Teresa Medeiros - [FairyTale 02] (17 page)

Before she even realized what she was going to do, Gwendolyn had crossed to his side and gently laid her hand on his shoulder.

He lifted his head without looking at her, shedding droplets of rainwater. “Good evening, Miss Wilder.”

“How did you know it wasn’t Tupper? “

“Tupper knows better than to sneak up on me in the dark. He might inadvertently get his throat cut.” Gwendolyn swallowed. “But then again, his throat isn’t nearly as bonny as yours.”

The whisky hadn’t yet slurred his speech, but it had softened the clipped consonants and flat vowels, giving his words a disarming lilt. Before she could withdraw
her hand from his shoulder, he caught it and held it fast, his thumb gliding across her palm. “Nor are his hands so soft. Perhaps you’re only a dream,” he murmured, rubbing the back of her hand against his cheek. “Pray tell, would the prickly Miss Wilder have enough pity in her heart to come to me in my dreams with her soft hands and her skin smelling of sleep?”

The delicious warmth emanating from his touch only made Gwendolyn feel more prickly. “I don’t believe that men in drunken stupors are capable of dreaming.”

The Dragon laughed harshly. “Perhaps you’re not a dream then, but a ghost. The white lady of the castle sent to warn me to leave this place before it costs me my eternal soul.” He turned his head to look at her, his expression masked by shadows. “Ah, but the ever-practical Miss Wilder probably doesn’t believe in ghosts, does she?”

Unnerved that he should have echoed her own dream so precisely, Gwendolyn said softly, “I used to think I didn’t. But when I stand in a place like this, I’m not so sure.”

She felt oddly bereft when he relinquished her hand and rose, seeking the deeper shadows of the hearth. The damp chill of the hall seemed to seep into her bones.

He looked up at the splintered rafters. “Have you ever wondered how they must have felt that night? Betrayed by one of their own. Abandoned by those they
trusted to defend them. All they could do was huddle in the darkness with their own meager weapons and wait for that first cannonball to fall from the sky.”

“They could have fled into the night with Bonnie Prince Charlie,” she reminded him, wondering as she often had why they hadn’t done just that.

His chuckle held little humor. “That might have saved their lives, but it would have cost them their precious pride.” He traced the motto engraved over the mantel with his forefinger. “ ‘Wrong or right…’ “

“ ‘… a MacCullough always stands to fight,’ “ Gwendolyn finished for him. There was no need for her to read the motto. Its hateful words were carved into her heart.

“Were there children, do you suppose?” he asked lightly, swiping his finger through the thick layer of dust on the mantel.

Now Gwendolyn was the one who turned away, seeking to hide from the moonlight. “There was a child. A boy.”

“Only one. That’s unusual, is it not? I thought these Highland lords bred like rabbits.”

Gwendolyn shook her head. “His wife was able to bear him only the one child. But unlike most men, he never reproached her. Instead, he treated her as if she’d given him the rarest and most precious of gifts—a son. An heir who would lead the clan once he was gone.” Her voice trailed to a murmur. “I don’t believe the villagers ever recovered from his loss.”

The Dragon snorted. “From what you’ve told me
about the good folk of Ballybliss, I doubt that anyone shed a tear for him.”

Gwendolyn swung around to face him. “I did!”

Unable to bear his silence, she drifted over to the jagged remains of a window. “I was little more than a child when he died, but I suppose I was half in love with him even then.” A rueful smile touched her lips. “Silly, wasn’t I, thinking a lad like that might spare a thought for a great, awkward girl like me?”

“Your only folly was fancying yourself in love with someone who was little more than a child himself.”

“Ah, but you didn’t know him. He was quite an extraordinary lad—strong and kind and noble. It was apparent even then what manner of man he would grow up to be.”

The Dragon sounded oddly subdued. “A paragon of goodness, no doubt, given to uplifting the downtrodden, protecting the virtue of the innocent, and rescuing damsels in distress.”

“He rescued me once. But I was proud and stubborn and instead of thanking him properly, I gave him a scathing set-down. I didn’t realize it would be the last time I would ever see him alive.”

She gazed out over the shattered ruins of the courtyard, but saw instead a sunlit path lined with weeping villagers, felt the rough bark as she dug her fingernails into the trunk of the oak, heard the mournful wail of the pipes as they heralded the death of all her dreams. “I saw them carry his body down the hill. I must have hidden in that very same tree and watched him ride
through that pass a hundred times before, but that last time, he was draped facedown over the back of his pony. They’d wrapped him in the tartan he’d always worn so proudly.”

Gwendolyn was aware that tears had begun to slip silently down her cheeks, just as they had done that day. Unaware that the Dragon had taken two halting steps toward her, his fingers curled into helpless fists at his sides.

Gwendolyn brushed a tear away with the back of her hand and turned to face him.

He stumbled around and braced both hands on the mantel. “I suggest that you leave me now, Miss Wilder. I’m lonely and I’m drunk. I’ve only been drunk for a few hours, but I’ve been lonely for a very long time, which hardly makes me fit company for discussing ghosts with a lady in her nightdress.”

Gwendolyn was taken aback by his admission. She supposed she’d assumed that pangs of loneliness were reserved for plain women with lovely sisters.

“And where would you suggest I go, M’lord Dragon? Back to my cell?”

“I don’t give a damn where you go,” he ground out. “As long as it’s out of my sight.”

Gwendolyn couldn’t have gone if there’d been another cannonball heading straight for the hall, not while there was a crack in the Dragon’s armor that might provide her with a glimpse of the man inside.

“Shall I return to the village then?” She took another step toward him, thinking to lure him into the
moonlight with her taunts. “Shall I tell them that their fierce Dragon is nothing but a man? A man who seeks to make others afraid of him, yet hides his face in shadows because he’s more afraid of himself than they could ever be.”

“Tell them whatever you bloody well like,” he growled, his knuckles white against the mahogany of the mantel.

Gwendolyn crept nearer, lifting her hand, but not daring to touch the unyielding expanse of his back. “Shall I also tell them that you’ve shown me nothing but kindness? That you replaced my rags with garments fit for a princess? That you forced me to eat when I would have starved myself out of sheer stubbornness? That you’ve declined to devour their virgin sacrifice?”

He turned around. “Don’t think I haven’t considered it. Don’t think I’m not considering it at this very moment!”

Hunger gleamed in his eyes, but he did not lay his hands on her. It was that, more than anything, that prompted her to touch her fingertips to his face. He inhaled raggedly as she gently explored his features, seeking the scar, the burn, the terrible deformity that had driven him to live in darkness and branded him a beast in his own eyes and the eyes of the world.

She had to ease aside a silky lock of hair to stroke a brow that was both strong and smooth. His eyebrows were thick and slightly arched, his lashes soft as feathers against her palm. She followed the arc of his cheekbone
to the firm line of his nose. Her knuckles curved to caress a jaw lightly stubbled with a day’s growth of beard. She was reaching to brush her fingertips against his lips when he caught her wrist, groaning.

She expected him to fling her hand away, not to bring her fingertips to his lips and press a kiss upon them. His lips were firm, yet soft. The tender urgency of their kiss sent a scorching sweetness melting through her veins.

He caught her by the shoulders and drew her against him in the darkness. “Would you sacrifice yourself to me, Gwendolyn? Would you sacrifice yourself to save this poor wretched beast that I’ve become?”

A strange calm stole over Gwendolyn as she gazed up into the shadows that composed his face. “You once told me what I had to do to turn you from beast to man.”

Curling one hand around his nape, she drew him down and gently pressed her mouth to his.

T
HE
DRAGON
STRUGGLED
TO absorb the gift of Gwendolyn’s kiss. It was too late to confess that he had lied to her, too late to warn her that her kiss could only weave an enchantment more dangerous than any that had come before. Instead of taming him, her kiss made him wild. Wild to kiss her. Wild to touch her. Wild to take her. He sucked in a shuddering breath as her mouth ripened beneath his, her lips parting in an invitation he no longer had the strength to resist.

Holding himself back so as not to frighten her, he wrapped his arms around her and swirled his tongue through the moist warmth of her mouth. She tasted of innocence and hunger, and it was precisely that shy ardor that made her kiss more affecting than any courtesan’s caress.

“My sweet… my innocent,” he whispered against the corner of her mouth. “You are a dream, aren’t you? A dream come true.”

Gwendolyn would have never believed the Dragon
capable of such gentleness. His mouth glided down the curve of her jaw, leaving a tingling trail of delight. He kissed the dimple in her cheek, then sought the one at the hollow of her throat before returning his mouth to hers.

This was no chaste brushing of lips, no misty mingling of breath. This was a kiss as sweet and dark as death itself. As he ravished her mouth with exquisite thoroughness, Gwendolyn had to cling to his shirtfront to keep from falling. He might have been the one drinking, but she was the one reeling, intoxicated more by his raw tenderness than by the whisky she tasted on his tongue. Although his breathing was as ragged as her own, she could feel his dragon’s heart beating strong and true beneath her palm.

He did not break that bewitching kiss, not even when he bore her back against the table. Gwendolyn had thought to lure him into the moonlight. She had never dreamed that he would drag her deeper into the shadows or that she would go with him willingly, even eagerly.

The table pressed into her backside; he pressed himself into the softness of her belly, proving once and for all that he was no beast, but simply a man. A man who desperately wanted her.

“You’re a bloody little fool. You should have gone when I told you to,” he rasped even as he drew her more tightly against him.

Gwendolyn reached blindly for his face, finding his
hoarse reproach even more irresistible than his touch. He grazed her lips with his own, brushing them back and forth in a coaxing caress that made her heart double its already ragged rhythm.

He began to unlace the satin ribbons at the throat of her nightdress. Gwendolyn felt the tremor in his hands as he dragged the fabric down, exposing her shoulders.

“You have the softest skin,” he murmured, feathering his fingers against her collarbone.

“Fat girls often do,” she informed him, pressing her burning cheek to his chest. “It’s their consolation for having so very much of it.”

He cupped her face in his hands, his voice as fierce as his touch. “If you’re not a goddess among women, then why is Aphrodite over there turning green with jealousy at the prospect of your unveiling?”

Gwendolyn laughed shakily. “Are you sure it’s not just moss?”

As the Dragon buried his face against her throat to smother his exasperated chuckle, it was almost possible for him to believe that her yielding softness could fill all the empty places in his life. “If you won’t believe the praise that spills from my honeyed tongue, I’ll simply have to put it to another use.”

Gwendolyn moaned deep in her throat as he did just that, sliding that honeyed tongue of his between her lips in a rhythm as ancient as that of the sea battering the rocks below the castle. A wicked thrill shot through her as he filled his hands with the softness of her
breasts, his callused thumbs stroking her nipples to rigid attention through the crisp lawn of the nightdress.

She gasped into his mouth; he groaned into hers. His dragon’s breath seemed to fill her, its tongues of flame igniting a raging fire low in her belly. Through the roaring in her ears, she could hear him murmuring her name, as if it were an incantation.

She could do nothing but moan her surrender as his other hand crept beneath the skirt of her nightdress, lingering to stroke the baby-soft skin of her inner knee. Ever since the morning he’d rescued her from the window, Gwendolyn had taken great care to wear a pair of drawers beneath her nightclothes. Now she realized how foolish she had been to believe that thin layer of silk would shield her virtue. She should have known they’d present more of an enticement than a hindrance to a man like the Dragon.

It wasn’t until she heard his ragged intake of breath that she remembered the slit in the silk at the cleft of her thighs. As those deft, aristocratic fingers of his brushed curls dampened by a desire she could no longer deny, her thighs went slack, inviting him—no— begging him to work his dark will upon her.