She squeezed his hand. “When you are subjected to such misfortune, it is difficult for those who are closest to you to comprehend it because you appear to be ordinary. Outwardly, you seem what you have always been, who you strive to show them that you are. But inside you are inconceivably altered, and perhaps you don’t even recognize yourself.” Her other hand joined the first, and she wrapped them around his palm, her voice growing with ardor. “I think, once you discover who you’ve decided to become, your children, your people, will get to know that man. And I have no doubt they will grow to love him. You are a good man, Laird Mackenzie, despite what you believe. I think your clan, and your children, know that more than you do.”
There it was, that reassuring smile again. The slight tilt of her sensual lips that coaxed a dimple into her cheek. Lord, but to look at her was pleasant. And to be touched by her, divine.
Bless her for what she believed of him, but Liam knew better. The maelstrom of emotion whirling through him at the depth of his confession suddenly flared into a physical inferno. His demon burst into flames of lust. Liam knew she could read it in his eyes, as she released his hands with a shocked gasp and made to rise. To retreat.
Well, if he was already damned, he might as well follow his wicked impulses all the way to hell.
At least he’d get to taste her again.
Liam sprang toward her, grasping her wrists and pulling her back down to him. He sank his fingers into her luxurious hair, loosening the intricate coiffure there, and pinned her head between his two strong palms as he took her wicked mouth with his own.
It was in the joining of their lips that Liam found what he’d come to the chapel seeking. He kissed Mena with a reverence he’d never felt in the entirety of his life. Driven by a hunger that welled from the darkest, most heretical depths of his soul, he knew he’d finally found something worthy of his worship.
Though he didn’t want to do so with soft prayers and humble words. He wanted to pay her homage in the most primitive way his Pict ancestors would have. With drums that beat with the rampant frenzy of his heart. With fire that licked at the black sky, ablaze with the strength of the heat spilling into his loins. Passion, years denied, clawed to the surface of his iron will as he feasted on her. Laid siege to her defenses as vigorously and mercilessly as he had so many walls and armies. He used the ruthlessness that had vanquished legions until he was the one man standing in the midst of the fallen.
Her hands closed around his wrists. She didn’t pull away, though he knew she wanted to.
They both knew she should.
Instead, a soft sound of surrender escaped her as she arched her neck, and opened her mouth to accept him.
Victorious heat surged through him, as he claimed her with his tongue, a delicious thrill spearing that dark place he’d always imagined had housed the Mackenzie demon. Her sweetness overwhelmed and stupefied him, and Liam realized that if anything, anyone, could bring him to his knees, it would be this singular woman. She could accept him deep into her body, and perhaps her soul. She could temper his fire, while illuminating the darkness.
God, but he had burned his entire forsaken existence … but had never felt true warmth until this moment.
And never felt true loss until she ripped her lips from his and pulled his hands down away from where they cupped her face.
The air between them vibrated with needful frenzy, and the frightened tears in her eyes only dampened the fire of a lust that would never truly be extinguished. “Mena.” Her name became a prayer.
A plea.
“Forgive me,” she whispered, surging to her feet and turning away from him. “You can’t know how wrong this is.”
She took the warmth with her as she gathered her skirts and fled.
CHAPTER TEN
Every day at sunrise, Laird Liam Mackenzie courted death.
He’d strap on his low-heeled deerhide boots and run the few miles across the moors until he had to scale Ben Crossan, the mountain which the river Crossan had to divert around to reach the sea. Though the way was rocky and treacherous at times, the true danger didn’t begin until he reached the abrupt pinnacle called Craeg Cunnartach, the Dangerous Cliff.
Many a tragic, lovelorn Highland lass had tossed herself to her death from this very place. It was said among the Mackenzie that these women became Fuathan, water wraiths, and should a man venture into their waters, the vengeful lasses would drag him to the depths of the sea, and devour him as he drowned, trying to fill the eternal void of their broken hearts. Even fishermen, divers, and merchants avoided the mouth of the Crossan River and the water beneath Craeg Cunnartach.
Liam, of course, didn’t believe in the superstition, but knew that a strong current lurked beneath the deep waters, as did sharks, rocks, and numerous other hazards.
The way he figured it, he owed the devil a chance to take him. He also understood that he was not an easy man to kill, and therefore sought the one place he could think of where he was not the alpha predator, the dominant warrior, or the Laird of the Land.
And so it was to the sea that he commended his life.
Almost.
Winded as he was once he climbed to the cliff’s edge, he never hesitated to leap, using his momentum to clear whatever juts and crags of the rock face that reached for him on his way down. For in his extensive experience with death, it was in the hesitation that a man often made his most fatal mistakes.
To say that he gave the Prince of Darkness a chance to take him didn’t suggest he meant to make it easy on the devil to collect his due. Warrior that he was, Liam fought the current with all his hard-won strength. Once he surfaced, he waited with patience for his breath to return to him—as the cold always stole it—before swimming with lithe, powerful strokes toward the Ravencroft Cove.
He’d never clocked the distance, precisely, but it took him a little over a half hour of hard swimming on most days. He’d performed this ritual since he was a lad.
Since the morning after he’d taken a whip to innocent flesh. His first true sin against another.
The first of many.
When abroad with his regiment, he’d plunged into any waters he could, when possible. He’d forged crocodile-infested jungle rivers, icy Prussian lakes, and just about every ocean on the map.
But this stretch of Highland coast was his favorite. Submerged in the sea that surrounded his home, the water which Druids had blessed and his Viking and Pict ancestors had profaned with the blood of the ancients, he turned his existential struggle into a physical one, as he battled against all that would claim him. That would pull him into the black depths and suffocate him. The guilt. The pain. The hatred. Burdens he carried every day.
He felt as though he invited the gods to strike him, or the devil to take him, and when they didn’t, he emerged from the briny water with a semblance of peace or, dare he say, permission. Not so much like a baptism, wherein his soul would be cleansed, but more like a figurative bath. He would live and toil another day, and the refuse, soil, and filth would paint his soul black again, and so he would repeat the ritual the next morning.
This particular morning, he made the journey in perhaps the shortest time since he could remember. A peculiar disquiet chased him up the mountain, and he fled from it with such speed, his legs burned as they propelled him to go ever faster.
You can’t know how wrong this is …