Unwilling (Highland Historical #2)

“Fuck!”  A mate?  Now?  How in
the name of the Gods had this happened?  He didna want her. 
    The woman surfaced, sputtering and
flailing until she found purchase on the mossy rocks, and stood.
    Connor blinked.  Och, that was how.  His berserker must have taken one look at the shimmering goddess in
front of him and decided to claim her as his own.  Straight, heavy raven hair
clung to pert, high breasts and a firm, tight figure.  She was a wee thing,
finely-featured and delicately formed, but fire flared in her amethyst eyes. 
    Following the direction of his
gaze, she looked down and let out a shocked squeak and covered her breasts,
lowering her body back into the freezing water. 
    For a moment, they just glared at
each other.
    “Your eyes,” she gasped.  “They’re
green.”
    “Aye,” he said moodily.  “They’ve
been since my mother bore me.”
    “Nay.”  She shook her head
vehemently.   “Nay, they’ve been black as pitch until now.  Sir, you were
possessed by… some kind of demon.  It made you do— terrible things.”  She
regarded him with wide-eyed apprehension. “Don’t you remember what you’ve done?” 
    He remembered it all through a
murky shade of grey .   Slaughtering Angus’ rogues.  The moment his beast
had decided to claim her rather than kill her.  The glow of her radiant flesh
in the dimness of the coach.  The hitch of her breath as he discovered the warm
cleft between her thighs.  The sweetness of her cries as she came for him.
    The kiss that tied them together
for eternity. 
    “Goddamnit!” he hit at the water,
showering the bank with a wave of his fury.  He whistled for Colm, his Shire
steed, and rubbed a wet and tired hand over his face.  He was well and truly
fucked. 
    Panic flared in her eyes as he
stalked toward her, displacing the meandering water.  She struggled backward
against the current, but only stumbled and flailed.
    “Yer coming with me,” he ordered. 
    “W-wait!”  She threw a hand up,
effectively stopping him in his tracks.  “J-just go.  You c-can leave me here.”
    The hell he could.  Her entire body
trembled, and her lush lips took on a blue cast.  He had to get her out of the
water and fast.  His ears pricked to the sound of Colm’s galloping approach. 
    “It’s too late for that.”  He
reached down for her.
    “I-I won’t tell anyone what you’ve
done.”  She cast her eyes toward the east, where the carnage from only moments
ago was an acre away, still shrouded in a dissipating mist and tall highland
grasses.
    He let out an impatient noise.  “Ye
would rather me leave ye here, naked and defenseless?”
    She looked at him like it would,
indeed, be the safer decision.  “I have a w-wardrobe, lashed to the coach.”
    “Aye, and do ye want to crawl over
twenty dead men and as many horse carcasses to reach it?”
    She paled, but then stuck her jaw
out at a stubborn angle.  “I-I would.  I can’t go with you.  What if the… demon
comes back?”
    Connor reached down and wrapped his
hand around her thin arm, pulling her out of the water.  “That was no demon,”
he ground out.  “Only me.”
    ***
    Lindsay knew by now that resisting
him was futile.  Though she wanted out of the freezing river, she couldn’t bear
to be naked in front of him.  Not after what they’d done.
    What she’d allowed him to do.
    She gave a token struggle, trying
to disengage the hand clamped around her arm like an iron shackle.  But the brute
dragged her onto the bank, as a gigantic black shire approached at a gallop.  Lindsay
crossed her arms in an ineffective effort to cover herself and hunched down,
feeling utterly humiliated and exposed. 
    The Demon used his free hand to
snatch the reins and pull the prancing beast to a full halt before unlashing a
bundle from the dark leather saddle. 
    “Here,” he growled, unrolling a
large, fur-lined cloak and settling it about her shoulders.  He at least had
the decency to avert his eyes from her nakedness. 
    “Thank you,” she murmured,
clutching the warm garment around her and trying to quell her violent shivers. 
It smelled of leather and musk with the sweet hint of frankincense.  Like him. 
    Silently, he grabbed her by the
waist and tossed her bottom onto the saddle, as though she were a sack of grain,
and swung up behind her.  An angry tension corded his thick muscles.  She could
feel it through the layers of the cloak and his still-wet clothing.  A vein