Dangerous Highlander

CHAPTER ONE

West Highlands of Scotland

Spring 1603

“Ye’ve gone daft, ye have.”

Cara adjusted the basket on her arm. The brisk wind from the sea pulled tendrils from her braid to fly haphazardly into her eyes. She tucked them behind her ear and smiled at Angus. He had only one tooth left in his mouth, and what little hair he had stood on end, waving about in the vicious sea wind. “I’ll be fine, Angus. The best mushrooms in all of Scotland are within walking distance.”

“Ye stay away from that castle, lass. ’Tis full of ghosts it be. And monsters.” He shook a gnarled finger at her, his white, fluffy brows furrowed deep in his wrinkled forehead.

He needn’t remind her. Everyone in clan MacClure knew of MacLeod Castle. For centuries the stories of how the entire MacLeod clan had been massacred had been passed down from generation to generation. Tales of ghosts that roamed the land and castle were also told to frighten young children.

But it did more than scare the bairns. Even adults swore they saw movement in the shadows of MacLeod Castle.

No one dared venture near the old ruins for fear of being eaten alive. It didn’t help that strange, furious sounds, almost like howls, could be heard emanating from the ancient fortress in the dead of night.

Cara inhaled deeply and turned her head to look at the castle. It stood dark and foreboding against the ominous clouds coming their way. Grass, bright green in the warming weather, surrounded the stones that protruded from the landscape while the dark blue sea set a fantastic backdrop to the castle. The castle itself had two connected towers that had at one time served as the gate house. The gate had burned in the slaughter, leaving nothing left.

The castle wall that was easily twelve feet thick still stood, its stones blackened by the fire, with many of the sawtoothed merlons and crenels broken and crumbling. There were six round towers that stretched to the sky, leaving only one with the ceiling intact.

Cara had wanted to look inside the bailey and castle but had never been brave enough. Her fear of the dark, and the creatures that lurked in it, kept her out of the stronghold.

“They are simply stones turned to rubble,” she said to Angus. “There are no ghosts. Nor monsters.”

Angus moved to stand beside her. “There are monsters, Cara. Heed me words, lass. Ye go near the ruins, we’ll never see ye again.”

“I promise I won’t go in the castle, but I must get near it to get the mushrooms. Sister Abigail needs them for her herbs.”

“Then let the good Sister go herself. She’s not one of us. Ye are, Cara. Ye know the tales of the MacLeods.”

“That’s right, Angus. I do.” She didn’t bother denouncing her MacClure ties. She was a Sinclair, though no one knew it. It was just one of her secrets she kept from the clan that had taken her in when she was a small child wandering the forest.

Nay, she wasn’t a MacClure, but she didn’t correct Angus, one of her only friends. It felt good to belong to something, even if it was just in her mind. Not even the nuns who had raised her made her feel as if she truly belonged. They had loved her, in their own way, but it wasn’t the same thing as a parent’s love.

Not that she blamed any of the MacClures for not opening their homes to her. When the nuns had found her, she had gone days without food. She had been filthy, barefoot, and still so in shock at her parents’ deaths that she refused to speak. She doubted anyone wanted to know that her parents had sacrificed themselves to save her, their only child.

Like most Highlanders, the MacClures were a superstitious lot and feared Cara and what had driven her from her home. It was that same superstition that kept everyone away from the ruins of the castle that stood on the cliffs. With one last look at Angus and his furrowed brow, she lifted her skirts and turned to start toward the ancient ruins, ignoring the tingle of apprehension that ran along her spine.

His words were soon drowned out by the breeze and the cries of birds. Cara kept a watchful eye on the sinister clouds moving toward her. If she was lucky, she would be back inside the nunnery before the first drop landed.

She set out, enjoying the spring wind and the call of the razorbills that made their homes in the cliffs. Ever since the spring equinox and her eighteenth year, strange things had begun to happen to her. She would feel a sort of . . . tingling . . . in her fingers. The need to touch something overwhelmed her. Yet she feared that sensation, so she kept her hands to herself and tried her best to ignore the need that called to her. Being more different than she already was would not endure her to the MacClures—or the nuns.

The village of the MacClures had been built but a short distance from the old community of MacLeod Castle. After the massacre, it hadn’t taken the other clans long to divide up the lands of the MacLeods, and the MacClures were one of the first.

It was a sad story, and every time she looked at the castle she couldn’t help but wonder what had actually happened. The MacLeods had been a great clan, feared and respected, and had been destroyed in a single night. Yet no one had claimed responsibility for the annihilation.

A shiver ran through her as she recalled the animalistic howls and screams she sometimes heard at night. She told the children at the nunnery it was simply the wind racing across the sea and moving between the ruins. But deep inside, she knew the truth.

There was something alive in the castle.

The closer she got to the old castle, the more the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She turned her back on the ruins, scolding herself for letting her fear take hold. There was nothing to worry about now. It was daylight. Only the dark of night brought out her true fear.

She briefly closed her eyes and tamped her growing fright down. A gasp escaped her lips when the necklace she always kept hidden warmed against her skin.

She pulled the necklace out of her gown and stared at the vial and the silver knot work that wound around it. The necklace had been her mother’s, and the last thing she had given Cara before she died.

Cara dropped the necklace and pulled in a shaky breath. Her mother had bade her to keep it with her always, protecting the vial. Cara couldn’t think about the night her parents died. It brought too much guilt, too much anger, to know that the people who had loved her, cared for her, had surrendered their lives so she might live.

She glanced down to see the mushrooms she was supposed to pick. No one knew why they grew only along the path to the castle, and few braved the ghosts to harvest them. Some claimed it was magic that brought the mushrooms, and though Cara would never admit it to anyone, she thought it very well could be magic. She had volunteered to go this time because Sister Abigail needed them for little Mary’s fever.

Cara loved helping the nuns with the children. It satisfied a piece of her heart that knew she would never have a child of her own. Her decision to become a nun had been a sound one. Yet there were times she felt . . . incomplete. It always happened when she saw a couple about the village. She wondered what the touch of a man would feel like, what it would be like to bring her own child into the world and look into the loving eyes of her husband.

Stop it, Cara.

Aye, she needed to stop. Keeping her mind on that track would only bring her melancholy for what could never be and rage over her parents’ deaths.

She began to pick the mushrooms and enjoyed the time alone that she rarely got at the nunnery. Her mind wandered, as it often did, while she plucked the shrooms from the ground.

It wasn’t until her basket was nearly full and a large cloud blocked out the sun that she looked up, startled to find she was closer to the ruins than she had planned to go. She had been so intent on the mushrooms and her daydreaming that she hadn’t paid attention to where she had walked. Or how long she had been out.

But now that she was at the castle, she was intrigued by it, forgetting the approaching storm. Even after three hundred years the scars from the battle and fire could still be seen in the stones.

Cara’s heart hurt for everyone who had died. No one had ever discovered why the clan had been killed. Whoever had attacked had spared no one, not even a babe. The entire MacLeod clan had been wiped away in a single night.

She shuddered as if she could hear the screams and the sound of flames surrounding her. It was all in her mind, she knew, but that didn’t stop the terror from taking hold. Her blood turned to ice, and fear clawed at her, begging her to run.

Yet she couldn’t move.

Cara blinked and forced her gaze away from the castle to calm her racing heart as her necklace heated once more. It was so hot that she took it off and held the leather strap by two fingers. She had never feared the necklace before and rarely taken it off since her mother had placed it around her neck. However, there was something decidedly odd about it now, had been since the equinox. It looked the same, but she knew what she had felt.

The wind suddenly picked up and swirled around Cara. She gasped for breath and dropped the basket in an effort to pull the hair out of her eyes.

“Nay!” she screamed when her mother’s necklace was ripped from her hands.

Cara followed the precious link to her parents as it bounced over the rocky landscape to land near the edge of the cliff.

With her heart in her throat and her hands tingling with that strange sensation again, Cara hurried to the necklace as the first fat drop of rain landed on her arm. The wind suddenly dropped in temperature. Cara glanced up to see the storm had grown larger than she had anticipated. With the breeze beginning to howl, she inched closer to the necklace.

A bolt of lightning zigzagged across the sky a heartbeat before the clouds opened up and the downpour soaked her. After several days of constant rain, the ground was already soggy and unable to hold any more water.

Cara got down on her hands and knees, uncaring of the mud that soaked her skirts, and scooted closer to the necklace. Tears coursed down her face.

Please, God, please. Don’t let me lose the necklace.

She should never have taken it off, never have feared the very thing that her mother had kept close to her heart. An image of Cara’s parents flashed in her mind, driving home yet again how lonely she was, how alone in the world she always would be.

“I’m not leaving without the necklace!” she screamed into the wind. Her mother had entrusted the vial to Cara’s care, begging her to keep watch over it. She wouldn’t let her mother down. Not now, not ever.

* * *

Lucan MacLeod stared out over the landscape he had loved since the first moment he had realized what it was as a lad. He leaned his forearm against the edge of the narrow window in his chamber in the castle that faced the south and gave him a view of the cliffs and the sea.

He never grew tired of the beauty of the Highlands, the rolling waves of the sea before it crashed into the cliffs. There was something amazing about the smell of the sea mixed with the heather and thistle. This land calmed the raging anger inside him as nothing else could.

It was the Highlands. His Highlands. And he loved it.

What he didn’t love was being trapped, and that’s essentially what had happened ever since he and his brothers had returned to their home over two hundred years ago.

That was their life now. And he hated it.

How many times had Lucan raged at the inability to leave the castle? How many times had he sat in his chamber as the fury over what had happened to him and his brothers consumed him? How many times had he begged God for a way to make it all go away, to free him from the dark torment that threatened his very soul?

But God wasn’t listening. No one was.

They were fated to hide away from the world, watching as time changed everything around them. While they endured. Alone. Forever alone.

He briefly closed his eyes and remembered what it was like before their lives had been ripped apart. It was a lifetime ago that he had stood at that very window watching the clan, hearing the children’s laughter over the roar of the waves. That time seemed like a dream now, a dream that faded with each day that passed, each beat of his heart.

As the son of the laird, Lucan had never wanted for anything. Whether it was food and drink or female company. Women had always sought him out, and he readily accepted them.

He had taken their touch, their smiles, and their bodies for granted. Now all he wanted was to feel a woman beneath him. He had forgotten what it was like to have the soft curves of a woman’s flesh against him, to have her wet heat surround him as he thrust inside her.

There were times his need had been so great that he had thought of leaving the castle and finding a wench. All it took was one look at his brothers and he would remember why they had locked themselves away, why they didn’t allow themselves to be seen.

Lucan and his brothers were dangerous. Not to themselves, but to everyone else. There was great evil out there, and it wanted to use them.

Over two hundred years of confinement in the castle. But what else was there? They couldn’t be seen, not as they were, the monsters they had become. As the middle son, he had always been there to make peace for his brothers. A rock, solid and steady, to keep them all together, his mother had called him. He didn’t allow himself to think what was becoming of him and his soul.

Fallon had taken the role as heir to the clan seriously. Everything he did, everything he thought about, was for their clan. He hadn’t known what to do with himself when there was no clan, and with the beast constantly hammering for control and no way to reverse what had happened, he had turned to the wine.

As for Quinn, they had nearly lost him to the beast. Lucan snorted. Beast seemed such an understated name. There was no monster inside them. It was a primeval god banished to the pits of Hell. Apodatoo, the god of revenge, was housed within each of the MacLeod brothers. A god so ancient, there were no records or tellings of him. And he was far worse than any beast.

Whenever this despondent mood struck Lucan, as it often did when it rained, he took himself off to his chamber away from his brothers. They had their own worries. They didn’t need to see him grappling with his inner demons. He could wallow in his self-pity the rest of the day if he allowed himself. But he wouldn’t. His brothers needed him.

He took a deep breath and had started to turn away from the window when something caught his eye. Lucan’s gaze narrowed as he spotted a breathtaking vision. It was a woman, a very young, shapely woman who had dared to come close enough to the castle that he could see the comeliness of her heart-shaped face. He wished he could see the color of her eyes, but it was enough that he saw her full lips that begged to be kissed and her high cheekbones that turned pink in the wind.

And the thick, dark braid that hung down her back to her waist. What he wouldn’t do to see that hair unbound and falling about her shoulders. He fisted his hands and he imagined running his fingers through the tresses.

Her gown was plain and worn, but that didn’t disguise her small waist and rounded breasts. She moved with the freedom of one who enjoyed being outdoors, of one who reveled in the beauty around her. The gentle curving of her lips as she looked out at the sea tugged at something inside him. As if she wanted the freedom to fly on the wind currents.

She picked the mushrooms with care, her fingers tender as she placed them in the basket. When she had stared at the castle, she had looked as if it pained her, as if she had known what had taken place.

Something inside him shifted, cried out for him to learn about the woman. The more he watched her, the more she intrigued him.

No one dared come this close to the castle, much less look at it with such curiosity. If he had known such a beauty was near, Lucan might have left the castle in search of her.

He ignored the wind that rushed past him, and squinted through the driving rain to watch as she suddenly cried out and chased something toward the edge of the cliff. Thunder boomed and lightning lit up the darkening sky. Already they had had so much rain.

“What are you doing?” his younger brother, Quinn, asked as he walked into the chamber and moved to stand beside Lucan. Quinn looked out the window. “God’s blood. Is she daft?”

Lucan shook his head. “She was picking mushrooms. Then she raced toward the edge of the cliff.”

Quinn snarled, his rage never far. “Stupid wench. She’ll fall to her death.”

Lucan jerked away from the window as his enhanced hearing heard the shift in the earth. He wasted no time in brushing past his brother and running out of the chamber and down the corridor before jumping over the rail and straight down the three stories to the bottom floor. He landed on his feet in the great hall, his knees bent and his fingers on the ground to keep his balance. His skin tingled as the god surged within him.

“Lucan?”

There was no time to explain to Fallon, the eldest of them, what Lucan planned. The girl’s life was at stake. He hurried from the castle, unmindful of the rain and wind that whipped at his hair and clothes.

He ran under what was left of the gate house when he heard her scream as the soil moved beneath her. He leapt into the air and landed a few feet from her just as her hand closed over a necklace and the ground began to give way.

Lucan dove across the space and latched onto her wrist before she could plummet to the rocks and water below. Hanging by his hand, her feet dangling over open air, she blinked up at him, her dark eyes wide with fear.

“Hang on!” he yelled over the storm.

Her muddied hands slipped in his grasp and her feet scrambled for purchase in the rocks of the cliff. She screamed, her tears mixing with the rain.

“Please!” she cried. “Dinna drop me!”

Lucan used his strength and began to pull her up when the earth moved once more. He held on to her as he slipped over the side. At the moment when they both would have fallen, his fingers grabbed hold of a rock.

He looked from the edge of the cliff to the woman. He would have to swing her up, it was the only way to save her, but if he did . . . she would see him for what he really was.

“I’m slipping!”

He couldn’t get a better grip without dropping her, but if he didn’t do something soon, she would slide out of his grasp. He tightened his hold, but the more he fought against losing her, the more she slipped.

Until suddenly he held nothing.

Her scream echoed through him, wrenching his gut. Without a second thought he unleashed the god within him, the monster he kept locked away. In two leaps down the cliff, he was at the bottom amid the rocks with enough time to hold out his arms and catch her.

He waited for her to screech in terror once she saw his face, but when he looked, he found her eyes closed. She had fainted.

Lucan let out a sigh. He hadn’t thought beyond saving the girl, but now that she was in his arms, he didn’t regret it. It had been decades since he had held a woman, and her lush curves and soft body made him instantly hard. And wanting.

The rain continued its assault, but Lucan couldn’t stop staring at her heart-shaped face and high cheekbones. The gentle curve of her neck as her head tilted toward him.

“Shite,” he mumbled, and bounded back up the cliffs.

He landed as softly as he could so as not to disturb the woman and found Quinn watching him with narrowed eyes full of malice and hate. It was a look he had gotten used to over the course of three hundred years.

“Well, well, Brother,” Quinn said between clenched teeth. “What have you been keeping from us?”

Lucan pushed past him and strode to the castle through the driving rain. There would be time for questions later.

Quinn caught up with him. “What in God’s bones do you think you’re doing? You can’t bring her to the castle.”

“I canna leave her in the weather, either,” Lucan argued. “Do you want to take her to the village like this? Besides, she’s fainted, and I don’t know where she lives.”

“It’s a mistake, Lucan. Heed my words.”

They might be monsters, but that didn’t mean he had to act like one. For too long they had hidden in the castle, watching the world through the windows of their crumbling home. This was his one chance to do something good, and he wasn’t about to pass it up.

Not when she feels this delicious in my arms.

Lucan cursed his body and tamped down any more thoughts of the woman’s full breast pressed against him or her scent of heather and earth that filled his senses. The soaked material of her gown molded to her body like a second skin and gave him a glimpse of a hardened nipple.

He swallowed, wanting to close his lips over the tiny bud and suckle. His balls tightened and his blood heated until he shook with need.

With a kick, he opened the castle door and walked into the great hall. Fallon sat up from lying on the bench in the center of the room and raised a dark brow in question.

“Lucan, I’m drunk, but I’m not inebriated enough to miss the fact you have a woman in your arms. In the castle. Which isna allowed, I might add.”

Lucan ignored his brother and took the stairs two at a time to his chamber. It was one of the only ones in good enough condition to put the girl in. Fallon never used his chamber, and Quinn had destroyed his in one of his many fits of rage. None of the others had ever been seen to.

There hadn’t been a need.

Once Lucan laid her on the bed, he built up the fire to help warm her and tried to calm his raging body. The need, the hunger, he felt for her alarmed him. When he straightened, he wasn’t surprised to find Fallon and Quinn standing in his doorway.

“Should we undress her?” Fallon asked, his eyes focused on the girl. “She looks soaked through.”

“She is.” But Lucan wasn’t about to test himself with that kind of temptation. Not until he held his hunger in check. His hands fisted just thinking about pulling the material away from her body and drinking in the sight of her creamy skin. Would her nipples be as dark as her hair?

Quinn stepped forward and lengthened his claws. “I’ll remove her gown.”

With lightning speed Lucan moved between his brother and the bed on the opposite wall. The girl was his responsibility. If he left her to Quinn he would likely tear her in two with his wrath, and Fallon would forget her when he turned to his next bottle of wine.

“Leave her to me,” Lucan said.

Quinn’s lips pulled back in a snarl. “All these years you’ve lectured us on how I’ve given in to the god inside when all along, Brother, you’ve done the same.”

Fallon ran a hand down his face and blinked his red-rimmed eyes. “What are you talking about, Quinn?”

“If you’d stay off the wine long enough you would have known,” Quinn bit out.

Fallon’s dark green gaze, so like their father’s, narrowed on Quinn. “The wine is better than what you’ve become.”

Quinn laughed, the sound mirthless and hollow. “At least I know what day it is. Tell me, Fallon, do you recall what you did yesterday? Oh, wait. It was the same thing as the day before and the day before that.”

“And what have you done besides tear up everything Lucan builds?” Fallon’s eyes snapped with fire, and a muscle in his jaw jumped with his anger. “You cannot control the beast long enough to take a piss.”

Quinn smirked. “Let’s find out.”

“Enough!” Lucan bellowed when the two took a step toward each other. “Get out if you’re going to fight.”

Fallon chuckled, the sound empty. “You know I won’t fight.”

“That’s right,” Quinn said, resentment lacing his voice. “We wouldn’t want the great Fallon MacLeod to tempt his god.”

Fallon closed his eyes and turned away, but not before Lucan saw the despair in his elder brother’s eyes. “We all have our curses to carry, Quinn. Leave Fallon be.”

“I can take care of myself,” Fallon said, and faced Lucan. Fallon glanced from the girl to Lucan. “What were you thinking, bringing her here? You know no human can enter our domain, Lucan.”

The girl shifted on the bed, and all three of them stilled, watching to see if she would wake. When she didn’t, Lucan blew out a breath and motioned for them to leave.

“I’ll be down in a moment,” he promised.

Once they were gone, he pulled off her sodden shoes. He needed to get her out of her gown lest she caught a chill, but he didn’t trust his body—or his hands—to keep away from the temptation of her curves.

Her hair, a glorious chestnut, had darkened with the rain. He moved a lock of hair that stuck to the side of her cheek and marveled at the feel of her smooth skin. Her face, fair and unblemished, captivated him with her high forehead and delicate structure.

Though his only impression of her eyes had come when they were wide with fear, he remembered they had been the deepest brown he had ever seen. Now he noticed the long, dark lashes that fanned her cheek as she slept.

Lucan hadn’t dared touch a woman since that fateful day so long ago. He didn’t trust himself or the god. But now a woman lay in Lucan’s bed, asleep and oh, so enticing. It took but a heartbeat for him to decide to touch her.

He ran his finger down her face to her full, plump lips. The scent of heather drifted over him. Her scent. God, he had forgotten how soft a woman’s skin could be, how sweet they could smell.

Unable to stop himself, he traced her mouth with his thumb. He longed to bend down and place his lips over hers, to slide his tongue into her mouth and hear her moan of pleasure, to taste her.

It might have been centuries since he had a woman in his arms, but he still recalled the feel of breasts pressed against his naked chest, of cries of pleasure as he thrust inside her. He still recalled the feel of a woman’s hand as she caressed his shoulders and wound her fingers in his hair.

He remembered much too well.

Lucan’s body throbbed with need as he imagined pulling away the girl’s clothes and cupping her breasts and rolling her nipples between his fingers. He jerked away from her, afraid he would give in to the hunger that consumed him. That’s when he noticed her lips had begun to turn blue.

He cursed himself for ten kinds of fool. He might not be able to die, but she certainly could. He lengthened one of his claws and sliced her gown down the middle. After he pulled it off her, he tossed it aside and hurried to remove her wet stockings.

His hands shook as they came in contact with her skin, just as silky as he had imagined it to be. He left her chemise in place and reached for a blanket. It took every ounce of his control not to rip her thin chemise from her and drink his fill of her luscious curves.

As he began to spread the blanket over her, he spotted her fisted hand and a strip of leather hanging from her grasp. It must have been what she was after on the cliff. He frowned as he felt the lull of something. It took but a moment for him to recognize it as magic.

“Just who are you?” he murmured.

Lucan allowed himself one look at her body. Lean legs, flared hips, a waist so small he could span it with his hands, and plump breasts with hardened nipples.

His hands and mouth longed to touch her.

He swallowed the desire that surged within him. His balls jumped in anticipation, but Lucan wouldn’t give in. He couldn’t. He laid the blanket atop her and turned to go. The girl had been in danger, and he had saved her.

That was all.

That’s all there could be.