Reluctant (Heroes of the Highlands) (The MacKays #3) (6 page)

The forest floor was soft with moss and leaves where he sprawled on his back beneath her. Tiny shafts of silver moonlight filtered through the trees and kiss of the odd snowflake still let by drifting clouds felt divine.

His sound of amusement was a deep rumble against her ear. “I only kill people who get in the way of what I want.” His hand was still curled on her rump and his strong fingers lazily flexed there, testing the supple flesh. “And if things were able to be taken, then they never really belonged to anyone, did they?”

Kamdyn pushed herself up to level the most withering stare she could muster down at him. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard.”

“I doubt that.” His eyes didn’t remind her of ice only because of the color, but because of the cold, remorseless barbarian that lived behind them. The only time his eyes burned with a blue fire was when he was inside of her, but he was that frigid, callous savage now that the flames of passion had been sufficiently fed. “When a Berserker is born at the Temple of Freya, he has nothing more than what is needed to keep him alive. Anything else, he takes by force and guards with his blood. He makes allies and enemies, and power is only held by the strongest.”

Kamdyn made a soft sound of distress. “That is terrible. Your mother allowed that?”

“Our mothers are usually whores frequented by our Berserker fathers,” he said dispassionately. “They bring us to the temple as infants and leave us for money. Mine is likely dead.”

Tears sprang to her eyes. “And your father?”

“Also dead.”

It was obvious he would say no more about that, so Kamdyn asked another question she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer to. “Berserkers never take— a wife?”

At this, his eyes did spark, and they searched her face with an intensity that left her aching. “
Nie
. When our Berserker decides upon a woman, it is forever. We were denied—any women but whores. A few of us tried to mate with them, but they didn’t survive.” If his features became any stonier, they would surely crack.

Unable to stand any more, Kamdyn lowered her gaze, tracing the grooves of muscle on his ribcage. “Even still, Highlanders are not Berserkers, they’re just people. They don’t deserve to be raided and terrorized.”

Soren snorted. “Tell that to the
Highland
men in my camp. To the discarded orphans. The outcast bastards. The children of the ill-conceived, the infirm, and the illiterate. There are plenty of us who have no choice but to take what we can from this life. From those who would never give them a kind word or a chance, let alone something to eat or a warm place to sleep. They take what they must to survive.”

She’d thought he pillaged because he was from the North and his people were notorious raiders throughout the centuries. Such a thing had never occurred to her, men raiding and pillaging for lack of a better choice.

Her brows drew together. “I don’t know anyone who needs fine silks and jewels such as those in your chest to survive.”

“They pay homage to me as their Laird and protector, a charming custom, is it not?” He threw her look full of amused challenge.

Sighing with exasperation she shook her head. “Yes but, those things do not
belong
to you. You didn’t earn them.”

“They are in my possession, so they are mine.” Soren smirked and spun one of her curls around his finger. “For such an immortal creature, you know very little about the world.”

Kamdyn tossed her piles of hair behind her, wrenching her curl from his toying hand. He frowned at her. “I know that most people work very hard for what they have and they deserve to keep it. I know that every single life is precious— has value and should be respected."

He slanted a look at her so full of meaning it made her pause. “Even mine?”
She blinked down at his swarthy, enigmatic face.
Especially his
, she realized. Despite his crimes, it could be argued that Soren was a protector of those most wronged by civilization. He was most certainly a leader among men, it was no wonder they fell in behind him. He’d given them what they needed, a place to belong.

A Clan.

Without him, most of these men would be raiding highways and pick-pocketing from markets. They would be drinking in the streets and garroting each other in alleyways. Raping women and preying upon children.

Aside from all the horrible stories she’d heard about his fiery, destructive raids, it was known that the Laird of Shadows never allowed rape or buggery. He’d publically skewered one of his men who’d attempted such a horror.

“If you’re only taking supplies, why raze villages to the ground?”

A flicker of something akin to a wound disappeared from his features before she had the chance to identify it. She hadn’t answered his question, at least not out loud. But he answered hers in the same deep, passionless voice as always. “Those fires are lit by men with grudges against one place or another. I don’t condone or condemn the practice. I am only their unofficial Laird. I am not their King. I am not their God. I do not tell them how many steps to take in a day, which hand to fuck themselves with and how guilty to feel about it. I do not tell them what to eat or how to pray. I only give them a code. It is the Berserker code. The only one I know and they chose to follow it if they chose to follow me.”

Kamdyn vigorously thought about their conversation for a very long and silent moment until struck by inspiration. “You know what your men need that would fix this whole bloody mess?”

He raised an eyebrow, but the hard lines around his eyes softened a bit. “What would that be?”

“Women,” she declared.

He shook his head. “My men are allowed whores when they want them, they just can’t bring them to the camp as it creates too many problems with—”

Kamdyn placed a finger over his mouth to shush him, ignoring his look that said no one had ever dared to do that before. “Not whores,
women
of their
own
. Wives, family, community. Everything they were previously unfairly denied.”

Soren looked at her in a way that stabbed at her heart. He was too barbaric for tenderness, but the resemblance was there. “You would fix the world with kindness, would you not, little Banshee?”

“If it would let me,” she groused.

“You have an eternity for that.” He nibbled at her fingertip, eliciting thrills of desire she’d thought too well sated to wake again so soon. “We only have tonight.”

“This proves my point exactly!” She forced a false brightness into her voice to balance out the hollow note that had crept into his. “I’m here, and you’re not out pillaging and plundering the countryside because you have something better to do.” Kamdyn frowned. If only she’d shown up earlier, before his fate had been sealed.

He gave a grunt that might have been a chuckle to another man. “I’ve been pillaging and plundering
you
for the better part of an evening.”

Was that all they’d known each other? Seemed longer. Kamdyn morphed her wistful frown into a sultry pout and moved her hips. “You’re not done, are you?”

His expression darkened as his cock thickened between them. “I’d
never
be finished with you,” he said savagely, surging up to take her mouth with his.

She resisted when he went to roll her beneath him. “Nay, Let me.”

Rising above him, she marveled as she lowered herself on and around him. Taking him slowly, as they’d not yet done. This time, it felt as though she’d been shaped for him, by him, he fit so snugly and so well.

She sat atop him a moment, admiring the masculine beauty of his prone form. She flexed herself with him inside of her, enjoying the steely warmth of his sex.

“Woman,” he growled.

“Mmmmm?” she stretched over him like a cat, indolent and slow.

“If you don’t start moving, I’m going to—”

She cut off his threat with a slow circle of her hips. “You’re going to what, Laird of Shadows?”

“I’m going to make you.” He gripped her thighs with his punishing strength.

“You are going to lie there and let me have my way with you,” she smiled victoriously. “According to your code,
you
are in my possession.”

His eyes snagged on her smile. Muscles bunched and strained.

“You knew I’d never been fucked by a man,” she teased, lifting away from him until he could see every inch of his own sex, slick and glistening with her desire. His eyes latched right where she wanted them to. “And
I
have it on good authority you’ve never been
beneath
a woman.” She let herself sink again, her breath catching at the pleasure.

His harsh groan pleased her beyond measure. He began to pant, nostrils flaring and chest heaving.

She rode him in long, slow, sometimes circular strokes. Each time she filled herself with him, tiny erotic pulses of pleasure stabbed into her abdomen.

She could tell she’d thrown Soren out of his element. He looked as though he didn’t know where to rest his eyes. For a moment he’d watch her breasts bouncing and swaying with her movements, then lower, to where they were joined, to her lips, her hair, and every place in between.

Astonishment and awe lay like strangers on his face and they mingled with tight, mounting pleasure. His hands quivered on her thighs, kneaded them, but didn’t control her movements.

He uttered her name like dying men plead with the gods. He said things to her in his guttural language that she was glad she didn’t understand, because she couldn’t hear them and still do what she had to do.

She just focused on the heat of him inside of her, and the movements that brought them both closer to bliss. She went slowly because she didn’t want it to end. All she wanted was to melt around him, to become a part of his indescribable strength. To be tied to it and call upon it when hers failed.

Pressure mounted. Different than before. An aching, roiling pleasure that sizzled and snapped along the currents between them until she couldn’t be sure which of their orgasms began first. They simultaneously spun off into the night sky. Her pulsating sex throbbed around the warm spurts of his release. They made little noise this time, both of them lost in the straining breaths of an incredible, excruciating paroxysm.

When it released her, Kamdyn collapsed atop his chest.

Soren still quivered and jerked a few times beneath her, and even when his great body stilled, the muscles of his thighs and chest twitched every few moments in little unbidden aftershocks.

His big arms came around her and clasped her to his body, even though he seemed to struggle for breath. “
Du är min. Och jag är evigt din
.” So filled with veracity was his low murmur, that Kamdyn had to lift her head.

“What?” she queried.

“I said: You may kill me now.” He slanted a sated look of humor in her direction that wasn’t exactly a smile.

Her jaw cracked on a monstrous yawn. “Must I? I’m too tired to do anything just now. Can it wait until morning?” Her eyes flew open. “Oh, is that too cruel?”

He nuzzled his nose into her hair. “You would sleep with me? What if I try and kill you first?”

Thoroughly unconcerned about that, Kamdyn burrowed her face against his warm chest, the chill of the evening finally seeping through her skin. “Please don’t.”

In a swift, graceful move, he was standing and carrying her back toward the camp.

“All right, my little Banshee, you can kill me in the morning.”

My
little Banshee. Kamdyn chewed on the inside of her cheek even as she snuggled into the warmth of his arms. He’d not said it like
that
before.

Chapter Nine

Soren lounged on his furs and cursed the sun as he felt dawn approaching. He’d woken inside her, halfway to release, and she’d ridden him to yet another soul-shattering end.

This time, she’d allowed him to help.

“It kept flexing at my back while you slept,” she offered by way of explanation when she rolled off of him with a contented sigh.

Only an idiot would explain a morning erection to someone willing to put it to good use, most especially when it might be his last.

Besides, she hadn’t stopped talking since.

Soren didn’t mind. He enjoyed the sound of her voice, its brogue and cadence a pleasant melody in the darkness. In fact, he’d asked her the question that had catalyzed her, but had since forgotten what it was. At first, he’d listened to every word. He’d learned of her older sisters. About the honorable men they’d married. The Druid seemed to be the most prolific, spawning what sounded to him like a tribe of MacKay babes. The Laird and her eldest sister had only daughters and Kamdyn was pleased that her brother-in-law didn’t seem to mind.

He’d chuckled at her stories of the Laird’s overprotective antics while chasing suitors away from his girls. He’d snarled fiercely when she’d told him of her violent end in a fire. Then she’d shocked him further by revealing that the very Berserkers who’d contracted after his death also had avenged hers.

Soren wanted to thank them for that. He wanted to hate them for it, too. What would he ever be able to do to protect her? To show her what it was to be mated to a fierce Berserker. He could not feed her from his hunts or warm her with his fires. He could not give her sons. Kill her enemies. She didn’t need his long life as she had an endless one of her own.

Without him.

She’d moved on quickly from the subject of her death to that of her immortality. She expressed her fear of her sisters and their mates aging and dying, leaving her behind. She’d bonded with their children, but her sisters were her immediate family and she loved them dearly.

It seemed her duties as a Faerie were important to her, though she mourned the last twenty years spent as one.

“Everything is perfect in Faerie,” she’d complained. “How I hate it.”

She’d flitted to a tangent some time ago and had lost him when one story or another had caused her to sit up and cross her legs. Though her lower half was covered by the furs at her waist, her breasts, only the size of ripe apples, bobbed and swayed with her animated gestures.