With Everything I Am (40 page)

This one was like out of a fairytale.

It had eight (she counted them) turrets upon which long, streaming pennants flew. It seemed to have no straight sides, no sharp angles. It was all rounded with sweeping edges. It didn’t ramble across the rise but was compact and tall, at least three stories except the turrets which were much higher.

She barely got a good look at it before Callum swung around the circular drive which had a small, round fountain dancing in the middle, stopped the Rover and parked.

She also barely got a good look at the two statues (she could swear they were
wolves
) guarding the banisters on either side of the six (or seven, or even eight) foot wide set of steps. These led to the studded, wooden, arched double doors that seemed fifteen feet tall and had enormous, scrolled, iron hinges.

She also barely got a look at anything in the welcomingly lit interior as he dragged her up a winding, stone staircase lit by sconces on the wall and cut by thin tapestries hanging on the rounded walls.

One flight, two, three, four and on the landing of the fifth he walked them straight into the only room that led straight off the landing. A bedroom that she didn’t see at all.

Because she was concentrating on the fact that Callum was almost tearing her clothes from her body.

“Callum –” she began.

“Quiet,” he ordered in his kingly voice.

“Cal –”

He kissed her.

She struggled. Not against him but against the urge which was fighting to emerge during his deep, heady, hungry kiss. She struggled because she was never going to sleep with him.

Not ever again.

But concentrating on her inner battle, she lost track of him taking off every last stitch of her clothing.

So when she was naked and he had his hands on her bottom, lifted her and threw her on the bed but caught her ankles and yanked her forward at the same time he pulled her legs apart she was losing the fight in her head.

And when Callum, still fully clothed, dropped to his knees beside the bed, that was when Sonia was lost and the urge took over because he bent forward and suddenly his mouth was between her legs.

The soles of her feet planted themselves at the edge of the bed. With a brazenly deep moan of pleasure starting at the core of her, tearing its way up her throat and through her lips, her hips surged up to meet the voracious, consuming demands of his mouth. He cupped her bottom in his big hands and took from her like a man who’d been wandering a desert for days without water and had just dropped to his knees at the pool in an oasis.

In what seemed like seconds, Sonia came against his mouth. Her orgasm was so intense she barely noticed him flipping her to her belly then tugging her hips up. Her knees going into the edge of the bed, he entered her savagely.

The urge devoured her, causing her to reach her arms straight out in front of her and her fingers to fist in the hides there as he took her, rough and fast and hard. Then harder, then harder and she met his every thrust with mindless abandon and reared back in desperation to deepen the contact. Her first orgasm seemed never to stop as the next one came and then the next before he seated himself to the root one last time, filling her full, and growled his release.

But he wasn’t done.

He took her again, Callum on top, Sonia wrapping her limbs around him and letting him ride her, again hard, again fast, again rough, until they both climaxed.

And he took her again, Callum behind her, his hands on her inner thighs holding her suspended and steady for his thrusts as she grasped the headboard of the bed, her head back on his shoulder, her whimpers piercing the air.

And he took her again, Sonia on top and riding his shaft as Callum, sitting up, coaxed her to go faster with one hand on her hip and the other hand cupping her breast and feeding it to his mouth where he tormented her nipple.

And lastly, he took her again, but neither of them climaxed as they were spent, lying on their sides, spooning, his shaft sliding tenderly, almost lazily, in and out of her and his arms were wrapped around her tight.

“Sleep, baby doll,” he whispered after he seated himself to the hilt and remained there.

Exhausted, all she could do was as he commanded.

Now, she lay in his bed in his castle in Scotland, her body exhausted and aching but content by his play. Content in the knowledge that he again fell asleep inside her and she again fell asleep full of him. All of which she told herself she would never be and would never again do.

Humiliation crept into her muscles alongside the ache and the bitterness that guarded her heart turned to hatred.

The tears of that bitter hatred started stinging the backs of her eyes when she heard a knock on the door.

She froze and stared, silent, hoping whoever it was (for it wasn’t Callum, she would smell him, and anyway, he would never bother to knock) would go away.

They didn’t.

The head of a tall, very pretty woman peeked around the door. She had dark hair burnished with coppery highlights and a huge smile on her face.

“You’re awake!” she said brightly, her words also softened by a Scottish burr, and she threw open the door, balancing a tray in one hand and closing the door behind her with a hefty kick of her foot.

Sonia sat up, holding the hides to her bared breasts. The woman, wearing jeans, boots and a pretty, bright orange, woolly sweater with a fluffy scarf in orange and red and purple stripes wrapped around her neck, walked into the room. Then she put the tray on the bedside table and dropped immediately to a knee, head lowered.

Sonia stared at her, stunned.

Then she remembered what she was supposed to do.

“Please rise,” she invited and, with abundant energy that startled Sonia so much she jumped, the woman surged to her feet.

“My queen!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been waiting
ages!
Everyone has! Ages and ages and
age
s
!
And look at you! You’re even prettier than I expected!”

“Um…” Sonia muttered, taken aback by her exuberance and, of course, the small fact she was naked in bed and confronted with a stranger. “Thank you.”

The woman burst out laughing while she turned and rushed to Sonia’s six suitcases (and one cosmetics case) that somehow were all lined up with Callum’s cases in the room.

“She’s thanking me because she’s pretty,” the woman said to no one. “Hilarious!” she cried.

Then she started opening suitcases in apparent abandon. She was digging through Sonia’s possessions while Sonia stared in shock, uncertain what to do and unable to do
anything
seeing as she was naked and the woman had four inches and at least fifty pounds on her.

“I’m Maraleena. I’m Drogan’s mate,” she announced while opening another suitcase and still digging. “Drogan is Steward of the King’s Estates.” She snatched something out of a suitcase and whirled, brandishing Sonia’s stretchy, black, cotton nightie with the deep hem of black lace and matching lace covering the cotton at the bosoms. “Ah ha!” she cried and rushed to Sonia. “You can put that on. Then you need to eat. Everything. King Callum said he wanted me to bring down a clean plate.”

Of course he did
, Sonia thought but didn’t speak aloud as she took the nightgown Maraleena dropped on the bed beside her so the other woman could start pulling covers off food on the tray.

“You’re human, I forgot,” she said apropos of what Sonia thought was nothing but going back to her earlier subject. “Steward of the Estates means Drogan takes cares of all things castle. You know, the plumbing and heating and the cars and the gardens and the forest and stuff like that. He also helps Callum with other stuff too, official stuff. Ho hum. Bo… ring!” she decreed, lifted the tray and Sonia had just pulled the nightgown down over her hips when Maraleena planted the tray on Sonia’s lap then she looked at Sonia and said, “I’m housekeeper, or I was. That means I take care of all things castle that are, you know, housekeeping things. Keeping it clean, doing the laundry, ironing, getting the food in. Though, I’m a terrible cook. Poor Drogan, he loves his food. His life is a misery with me.” She grinned a grin that belied her words and then carried on, “We’ve a she-wolf who sees to that, or saw to it, her name is Callista.”

Sonia’s astonished eyes went from her tray to Maraleena. And her tray, incidentally, consisted of two eggs over easy on what looked like two
fried
pieces of bread and sat next to a pile of baked beans, a pile of sautéed mushrooms, two rashers of bacon, two huge sausages and two patties of some kind of meat that was black. This was accompanied by a toast caddy of four half-diamonds of perfectly toasted toast and three small bowls, one of butter, one of strawberry jam and one of orange marmalade. This was finished off with a cafetière of coffee, a mug, a small jug filled with milk, a sugar bowl and a tiny salt and pepper shaker.

“She-wolf?” Sonia breathed, forgetting her food and she watched as Maraleena went stock-still and her face paled.

Then she blinked.

Then she stammered, “Oh, it’s just something we… it’s just. Well…” she spluttered, her eyes lit and she proclaimed, “King Callum is known as The Wolf!”
 

It was Sonia’s turn to blink at her, stunned silent by this news.

Callum was known as The Wolf?

The Wolf?

The Wolf?

Why had he not mentioned this to her?

Not once.

Not while she was calling him that, screaming it during her orgasms (as hideous as that memory was at the moment), cuddling her stuffed wolf, fiddling with the wolf charm his mother bought her or
any time in between.

“King McDonagh was known as wolf too. Because of that we’re all known as wolves.” Maraleena beamed down at Sonia looking, for some reason, strangely pleased with herself and her announcement. “So, you know, if anyone mentions that, say, calls us wolves or she-wolves or… whatever, you know why.”

Sonia was only partially listening.

She was more hooked on the fact that she didn’t know Callum’s father’s full name was McDonagh.

She thought it was Mac.

Callum hadn’t told her that either.

And McDonagh was a strange name (not that some of Callum’s people didn’t have strange names).

Was it a last name? Was it Callum’s last name? Did Callum
have
a last name?

He’d never told her that either and she’d never (stupid,
stupid
her) thought to ask.

Not, of course, that she cared (anymore). It was just that his last name was probably
her
last name and she should know her own last name!

Maraleena, oblivious to Sonia’s rampaging thoughts, moved back to the suitcases. “King Callum and Drogan are down in his study going over things and beginning plans for the celebration and The Mating.” She lifted an armful of Sonia’s clothes out of an opened suitcase and turned to Sonia animatedly. “
Two
parties to ring in the New Year!” she shouted happily. “One of them the end of those terrible rebels and the other a Royal Mating! How exciting!”

Sonia thought she should reply or perhaps ask Maraleena what she was doing with Sonia’s clothes but the former became moot when Maraleena babbled and the latter became obvious when Maraleena started to put them away.

Therefore, Sonia decided to eat and let Maraleena chatter.

“I figure King Callum will go big on both, The Mating definitely.” She threw a smile over her shoulder at Sonia as Sonia forked up some mushrooms and Maraleena dumped her clothes on top of a bureau and started sorting and kept talking.

Sonia took her prattle as an opportunity to look around and finally see her new bedroom.

The minute she did she stopped eating and stared about the room in wide-eyed wonder.

It was like no other room she’d seen.

The walls were not flat but rounded however the room wasn’t a circle but seemed to go in waves.
 

And it was huge.

There were two, five-doored, dark wood wardrobes that went from floor to high ceiling and they also followed the wavy curves of the walls. There was a thin dresser but it was tall. There was a wider one with seven drawers and a longer one that had four drawers up and four abreast but was shorter (the one Maraleena was at presently). The walls not covered in furniture were covered in intricate tapestries that looked old but were definitely well-kept and hung from curving, polished brass rails at the top edge of the wall.

There were many windows, all of them diamond paned and the glass was so old it was wavy as well, giving the gray, green and white landscape beyond it an almost dreamy quality.

There was an oblong alcove set in one wall which was big enough to seat two and had a fluffy pad covered in hunter green twill and humongous cushiony pillows scattered around in different shades of brown and green.

There was a circular fireplace that, she noted in shock,
was
in the middle of the room
. It had what looked like a stone hood over it which served as a chimney. On one side of the fire was a half-circle, comfy couch in a reddish-brown and on the other side were two cozy chairs with ottomans separated by a stout, round table. The couch and chairs were also piled with big pillows, woolen throws or soft animal hides.

The bed Sonia was in was bigger than any bed she’d ever seen, not only wider but longer. It had four curtained posts and was covered in heavy, soft, dark hides stitched together. There were copious pillows across the head, the mattress were covered in soft, clay-colored, flannel sheets and Sonia was separated from the underside of the hides by sheet of the same.

The floors were littered with rugs, all of different sizes, most of them large and thick and elaborately woven in browns, rusts and greens.

Any part of the room not taken up by furniture, tapestries or rugs was made up of a mellow, golden-red-brown stone.

It was the most inviting, comfortable looking, beautiful room she’d ever seen.

She immediately felt like crying.

For it was
this
room she sensed in some of her dreams. She knew it from the many times she’d see that golden-red-brown at the edges of her consciousness that wasn’t involved with her handsome wolf or saw the dancing of the firelight on his skin.