two.

“Laird,” came the angry voice from the female whose hand had been evicted from his backside, “I don’t know who she is but you’d better tell her that women are never allowed to become possessive over you. If she becomes angry over a hand on your bum just imagine how upset she will be when it’s my turn to warm your bed.” The female voices rose in agreement with the speaker.

“I have a different bone to pick with you,” said the deeper voice from the man who had been nibbling Heather’s lovely digits before they were so rudely jerked from his grasp. “I’ve as much right as you to touch this lovely creature, and if she prefers my touch to yours it’s apt to mean that she would rather own than rent.”

Nial lifted Heather’s left hand in his to hold it out and display it to the crowd. Loud gasps of shock from the men and women proclaimed that all eyes recognized the famed Maclee betrothal ring that the lovely lady wore. “Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to someone you have all known since she was small. This is Lady Heather MacIver. I have long known the inner beauty of the woman, the charm and caring and strength of her character, but until very recently, I was blind to the fact that the inner beauty was matched by the outer glory of the lady.”

He kissed the hand wearing his ring and continued. “Heather is my faerie fated forever and in three days time,” he ignored the loud groans from Bonnie and Violet that protested the rush, “we shall be wed in the kirk. That means that the only female flesh that shall meet mine shall be my lady’s. As for the men, if you wish to have the right to touch my Heather, you best plan to do so over my corpse, for I will after this day meet any touch with the point of my sword. Be very sure that your lust does not overrule your brain, for I will tolerate no interference with this one. She is mine and there is nothing I have that I value near as much. See that you all remember it.”

With those words, he joined the rest of the party in the wagon that would carry the group to Kilcuillin. The journey was only a few minutes in duration, but now that he had returned to the island so much a part of them both, his desire refused to be contained. It billowed his kilt and commanded attention. Ignoring the other occupants of the wagon, he traced the line of his lady’s mouth until the wench opened her lips and proceeded to nibble his finger. He returned the favor by nibbling her ear as he softly whispered in most graphic terms how much he needed her and how he intended to satisfy that need. His attentions were open and observed by all, and everyone was glad when the wagon pulled to the front of the Castle.

He was so intent upon impressing the immediacy of his intentions upon her that it was a couple of moments before either of them realized they had arrived and that they were the last occupants of the conveyance. With a laugh, Nial jumped down and reached up to help her out of the wagon. She put her arms on his shoulders and he reached up to curve them around his neck as he place his arms under her knees, and carried her away from the group.

With a frown showing the ingrained nature of the English propriety she had become accustomed to, Violet said, “One would think that he could wait three short days.”

Boz showed that perhaps the wildness of his nature still had a fair amount of Highlands in it when he remarked, “Personally, I don’t think he could wait three minutes.”

******

The progress of Nial’s rapid strides was interrupted several times because he periodically stopped to take her lips and tell her how he ached for her and how much he needed to bury himself inside her, joining them so closely that nothing could separate them. Finally he brushed through the last of the trees into a brilliant yellow field of rape that swept down to the edge of the blue waters of the hidden loch. The muted crash of a waterfall was straight ahead and an enchanted mist hung over the area. It was a place apart in time and space, and he could wait no longer to fulfill his fantasy.

From the day she had ran away from him with tears melting the gold of her eyes, he had haunted the loch. He would not believe she was his until he had her here on the bed of rape where he had come day after lonely day to gaze and fantasize. Now, at long last, they were here, and he could claim the promise of the passion that had raged between them. To the law, she would be his when he stood before a priest and exchanged vows with her. To the Scot, she had been his since first he had claimed her. She would only belong to the man when he had her right here, in this spot.

He laid her in the center of the yellow mattress, and knelt over her allowing his eyes to feast on her glory. The neckline of her dress had slipped down so that both breasts were about half way visible.

“Sorry, love, so sorry, but I can’t…”

He couldn’t wait and he couldn’t even finish his sentence. He seized the top of her gown and jerked it down, ripping the delicate fabric in his unbound eagerness. She thrust her pebbled nipples towards his mouth and he licked his lips. She moaned and writhed beneath him and he closed his eyes, wanting to focus on her, wanting to satisfy her, but his entire body burned and shook like he had a fatal fever. He was too hot, too ready, too damned pathetically needy himself to tend her craving. He could wait for nothing.

He jerked her skirts up without words save the plea in his eyes. That plea grew stronger as he grabbed the seam of her drawers and ripped the fabric apart. He tossed his kilt up and wrapped a hand around his tarse, prepared to ram his full length inside her with one thrust before a memory of the beast’s behavior halted him. His full lips trembled too badly to allow speech and what emerged from his vocal chords was a loud sob as tears he could no longer restrain poured from his eyes.

His soul lay bare before her in those moments. She was humbled by the depth of emotion it took for the proud laird to be brought to tears by the force of his feelings for her. The loss in his eyes provided irrefutable proof that she had not been alone in the bottomless pit of sorrow that had consumed her soul every lonely moment she was away from him. Unbeknownst to her, those emotions had been mirrored in the soul of the laird who loved her.

He paused but didn't withdraw and rapped insistently at her portal. He had taken her once before when he had not been certain of her permission. Despite the conjoined demands of his body and soul, he couldn’t proceed until he knew that she could forgive his invasion.

“Heather?” He managed to rasp, just as a teardrop dripped from his face to sparkle amidst the glory of her wild nest of feminine fur. He shuddered, and bit his lip to restrain a second loud sob. She knew what he was asking and she knew the reason for the inquiry, although she had repeatedly assured him that his concern over the prior passion was unfounded.

Being needed so desperately by her Prince Charming had tapped her feminine font whilst he nibbled and whispered in the wagon so she was more than ready. She opened her legs wider and surged up to meet the staff that grazed like an impatient filly. He needed no further invitation, and thrust inside immediately. The smile that sprawled over his open mouth at feeling how wet and ready she was belonged to the triumphant predator who had bagged his prey.

“Thank God,” He said, as the ribbed, tight walls encased his suffering staff and the joining encased his soul. At last, she was his right here, where he had cried for her, had mourned for her. She was his right here where he courted death as preferable to a lifetime without her. He made her his where he had felt her loss most keenly and when her release met his their union was complete.