Page 6 of Dorchad

You’re everything wanted by another in that long ago time, the voice in her head had promised.

Was this man the one who had wished for her?

“Kiss me.” Saying that made him stare down at her in disbelief, but a reckless impulse had taken over Rebecca, who wound her arms around his waist. If she was going to die here, she’d have one last wish of her own fulfilled. “Please.”

He stared at her for a long moment as if shocked, and then his mouth came down on hers.

Chapter Two

Kissing the young red-haired female he’d fished out of the loch emptied all reason from Chieftain Dorchad MacRune’s thoughts. Indeed, her boldness, the sweet warmth of her lips and fetching fragility of her slender body under his bulk nearly drove him mad. She tasted like honey, and smelled of warm sunshine. Why had she asked for such from him? Like this he could ravish or strangle her with ease; surely any other female in her position would have screeched in terror.

Not this lass. As he kissed her, she whimpered into his mouth, and yet parted her thighs to cradle his hips as if they’d already become lovers. The fact that she’d saved him from taking an arrow in the back only added to his lust for her.

As second in command to Lord Tair MacRune, Dorchad had many responsibilities far more important than dealing with intruders. Keeping control over a clan made up of hundreds of the men fathered by their dark Fae sire, Rune, could be called his most important duty. He also kept a close eye on all of the clan’s senior men, and stepped in to aide them with their responsibilities when necessary. Whenever Tair left the stronghold Dorchad ruled in his place until he returned, a burden he hated almost as much as the darkness that constantly tempted him to do otherwise.

He had no business touching this wee butterfly wing of a mortal.

Dorchad ended the kiss to look at her dazed eyes and glowing face. This close she appeared much younger than he’d reckoned, and for a terrible moment he wondered if she had even come into her womanhood. Yet when she dragged in a breath her small chebs rubbed against his chest, assuring him she was no young lass. He wanted to take his dagger to her unfamiliar, mannish garments and cut them apart so he could inspect her body for himself.

“That was amazing,” she said, and touched his mouth with tender fingertips. “Thank you.”

She thanked him, as if he’d given her a boon? Or did she reckon he served her now? Dorchad had no intention of dancing attendance on a female mortal as the laird had with his woman.

“Do you think to tempt me to do more, wench?” he demanded, and then deliberately clamped a hand over one of her little mounds, squeezing in hopes of finally frightening her.

Her cheeks flushed, but she didn’t scream. Under his palm her peak hardened, pushing out at the soaked fabric covering it.

“When you touch me like that, I can’t think at all,” she said, breathing the words.

Somehow she’d become entirely besotted with him. Dorchad told himself that it was the shock of falling in the loch that had made her so dottled. Her innocence and beauty made him want to kill whoever had let her wander alone and unprotected.

“Never say such to a man atop you,” he told her, softening his monstrous voice as best he could. “You dinnae ken me or what I desire.”

“That’s an easy fix.” Her lips, slightly swollen now from his ravaging, curved with sweetness. “Tell me what you want.”

Such innocent provocation from her was the kind that no female had ever shown him. Perhaps she had been sheltered all her life, to make such an offer to the worst of the MacRune.

Or she’s half-blind and suffered a blow to the head.

He moved his hand to the wet fire of her hair to check her scalp, which even now was raveling itself into a thick mop of bright red curls. Her glorious locks also smelled of a summer day, and slid as soft as down between his fingers. He found no tell-tale lump, and when he looked into her gray eyes, the color of a mountain hare’s fur in summer, they seemed clear enough. Her wide, curving lips put all manner of unseemly notions in his head, as did the scattering of golden ferntickles across her small nose and high cheekbones. He imagined kissing each one as he held her down and stripped her. Would she resist as he stroked his cock in and out of her quim all the night?

She’s no’ yours to fack or torment.

The wench had called herself a doctor, he remembered. Lucia Brooke, the laird’s wife, had used the same word to refer to the clan’s healer, who had of late left the keepe to visit his kin in the islands. Like this one, Lady Lucy had also dropped from the sky.

She’s come from the future, thanks to that cursed rag.

That realization proved as chilling as the loch’s waters, and Dorchad pushed himself off her and pulled her up to stand with him. He saw no strange fabric on her, although her garments appeared odd compared to the gowns worn by females in this time. The light green bodice she wore had wrist-length sleeves but no fasteners or lacing, and had been embroidered with gold threads so fine they resembled gilded cobwebbing. Her brown trews, made from a thicker fabric, seemed like a divided skirt, the fabric of the legs had been left so wide. On her feet she wore dark brown slippers with gold buckles across the toes.

“Since someone is shooting at us, shouldn’t we find some cover?” Rebecca asked, looking around them.

He suspected the arrow had come from the archers’ range, where the stronghold’s patrols and guards often practiced their skills. One of the men had likely aimed poorly, or by chance had shot an arrow in the wrong direction. Because of a weakness he’d possessed since birth, Dorchad became the target of anything in the air that strayed within three ells of him. The fact that the arrow might have gone through her on its path to him made an unfamiliar guilt weigh on him.

“No, the arrow, ’twas a stray. Never shield me again as you did, unless you wish for death,” he told her, using his chilliest tone, which usually sent females running fast and far away from him.

At last his harshness had some effect on the wench, for her eyes grew shadowed as she twisted free of his grip.

“I don’t want either of us to die, friend,” she said before she walked off into the trees toward the docks.