Authors: Michelle Woodward
He shouted with fury. On the far side of the room, he spotted Colin McIntosh throwing down a crossbow and lifting up an axe. Fingall was unarmed, so he slammed the door with his good arm.
“Get out of here!” He yelled to Jocelyn. She hesitated, then ran around the building.
There was no one nearby who could help Fingall, so he held onto the door, bracing his feet. Colin tried to get out of the building, but found he couldn’t get out. Instead, he started to hack away at the door. It wasn’t the strongest wood, so it would only be moments before he was upon him, defenseless.
As the door began to splinter, Jocelyn came around the corner again, this time with a small axe used to chop wood. The moment he saw that, he let go of the handle and snatched the weapon back up from her.
“Now go!” He insisted, having no time for gratitude. She stood her ground and he realized she’d also brought a hoe, ready to use it to help defend him. He thought to demand she leave, but before he could do that, Colin stepped out of the door. The man was expecting he’d face nothing in return. Instead, he was taken by surprised and received the edge of the Fingall’s blade to his head.
When he was sure his attacker was dead, Fingall dropped the axe and went to Jocelyn, grabbing hold of her about the waist. “You saved us both.” He said, his voice cracking. “You saved us.”
“You did pretty well yourself, Fingall MacAllarran.” Jocelyn replied. They embraced, kissing hard and thrilled to still be alive.
###
The wedding of Fingall and Jocelyn was the event big event of the fall of 1411. All the village was in attendance, including Murron and her new beau, a kind baker by the name of Gerald. He had the approval of Fingall, and had shown himself to be a strong and honorable fighter at Red Harlaw, as the people of Bodhuvan had come to call it.
When the ceremony was over, there was a feast like none had seen in a long time. It was held at McAllaran's farm, with a rich meal contributed by all the families. After, there was much singing, music, and dancing. Fiddles, pipes, and all manner of instruments were broken out. Though he was no musician, Fingall sang at least one song, one of Dhugall’s favorites.
“In honor of my brother who I know would have been pleased to see this day. May his memory never fade!” He said, raising a glass. They whole company drank, then drank to the happiness of Jocelyn and Fingall.
As he made the rounds of welcoming the guests and being congratulated, as Jocelyn did as well, Mártainn cornered him. “You’ve done well at last, Fingall!” The blacksmith told his friend. “Being a lifelong bachelor never suited you, you know.”
“I know, I know.” He laughed. “I thought my independence was all I craved. It was an excuse, I suppose.”
“You became too comfortable with your old ways, Fingall. But now the lovely Jocelyn will make an honest man of you.” He proceeded to lecture his friend on the best ways for a man to stay in the good graces of his wife. Though he appreciated the sentiment, the hours were growing late and the man, once in his cups, could hold forth endlessly.
“I think I should go to her now, before she loses her temper. A good idea, would you not agree?” Fingall said at last, patting his friend on the back.
“Certainly, certainly! It’ll never do to be gone so long.”
As their friends and family made merry, Jocelyn and Fingall were finally able to take their leave and adjourn to the cottage. “I thought we’d never be allowed to go.” She laughed as they entered the bedroom.
“Mártainn wouldn’t stop talking to me. You’d think the man would realize that I’d want some time with you eventually.”
“Well he’s well away now.” She said, looking about the room nervously. He heard her voice shaking as she spoke.
He put his arms around her. “Hey there. My lass, you needn’t be nervous.”
“You’ll have more experience in these things than me. I fear I’ll be a disappointment.”
“Nothing you do or say could ever disappoint me.” He said quietly, lifting her chin up with his hand. “You’re perfect and I’m bewitched by your beauty.”
Fingall caressed her arms and she reached up to touch his cheeks, run her fingers through his hair. They kissed, gently at first, then with increasing need. They pressed their bodies close. His breath quickened and they helped each other remove their wedding clothes. By the time each was naked, Jocelyn’s body was still shaking with nervousness and desire.
“Don’t… you won’t… hurt will you? Be gentle.” She warned.
He kissed her gently and whispered in her ear. “Tell me if you hurt at all. We’ll go as slow as you need. There’s no rush.”
“No rush.” She agreed, finding herself smiling. “I want you to feel good. I want this to be right, for you to love me.”
“I do love you, and you never need worry. We have the rest of our lives to get this right. Let’s take tonight to discover each other.”
She sat on the bed and he knelt down to kiss her neck, working his mouth down her neck and to her breasts. As his tongue moved gently around the curve of her breasts and her nipples, she sighed, feeling increasingly excited. She ran her hands along his back, his chest, and reached down to grasp and feel his erection.
He touched her as well, feeling the wet warmth between her legs. Her nervousness gone, she held onto him and they began to feel one another, she stroking his hardened shaft and he rubbing the her softly and rhythmically.
Quietly, though panting, he asked, “Have you ever been kissed there?”
“What do you mean? I don’t understand what you intend.” She asked. He responded but falling to his knees and gently pressing his lips to her. She was shocked at first by it, then found her mouth open with joy as his tongue ran along her, pressing and licking in ways she hadn’t imagined. Jocelyn held his head, leaned back, and moaned.
When he was finished, she felt curious. He stood full before her, so she sat on the bed, leaned down, and took him her mouth as well. His grateful gasps told her she was exciting him, and she felt her own excitement rise.
She stopped before he could become too excited. After kissing his chest and running her hands along the length of his body, she tired of the slow exploration, wanting him in her. She guided him in and he moved slowly, teasing and allowing her to adjust to him inside. When he was in as deep within her as they could meet, the slow, rising friction brought them to greater joy. She felt some discomfort throughout it, but when she did she let him know and he slowed or stopped enough for her to adjust and become comfortable. By the time they’d reached the end, she felt comfortable enough to touch herself as he moved within her and they both came to nearly the same release.
They lay together after, entwined and exhausted. “Is this real?” She asked, unbelieving. “Are we finally together and happy?”
“I’m happy.” He assured her. “And I’ll be with you for the rest of my days.”
###
Old Mártainn finished his final drink and blinked to try to wake himself up. He’d told his story as best he could, though his old wound to the head was said to have made him go a bit senile earlier than most. No one was entirely sure how old the man was, though, and given his great age some degree of forgetfulness was certain.
Though he hadn’t shared Fingall’s marriage night with his audience- they were certainly not details he was privvy to- he was able to tell them the broad strokes of Fingall and Jocelyn MacAllarran’s lives to the best of his ability. It wasn’t as though he was without some help.
“Now, I told you they married, but did I tell you they had children?” He asked. The audience laughed, and the middle-aged man to his left patted him on the back. The old man joined in, chuckling.
“Well, I suppose that part Dhugall MacAllarran can tell you his own self, could he not?”
“That I could, good sir.” Dhugall agreed. “For instance, I can say I’m pleased to have been named for my uncle and I’m do my best to give honor to both my names. But you’ve done so well in your storytelling, it’d be a shame to stop you now!”
“I’ll do my best.” He agreed. He steadied himself in his seat and sighed. “Sad to be the last of us from that time. Your mother, there was a wonderful woman. Gone these five years now. Your father passed only a year before.”
“They lived good long lives, sir, as have you.” Dhugall assured him.
“I have tried. And they have seen their five children all grow to adulthood and make them proud. Your two sisters, Jocelyn and Murron, have left the village and married well. Dhugall , Kieth, and Uilleam have each grown their stock to become the wealthiest men of the village. All of you have children of your own, most of whom your parents were able to know. Aye, I envy you your happy life ahead as the years before me grow dimmer.”
Dhugall cleared his throat. “Yet you fought at Red Harlaw, as did many of our town. If you are the last of those men, it is you I envy. I envy your bravery and your chance at honor.”
The last of the drinks were passed around and Dhugall stood. “To our ancestors and those who came before us. Let their memories never fade.”
THE END
Retiring from his life as a smart thief, Ted Wilkins decided that going back to Texas was the best thing for him. He had landed huge deal yielding a very large amount of money, and he intended to purchase a ranch there and begin his life again. He wondered how his brother, Alex, was doing. He had not seen Alex in almost ten years, although they had communicated quite a lot while he was in the Middle East thinking up ways of making money off the Arab oil lords. He had finally gotten his break when he had managed to convince one of the old oil don's to give him his inheritance before he died and he had finally achieved what he had been looking for his whole life. He was now one of the richest men in the state and he would finally gain the respect of those who had treated him as a loser. There was only one thing left missing in his life: love. Ted had never had time for relationships while in the Middle East, although when he had been back in Texas, he’d had several flings and even married.
He had then gone out to the Middle East with the main aim of making enough money to make him and his wife live a comfortable life, but when he had been there he got wind that she had moved in with another man despite the fact that she had his child. He even began doubting if her son was his, and he decided that he would never give his heart to another woman again. Alex had already gotten married and even had a little daughter named Mia, a cute little girl who had the looks of her mother. They sent Ted photographs often and so he was kept up to date. Ted had lied to them, saying that he was in the military so that they would not have to worry about him. He even wore military tags around his neck to keep up this façade to people he knew. Now he was going back home and he wondered how things were going to be. Would they be the same as they always were?
*****
“I'm sorry I had to leave so suddenly, but I really need to get this inheritance issue sorted out,” Diana Blake said into the mouthpiece as she steered the rental through the Texas heat. “I promise you that I'll be back in Chicago as soon as I am done.”
“Why didn’t you call me? I would have cancelled the trip just to accompany you to Texas.” Her fiancée Mark Lindel complained.
“It was all at such short notice, with my mom’s death and the conditions of her will, but I promise that I'll come back as soon as I am done here,” she replied, imagining that she would be going to the Bahamas with her rich fiancée for the weekend instead of having to go to Texas to fulfill her late mothers wishes, which were to stay at the ranch where she to stay for a whole week if she was to inherit her life insurance money.
“Well then, you have a good time, and don’t forget to call me when you get there,” Mark replied.
“I will, as long as there is damn reception in this God forbidden place,” she said, hanging up and tossing the cell phone onto the passenger seat.
She then recalled the incidents that had led to her trip to Texas. Diana had been brought up in Texas on a ranch, but had been mistreated by her step father, who was an emotionally abusive jerk. As a result, the moment that she had turned 18, she ran away to Chicago with her savings and began a new life there. She had abandoned her mother, who had never seemed to be able to protect her from her step dad, and went ahead and paid for her own college education with the few savings that she had and a couple of jobs that she held to help her get by. After graduation, she launched her own fashion house from scratch with the help of her best friend, Amanda. Slowly her company had begun to gain recognition in the Chicago fashion world, and she started to become successful very.
After an amazingly successful fashion event, she ended up hooking up with Mark, the spoiled son of one of the richest families in the state, and they started to see each other regularly and eventually got engaged. Although, for Diana, their whole relationship was more for convenience, since she wanted him to finance the expansion of her company. By marrying Diana, it was a way for Mark to show his parents that he had matured and was ready to run their businesses. Amanda had sworn never to go back to Texas, but after the death of her mother, she realized that one of the clauses of the will stated that she had to go back to the ranch house and stay there for a week before she got the ten million dollars life insurance money. She needed the money if she was to expand her business, and since she had been told that her step dad had died years ago, she decided that it would not really harm anyone to go back there, especially if it was only for a week. Her phone went off again interrupting her thoughts, and she reached over to it and picked the call.
“Diana, are you out of your mind, how could you just take off for Texas without even letting me know?” Amanda's voice crackled into the phone.
“I'm so sorry, I had meant to call you but it all happened so suddenly,” Diana apologized to her best friend.
“Well, you take good care of yourself, girl. I have to go, I have a date with this guy I met and I need to get ready; I'm so excited!” Her friend chattered excitedly. “I'll give you a call to let you know how everything goes. Love you!”
“I love you too,” Diana said, hanging up the phone and tossing it back onto the passenger seat as she thought how lucky her best friend was.
Unlike Diana, Amanda had one of those model-like hourglass shaped bodies that made men drool over her, and she was never at a shortage of dates. Men were always chasing after her, unlike Diana who’d had a hard time getting Mark to accept her. Diana was one of those larger, yet very shapely women, with voluptuous firm breasts and wide shapely hips, but the problem was that most of men, or ‘most eligible men’ as she would put it, referring to men with money, preferred skinny women, and that had left her in quite a dilemma. She therefore jumped at Mark when he had shown an interest in her, although she did not really have any feelings for him. Her phone went off, and she wondered what Amanda wanted this time. She reached over to get the phone but it slipped and fell onto the ground. Amanda looked at the main road, and seeing that it was clear, she bent under the dashboard and tried to reach for her cell phone, which slid under her seat.
Suddenly, she heard the blaring of a horn and when she sat up and looked ahead of her, there was a truck coming for a head on collision with its lights on and its horn blaring. She jerked the steering wheel, and the car careened onto the other side of the road. Unable to control the car, it dived off the road and across a ditch, landing on a patch of grassland. Dana moved forward, her head hitting the windshield as her foot hit the brake sharply. She could feel blood trickling from her forehead, and the last thing that she saw before she blacked out was a man pounding on her window.
*****
Ted wondered what was wrong with the driver of the oncoming vehicle, since the car had gotten off its track and onto his, and was coming directly for his truck. He put his hand down on the horn, but the other driver did not seem hear it, and Ted couldn’t even see the face of the driver. A head suddenly appeared, and the sedan swerved to the other side, lost control and plunged into the ditch. Ted watched as the car came to a stop, bringing his car to a stop and waiting for the other driver to give him a piece of his mind. He wondered who the hell wanted to kill him. Nobody seemed to come from the car, and his instincts took over. What if the driver was injured? He jumped out of the truck and made his way to the other vehicle. He peered into the driver’s window and there was a woman inside lying over the steering wheel. She seemed to have smashed her head on the windshield as she was bleeding, and he noted with disgust that she was not wearing her seat belt.
Ted knocked on the window, calling out frantically, but there was no response. He tried the door of the car but it was locked from the inside. Glad that he had worn a designer jacket with leather padding on his elbows, he hooked his elbow and sent it smashing through the window, smashing it open. He then reached into the car and unlocked it, pulling the door open. Inside the car was an elegantly dressed woman, and he couldn’t help but notice how sexy her fleshy thighs looked under the short skirt she wore. She was a larger woman, but being a strong guy, he reached into the car and pulled her out. She had passed out and he studied her wound to see if she was badly injured. He dashed to his truck and came back with a first aid kit. He then swabbed the blood away and disinfected the wound. It did not look too serious, and so he decided that he would take her back to his brother’s house so that Imelda could take care of her. His brother’s house was only ten minutes away while the hospital was two hours away, although he could always call in for his chopper to come down and take her there if it became serious.
“What happened?” she said, opening her eyes briefly to reveal the sexiest emerald green eyes that Ted had ever seen before she blacked out again.
Ted carried her to his truck and belted her up on the passenger seat, before making his way back to her car. He looked around in the car, carrying her belongings to his truck and tossing them onto the back seat. Ensuring that there was nothing of hers left in the car, he headed off to his truck and drove off in a hurry. Imelda came running out of the house when she saw his truck driving in at a crazy speed. Ted did not wait to kill the engines, jumping out of the car and running up to the porch.
“Imelda, I need some help, I ran into some kind of trouble,” he breathed quickly.
“Oh no, Ted, I thought that you had changed. Alex and I don’t want Mia growing up around trouble, and if that is the case, you might have to move into a motel as you wait for your ranch house to be complete,” she creased her brow jokingly.
“Imelda, I'm serious, I met a woman who wanted to run me off the road, and she ended up in a small accident. I could not leave her there, and besides, judging from the way that she is dressed, I don’t think that she is from these parts,” Ted said, putting on a serious face.
“Oh no, that is serious, why didn’t you take her to the hospital?” Imelda said, her face suddenly flooding with worry.
“Nah, I don’t think it is anything serious, just a bump on the head, nothing that you can't fix,” Ted said, leading her to the truck.
“That doesn’t look too bad, why don’t you carry her to the guest bedroom while I go and get the first aid kit,” she said bustling back into the house as Ted opened the truck door and carried the hot beauty out of the car, thankful for his own size and strength as he carried her into the house.
Imelda was like a mother hen, and he trusted that she would take good care of the woman. For some reason that he could not understand, he really wanted her to get well. Maybe it was because he thought that something just might occur between them. He did not know her, but he was already smitten over her. As he laid her onto the bed, her blouse parted a little giving him a view of her cleavage. Her skin was creamy, unlike his tanned skin, and he could only imagine how the rest of her breasts would look without her blouse or bra. He studied her thighs as her skirt hiked up a little more than it was supposed to, and Ted felt his cock beginning to stiffen in his pants.
Meeting this stranger was probably no coincidence at all
, he thought,
it was fate
. This was definitely his type of woman; he just had an inexplicable feeling. Although, he still had no idea who she was. Imelda came bustling into the room carrying a first aid kit.
“Ted, that is bad manners, look at how you are practically undressing that young woman,” she scolded as Ted jumped away from the woman.
“Have you forgotten that I was away for a long time and practically forgot how a hot woman looks?” He joked with his sister in law.
“I think you should go and get yourself a woman to take care of your needs, Ted. That long dry spell is doing you no good,” she scurried over to the side of the bed and went about checking out the wound. “Now, get out of here. She needs some space in here. I'll call you when I need you. Go and check if Mia is awake yet.”
Reluctantly, Ted left the room and closed the door behind him, making his way downstairs to check on his sweet niece. He could not get the mysterious woman out of his head no matter how much he tried to concentrate on anything else. The child was still asleep and so he made his way to his truck and drove over to his new ranch to see how the construction of the mansion was going. The house was in the finishing stages, and if he could hit it off with this woman, maybe she would be keeping his new bed warm very soon.
*****
Diana woke up to a blazing headache. Her head felt heavy and drowsy, and she tried to remember what had happened. She remembered almost colliding with a truck before getting in an accident, and judging from the bedding that she was laying on, she was probably in a hospital bed. She forced her eyes open and scanned around the room. This was definitely no hospital because it looked like a very tastefully furnished room. Panic snaked its way through her. Could she have been abducted and taken hostage by some perverts or something? Lifting herself up, she got off the bed and made her way to the window, peering out. She could see a swimming pool out the back, and further on she could see barns, cattle and horses. There were also toys strewn out on the backyard, which made her feel a little safer. Whoever lived here had kids, which meant that the chances that they were abductors were very slim. She could hear the low voices of a man and a woman talking somewhere in the house, friendly tones. Sensing someone behind her, Diana turned around slowly and looked into the sexiest blue eyes that she had ever seen, eyes that she could look into forever without ever tiring. They also belonged to one of the most handsome men that she had ever laid her eyes on, and he stood there his huge frame draped in blue jeans, a brown shirt and matching Stetson and cowboy boots. She found herself blushing despite herself, her jaw dropping.