His Judas Bride (12 page)

“Over my dead body am I going back there. I’m not. Not if you bring wild horses. Not if you…”

She was appalled by the awful low sounds that came from the very back of her throat. With that and wrists held, herself too, she yet attempted a squirming, flailing, bitten removal of his fingers—he was the Black Wolf, for God’s sake—when having been caught out here, she only made it worse. And Arland…Arland was still out there.

“Easy.”

But it wasn’t that his fingers cut into the flesh of her wrists that worried her. Or that he tried to control her with a grip of iron. Other men used their superior strength to hurt her. This was very different, as if she were a wild horse, a child, and all he wanted was to calm her.

Instinct had said that she should fight him. Logic told her this was why.

Kiss him
. The voice in her head raged, as her gaze tracked the moonlight down his
sculpted face.
Do it. End this. Because if she didn’t…

Her heart accelerated to a crazy gallop. She thought it was going to burst from her ribcage. Everything was him. The water dripping from his clothes. His hair. The sensuous curve of his mouth. The strangely glittering eyes that said while he was astonished, he somehow expected it.

So much so she was appalled by what flamed in her mind. The thought—not about how he towered or how he was close enough for his breath to brush her mouth and she had only to press her lips to his to do this. To save herself. Save Arland. But the thought that she not only didn’t welcome when she didn’t want to find herself dragged back on a rope all the way back to McDunnagh Castle—if she was lucky—the thought was about
Meg.

Had she fallen so low as to try to steal another woman’s man? A woman who was the mother of his child?

She must have. Oh God. And not just that. If she did it now, now while she was like this and with what thudded in her veins, she could not swear to doing it for the correct reason. Not the way he held her. Not the way he looked. There must be some other way. Some way to do this. Something to say. Something to do. Something that made this bit right, if nothing else, and overrode these storming sentiments when she’d made this scene.

And that was when her lips parted. “You see, there is someone else.”

Chapter Five

Kara wrinkled her nose. Something soft and damp tickled her cheek. Something so pleasant for all she couldn’t define or examine. She wished she could, except her nose was as much as she could move. The skin of it anyway. Maybe the muscles moved but she couldn’t tell. Even her head seemed stuck fast, while her fingertips made no connection between what lay beneath them and her brain. Or maybe it was the other way about? Her brain couldn’t make a connection with anything. As for her eyes, she couldn’t open them.

The softest breath brushed her cheek and a voice spoke. “Right.”

She strained to open an eye. Having investigated and satisfied herself whatever it was
was
, she closed it. The Wolf. She hadn’t dreamed it. Though stiff as pokers, her lips curved faintly. How fine was this? The Wolf. And he’d brought her here to this place somehow so now she lay on this soft, this nice, this velvety, furry…

Her eyes shot open. Darkly gleaming walls. Dank, dripping corners. Stone.
Rock
stone. Flames leaping at the edge of her vision. Nearby something lapping. Water? Waves? What? Close to where she lay with him on…on top of her.

She bolted up onto her elbows. He collapsed with a muffled curse on whatever they lay on. What they lay on was of no consequence.

Her throat constricted, her breath sharpening. Dear God, this wasn’t his and Meg’s. This wasn’t anywhere she recognized. Her heart stopped, then resumed with a wild, jarring thud.

No. There was only one thing missing from this place.

The sign saying “Welcome to Hell.”

And that was when she sprung up screaming.

“You know something, Princess?”

No, she didn’t. Not about how she got here. Or where she was. Or what he dug under whatever this strange platform they lay on was, to find, pull out, and bite the stopper from. Not when she was here. Not when he’d been lying on top of her like that.

“You need to stop showing your credentials. Especially on nights like this.” He helped himself to a long slug of the whiskey he’d pulled out. “Here.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Drink it.”

Fortunately her own hand was not so frozen she couldn’t shoot it out and knock the bottle down. “No!” She did not care that she dared him to implode with outrage, so long as she saved herself here. “M-m-mother of God. What is this awful place?”

“Awful place?”

He stared for what seemed like an eternity at the spreading stain on his tunic from where the bottle had spilled all over him. Then he stared at the amber puddle soaking into the furs from the still upended bottle. Lastly he stared at her, standing there with her back against the wall, trying not to tremble. His jaw tightened. His boots scrunched as he stepped down off the heap of furs. “Are you meaning here by any chance? Hmm?”

“Yes. Why have you brought me here? What are you—”

“Brought you here?”

Oh, he was furious with her. Never mind the low semi-snarl, dear God, what was he doing clinking his sword belt undone? He wasn’t about to… Oh God, he was hauling it off. And not just that. She shielded her face with her arm as his other belt, the one that held his plaid on, clanked against the ground.

“Well, why do you think? Hmm?”

She didn’t. She couldn’t.

“Get you drunk? Have my wicked way with you? Monster like me. Except the first’s not an option, the fine damned mess you’ve just made of my bed.”

“Your bed?”

“Here.”

There was no damn need to prance about it like that. That was what he was going to grit at her next, now that her feet wouldn’t stay still. A gasp escaped her as a lump of rough cloth flumped against her chest. His bed? Dear God. What was his bed doing here in a place like this?

Had Meg flung him out? Was that what he came to McDunnagh Castle to say? That he didn’t have a bed for the night? It would be no surprise. In the seconds leading to him pulling her hood off, there had been such a horrible flirtatiousness, the wonder was he hadn’t pulled more.

He was pulling off plenty now though. His plaid. His boots. Oh, good God, had he no sense of shame?

“But next time, next time you’re stuck up to your eyeballs in snow, and I can’t think where to take you, remind me to waste even more time looking for a fine palace.”

A fine palace? With difficulty she fought the sensations sweeping her veins, the acknowledgement that when he was as far from hurting her, as she was from abandoning Arland—because he wouldn’t yank his clothes like this—that was not why she shielded her face.

She’d keep the pressure on herself because he’d found her where she shouldn’t have been, in a situation she shouldn’t have been in. A situation, when she considered it she had just made worse, screeching like a banshee.

“But you—
you
…”

“Don’t like bundling?” The pile of furs sank beneath his foot as he reached for a dry tunic from the rope-line that dangled above her head. “Damned right I don’t. So don’t you start giving me any maidenly grief that you’re here and so am I. Or how I shouldn’t have brought you. Do you understand?” He snatched the tunic from the line. “Because so far as I’m concerned for tonight, you’re here…
bed
. I’m over there…
chair.
”

“A cave. You live in a cave.” She didn’t mean to sound so forlorn about it but he did, didn’t he? An underground cavern, to be precise. How could he? And how could she be so stupid, when what she needed was to be amenable, nice.

He whistled and Dug sprung up. “And she’s there. In the middle.”

“Dug?
Dug?
Dug’s a—”

Kara swallowed a gulp. Oh, the night was full of surprises wasn’t it? Horrible ones. And now if that glower was anything to go by, she had offended him further.

“Don’t you go telling me you never saw the damn cur’s minus more than a front paw. No one’s that stupid. Not someone here to be married. Not someone who’s got—”

“But you call her Dug.”

He tossed the tunic down. “Perhaps that’s because she doesn’t like being called bitch.”

Did she imagine it? The way he spat the word, the way he now tore down a dry plaid, that it was a word to consider here with regard to what she was? An ungrateful troublesome one, who hadn’t just spilt all his good whiskey on his bed, at that, but who had made that stupid,
stupid
statement about there being someone else. How was he meant to know that someone was him and she was trying to pick herself out a hole? He probably thought she was running off to meet a lover.

“I thought you lived with Meg?”

“Meg?” That he regarded her as if she were the local idiot was all the confirmation she needed. He and Meg weren’t a couple. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“I thought she was the mother of—” Oh, how weak it sounded now. As if she’d almost put the obstacle in the way. “Your daughter.”

“
Meg
?” He canted his jaw. “Has no one told you about the Isle of the Saints then?”

She shook her head vigorously. She could only pray he did not see right through her in this instant, what crept into her mind. Isle of the sinners, maybe.

He shifted off the platform and the damp sand left not an imprint as he crossed to the blazing fire.

“It’s a sacred place in the middle of the loch. Meg’s a nun. She was, anyway. When Morven died, she came back. I thought you’d have known she’s my sister.”

Kara edged down the wall. He didn’t need to hurt her. He had only to send her back to Ewen. And he would. She edged her gaze over his shoulders. It was true, that from the moment she clapped eyes on him, she’d been unsettled by the sensations he evoked. The feeling she was in the grip of a powerful force she could not quite control. A feeling as powerful as the forlorn despair that now clawed her heart at how she had overreacted to this place. Overreacted period.

True too, that the sexuality he oozed wasn’t in the normal run of things. It was, in fact, in the very dangerous run of things. Sleek. Knowing. Moody. Even wet and shivering, irritated too, he was too handsome for his own good.

But so long as he did not prove too handsome for her own good, how much of a problem could there be, if she was to make sure of him? Her son’s future was at stake here, as well as her own and that of her sisters. Had she accused Ewen McDunnagh of rape perhaps, but she hadn’t. And she must be honest, when the Wolf was a man and there was one way to make sure of a man, especially when she could not very well tell him the truth, this could be worse. He smelled nice. Probably from bathing every day in the water lapping near her feet. Physically she could see nothing to criticize about him or to remind her of Lachlan either.

How could she go back to McDunnagh Castle now? Even if Ewen McDunnagh didn’t kill her for the shocking affront to his pride, as the evening had so clearly shown, she couldn’t marry him.

A woman of her dark experience wasn’t exactly likely to be moved. It didn’t matter what this man roused. The flickerings of a woman set at liberty. Nothing more. A woman who was better to have been ignorant of the passion she had once known. As earlier with his brother had perfectly proved, she was the very one to do this. There was also that secret she held, the one about Morven.

Reaching out her hand she grasped the neck of the whiskey bottle. He stood on her path to heaven. What other choice did she have but to remove him?

She wiped her mouth. Then she cleared her throat. “Sir.” It was the most ludicrous formality, given what she planned, but she needed to start somewhere. Now he’d sat down on the edge of the bed, the opportunity was perfect, especially as he unfastened his tunic ties. “About… About…”

“What?”

Every single drop of moisture evaporated from Kara’s mouth. How awful was this, to be so little skilled in the art of seduction when he was the Black Wolf of Lochalpin and this was her last card? She ran her tongue over her lips to moisten them.

“Why I ran away.” Touch him? She was going to have to. At least put one hand on his shoulder, so she could wriggle closer. “About…about there being someone else.”

Having her hand in a honey pot in a cave full of starving bears would be easier, considering the freezing glare he shot at her. Of course, he was cold. They both were.

“What about it?”

Must he be so difficult? So obtuse? When it was perfectly obvious? “What do you think?”

Grasping her skirts she wriggled deliberately onto his lap. Not as gracefully as she’d have liked. Her teeth were chattering too badly for that and she’d done something to her ankle. She clutched another shallow breath, not just at her daring. Sweeping the damp hair back from the sides of his face, she pressed her mouth to his.

His mouth was cool, his breath tasting faintly of whiskey, while his actual lips felt… Of course he was wet. He was cold. His hair tips dripped water. The dampness brushed her cheeks, as she pressed closer. Soaked into her fingertips. Her palms.

But God, oh God, did he hate the McGurkies so much that his lips were like chunks of ice? He’d
defended
her the other day.

Alarm flared, clogging the back of her throat. Mother of God, of all the men she could have chosen here, how could she have gambled Arland, herself, and her sisters’ futures on the one with ice floats in his veins. Or was it just that after five years, she’d forgotten how to kiss?

She couldn’t have. He was a man and all men had their breaking point. She just needed to swallow the panic swamping her like a black tide and find his. She grasped his hand, frozen to his tunic ties. However much he hated the McGurkies, surely the apple-round softness of her breast would settle this?

“Hell. Princess. Don’t you think things are getting the tiniest bit out of hand here? Hmm?”

The way he jerked away, it wasn’t terribly likely. Although she wasn’t about to say so. To think she had worried solely about her response.
This
belt, the one holding his breeches hadn’t been undone. She must unbuckle it. Because then she would have access to his breeches themselves. She grasped it.