Hero of a Highland Wolf by Terry Spear
“We’ll watch them with you. As your mate, I want to know everything you enjoy doing,” he said agreeably.
Colleen patted his thigh. “Are you up to baking decadently delicious chocolate treats?”
“I am. And eating my fair share, too.”
She smiled and hugged him soundly. “I think I’ll keep you as my mate.”
“I couldn’t be happier with our sleeping arrangements. I do have one question for you, though.”
“Oh?”
“You didn’t send those pictures you took of me while I was sparring with Ian to some other lassies, did you?”
She smiled.
“Darby said he swore the man showing off his arse on Facebook was wearing one of our kilts, and the man he was fighting was wearing the MacNeill tartan. Seemed like too much of a coincidence to us.”
She laughed. “What are girlfriends for?”
“I knew it. You said you wouldn’t share them.” He squeezed her tighter against his chest.
“Well, at least not the identity of the person bearing that sweet ass.”
“And now who’s baring her sweet—”
“I am not.”
He laughed. “With as windy as it is, lass? I’ll have my cell handy when we leave here.”
She’d hold her skirt down, then. She shook her head at him, but he was grinning wickedly and she knew he would, too. Not to share it with anyone, though.
When the whole party of stags and hens headed home, it was pouring rain, the first she’d experienced since she’d arrived. A shuffling of who rode in which cars followed. Ian and Julia grabbed a ride with Grant and Colleen, and they could barely see their way to the castle in the downpour.
That night, after watching romance movies and sharing popcorn and some crazy chocolate concoctions, Ian and his family left for Argent Castle with plans to return in two days for Colleen and Grant’s wedding. The forecast looked like intermittent rain. But it wouldn’t put a damper on the festivities, as excited as everyone was.
Everyone else headed for their respective beds. Grant had wrapped Colleen in his spare plaid while they snuggled and watched the movies, ensuring she didn’t show off her legs or other unmentionables in the short minikilt. As soon as he carried her to the bedchamber, he set her on her feet, then ditched the plaid wrapped around her.
“I want you just like this,” he said, running his hand over her bare leg. Still dressed in his kilt and her in her minikilt, they got into bed together. He pulled her back against his chest, his hand reaching down to feel under her minikilt.
She smiled. A questing finger quickly found its way inside between her slick, hot folds, and she groaned with the sensual assault.
“You should have told me you were already wet for me. You don’t know how much it killed me to touch all that silky flesh and not be able to lift that tiny kilt and bury myself inside you while I waited for everyone to retire for the night. From now on, you only wear it for me in the privacy of our chambers.”
She smiled, happy to do so, not willing to have a breeze lift her kilt and show off her buttocks. He stole her breath when he began nibbling her ear and rubbed his hard body against her backside.
His phone gave an annoying jingle, making them both tense. It was close to three in the morning, and she couldn’t believe anyone would bother them at this hour. Unless it was something serious.
Grant kissed her cheek and withdrew his finger from her feminine folds. “This better be damned important.” He pulled out his cell, still holding her close, moving his hips so he could connect his hard cock with her mini-kilted buttocks. She obliged him by wriggling against him, providing friction, too.
“Aye,” he growled into the phone. He slipped his hand up her sweater to cup a breast, his fingers softly pinching a nipple, making it tingle with need.
She heard Enrick say, “Archibald’s men are here. Ian said they saw five of them in the woods prowling the perimeter near the castle, and Baird is with them.”
Her heart skipped a beat. Grant stiffened against her. His sexy scent subtly changed to anger.
Grant swore. “I’ll be right down.” He gave Colleen a tight embrace. “Stay here, lass. Don’t get undressed. I’ll return,” Grant said, still dressed only in his kilt.
She knew then he would shift if he needed to chase the men or wolves down. He kissed her cheek, then stalked out of the room with the cell in hand.
“Did you see any of Baird’s cousins? Any of the rest of his men? What about Archibald?” Grant shut the door to the chamber.
Colleen slipped out of the minikilt in a flash, kicked off her boots, and hurried to throw on her jeans and boots again. At the very least, she wanted to watch what was going on from the ramparts.
Before she could grab a rain jacket, the bedchamber door opened. Thinking Grant had returned for something, she turned. And gasped.
To her horror, a soaking wet Archibald rushed into the room. Before she could scream, he struck her in the temple. A sharp pain registered, and a sprinkling of white stars against an inky black night followed. And then? Nothing.
Chapter 24
The next thing Colleen was aware of, her head throbbed, her hands were tied together, and her mouth was gagged as she lay on the soft mattress. What had happened to her? Then she remembered in a flash of horror. Archibald. He was here, and she was in grave danger.
How had he gotten inside the keep?
She kept her eyes closed, listening to movement, trying to determine where he was in proximity to her. She was lying on her side of the bed, her feet unbound. That was good. She planned to kick him, though what good that would do, she didn’t know.
Archibald moved toward her, away from the window. “Wake up or I’ll kill you where you lay,” he said, his voice soft but filled with threat.
Her eyes popped open.
He offered her a cold, calculating smile. “You don’t appear happy to see me,” Archibald said, sneering at her. “Here I thought we were getting along so famously. I imagine you wonder how I reached you so easily. Through the old sewer pipes, where we’re going now. Do you mind?” He yanked her from the bed.
Her wrists burned from the rough hemp rope. She jerked away from him to free herself. She fought him, trying to kick him with her boots, but he growled low, “If you fight me, I’ll knock you out. Your choice.”
She stilled her efforts, knowing she could do nothing if she was dead to the world, and he could easily kill her somewhere else. She was certain that was his intention. He dragged her down the hallway until they came to a door. He jerked it open and forced her inside, then shut the door. The room was a tiny water closet, never used, from the looks of it. Boards had been pulled free from a hole in an antique-looking toilet—nothing more than a box, with a couple of boards nailed to the top of it to form a toilet hole. Or that had been at one time. She smelled the faint odor of mold and mustiness.
“Hasn’t anyone told you about the Welsh princess Nest, a former mistress of King Henry I? A prince from her homeland, a second cousin, Owain, learned how she’d been enslaved by the robber chief Gerald of Windsor. Owain sought to dine with her and was so struck by her beauty that he was determined to have her for his own and free her from her despicable husband.
“The story goes that he and fifteen of his men invaded the castle at Christmastime and she left willingly with him to protect her husband and children. They, her husband and children, meanwhile, had gone through a toilet hole very much like this one. Only theirs had been in use. This hasn’t been used for several centuries. You can count yourself fortunate. Can you imagine being married to a man like that who would hide in the sewage pipes underneath the castle while his wife was taken away?
“Just a quick slide down the pipe and you will be where I want you to be,” he added.
Stuck beneath the bowels of the castle, she feared. But someone co
He lifted her and dropped her through the toilet hole. Her heart skipped beats as she slid through the pipe, fearing she’d be deep in the bowels of the castle with no way to get out for hours. What she didn’t expect was to feel the chilly outdoor sea air just before she landed on the rocks below the seawall, the gag muffling her frantic screams.
The Irish wolfhounds barked in the distance, excited, wanting to join the men in their search out front. But it sounded like they had been confined to the kennels. Which was understandable. Though wolfhounds were named such because they had killed wolves in the distant past, she doubted they would do well against a pack of wolves.
The chilling rain drenched her, soaking through her sweater and her jeans.
Oh…my…God, she was certain the pipe was dumping her into the frigid sea, and with her hands tied, she would drown right away. This was bad, but she thought she still had a fighting chance as she squirmed and wriggled, trying to loosen the rope that bound her.
Archibald landed beside her before she could scramble to her feet, her bound wrists making it difficult to maneuver, the rocks even slipperier than before with the rain and wind pelting them at a slant. The whitecapped waves stood out in contrast to the black water, forcefully crashing against the moss-covered boulders.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it? Before the inhabitants cared anything about conservation or sanitation, they just let it all dump out to sea,” Archibald said, grabbing her arm and hauling her to her feet. “But they removed the section of pipe that actually fed into the water, so these now end on the rocks. Your father showed them to me when I was a boy. We practiced entering the castle in that manner. Other cases exist where an enemy force breached a castle in such a way. Only who would ever do such a thing today? Eh?”
He yanked off her gag. “No one will hear you down here while everyone is beyond the castle walls looking for me—including your mate. Wouldn’t he be surprised to learn you decided to take a swim in the cold, black sea at my urging? Only he’ll never know I had anything to do with it.”
“You can’t mean to kill me.” Yet she knew he intended just that.
“Centuries earlier, my grandfather should have owned this place.” Archibald pulled her down the path leading to the breakers.
She balked at being moved, but she knew he could just as well toss her over his shoulder and then take care of her before long anyway. The thought that both Grant’s mother and father died in the same manner chilled her to the core. Somehow she had to prolong this so Grant or one of his men would realize she was gone. They could trace her scent and, hopefully, realize she’d ended up in the sewer pipe and then landed on the beach, and not that she’d walked into the room and then left. She belatedly realized Archibald had no scent. Why wouldn’t he? They wouldn’t know that he’d forced her to leave with him and that she was in trouble. She feared they’d never learn of it in time. She had to stall him.
“Your grandfather Uilleam killed mine on the battlefield, didn’t he? He wasn’t cut down by one of the enemy clan’s swords, but by his own loyal man,” Colleen said, sure of it now as chilling raindrops ran down her face.
“Sometimes a fine line exists between your enemies and your friends. Gideon Playfair fought bravely in battle and died. That’s all anyone needs to remember,” Archibald said.
“He died at your grandfather’s hand,” she said, trying to yank her arm free of Archibald’s fierce grip as he moved her closer to the breakers. The aspect of being in that icy water was all the more terrifying since she’d already felt its chilling pull when she and Ollie were swept away. She never wanted to experience that again. She kept telling herself she’d read about people winter-swimming in frigid water, believing it was healthy for the body. But doing it all tied up with the threat of being smashed against jagged cliffs? She didn’t believe that would be good for anyone’s health.
“Then John MacQuarrie had to learn of the theft in the accounts and tell Neda. Uilleam explained to her that John had lied about the figures, but she still believed John,” Archibald said.
“Because John hadn’t lied, and Neda knew it. Uilleam must have broken her heart.”
Archibald shrugged. “All in doing business.”
“So he never really loved her. She was just a means to an end. What are you planning? Why kill me?”
Fury in his expression, he scowled down at her. “My father was a good friend of your father. If Theodore hadn’t been such a bloody—”
She slipped and fell on the rocks, freeing herself from Archibald’s steel grasp for an instant and landing on her butt.
Archibald immediately dove for her and jerked her to her feet, his breath unsteady. “Well, they got rid of Robert’s mate, figuring as much as he loved her, he’d neglect the estates or kill himself. He did neither. The first opportunity Haldane and Theodore had, they helped him join his beloved mate. But Neda still wouldn’t install Theodore as a manager of the estates. She knew him too well—his drinking problem, his lack of caring anything for the properties, his inability to handle money. He would have bled the estates dry. He hated Robert MacQuarrie, and he hated Grant and his brothers for the affection your grandmother doled out to them.”
“If Theodore had become manager, how would that have helped your father?”
“Haldane and Theodore were the best of friends. They would have found a way to rid themselves of Neda Playfair. That was the plan. But Theodore was too much of an arse and was so furious that his mother didn’t let him run the properties that he left for America and abandoned my father. And after all they’d done together, too.”
“So when my father did inherit the castle, you thought you could convince him to let you take over management, but what happened? By that time he didn’t care?”
“Aye. The bloody sot was too fond of his bottle. Then I had the idea that if he died, you would inherit. But damn if you didn’t take up with Grant. I never expected that. He’d made it well known he wasn’t happy that Theodore’s daughter was coming here to tell him how to run things. I figured I’d step in and be your Highland hero. Take him to task. Protect you. It was working so well. But I never expected you to stoop so low as to give in and go with him. I still didn’t believe you would fall for him. In the past, you’d always ended up mating betas.”
“You’re not a beta,” she said.
He smiled, albeit the look was pure evil. “You’re right. It was killing me not to be like Grant was toward you. I figured the time would come when I could be myself around you—after we were mated.”
“Only he’s my hero,” she said, chin up, glowering at Archibald. “And my mate.”
“So where is your hero now, eh, lass? He will lose you, like he lost his mother and his father. Maybe he won’t manage your loss as well and will join you in the deep, briny sea.”
Even if she didn’t make it, she knew Archibald wouldn’t, either—her only bright side to this deadly situation. “They’ll kill you. You won’t be able to escape.”
Archibald waved his hand at the darkness. “A raft. How do you think I got here in the first place? I have no plans to die today or any other. And I’ve left no hint of my scent anywhere.”
The notion that he could get away with murder made her sick to her stomach. She saw the black rubber raft tied up against the rocks, black as the water, and she could see how Archibald had managed to make his way here without anyone spotting him. Though in ye old times, men serving guard duty on top of the wall walk probably would have noticed if a wooden boat had ventured to the cliffs, but it surely would have been dashed against the sharp-edged crags.
She thought the raft looked half-waterlogged, between the rain and the waves, and drooped a little on one side. Losing air? A hole or two in the rubber sides?
He would drown, she hoped, if she had to.
Chapter 25
This had to end now, G
He stalked into the room and discovered she was gone right away. Her minikilt sat on the chair. She’d changed. Unless…she’d shifted. Her raincoat was on the floor. She had to have shifted into her wolf form.
Was she on the ramparts, watching for him? He pulled out his cell and called one of his men on watch as he headed out the door and realized the most recent scent she’d left was fearful. And not headed for the stairs to leave the keep.
Fearful for his safety, aye. But why would she be going this way? His heart thundering, he couldn’t help the fear escalating in his blood. He kept telling himself she had to be fine.
He tracked her scent to the small water closet that contained the old sewage pipes. His heart nearly stopped beating. What the hell? He knew she wouldn’t have just gone exploring the various castle rooms, considering what was happening outside the keep.
He yanked at the door. Bolted. Horror swamped him as he yelled, “Colleen!” and jerked again at the door. Then he began to kick the solid oak, determined to break it down.
Maynard came running. “I heard you yelling from down below. What’s happened?”
“Colleen was here. The door is bolted.”
Maynard helped Grant kick it open and found no sign of the lass in the small water closet, long since shut up, the boards covering the toilet hole torn aside and thrown on the floor. Grant swore. “Alert the men Colleen may be down at the cliffs.”
“Aye…aye, my laird.” Maynard hurried out of the water closet and raced down the hallway.
Grant kicked the boards out of the way, careful not to step on the exposed rusty nails. He peered down into the pipe and smelled Colleen’s sweet scent mixed with the mold and earthy smells of the pipe. Bloody hell! He couldn’t believe anyone could have forced her down them. Especially when he smelled no other wolf’s scent in here. Had Archibald come for her?