Branded By Etain (13 page)

A faint groaning reached her ears. Alarm shot through her. She hiked her skirts higher and broke into a run. When Étaín raced through the open doorway to the wine cellar her heart nigh about jumped out of her throat. For Larkin and Gavin both lay sprawled on the stone floor.

Blood oozed from a deep gash on Larkin’s temple.

She knelt and laid her hand on Larkin’s face. His skin was damp and icy, but his chest rose and fell evenly.

Étaín pivoted on her toes when Gavin groaned again. She brushed a lock of hair back from his brow and gave his shoulder a gentle shake. “Gavin. Awake. What happened?”

Gavin’s eyelids slowly lifted. He blinked and rubbed the back of his head. “Irvin. That blackguard. He knocked me out. Where is Larkin?”

"Behind me,” she answered and shifted so Gavin could see the other man. “Why would he do such a thing?”

“I know not. I set Larkin to following Irvin. Your Da believed he was up to some mischief. Larkin was to report to me here. After I helped Irvin with the wine cask, I returned here to wait for Larkin. We were in deep discussion and then—I remember naught else.”

Gavin eased into a sitting position and shuffled on his behind to get closer to Larkin. He peered at the other man’s wound. “’Twill need a stitch or two. My lady, you must call for help and sound the alarm.”

“I will go at once.” She bounded to her feet, sprinted down the hallway, and raced up the stairs. All the while her mind buzzed. What was Irvin up to? Why would he hit Larkin and Gavin? Why would he risk Da’s anger and retribution?

Their earlier conversation rushed back to her. “Nay. He could not mean to take Alana. Mother Mary, please let her and Keara be in the stables.”

Étaín could scarce draw breath when she arrived in the kitchen. “Sound the alarm. Lord Irvin attacked Gavin and Larkin. He may have stolen Alana and Keara. Both Gavin and Larkin lie injured in the cellars. Send for the healer, Hilde. I must find Brand at once.”

Brand paced the deck of his langskip and scanned the horizon. The full moon had not yet begun to wane, and the rippling surface of the sea glimmered under the powerful rays of its beams.

“Irvin has three ships to our two. He must have sighted us at the same moment we did him.” Nikolas scraped his jaw. “Which ship think you he has her on?”

“Methinks he would not risk keeping her far from him, and he would avoid the obvious. I’d lay odds she is not on his main boat, nor is she on the one designed for cargo. The middle ship. ’Tis fast and small enough to maneuver into the narrow channel he’s headed to.”

Nikolas shaded his eyes. “We cannot follow him into that bay. The entrance is too narrow for our langskips, and we could founder on the rocks.”

“Aye. You have the right of it. We must use cunning and stealth to retrieve Alana, else we risk her being harmed.” The vision of Étaín’s wan complexion and the dreaded fear glinting from her brimming eyes crowded Brand’s mind. Thank Odin, they had found Keara in the stables with the kittens. ’Twas bad enough that Alana had been taken, but at least she had seen ten and six summers. Keara had seen only ten and three. He shook his head. No time to brood on Étaín and her youngest sister when the middle one needed rescuing.

“We need a ruse. He will expect us to attack the main ship.” Nikolas propped a booted foot on the oar bench. “I see naught for it but for one of us to take a dunking.”

“Swim to rescue her? ’Tis a sound notion, but we cannot risk bringing her back through these icy waters. She is but a wee girl.”

“Have a skiff follow?” Nikolas suggested.

Brand considered his brother’s idea and a strategy formed. “Aye. We will pretend to be bent on attack. You will captain the other langskip and head for Irvin’s cargo boat. I will swim into the lee of the last and smallest langskip.”

Nikolas straightened, and his teeth gleamed in the moonlight when he grinned. “’Tis obvious now. I will have Thorkell take the rudder when we are within boarding distance of his cargo ship, and then take the skiff and follow you.”

“Aye. By then I should have found Alana. I will hand her off to you, and you will both return here. Irvin will be too busy defending his precious cargo to pay any attention to the skiff.”

“’Twill be nigh on impossible for you to board without the crew noticing. ’Tis best we swim to the small boat together,” Nikolas argued.

“Nay. I go alone. If a battle ensues, I will let my beast loose. It matters naught what Irvin’s crew sees. None will live to tell the tale. ’Tis the reason I want you to bring Alana back here right away on the skiff. I do not wish her to see the beast in me.” Brand did not intend Alana to suffer from the same trauma as that which had broken his wife’s spirit.

Étaín had come to him first when Keara and Alana disappeared. She had trusted him to rescue her sister. He would not fail his treasured wife.

“We close on him,” Nikolas said and pointed to the three ships hovering between the narrow, jagged rock strewn promontories of the tiny bay. Moonlight cast no shadows on the shimmering white capped waves crashing onto a silvery stretch of pebbled beach.

Brand positioned himself behind the mainsail and stripped to his breeches and bare feet. He strapped knives to his calves and then had Nikolas strap a dagger to each arm.

“All will go as planned, and I will sacrifice a bull to Odin when we return to Caul Cairlinne,” he swore, and lifted his sword to the black night sky and faint stars.

And all did go as they planned.

He found Alana tied and gagged in a cargo hold beneath the deck. She was frightened but not hysterical. The crew did not notice Brand, and he handed Alana over to Nikolas.

Brand bided his time on deck until he gauged Nikolas had returned to the langskip. He scrabbled to the top of the mast and surveyed the deck below.

A dozen warriors crowded the
steorbord,
the word the locals used for the right of a ship, gawking at the pitched battle ensuing between the Viking’s langskip and Irwin’s cargo boat.

Howls, roars, battle bellows, and the echoes of swords clashing rented and reverberated around the tiny bay and bounced off the cliffs. None had detected his presence, all the warriors too preoccupied with the fracas to tear their stares away from the ferocious skirmish.

The ship’s sail billowed and stretched to its fullest under the force of a stiff but constant breeze. Brand smirked. He withdrew the two ankle sheathed knives. Long accustomed to wielding both hands in battle, he sliced the forestay and backstay ropes used to raise and lower the sail, set one blade between his teeth, and hacked at the yardarm until it cracked.

He stuffed the blades into the tight breech ropes, grabbed the mast, and kicked the wooden pole holding up the sail. The yardarm broke with a thunderous snap. The canvas sail collapsed and enveloped all on deck, save the two sailors manning the steering oar.

Both men whipped their heads up and spied Brand just as he regained his footing on the metal step-iron nailed into the mast.

He raised a fist and gave a mighty roar.

The battle cry thundered in the momentary quiet. Within mere breaths, his warriors echoed him, and naught could be heard but the Norsemen in full berserker rage.

Brand retrieved his weapons. He fell to the deck and landed crouched to pounce. The beat claimed him then. A red haze of beast-fury drove him. He leapt to the ship’s stern before either of the two men left standing had a chance to react. Slashing with both hands, he lacerated the sailors’ exposed throats as they glanced up and made to draw their swords.

He jumped onto the ship’s rail, flung his arms wide, and bellowed his victory. A few of Irvin’s men worked their way loose of the heavy sail and sprinted in his direction. He snarled and dove into a gargantuan wave.

As always, Brand recalled naught of what happened while his beast raged and had no notion of how he made it back to the langskip. Nikolas recounted Brand felling those who swam after him, but Brand remembered it not.

According to his brother, a sudden explosive storm had arisen the moment Thorkell boarded Irvin’s cargo ship, and the tempest raged for as long as the melee continued. Once Irvin and three of his boats fled north, the cyclone-like squall abated as rapidly as it had arisen.

“Did Alana see any of it?” Brand knew when the beast took control, he grew both in stature and girth, and became more monster than man. He had seen Nikolas’s transformation and those of his men. ’Twas not a sight for the tender at heart or the innocent, and Alana was both.

“Nay. I stowed her in the hold and had two men watch o’er her. They persuaded her to take a few sips of ale loaded with the sleeping potion from our Bá Brestá healer. She will not awaken for some time.” Nikolas clapped Brand on the shoulder. “All is well. Caul Carlinne comes into view.”

Brand turned to face the emerging settlement. He blew out a long sigh. Caul Carlinne appeared as peaceful and sleepy as when he had first laid eyes on it.

’Twas the break of dawn when he carried a slumbering Alana into Castle Cairlinne’s great hall.

“Brand. Alana.” Étaín lurched to her feet.

Brand shook his head and put a finger to his lips.

Mac Eiccnigh mac Dalagh marched straight to Brand with his arms outstretched.

Careful not to wake the limp girl, Brand transferred Alana to the king. “She saw naught. Nikolas kept her in the hold of my second ship, which did not play any part in the battle.”

Étaín grasped his hand between hers and feathered soft, hot kisses over his wrist and knuckles. “My thanks, Brand.”

He met her gaze and gulped when a stream of tears dampened her cheeks. Brand knew ’twas a sign of her trust that she cried openly, not only in front of him, but also the myriad workers busy preparing the room for the meal to break the fast.

He draped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her close to his side. The flowery aroma so peculiar to her intoxicated his senses. His pecker stiffened on a swift rasped breath. The need to plow her, to sink into her hot pussy and hammer his release, blurred his vision and hearing.

Brand had no notion of how he and Étaín got to their chamber. He had no memory of what answers or explanations he gave in answer to the king’s queries.

He held Étaín’s face between his palms and slanted his mouth over hers. Avarice consumed him. He thrust with his tongue and pelvis simultaneously. Bunched her gown and chemise up to her waist and dragged his fingers through her folds. “By Freya, you are hot and ready. Étaín, I know not how gentle I can be. Battle lust is upon me, and I needs be inside you.”

The smile that curved the lips pinkened and swollen from his fervent kisses drew his stones into hard, aching balls. “Then come inside me, Brand. Now. I needs feel your pecker driving into my quim.”

Her blatant words and passion did him in.

Brand jerked her off her feet and staggered to the bed. He spun about, the backs of his knees hit the bedframe, and he buckled onto the mattress with Étaín on top of him.

“Ouch,” she winced and sidled off to one side. “Your sword, Brand.”

She struggled with the buckle of his sword belt.

Desperate to feel her walls fisting his prick, Brand shoved off the bed and threw off his weapons, clothes, and boots, not caring where the garments, sword, and daggers landed. Growling when he turned back to face her and found she had divested her gown and chemise, Brand circled his hands around her ankles and set her small feet to his chest.

He caressed the slickened and pouting folds of her pussy and licked her cream from his fingers before positioning his cock at her core. Gripping her arse cheeks, he lifted her and plunged in to the hilt. The sight of his pecker embedded inside her quim fractured what was left of his rationality.

Bending to her breasts, he drew on the taut tip and suckled, using both teeth and tongue to stimulate the peak to a hard knot.

She tangled her fingers in his hair and held him fast to her. He nuzzled the underside of her breast and nipped his way to the bud still wet from his frantic laving.

“I beg you. Move.” She arched and squirmed side to side, and her sweet pussy quivered and pulled at his prick in short, sharp squeezes. When she wrapped her legs around him, he howled.

Holding her tightly at the waist, he plunged into her contracting sheath, bucking and lifting to his toes when she cried out and repeated his name like a litany.

His nuts drew up with a fierce jerk. The sharp lance bowed his back. He rooted for her nipple when his seed erupted and spewed into her. He tongued the swollen peak as the orgasm shuddered through him.

Her sheath milked every last drop, wrapping and wringing his prick in violent, erratic bursts. Spent and too sated to think, he brushed his lips over the tempting curve of first one breast, and then the other.

A thin sheen of sweat coated her skin with a salty spice that had his prick twitching when he licked at the moisture. The tangling aromas of her honey and his seed infused a tentative breeze attempting to circle the room. Morning birdcalls wafted through the half-open shutters. Somewhere a rooster crowed the dawn’s full blooming.

She finger-combed his hair and dropped hot, moist kisses on the bridge of his shoulder. He smiled, pleased by her affection and the way she sighed her satisfaction with a low humming.

When her walls contracted around his still-erect pecker, he gathered her off the mattress, pressed her close to him, and twisted around to fall onto his back on the bed. Still embedded deep within her fiery heat, he stroked her back and lingered on the twin dimples at the crest of her arse cheeks.

“You smell of the ocean here.” She grazed her fingertips along the ridge of a rib.

“I spent some time swimming last eve.” Contentment sank into his pores. He savored the way she relaxed against him and sprawled, all limp and pliable.

“Will you tell me of it?” She propped one hand atop the other and rested her chin on the spot where her fingers met.

Brand reiterated a glossed-over version of the rescue.

“I am glad Alana did not see what happened. ’Tis for the best. My thanks, Brand, for bringing her back safe and sound. I would not have Alana’s spirit dampened.” Étaín toyed with a clump of hair on his chest.