The Highlander and the Sea Siren Read online

  The room contained only a bed, a chest of drawers, a washstand and a small bookcase. Lachlan stood in the doorway. Morven pulled his shirt over her head, shaking out her hair so that it rippled over her shoulders, allowing him to feast his eyes on her womanly form. The sharp intake of his breath told her he liked what he saw. She held out her hand. He stood before her, tall and reassuringly broad, a fierce look in his eyes that made her breathless.

  She took his hand and placed it onto her breast, feeling her nipple harden under his palm. The flush of desire on his cheekbones heated her. His hand enveloped her curves. The rough of his palm roused her skin. She felt as if she were melting. Drawing his face down to hers, she kissed him with passion, showing him how much she wanted him, allowing the heat that bubbled inside her to fill her mouth. For a second, he was still. Then he groaned, pulling her tight to him.

  Hard and hot his mouth was this time, all traces of restraint gone as he touched her feverishly and kissed her passionately. He kissed her mouth, then her neck and throat, then her breasts, his hands cupping as his tongue tugged on her nipple, sucking and licking, pulling and dragging a response from deep within her.

  She was on her back on the bed now, with Lachlan beside her. As he took possession of her body, she did the same to him. His mouth, his chest, his shoulders, his mouth again. The taste of him was tangy with sweat and desire and man. So much sensation. Such beauty in him, and in the things he was doing to her. The hardness of his manhood pushed into her thighs through his clothing. Her fingers struggled with the unfamiliar buckle of his belt. Lachlan undid it for her, standing up to undress, his eyes never leaving her body, spread before him on the bed. She feasted on the sight of him, proud and naked before her. The breadth of his torso. The narrowing of his waist. The dip down to muscular thighs and the thrusting length of his shaft.

  Morven shivered in anticipation, and a little in trepidation. He was so big. She sat up to run her fingertips along the length of him. Hard, sheathed in soft. His eyes closed in pleasure at her touch. Morven licked her fingertips, delicately tasting the faint trace of him. His eyes widened as he watched her, then he pushed her back down on the bed, falling on top of her. She wound her fingers through his hair, wrapped her legs around his thighs, urging him closer, the press of his erection between her legs making her tighten with pleasure.

  Lachlan smiled at her, a certain, smouldering smile that made her tremble with anticipation. She throbbed, an ache of emptiness inside her wanting to be filled. He positioned her beneath him, tilting her hips, placing himself between her legs, and then at last the slow push of him inside her. More and more and more until he filled her, his manhood pressing hard and high.

  A rush of heat and a clenching of her muscles around him made her shiver and ripple. He covered her body with his, leaning over to kiss her. She could feel the fall of his hair soft on her cheek, taste the warmth of his tongue in her mouth, smell the scent of heat like smouldering desire on his skin. And inside her was the thick, hard, solid certainty of him. It was overwhelming. Ripples of sensation sucked and surged, like the catching of the sea in a pool at the change of tide. She wanted it to stop but at the same time she wanted more. She clutched at his shoulders, saying his name like a plea.

  Lachlan withdrew and then entered her again. Withdrew and then thrust harder, then again but faster, his grip on her thighs tighter, his breath coming harsh and ragged. His shaft seemed to expand and fill her more with every thrust, higher and harder, pounding onto and into her, like a wave on a rock crashing over her, stretching her and filling her more, until she cried out with the painful ecstasy of it, and the throbbing whirl of her climax ripped through her, as unstoppable as a seventh wave. In the distance, she heard Lachlan cry out, too, as his seed spilled inside her, so high inside her she knew it was right. She was right. He was what she was here for.

  His grip on her relaxed as their tempest passed. Gently, he withdrew, pulling her into the shelter of his arms. Morven burrowed her face in his chest, trying to catch her breath, feeling from the lift and fall of his ribs that he was struggling to do the same.

  She felt strange. Wonderful, but strange. Heavy but floating. At peace. She closed her eyes. They slept.

  Lachlan felt as if he were climbing back up from an abyss. He didn’t want to wake up. Through his lids, he was aware of brightness in the room. Full daylight. Groaning, he opened his eyes and found Morven curled up beside him, exactly like his dream. He closed his eyes and opened them again. She was still there.

  Morven stretched languorously and kissed him, full on the mouth.

  “You’re real.” Lachlan looked at her in wonder. “It really happened?”

  She smiled. “Of course I’m real.”

  Her eyes were already darkening with desire as she rubbed her face on the pronounced stubble of his jaw, then slid her body on top of his, trapping him beneath her with her knees on either side of his thighs. Instantly, his manhood sprang to life, unfurling and thickening in response to the gentle rubbing of her heat on his abdomen.

  “It really happened,” Morven said, kissing his chest, tasting the saltiness of his sweat, enjoying the way his muscles rippled under her touch, the way his erection was hardening against her bottom. “It really happened, and now it’s going to happen again.” She lifted herself up and captured him, sheathing him in one long fluid movement, which wrenched a moan from each of them, and Lachlan put his hands on her waist, holding her still, as he arched up underneath her, forging his way deeper into the hot, delightful depths of her.

  Already, the singing soaring was starting, her body was so attuned to his. “Very, very soon,” Morven said breathily, taking one of Lachlan’s hands, and placing it on her breast as she started to move.

  Later, he prepared food for them. Dressed once again in his shirt, Morven was impressed by Lachlan’s competence with the complicated arrangement of hooks in the chimney from which a pot and a griddle were suspended. There was a black iron oven, too, by the side of the stone mantel, but he did not use it. “Is it usual for a man to cook?” she asked.

  Lachlan grinned. “If he has not a wife or a servant, aye it is. I had to learn the hard way, when I came here. For quite a while, it was either burnt or raw, I couldn’t get the hang of the fire, and even now the oven often defeats me. I buy my bread from the baker in the village.”

  “When you came here? You’re not from–what is this place called?”

  “Port of Ness, on the Isle of Lewis.” Lachlan set a plate of salt herring and potatoes in front of her. “No, I’m not from here. I came about a year ago. Never mind me though, what I want to know is what happened to you. Have you any memory at all of how you got here?”

  She did not want to remember. Why not? Something else she did not know. Morven clung instead to the one thing she did. “I came here for you, that is all that matters.”

  He looked at her, daintily picking at her food. The flush of their love-making still coloured her cheeks. She had behaved like a wanton, yet she looked untouched. The way she had responded to him had been both elemental and somehow innocent, yet that could not be. He could see the shape of her breasts through the cotton of his shirt, and felt himself stirring at the sight of her, but he felt also the urge to protect her. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen, the most desirable, too, and she seemed to want him every bit as much as he wanted her. Yet he knew nothing at all about her. The whole situation was shocking, but he could not rid himself of the notion that it was somehow meant to be. “What do you mean when you say that you came here for me?”

  “To be with you.” A sudden doubt shook her. “Don’t you want me?”

  Lachlan stared at her in consternation. “You’re asking me to believe that you’ve come here to seek me out?”

  “Yes. My sisters sent me.”

  “You have sisters.”

  “Three,” she said automatically.

  “Where are they?”

  She could see them, but it was as if the
y were far away. “Home.”

  “Where’s home?”

  Morven tried to think. Home, she should know where home was. She knew she had one. She closed her eyes, but it was as if a haar had blown in from the sea, clouding her memories. “I don’t know.” She began to panic. “I don’t know! I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know where I came from. I don’t know anything, except that when I saw you on the beach I knew you were the one. Please, don’t ask me any more because my head hurts when I try to remember.” She covered her face with her hands.

  “I’m sorry.” Lachlan knelt down beside her, gently prising her hands away to take them in his own, large and capable pair. He was relieved to see she was not crying. “Perhaps if you stop trying to make it happen, your memory will come back of its own accord.”

  Morven brightened at that, and her smile was grateful. “Yes.”

  “You’d best stay here a while then, though what they’ll make of it in the village, I don’t know. I’ll ask the fishermen to put word out that you’re here, so you’ll be easy enough to find when you’re missed.” He meant it to reassure her, but an unpleasant thought struck him. She wore no ring, but that meant nothing. It had not even occurred to him to ask. “Have you a husband?” he asked tersely.

  “No!” How could she be sure? But she was. “No, no of course not. I’ve never–not before today.” She was blushing. “You are my first.”

  He wanted to believe her. He realised, with a shock, just how much he wanted to believe her, though he could not quite reconcile his wishes with the experience of her. She did not belong to another. He believed that. With so many questions unanswered, for now, that would be enough.

  “So I can stay?” Morven asked. She could not bear him to change his mind. She did not want to think about what that would mean.

  Lachlan hesitated. The truth was, he did not want to let her go. He knew his judgement was impaired, clouded by the passion they had shared, but he did not care. He wanted more, and if she was prepared to give, he would take. If Morven was content to let the future take care of itself, then so, too, was he. “You can stay. I’d like that.”

  “Thank you.”

  Morven’s arms were around his neck. Morven’s lips were brushing against his, her breasts against his torso. Already, he was aroused. Already, she sensed it, wrapping herself around him sinuously in a way that left him in no doubt of her own wishes. He pulled her to her feet and kissed her. Then he scooped her up into his arms and took her back to his bed.

  Chapter 3

  “I’ll take the boat round to Stornaway,” Lachlan announced as he spooned porridge into their breakfast bowls the next morning. “It’s the main town on the island. I’ll be able to get you some clothes there, you can’t wander around in my shirt, and I need some supplies. I’ll be gone most of the day, will you be all right by yourself?”

  “You’ll be back?”

  “Of course I will. Don’t go into the village yet, not until I’m with you,” Lachlan mumbled from the depths of the thick fisherman’s jumper he was pulling on over his shirt. He kissed her and was gone, taking the path along the cliff top to the harbour where his boat, the Sheila, was moored.

  It was a bonny day, with white clouds scudding across the blue of the sky, the sea a gentle green with only a slight swell. In his dark blue jumper with its traditional cabled pattern, his black trousers and heavy boots, Lachlan was dressed as all the other men hereabouts, but despite this, no one ever mistook him for a Niseach. His height, his proud carriage and air of casual authority made even the local minister, John Macpherson, defer to him. And the Reverend Macpherson was a man who deferred to no one. Some said not even God.

  As he made his way through the village, Lachlan’s dark good looks contrasted starkly with the fairer colouring of a people by and large descended from the blond Norsemen. When he first arrived here, the villagers had seemed to him dour, reserved to the point of rudeness. It had taken him a while to become accepted, even longer to be invited into their homes as a friend. Now, he nodded and smiled at Agnes McLeod and her sister Jane, waiting at the harbour for their husbands to land the night’s catch, which they would fillet. As ever, the two women were knitting, needles clacking efficiently, trailing wool from the wide pockets of their black skirts as they chatted without once having to look down at the complex pattern.

  As he readied his boat to sail, Lachlan sniffed at the air and scanned the horizon with the weathered eye of a skilled seaman.

  “Set fair for a few days yet,” Hamish Dodds called to him from the harbour wall, where he was mending his nets.

  Lachlan nodded his agreement as he pulled away from the mooring, concentrating on steering the Sheila through the harbour’s narrow mouth out to the open sea, where the wind quickly caught at her sail. Already, he was anxious to be back. Already he was missing Morven. Guiltily, he hoped her loss of memory would last just a little longer.

  Back at the cottage, Morven set about exploring Lachlan’s domain. Though she could not know it, it was a larger and better appointed cottage than the rest of those in the village, some of which had not even a chimney, but a fire set in the middle of the room, with only a hole in the thatch above it to release the smoke. Lachlan’s was one of the very few cottages with glazed windows. In the black houses across the moor, crofters shared their homes with their stock. It was common practice for the room that Lachlan used for his bedchamber to be byre to the crofter’s cow, sty to his pigs, coop to his hens.

  Morven wandered aimlessly through the rooms, picking up and putting down objects at random. Lachlan’s plates were fine china. His cutlery silver. His glasses crystal. In a drawer, she found a heavy, polished box lined with velvet. Inside was an instrument she recognised as a telescope. It was brightly polished brass, intricately crafted, obviously a valued possession. The chest of drawers revealed a surprising amount of clothes. Shirts of finest linen with pearl buttons. A long coat with tails. Tailored trousers, finely stitched. Shoes brightly polished and of the softest leather. She buried her nose in them, but the smell of Lachlan was faint. He had not worn them for some time.

  Deciding to extend her exploration to the outside of the cottage, Morven remembered just in time that she required clothes, and pulled on Lachlan’s shirt and a pair of his work trousers. They were enormous on her, but she belted them at her waist and rolled them up to her ankles.

  The front door opened out on to the cliff top. A wooden bench was propped up against the wall of the cottage, commanding a majestic view of the village and the harbour to the left, the path over the moorland on the right, and in front the sands, the glittering sea, and the distant horizon.

  The gentle shushing of the waves on the beach was reassuring. The tide was out. She could see the line of rocks where Lachlan had discovered her yesterday, reaching out past the end of the harbour wall. A group of children were filling a large bucket with clams or mussels. About a hundred yards out, a large flat rock peeked out from the water. On top of it perched a seal, basking in the sunlight. At the sight of the creature, Morven felt something shift inside her. A stopping of her heart for an instant, a crack of light revealed, then the slamming shut of a door. Shaken and nauseous, she bent her head down toward her knees. The sick feeling passed. When she looked up the seal was gone.

  She made her way round to the back of the cottage. A small garden was planted out with neat rows of vegetables. A few hens clucked, scraping contentedly in the ground. A barn sat at right angles to the cottage. Built of wood, it had one big window, and a large set of double doors on the side that faced directly out to the moors.

  The powerful scent of wood and resin and varnish rushed toward her as she lifted the latch. Pushing back both doors to allow the light to flood in, Morven saw a boat, or what would be a boat, sitting up on wooden crutches, its ribs only partially covered. Lachlan was a boat builder. Running her palms over the smoothly planed planks that had been fixed to the hull, trailing her fingers over the immaculately clean and glistenin
g tools lined up on the long workbench on the back wall, she imagined Lachlan at work here. She recalled now the calluses on his palms, the long shapely fingers, sensitive, competent and creative. The untreated new wood of the boat was sensual to touch. She could see it would be a beautiful craft.

  Carefully closing the doors behind her, Morven made her way down the cliff path to the beach. Deep in thought, she waded into the shallows, relishing the cool feel of the water on her toes, the soothing lapping around her ankles. The urge to swim was strong, but something told her she should not. She clenched her fists as the mist in her mind swirled and resettled.

  “Good morning.”

  Startled, Morven whirled round, finding herself face-to-face with an old woman dressed entirely in black, with the strangest eyes she had ever encountered, colourless as the sky before sunrise, with irises an unsettling grey. She waded back onto the dry sand. “Good morning,” she said shyly.

  “I’m Ishbel Macfarlane,” the woman introduced herself, her voice strangely melodic for one so aged in years. “I live up in the village. I’m what they call the fey wife, in these parts.”

  “A witch.”

  The woman laughed unaffectedly. “I prefer herbalist.”

  “I’m Morven.”

  “You’re new here.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “Yes. I’ve just arrived.”

  “I know, I saw you yesterday morn on the beach with Lachlan Sinclair.”

  “He found me there.”

  “Did he now? And where had you come from?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember. Lachlan said I should wait, and it would come back to me.”

  The woman drew her a piercing look. “You’re staying with him?”

  Morven blushed. “Yes.” She looked out to sea in order to avoid Ishbel Macfarlane’s too-knowing gaze. The seal was back on the rock. This time she was certain it was looking at her. She realised the fey wife was staring at the seal, too, and forced herself to look away. “He is a good man isn’t he, Lachlan?”