“Because,” he answered gently, alarming her with the discovery she’d spoken the question out loud. “I ken what it’s like to fear the darkness, Mena, and to hate the man who beat that fear into me.”
Mena felt the rough pads of his fingers drift over her down-turned cheek. When he reached her chin, he gripped it softly between his thumb and forefinger, lifting her face toward his.
“I find myself in the middle of a dance I doona ken the steps to,” he admitted, his eyes gilded by an unholy light as they searched hers for something she could not give him. “When ye’re near me, I doona know what to say or how to act. I canna figure what platitudes to give ye. I never learned the soft words that would reach through the walls that ye’ve built around yer heart.”
Though she didn’t allow herself to blink, Mena could still feel tears gathering in her lashes. She needed him to stop. She should pull away. But God help her, she couldn’t tear her gaze from the abject beauty of his face.
“I doona know which urge to act upon and which to suppress, but I want ye with a strength that even the gods canna understand … even though I canna always tell if it’s fear or desire I see reflected in yer eyes.”
Because it was both, Mena knew. Fear of him. Fear of the desire she felt for him. Of the things she wanted to do again in the dark.
“It was written in those stars that we meet.” His voice gathered a tender fervency that unstitched something from inside Mena’s soul. “We are bound in some inescapable way, thee and me. I’ve known it since I first laid eyes on ye in that dress.”
Mena wanted to deny it. To shake her head and make him stop whatever it was he was about to say. But she knew she could not. Though her heart threatened to gallop away, her body was frozen in place. A captive of his warm, gentle hand.
“Don’t.” She whispered a tortured plea as she wrapped her fingers around his wrist, meaning to push his hand away. “It’s impossible.” She was married. She was a fugitive.
She was unworthy of a man such as this.
“It’s impossible to deny it, lass.” He smiled down at her, and Mena suddenly knew that one could feel the warm rays of the sun even in the dark of night. “Try as ye will to resist me, I’m after ye, Mena, and I willna claim ye until ye yield. But I’ll not stop until every last one of yer defenses are in ashes at my feet.”
Down below, a large horn blared loud and long enough to break the spell he’d cast over her.
“They’re calling for me, lass.” Before she could move, he brushed his lips against hers, then turned over the wall and leaped to his feet. “Ye will be, too, before I’m done with ye.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Twin bonfires roared and crackled amidst the festival grounds, blazing as high as a two-story London row house and half as wide. Mena sipped on the spiced cider she’d mixed with Scotch and hoped no one had noticed. Highlanders seemed very adamantly against blending their Scotch with nectars and such, but she hadn’t the constitution yet to sip it alone, though she was trying to build to it.
A crowd of several hundred guests circled the twin infernos as gamekeepers and farmers drove their most prized livestock between the fires to purify and bless herds through winter. Bones of the cows, pigs, and various fowl used to feed so many were dried, kissed, blessed, and tossed into the flames, lending the air a succulent aroma. If Mena hadn’t already been full to sick from her copious meal, her mouth would have watered.
“You are in luck, Miss Mena, they are about to start the ritual.” Jani appeared at her elbow, dressed this evening as a glittering gold maharaja. His turban shimmered with gems, the largest in the center of the headdress, from which a tall peacock feather sprouted.
“Jani, don’t you look regal?” Mena exclaimed.
His dusky skin glowed with pleasure. “You are kind, Miss Mena, but I am muted next to your beautiful self.”
“Go on, you.” She elbowed him good-naturedly and went back to watching the increasingly foreign ceremony. “What ritual is this, exactly? I’ve never seen the like.”
Jani’s black eyes reflected the light of the bonfire, turning a tiger gold. “Even in this modern age, Highlanders are superstitious people. The harsh Scottish winters are especially dangerous for livestock, and this ritual the Mackenzie is about to perform will petition the gods to protect the cattle and sheep.”
“I see,” she breathed, before the ability to speak was stolen from her.
A lone pipe blared, silencing the crowd with its piercing, mystical song. Then the Mackenzie Laird appeared between the fires, and a reverent murmur weaved through the night.
Here stood her ancient barbarian. The one from the canvas in the hall. Clad in nothing but his kilt and boots, Liam Mackenzie radiated primitive, elemental power. His arms and torso were packed with even more muscle than Mena had remembered, and gleamed like tawny velvet in the firelight.
Something dark and unbidden unfurled in Mena’s body, tightening her features with a primal hunger and softening her feminine muscles to welcome him. She’d fought the very idea when he’d warned her of his impossible intentions on the roof. But looking at him as he was now, the incarnation of an ancient Druid warrior, she couldn’t remember any impediment to his absolute possession of her.
The fire illuminated black and blue runes adorning his chest and arms starting just beneath his rib cage and knotting over and around his nipples, his shoulders, his throat, and finely crawling up his sculpted jaw.
Cuffs of solid gold circled above the swells of his biceps, his wrists, and his neck. His hair ruffled in the breezes, but as close to the flames as he stood, there was no conceivable way he marked the chill of the evening. The ebony of his unbound hair fell to the middle of his back and matched the shadow stubbling his jaw. The two braids over his shoulder teased at his beruned collarbone.
Surveying his people with unabashed pride and satisfaction, Liam found her where she stood at the crowd’s periphery. The look he sent her was so full of sensual promise, Mena’s body released a wet flood of thigh-clenching arousal.
How could he provoke her with just a look? How on earth was she to ever resist such temptation?
Because you must, she admonished herself.
Whatever he read on her features inspired a glance of such victorious self-satisfaction on his face, she suddenly wanted to throw something at him.
Something like herself, perhaps.
Jani waved to him, oblivious to their unspoken interaction. “The laird has only missed one Samhain since his father died,” he informed her, “and on that year, there was blight on the cattle. So the people demand that every year he is here for the ritual.”
Mena tore her gaze away from the overwhelming sight that was the Laird of the Mackenzie clan. “You don’t really believe that driving a few cattle through two bonfires and saying a spell has anything to do with the survival of the livestock herds, do you?” she asked skeptically.
Jani shrugged. “Who is to say, Miss Mena? The story is that Liam Mackenzie, his father, and all Lairds of the Mackenzie of Wester Ross are descended from an ancient royal Pictish line that mingled with invaders from the north. It is said they carry the blood of the Lachlan berserker in their veins.”
“Berserker?” Mena queried.