“I am the most blessed man in the Highlands,” he vowed, slanting his mouth over hers in a plundering, bruising kiss. A deep all-slaking kiss filled with hot breath and tongue, more love than his heart could contain.
Reeling with the realization, he swept his hands up and down her back, then lower, splaying his fingers across her hips and clutching her even tighter.
“You could ne’er disappoint me.” He broke the kiss to drop to his knees before her, his heart thundering so wildly he feared it would soon burst from his chest. “Truth is, I dinna know how I e’er lived without you.”
“Ach, Ronan . . .” She thrust her hands into his hair, pulling him against the slight curve of her belly.
Her soft maiden curls brushed his chin and he made a sound deep in his throat. A low growl, earthy and feral, it was nearly unrecognizable as his voice. But her sweet female heat proved too close. Her silky-hot lure beckoned until he growled again and buried his face between her legs, first nuzzling her damp curls, then licking and lapping at her. Long, broad-tongued strokes, slow and deliberate, then quick little swirls to flick across her most special place, followed by gentle nips to her most tender flesh.
“Aggggh . . .” She gripped his shoulders, her entire body going rigid as he swirled his tongue just there. “Ach, gods!” Her passion broke on a great shuddering cry and she slumped against him, trembling and gasping.
Her breath came loud and ragged in the quiet room, each sweet sated gasp blending with the crackle and hiss of the hearth fire and the sound of his own ever-rising growls.
Ronan frowned.
The noises weren’t his.
Nor could they truly be calledgrowls.
Leastways, no more. Nothing less than a keening wail, the sound was unmistakably a howl.
“Do you hear that?” He pushed to his feet, angling his head to better catch the sound. “Like a dog howling.”
He looked at her, hoping she’d heard it, too.
Her knit brow said she had. “Buckie?”
But a glance past the tent silk to the far side of the room showed the dog sound asleep in his favored place before the fire. And his snores were of the old-dog fluting variety, not howl-like at all.
“It didn’t sound like any of the other castle dogs either,” she observed. “ It —”
“It wasn’t inside the keep.” Ronan strode to the nearest window and opened the shutters.
Chill night air rushed in, fluttering wall hangings and guttering candles. One of the hanging cresset lamps swayed on its chain and went out with a hiss. The icy blast also brought another long, piercing howl.
An ear-splitting one this time.
“By glory, ’tis a fox!” Bracing his hands on the window edges, Ronan leaned forward to peer down at the little dog fox sitting on the tree stump where he had perched over a fortnight before.
As then, he sat proudly, only now he didn’t just stare up at the window. Far from it, he repeatedly threw back his head and howled at the moon.
A bright crescent moon riding high above the long belt of dark pines, its silvery brilliance slanted down to glint off the fox’s lustrous red coat and the fine white tip of his thick brushy tail.
He looked their way then, his yellow-gold eyes fixing on them for one long and unsettling moment before he tipped back his head and resumed howling.
Ronan shook his head. “Have you e’er seen the like?”
“I may just have . . .” His lady puzzled, her gaze intent on the little creature. “He looks oddly familiar —”
“God’s blood!” Ronan’s heart slammed against his ribs, his world upending even as the little fox hopped off the tree stump and disappeared into the wood. “I know where Maldred is!”
Gelis spun around to look at him. “What?”
He grabbed her shoulders, turning her back to the window. “There, that is the key!” He pointed to the moon-washed tree stump. “I canna believe it took a fox howling at the moon for me to remember.”
Gelis blinked. “The tree stump? You think Maldred is buried beneath it?”
“Nae, lass, no’ the tree stump.” He slid his arms around her, drawing her back against his chest. “The key is the crescent moon.”
