A Faerie Fated Forever (6 page)

Heather loved him and her quiet worship soothed his soul. He sought her company more rather than less as the days passed. It would have been kinder to stay away, but when he tried to do that he couldn’t. There was always something he just had to tell Heather. Some question he needed her help with or some tale he had to share. He would break his promise to stay away for her own good and go to seek her out instead.

And now, to top it all, this morning at breakfast only the elders and the MacIver were there, and he had knew he was in trouble the second he entered the room.

“Laird Maclee,” Carrick began, “you have spent a fairly substantial amount of time with my daughter. It appears to me, that it is past time for you to make your intentions plain.”

“My intentions?” Nial’s question was admittedly feeble, but he had been caught in the hell of the nightmare and wasn’t ready to deal with this right now.

“Laird Maclee, it is my understanding that you are contemplating a match with my daughter.” Carrick looked to the elders, “Am I mistaken?”

“Nay, Laird, of course you are not mistaken. A match between our laird and your daughter would secure the future of both clans and this island.” Eaoseph wasn’t subtle but from what Nial had seen, subtlety vanished with age. “Ye have been spending time with the lass considering a match, haven’t ye, Laird?”

Now he was caught, and under the joint glare of all the elders had no choice in his reply. "Well, of course. It’s just that I hadn’t expected to be pressed about my intentions quite so soon.” His statement was blatantly false. He had expected to be tackled before this and still hadn’t come up with a good way to respond. What he most needed to do was the one thing he couldn’t – discuss it with Heather.

“Really? I find that surprising, Nial. I thought your character more like mine. I expected that you would be decisive, able to make a quick and correct decision and follow through," Carrick said pointedly.

Nial sighed. The man had virtually challenged his ability to lead his clan with that one, and again, he had no choice in his reply. “Normally that would be true. However in this case I must weigh my duty to the clan against my own future happiness.”

“Sir, are you saying that marriage to my daughter would make you unhappy? If that is the case, I assure you my family and I will take our leave and will not trouble you about this matter again. My daughter has a great deal to offer a man astute enough to look beneath the surface. Perhaps I was wrong and you are not such a man.”

The elders’ distress aside, Carrick’s offer would let Nial off the hook, and he nearly said the words that would eliminate the pressure to make him marry Heather. As he opened his mouth to speak, he realized that the same words would destroy the friendship he had with her as well. He couldn’t even explain it to himself, but Heather’s friendship had become important to him. Maybe, just maybe, it had even become necessary.

“Gentlemen. You will have to allow me to take my leave of you as I will require a bit more time to think this through.” Nial was polite but insistent. He had to have time to formulate a plan.

“How much more time?” Carrick inquired firmly.

“Tonight. I will have a decision tonight. I will discuss it with Heather when we take our evening walk in the garden after dinner,” his words pleased the group, whose eyes lit up in anticipation of a reason to celebrate. He pushed his uneaten breakfast away and left with a heavy heart, feeling pushed into a corner. His instincts compelled him to push back. Nial never cornered well.

He did what he always did when he was deeply troubled. He sought the privacy and serenity of his hidden sanctuary. He made his way through the dense greenery of the forest towards the crest of a steep hill where he could sit and contemplate the peaceful tranquility of a tranquil loch that lay at the foot of a mighty peak of the majestic Cuillin mountains. The loch was hidden from view by the range of the Cuillins, the hill where he would sit, and a dense thicket of trees, at the edge of which, wildflowers grew in abundance in private majesty.

This had become his refuge. In this place alone the pressures of clan business and the efforts of scheming women who wanted his body or his power but never his heart or his soul could not reach him. He had never seen another person at the hidden loch. He held the secret close to himself to preserve the one place on earth that was solely his.

He would come here to seek his answer, thought Nial as he climbed the small hill. He would sit and his refuge would speak to him and tell him whether he should do his duty and put the welfare of his clan ahead of the call of his heart. When he reached the peak of the hill, a small movement from his left, down below at the loch, drew his notice. Someone was down there. Who?

It was a nude woman. He could only see her back at present, but even that was glorious. Her rounded bottom looked made to fit his hands. His palms started itching with the need to cup those buttocks. He gulped the excess moisture in his mouth that threatened to become drool. He would have to look up at the rest of her in a moment, but it required a physical act of will to tear his eyes from her long, oh so long and shapely legs to the point where her bottom curved like a ripe apple. Up to the small of her back – no wait, for just a minute back to her bottom. His tongue rimmed his mouth, imagining licking every inch of that bottom before he bit into the fruit and savored it before his tongue lapped up to the small indentation at the base of her spine.

He twitched in his seat, conscious that never in his life had he reacted so to the sight of a woman. His body was on full alert, and he couldn’t even make himself blink.

Then she turned around. He had been gazing at her butt, so when she turned, his eyes rested on the exotic nest of curls that sheltered her womanhood. His eyes darted up to where her thin waist blossomed into full, extravagant breasts topped by dusky mahogany nipples, hardened from the cold.

She dipped beneath the water again, hiding her beauty. He nearly stood up and screamed in outrage, but held back, knowing she couldn’t stay submerged for long in the cold loch. With her exotic figure hidden from his gaze his mind replayed the delights he had surveyed so far and…

Dear Lord! What color had that nest of curls been? Was his mind betraying him? Could it have been every shade of the brown rainbow? Had he seen sandy locks mingling with golden brown, chocolate and auburn? Did he want that so bad he imaged it now?

She could not have been submerged for more than a couple of minutes, but they were without doubt the longest, slowest minutes in the annals of recorded time.

She stood and he knew her instantly. “
Mo cridhe
,” my heart, everything within him cried, as he went completely still, gazing at the woman who was his destiny. Her exotic beauty set her apart from any female he had ever encountered, and spoke to everything wild within him. The multi-hued rainbow of brown of her long, wavy hair fell to that rounded bottom he had been studying before, and it provided the perfect frame for the golden eyes that had tormented his dreams for days.

What was he doing? While he sat here gawking he could have been closing the distance between them. He jumped to his feet, but the movement was too sudden and drew her notice.

She looked up and met his eyes across the distance. Her golden eyes widened, her jaw dropped and she took off at a run - away from him.

“Wait. Don’t go,” he implored as his fated love reached the ground on the other side of the loch. She grabbed a mound of clothes lying beneath a tree, tucked them beneath her arm, and ran harder.

His steps sped around the lake as he ran harder and faster than he'd ever gone in his life. He chased his future and like so many things these days, it seemed to appear only long enough to torment him. Despite his speed, by the time he reached the gap in the trees she'd disappeared into, he saw no trace of her.

He tried calling again. “Come back. Wait, I have to talk with you. Where did you go? Please, please, come back!!”

He searched everywhere, and terrified at least two innocent bunnies and a deer that he heard darting around the woods and pursued. Only when he'd circled the lock in widening loops that took him beyond the sanctuary did he admit the obvious. She'd gone as suddenly, as mysteriously as she'd appeared.

He trudged toward the castle with a heavy heart, downcast at her flight. Okay, he quirked a smile, if she wasn’t the type of woman who would be terrified at a strange man lumbering towards her as she stood naked in the middle of a loch, then she might be fun for a night, but she wouldn’t be his fated mate. Didn’t she know she belonged to him? Why hadn’t she stopped and waited once she was dressed again? No matter, he would find her and she would be his.

He couldn’t marry Heather.

Now that he had seen his fate and knew that she was not just a product of his libidinous imagination, he would never settle for less. Still, he didn’t want to lose Heather’s friendship. Just the thought shadowed his soul. He was Scot enough to respect his instincts and he was male enough to look for a way to have it all.

So his mind set to work. How to convince Heather that they were not meant to be wed without causing a complete break in their friendship? Heather loved him. That would make it harder. Many women had fallen in love with him, or vowed they had, but he hadn’t concerned himself before. Heather was different. She mattered. He had to end it without hurting her too much. Okay, she would be hurt to some degree. Avoiding it altogether was impossible. How to lighten the blow and make it her choice?

Heather was constant and would demand fidelity from a man. She thought she had it from him. His active urges would not give him ease to remain celibate this long, certainly not based on friendship or the possibility of getting into bed with Heather. He kept his nighttime meandering to the widow’s bed a close secret because he knew it would hurt Heather.

Sorcha did keep lobbying to return to the castle, and suddenly he stopped in his tracks. Why not let her return? He could arrange to meet outside in the garden a few minutes before his meeting with Heather. If Heather saw them kissing, she would decide he wasn’t constant enough to be her mate. Yet kissing was fairly mild, and could be overcome later. It might take some time and some effort, but he would be able to regain her friendship while being fairly sure that she would not allow it to go further. She would think she could not trust him with her heart, and she would look elsewhere.

He looked at his watch and frowned. He was due at crofter’s court, and had been told that there was a full docket this afternoon. There would be no time for him to see Sorcha himself and make arrangements. He would have to fill Calum in and send him over to get her. He didn’t think she would refuse any opportunity to cast her lures at him because she kept hoping for a permanent bite.

There was a bounce in his step as he headed inside. He was going to be able to keep Heather and have his true love. The curse wouldn’t mess up his life after all.

The faeries wouldn’t win this one.

CHAPTER SIX

“I need you to talk to Sorcha and invite her here for dinner. Afterwards, she is to meet me in the garden. We will be kissing when Heather comes to meet me. I told the elders and the MacIvers that I would give her my decision in the garden after dinner. She will see me kissing the other woman and take that as an answer,” Nial requested, wrinkling his brow at his friend's odd expression. Had he sprouted wings? Why did the other man look at him like he'd turned into a fairy godmother?

Calum gaped, slack-jawed, unable to speak for a long moment

“Will you help me?” Maclee demanded. "I need words, here."

"Of course. I��ll be glad to,” Calum said when his jaw tightened enough for him to speak and even for him to sprout the broadest grin he'd ever worn. "Sorcha and I will see you before dinner and I'm willing to bet she'll be raring to go."

Several hours later, Nial found himself strangely nervous as he stood in the blue sitting room awaiting the dinner guests. Calum arrived with the widow who looked like sex on two feet. Sorcha was garbed in a fiery red gown cut so low it barely concealed her nipples.Walking over to greet her, he raised her fingers to his lips and gave them a teasing flick of his tongue as he asked, “Do I understand that you have agreed to assist me with my little drama after dinner?”

“Indeed I have, Nial. Anything to send the little mouse scurrying away. This should certainly do that,” she said, openly catty.

His eyes shot fire at her characterization of Heather, but given the part she was to play tonight he could hardly argue with her now. Dangerous as it might be, he would have to tolerate her outrageous conduct on this singular occasion. Calum passed him a goblet filled with red wine, and Nial thanked him absently, his mind already far from dinner. He was envisioning tomorrow when he would have the freedom to find his dream. As he sipped at the wine, he caught a couple of strangely amused glances dart between the other two, but before he had a chance to grill either of them Heather entered the room.

As usual, she looked like a disaster. This time, the sack she wore was of a singularly unattractive shade of lime green, with a bonnet of the same hue. Still, he walked over to greet her, and noticed that the skin on her forearms was a little pink, as though she had been out in the sun.

Heather had spent hours wondering what Nial would say to her. Surely he must have figured out by now that it had been she at the loch. His first words dispelled that notion.

“Have you been out in the sun, lass?” He asked, teasingly.

“I took a rather long walk today and fear I managed to get a bit more sunshine than I bargained for,” she said, aware that she had gotten more than she bargained for and less than she expected.

Glancing at the bronzed tone of her natural complexion, he said, “I am surprised that you suffer much from exposure to the sun.”

“Generally I do not. However today I had a great deal more sun that normal,” she said, then wished she had thought before speaking. She didn’t want him to know it was her did she? That was the very reason she hid from him in the first place. The man was just so attractive, standing there in his navy and green kilt that he interfered with her normally well reasoned thought processes. The navy of the kilt was an exact match for the Maclee blue of his eyes and Nial always looked devastatingly attractive in it, but then again, surely he knew that. Heather had no doubt that women told him so all the time.

Sorcha strolled over to join the conversation, again laying that annoyingly possessive hand on his arm. She brought another goblet of wine, and he looked down, surprised to find his empty. He didn’t recall drinking it.

She took his empty goblet, handing him the full one and stepped behind Heather and leaned over to put the empty one on the sideboard. The movement displaced the neckline of her dress for a moment, and bared her right breast entirely. Nial’s eyes were glued to the sight, and he realized that he was becoming physically affected by it. She winked and stared pointedly at his crotch as she tucked the breast in. Her stare increased the problem so he seated himself on the sofa to hide his discomfort.

Bonnie and Carrick entered and he had to stand back up to greet them. When he seated himself again, Sorcha sat down right beside him. He knew that was a bad idea. Having the widow close would not decrease his discomfort, but he was loathe to stand again, as he had noted a quizzical degree of curiosity in Carrick’s eyes at his demeanor.

Carrick and Heather became embroiled in a lively debate over how many days service a crofter should owe a laird, and Nial would normally have joined right in. Heather glanced at him in surprise at his continued silence. She thought his smile seemed rather strained.

Maclee sat with his legs crossed to disguise the bulge in his kilt. He wasn’t thinking well, so his legs were crossed towards the widow. She grinned and crossed hers towards him just as one of the elders issued a reminder that they all expected to speak with him after dinner.

He was conversing with them instead of paying attention to his sofa mate who used the opportunity to pick her hand up. Behind the shield of their crossed legs, she placed her hand directly over his straining member. He nearly came off the sofa.

“Stop it,” he hissed. She raised her brows innocently and gave his erection a distinct squeeze. He was trapped so she continued to fondle and squeeze until he was forced to address her again.

“Move your hand,” he insisted in a tone that was lower and more gravelly than it should have been.

“It doesn’t sound like you want me to move my hand, Nial,” she insisted playfully, punctuating each word with a measuring squeeze. His erect tarse was throbbing and relief battered at the base of his spine, just a couple of pulses away. He was only short moments from disgracing himself in the parlor of his home in front of the assembled guests. He really needed her to remove that hand, although it was the last thing his body wanted.

“Damnation,” he muttered.

“I see that your goblet is empty. As much as I hate to move my hand, perhaps I could fetch you some more wine?”

“I would appreciate that, thank you,” he said, though not from a desire for more wine. He had drunk enough already, and it seemed to be effecting him oddly of late. Tonight he needed to manage events so that Heather would lose interest without coming to hate him and the control he had spent his life erecting and reinforcing seemed strangely beyond him.

The dinner gong sounded before the widow returned. He should have escorted Heather but although his rampant erection had calmed a bit, it was far from sedate. He lurked behind, using the excuse of speaking with a servant to make him the last one in to the dining room. He followed closely behind old Eosaph, to provide additional cover.

He seated himself at the table and nearly groaned to find himself across from Heather, and between Calum and Sorcha. Both of them seemed vastly pleased by the seating arrangement for some reason.

Calum asked about his decision in an amusing dispute between a tenant and his brother, ostensibly over ownership of a cow that had belonged to their father, but really over the wife of one coveted by the other. When he looked back down at his plate, his goblet was full again. He shrugged and picked it up.

Things progressed normally through the first two courses, yet strangely the pressure of his arousal kept increasing and had now reached the point of continuous pain. His unruly libido caused him to spend a fair amount of the meal staring at Sorcha’s breasts, which hardened under his perusal and pebbled against the thin fabric of her gown. Old Seaumas, who was seated across from Sorcha and next to Heather, cleared his throat loudly to indicate to Nial that he was making a spectacle of himself with his pointed and noticeable attention.

He acted stranger still when he suddenly looked at Heather and asked, “So how do you find life on Skye?”

“Since I've never lived elsewhere I doubt I would have a basis for comparison." She looked at him carefully and asked, "Are you all right? You're wide-eyed and sweating and you seem to be having trouble sitting still. Do you need help of some kind, perhaps some sort of medical assistance?"

Sorcha gave a single low-pitched chuckle as she rolled her eyes. "If you try to help him with this stiff issue, my dear, it'll send him screaming from the room."

Nial saw Heather and her parents darting glances at him, expecting him to berate the widow. He looked at Heather and gave a small, rather helpless shrug. He reached for his napkin to wipe his forehead as he surged up in his seat. He settled down again when he felt Sorcha’s hand on his thigh. She traced small circles that never reached the organ howling for help. He ignored the elder’s frown to look at her intently, beseechingly. She leaned over, far too close, and her pebbled nipples brushed his forearm. He clenched his hands into fists, fighting the physical compulsion to touch.

She whispered, her tone flavored with undisguised amusement, “Do you want me to touch it or do you want me to stop? If you want me to touch, you must make that very clear.”

He spread his legs so wide that one bumped into the widow and the other into Calum. Uncharacteristically, Calum made no comment, not even in jest.

“Not good enough, baby,” she whispered, flicking out her tongue to his ear under cover of the whisper, and he groaned softly. This time she laughed, but he was too far-gone to think that strange. “If you want my hand there you need to reach under the table and flip up your kilt.”

He sat there, his distress open and visible even if the cause remained hidden.

Heather leaned forward again, her concern as visible as his distress. “Nial, are you certain you're all right? You seem to be in pain. Are you ill?”

“I’m fine, just fine,” he assured her, in a voice that sounded deep and strained.

Nial ordered himself to keep his hands by his side, and was astonished when he flipped up his kilt. He wasn’t so astonished that he failed to draw her attention to it, whispering to the widow, “I did what you asked.”

She said, “good boy” and reached under the table to find him bare. She skipped the erection and feathered her palms around his balls. She touched the head briefly, teasingly, and drew a bead of ecstasy. She looked at him with open contempt as she realized that a couple of strokes would finish it for him and bring him off right here at the dinner table. But that wasn’t the plan.

She withdrew her hand and he bit his lip to keep from asking that she put it back. He glanced over to where an exit to the back garden beckoned like the entrance to Eden.

Abruptly he stood and excused himself, saying, truthfully, “ I fear that I have urgent business to attend to.”

As he scurried to the door, keeping his back to the assembly one of the elders called out something, but his ears rang so loudly that he didn’t hear the words. Sorcha waited only seconds before excusing herself to leave by a different door but with the same destination in mind. The widow spotted Nial standing with his head thrown back, his eyes closed, and his hands under the skirt of his kilt, pulling and tugging. She threw back her head and cackled, and he actually blushed, dismayed at being caught like a callow lad tugging on his own reins. She walked forward and stopped just a foot away to reach up and free her breasts, capped by the taut nipples that had stirred him to a frenzy of arousal.

He clenched his eyes shut, willing himself not to look. There was no time for this. Heather would be here very soon. When he heard movement at his feet, he opened his eyes and looked down to where she lay nude, with her hands between her thighs where her dark curls were wet and sparkling.

He took a step forward and stopped. “We can’t Sorcha, not now. Heather will be here soon. Later. Put your clothes back on. Come here and kiss me.”

She shook her head no and put one finger in her mouth, wet it and slowly, oh so slowly, threaded it through her glittering curls to her nether lips. She moaned at the sensation, and Nial convinced himself that he would be fast enough. It didn’t take much convincing, because his thoughts were muddy and throbbing like his tarse. He threw off his kilt and thrust into her hard and fast and deep.

He knew his plan had gone awry when a loud female sob echoed through the garden. He looked up as a booming male voice said, “Bloody hell.” There stood Heather, her parents and the elders, gazing through disgusted eyes at him lying naked, pounding into the widow whose shrill laughter sounded demented.

Carrick gathered his daughter close, his rough embrace displacing her bonnet. He put his hands into her hair to press her face to his chest, to hide the vile sight she shouldn’t have to see. The press of his hands dislodged her bun and her hair cascaded down her back. Bonnie looked as if she might faint, and the elders simply looked disgusted.

“Let’s get out of here,” Carrick said quickly, sweeping his wife and daughter away.

He balanced on his hands and thrust out of Sorcha, crying the other woman’s name.

“Heather,” he called loudly.

She turned and looked back at him with eyes no longer lit with love. Heather stood in a pool of moonlight that illuminated her multi-hued brown locks and turned her eyes into molten gold, melting as rapidly as his future and his dreams.

His world halted as his heart recognized its mate. Horror froze him for a long moment before he bounded from his knees to his feet. He barreled forward, intending to run after her.