A Faerie Fated Forever (13 page)

He looked at his friend in a silent, yet heartfelt plea for help.

Under the circumstances, Boz complied wholeheartedly. “Wait a few minutes to examine Nial because we're nearly there. You can be much more thorough at my house.” Heather nodded but didn't look like she'd wait long so both men gave sighs of relief when the carriage halted at the ducal residence.

The Scot said a silent prayer of thanksgiving when the arrival of Heather’s maid with her herbal supplies turned her attention elsewhere, allowing Sedgewick to hustle him upstairs to his room. Hearing Heather on the steps and having a desperate desire to be elsewhere than closeted in a bedroom with those two, Boz said, “Be careful, buddy. You’re her hero right now and you don’t want to lose that advantage. Don’t push too fast.”

“I’ll try but it’s hard.”

Boz wasn’t about to let a shot like that pass. “Hell, that was pretty clear in the carriage.”

“Bugger off,” Nial said without heat, looking up as Heather entered the room. The duke paused for a moment in the doorway before he winked and thoughtfully committed a grave breach of etiquette by closing the door entirely.

The lass carried water, a small basket of herbs, and a stack of cloth for bandages. She set it all on the bedside table, and perched beside him. “Can you sit up?”

He complied and she began to unbutton his shirt. She sat in front of him and rose on her heels to pull the shirt from his arms. A long lock of burnished bronze brushed his bare chest while her fragrance surrounded him. He breathed deeply, wanting to bathe in her scent of orchids and musk. He really couldn’t allow himself to think about what he wanted to do with that lock of hair. She took rather a long time getting his shirt off and leaned so close that if he had opened his mouth he could have had her nipple in his mouth. His tongue battered against his clenched teeth with an eagerness to do just that.

As she leaned over to examine a scratch on his forearm, several long strands of golden brown, auburn and chocolate fell beneath the sheet to curl around the top of Nial’s erect which by now far outstretched his pants. While she didn’t know where her hair touched him, he and the trouser traitor certainly did. It craved contact with any part of her and she turned her head slightly so that the hairs tickled its sensitive engorged head. He gasped and clenched urgently but couldn't halt the large dollop of liquid pleasure that emerged.

The instinctive growl that followed was borne of the pleasure of that single burst and of the pain of holding back the release that he needed so badly from her, only from her. He lay back on the pillows, panting through teeth barred against a need more potent than he thought humanly possible. He shut his eyes against the sight of her creamy breasts leaning over him and clenched his fists around a hunk of bedding so he couldn’t palm those breasts or suckle them or feast upon them or….

“Nial?” She asked, concern plain in her voice.

He was a cad, a heel of the worst kind, and if he opened his eyes she'd see the wild cauldron of boiling need and know what he was and what he wanted.

“Nial?”

Her worry was more apparent this time, as she raised a hand to the beaded drops of perspiration on his brow and then, heaven help him, she touched his chest, where drops of sweat glittered amongst the wild black tangle of hair. She began to comb through that hair, and soon enough made her way to the taut nipples that drew her fingers time and time again.

“Nial?”

This time a husky tone underscored the question and her touch to his nipples frankly teased. His eyes popped open and her golden gaze remained close, too close for evasion or dissembling. The pebbling of his nipples had been a virgin’s first clue to the cause of his distress. She recalled that under his touch her nipples had become as sharp as the desire battering her body.

His gaze whipped and tossed like the sea surrounding Skye in the throes of a thunderstorm. The lightning sparkled in his eyes. Then she placed her hand over his heart and felt the thunder. Her gaze flickered down to his lips as his tongue darted out to lick the dry surface. His desire kindled so flagrantly that a virgin could not mistake it.

Nial knew his lapse shredded his pretense. Now she would never believe he craved only her friendship. The plan had been ludicrous anyway because his desire was as open as his heart and both were Heather’s, whether she'd have him or not. So he grabbed her hand, afraid she would storm from the room. If she did, he would be left alone in an aching, unsatisfied void where he would be tormented by love and a passionate yearning that would never be fulfilled. A faerie fated forever it would be, but would it be filled with joy and passion or aching loneliness and biting need?

His expression revealed the pain of where his thoughts wandered so she didn’t jerk her hand away, though that had been her first impulse. He gripped her fingers tightly and long moments passed in silence as only their eyes spoke for them. Hers carried the pain of remembered betrayal and lost dreams, but showed hints of hope that the prince who rescued her today would show himself to be the man of her dreams. His overflowed with a heady brew of passion, fear, possibilities and a hope as stubborn as the Scot who couldn't quench it.

As the silence stretched, the new woman birthed so recently experienced a desire to test herself and her power and perhaps to test him as well. How many female hands had she seen him swipe away? Her challenge showed in her eyes and her hands moved to play along his arms. She felt his muscles ripple in response as he gripped the sheets tighter. Her fingers moved up to torment his earlobes and he moved his head closer to give her greater access. She waited for the motion that would end her foolish dream that hers would be the hands he would not swipe away.

Nial had no second sight but he didn't need it to know what was afoot. The open honesty of her eyes trumpeted her intent. She wanted to test him by playing the game. The fame of the Maclee swipe was one of the reasons females toyed with his person so openly. They touched to see if their hands were the ones he would not swipe away. He had waited all his life to play this game with her. She had more reason to doubt him than most, so this would not be the only time they would play. Despite his assurances, they would play again.

She rubbed his chest with the tips of her fingers in swirls and circles that centered around his navel. Her tentative caresses bathed him in fire that kindled a sharp clawing need, a pain long awaited and sought during countless empty encounters. He took other women to ease a physical need. When he hungered, he ate and when he thirsted he drank. He avoided tending his sensual needs for as long as his drives would allow because he was aware that every woman he dallied with hoped she would be the one. Each time he had been aware that she was not, so he kept his entanglements short to try to avoid inflicting more pain than necessary.

But this time, although the play of her virginal hands was on his body, it reached his soul. He held on as fiercely as he could and he would hold out as long as he could, but she would outlast him in this battle. He didn’t want to scare her away when he surrendered. He could hold back the dark tide of desire for just so long before the wave broke. He could feel it building as her hands drifted lower to dip inside his navel, moving in and out of the crevice in motions his groin demanded he imitate. He couldn’t stop the thrust of his violently aroused tarse against the sheets as his rampaging ardor battered at his sanity.

He sensed her intent to bare him a moment before she did it. He could not raise his hands to stop her, for she would interpret that as the swipe she expected. He spoke instead. His voice was a barely human growl and shouted his craving although he spoke only one word as her hands grasped the coverlet to flick it away.

“Wait.”

“What? The Maclee swipe isn’t verbal.”

He could see the teasing in her eyes and hear it in her voice. But he also heard the passion, and glanced to her breasts to see it in the fullness of the mounds and in the tightly aroused nubs. Her legs moved restlessly, telling him that she was wet for him. His hands would find the moisture of her passion coating the curly hair that guarded the gates of her paradise that he alone would conquer – but not today.

“This is not the Maclee swipe. This is a man who is afraid and asking you to wait.” His tone was as level as he could make it, but he couldn’t help that he panted between each word.

“Afraid? The hero who foolishly ran out into traffic knowing he faced sudden death. Afraid? Not likely. Why did you do it? You should not have risked so much for me. You could have died. You would have died without the faeries' assistance, which you couldn't have expected. You've ridden since you were a toddling child so you knew full well the risk you took. Why?”

There it was. The question. His Heather was bold but likely God in his wisdom knew that a faint lass would never do for him. Still, he hadn’t expected to face the verbal query and the physical query simultaneously. His currently scattered wits could not disguise what he felt for her now, so he better not try. She would see an attempt at evasion as a denial of the question she hadn’t voiced. Perhaps she would even see it as a second and more brutal betrayal and he would never do that to her again.

He sat straight up in the bed. He wanted to take her hand as he spoke but feared she would see that too as a physical evasion. This total honesty business was intimidating.

“Heather?” He extended his palm outward, asking that she place her hand in his.

"Nial, you're scaring me. I don't know what you're asking. I don't know what you want. Oh, I can tell what you appear to want but you can't mean what you're hinting. I won't believe you mean it. No, I won't. My girlhood dreams have no basis in reality. I'm grown up now and I know that. There is no Prince Charming. There are only frogs."

Frogs? She couldn't want to discuss amphibians now. This must be that female logic his married friends groaned about. He'd rather face a cohort of armed warriors barehanded. He couldn't muddle through her meaning. All he understood was that she was scared. That made two of them. He'd try again.

He held out his hand out once more, his eyes meeting hers until she chewed her lower lip and slowly placed her tiny hand in his. His fingers curled over it like they'd never let go. Then he decided to ease into answering the question about the past first. Get the pain over with.

“You know that I grew up under the dratted curse. If I don't find my fated mate and wed the wrong woman I will face a life of agony. You know some of the stories. For God’s sake, you know about my parent's marriage. Father's life was full of torment. The pain of not being wed to his Fia never left him and on his deathbed, her name was the last word he uttered. I like to think they are together now. After his fights and battles with my mother, he could surely use some peace and contentment in the hereafter. Yet I can’t blame Mother either, for she had to live her entire married life with another woman in her bed.”

Her eyes showed her sympathy, and she reached up her free hand to wipe the tiny dots of moisture that had escaped his control from the corners of his eyes as he spoke of what he had never voiced until today.

“So I knew first hand what I faced. After the fair, when circumstances, the clan elders and your father began pressuring me for a marriage with you,” her eyes closed. She looked away and would have gotten up from the bed. He could see her preparing to leave. “Nay, Heather. Please. Listen to all of it. Please.” He continued in a rush, knowing her tolerance might expire at any second. “I expected that you would be the test I had to resist to find my fate. In my blind and selfish way, I was so sure of that fact that I never looked at you. I never really saw you. I never looked even after I felt a connection with you I had not known before. I told myself it was friendship.”

She gave him a sad half-smile and tried to rise again. "I understand. I've heard much of how kind you are to the women you try to let down easily. We are friends. I said so just last night now, didn't I?"

He tugged her back down. “Nay, lass. You’re getting ahead of me again. Sweet,” he said, tilting her chin up to look deeply into her eyes, “the day they demanded a decision, I set up a scheme with Sorcha. We were to be kissing in the garden when you came for my answer. I thought that would scare away the girl with dreams in her eyes and let me keep the friend. But things went awry because I was tricked.”

He told her about the black widow and her eyes widened. “She just vanished in a puff of smoke?”

“Indeed. As I said, it was the faerie flag and the power she thought it represented that she craved all along.”

“Well you got what you wanted all the way round, then. We are friends and the dreams are gone from my eyes. They won’t trouble you again,” she snapped the words, her pain painted across her face.

This time when she turned to rise, he snatched her to his chest and held her in an iron grip borne of terror. She spoke aloud his greatest fear. “Damn it, sit down now,” he roared.

She started visibly. "Nial, none of this is like you. You are tranquility personified with females. You're never rude and I've not once heard you use profanity in the presence of a lady. Clearly, I've somehow provoked you, but I don't know what I did to upset you or to cause such a reaction. If you will just let me get up I swear I will go away. You can get on with your search without me or my parents or the elders interfering."

He swallowed deeply. Well, he gulped really. He put up a hand to wipe the sweat now rolling down his face and the hand shook. Nial was nervous, she was certain of it. She had never seen him nervous over anything and if anyone in all of Skye had she would have heard the tale before now. Strangely, his nerves calmed her a bit and she waited.