“It’s my gift.” Damn it, her voice had cracked.
“And yer burden.” He straightened and turned in his seat to regard her. “Ye are pale as a seagull’s breast. I’ve hurt ye again.”
“Nay, ye have pleased me, by releasing the misery ye were clinging to.” She stroked a hand along his face. “Ye are dear to me, Logen, and I willna have ye hurt if I can relieve ye.”
“Ye can do that, aye.” He pulled her into his lap and wrapped strong arms around her. “And more, if ye are willing.”
Coira leaned into his shoulder and rested her head against his neck. “We’ve been through a lot, ye and I. Our time together seemed easier than when we were apart.”
“Aye. I told ye that weeks ago. But ye allowed yer fears to isolate ye.”
How ironic she’d begun by comforting him, and now he did the same for her. “I willna, any longer, Logen.”
His kiss pulsed against her lips, a living thing, warming her body and firing her blood. Coira moaned into his mouth and gave herself over to the power of their passion for each other.
The cold disheartenment she had sensed consuming Logen fled, replaced by heat searing each place they touched, down along his arteries and veins, to the throbbing hardness at her hip. But it also flowed like molten metal from the smith’s forge to her own inner core, turning her blood to steam and making her muscles flaccid.
“I promised ye a bed...” Logen whispered as he nuzzled her ear and let his hand drift from her cheek to palm her breast.
Coira arched against him. “Aye, ye did. Silk sheets and furs piled high, I seem to recall.” She turned her head to meet his lips with hers, then nipped at the corded muscle at the side of his neck.
“We have the fire.”
“We dinna need those flames. The fire burning within us is more than enough to keep us warm.”
Logen growled and stood with her in his arms. He carried her to the hearth, grabbing a plaid off of the back of a chair and tossing it onto the floor before he knelt and laid her gently upon it.
Coira could only imagine how she looked, but in the flickering firelight, Logen appeared to be made of light and shadows as he bent over her. The power of his arousal stole her breath. His need for her. His fear that she would turn him away.
She sat up and touched his face with a trembling hand. “I need ye, too,” she told him, hoping with those few words to allay his fear. If he truly understood how she came to be here, he would know what it cost her to say that out loud. She’d nearly died the last time she gave her heart to a laird. But Toran Lathan had not been hers. He’d never been hers. She’d been too wrapped up in her own dreams, her own ambitions, to see it.
The man before her now was not the same at all. His touch, the desire in his eyes as he regarded her, told her that Logen would love her deeply, powerfully, and lastingly. He already did.
“I ken ye do, Coira. Ye feel what I feel. Ye needna fear for the future. I am yers.”
“Aye, ye are mine, as I am yers, through all the tides to come.”
Logen bowed his head, touching his forehead to hers as he held her face in his hands. “Before ye came, I could only see one fate for myself and the clan. Death. Dishonor. Destruction. Ye changed all that. Ye have given me and our people a new life, a future that was nearly lost to us. Whatever burden ye still bear, be absolved. Ye have surely atoned for it.”
Coira froze. Her breath stilled as the horror of that night washed over her.
“Ach, lass, I’m sorry. I’ve brought back terrible memories. Ye’ve gone cold as ice.”
Could she tell him? Should she? Surely he needed to know the depths to which she had sunk. And might be capable of again. But she risked everything they now had. His feelings for her. Her place in the clan. Tears welled in her eyes as she contemplated throwing it all away. But he needed to know. The memory stabbed as sharply as the blade that had narrowly missed her heart.
“I threatened a wee lass that night. When I stabbed the Healer and was nearly killed in turn. I was—”
“Out of yer mind with grief and fear. I ken the feeling well.”
How could she make him understand? “Nay, no’ like this. I held a knife at the throat of a bairn to force the Lathan and his new bride to come to me. To lure them within the reach of my blade. Just like MacMakon.” She choked on that name, then forged ahead. “I never intended to harm the lass, but if they hadna obeyed me, they wouldha forced my hand.” Coira choked on a sob. Not their fault. Hers. “Nay, not they. ’Twas all my doing. My choice.”
Logen’s hand stroked up and down her back. “When the tide turned and the battle was lost, those few of us left alive to escape the field slogged knee-deep thru blood and gore and entrails. Bodies lay where they’d fallen, steaming in the chill rain. I kept slipping in the muck. The mud sucked my boots from my feet, but that gave me purchase to climb the hill behind us where the last of us gathered to try to make our way back over the border to Scotland. Warm muck was something newly dead. Cold muck, if I was lucky, was merely mud, wet from the rain. Or it might be something dead long enough to cool. A Scot, an Englishman, a Frenchman, a horse, after a while, they were all the same—bloody body parts. Gore the likes of which I hope never again to see or smell in this life. The cries of the wounded haunt me, still. I knelt to slit the throats of several who were gut-stabbed or whose legs had been cut out from under them. Whose arms had been hacked off at the shoulder. I could do nothing more for them. I pray no one could have, for I killed many that day, even after the battle ended. I dinna ken if they were ours or theirs—everything was wet, matted, and soaked in blood. Likely, some were little older than yer lass. I’ve never told this to a soul. I was out of my mind, too, trying to climb that hill, slipping and falling into the dead and wounded, the blood and gore. I was fighting for my life, as were ye.” Logen’s deep voice stilled. Tears streaked his face, their tracks catching the firelight.
“Ye didna kill her, Coira. Ye let her go. She was saved. As were ye. The Lathan Healer did many wondrous things that night, including bringing ye back to yer senses, no’ just saving yer life. She gave ye a gift. Ye have used it to save mine. And this clan.”
Coira nodded. She could do nothing more. Her throat had closed so tightly, she could barely draw air to breathe.
“Let me take ye away from here. Away from these painful memories. Come.” Logen stood and offered her his hand. She took it and allowed him to pull her to her feet.
