Page 14 of Alec

Why had she lied to him? She nearly squirmed with embarrassment. Yet she couldn’t tell him she’d believed she was swiving the hunter while she sat naked atop him.

“You cannae ravish the willing, sweeting.” He lifted her as if she were fashioned from feathers and settled her atop his thickening cock.

Kelso had an earthy side to him that had always appealed to her, Elspeth thought, relieved. “I still beg your pardon.”

“I like that you dream of having me again after I fack you in truth,” he said, smiling up at her. “Do as you wish.”

Elspeth knew it was wrong to close her eyes and imagine Ulf beneath her instead of Kelso. She also knew the guard could appreciate the wetness of her excitement as she slid down on him, her softness engulfing his thick girth with all the silky heat her dream had wrought inside her. Then her own desires welled up, a torrid fountain of fire made liquid, and she worked herself over him, taking his full length into her time and again. He brought up his big hands to cup her little breasts, pinching her nipples and tugging on them until she thought she might shriek with the painful pleasure of it.

“You should wake me when I do such,” she said, panting the words.

“You moaned in your sleep, and I reckoned you dreaming,” Kelso told her, his hips arching up to meet her next downward thrust. “When I put my arms around you, you came atop me and shivered with delight. Did you desire me at your mercy, lass?”

“Aye.” She would not hurt him by admitting the truth, that she had been dreaming of one of the lovers she knew she’d never have. “I’d chain you to my bed, Kel, and put you inside me whenever I wish.”

He watched her face, his eyes glowing as she gave herself up to the pleasure bursting inside her, and only when she drooped and shook with the force of it did he utter a soft groan and pump her quim full of his seed. He then cradled her against his chest, his hands stroking her back and hips as they both calmed. A tender and thoughtful man, Kelso liked holding her after they finished.

Gods, but it shamed her.

Elspeth knew she should end it with him, and she dreaded that conversation. He was a good and kind lover, and generous to a fault with her. She should never have bedded such a decent man. She could never tell him anything about her true desires. Still, when she had come to him that first night she had told him that she would only share his bed for a short time, so he could not be surprised or hurt.

“I suspect ’tis time for you to turn to another of my brothers, aye?” Kelso murmured as if he’d heard all the thoughts in her head. “Dinnae fret, sweeting. Ever I ken ’twas how it should go. Or shall you seek the one you truly desire?”

Miserable now, she lifted her head and looked into his kind eyes. The laird had forbidden all the vassals from speaking on the time cycle they endured each year; she had to choose her words carefully now, as if she didn’t know what was to come. “I darenae, lad.”

He nodded. “Then come to me when you dinnae wish sleep alone. You’re ever and always welcome in my bed.”

Although exhaustion dragged at her, she rose and dressed, kissing him goodbye before she slipped out of his chamber. For seven hundred years she had been sharing her body with various men of the clan, and like Kelso all of the McKeran had treated her well. They tended to be passionate but gentle lovers, and always appreciated her attention, as they could not choose a lover from among the vassals, but had to wait to be chosen. Many had agreed to take her to their bed more than once, so she must have pleased them as well. She could not fault any of them for how they had regarded her. None of them tried to keep her as their lover, however, or ever uttered a single word of love to her.

Even before they had been cursed, McKeran men had not fallen in love with mortals. Their half-Fae blood made them unsuitable as husbands, and they could not sire bairns.

Sometimes Elspeth had resented the clansmen for being so stoic about matters of the heart. If not for women like her they would endure eternity in the trap as celibates like their war master. Until Ava Travars had arrived, not a single McKeran had fallen in love. Then the woman from the future and the clan’s laird had turned everything upside down.

She and Tasgall married. Why cannae the other McKeran join in the binding ceremony?

Her thoughts so engrossed her that Elspeth nearly walked into a tall, lean male body before she realized it, and skittered out of the way, her boot slipping out from under her.

“Easy there.” Ben Miller caught her arm and braced her against his side. “You can’t daydream and walk at the same time, Ms. Elspeth.”

The clan’s healer always spoke kindly to her, as if she were a younger, wayward sister. He had sharp senses that seemed to catch everything, so she knew he saw her rumpled curls, and smelled Kelso’s sweat on her skin. Yet the bland smile he gave her was exactly the same as he offered every female in the stronghold. Since his arrival he had never taken a lover, either, which had fueled much gossip.

He fancies men, I swear it, Brigid, one of the kitchen maids, had said after the healer had rejected her offer to sleep with him. He doesnae even glance at a lass’s chebs—and ever he’s alone with that wicked Norse hunter.

Una, another maid known to regularly cheat on her husband with any male she fancied, smirked. Mayhap they share a woman in bed. ’Tis a disgusting debauchery.

Since overhearing that conversation, a terrible longing had seized Elspeth, one that made her go to the garrison hall nearly every night to seek relief. She did not have to choose between the two mortal men she desired if they shared her, and imagining such roused her more than any other fancy she’d ever had. Did Ben or Ulf suspect that she desired to bed them both? That if they shared women, she wished to be one? Even thinking of it should have shamed her for the rest of forever, but her heart had always been defiant.

“Is everything all right?” Ben asked, drawing her attention back to him.

For a moment she wanted to thump him for being so oblivious, but of course she wouldn’t. Ben liked everyone at Dun Talamh, and was so friendly and helpful he had become adored by all. She loved his bright red curls, which gave him a charming boyish look, and the depths of his vivid green eyes, which always seemed so full of secrets. He’d even saved her life during the attack of the monstrous caterpillars by taking her from one before it could cocoon her entirely. She owed him much, and it wasn’t her place to judge him. It could be that he didn’t have the same needs as other mortals.

And me, the lump in her chest muttered sullenly. But how could she ever ask if Ben desired a man and a woman as his lovers?

“Thank you, Healer.” She stepped back and tried to wriggle free from his grasp, but he wouldn’t let go. “I’m quite steady now, thank you.”

Ben glanced over his shoulder. “You’ve been spending a lot of time in the garrison hall lately. Didn’t your clansman ask you to stay the night with him?”

Elspeth couldn’t believe how easily he asked such an intimate question—and why had he noticed where she spent her nights? He had no claim on her.