Morainn caught a fleeting glimpse of Tormand’s bedchamber before she found herself sprawled on top of his large bed. There were signs of wealth everywhere she looked. Rugs upon the floor, tapestries upon the wall, and candleholders made of finely crafted silver all spoke of a man with coin enough to enjoy the best life had to offer. Morainn felt suddenly intimidated by it all, for it was a blatant display of how very far above her touch this man was. He not only had family who loved him, and a title, he had wealth enough to choose a fine highbred woman for a wife.
Then Tormand lowered his lean strong body down onto hers. Despite her promise to herself not to think about his past, to put it firmly out of her mind, the thought of all his past lovers slipped inside her mind. She wondered how many of those women on his list had shared this bed with him and then tensed even as he pulled her into his arms. Morainn tried to banish those thoughts from her mind and relax before he noticed the change in her, but she knew she had failed when he frowned down at her.
“Did I mishear ye? Or have ye changed your mind?” he asked, praying that she had not, for he knew he had never been so desperate to make love to a woman as he was to make love to Morainn.
“Nay,” she said and put her arms around him, silently cursing the fact that even that small move revealed the tension she could not shake free of.
Tormand studied her for a moment and then sighed as he guessed what had made Morainn change from soft and welcoming to tense and almost cold. She was thinking of him and his other women, women he might have shared this bed with. He could see the truth of his assumption by the way she refused to meet his eyes, but kept glancing at the bed. After all, was he not Tormand the great lover, Tormand the sinner, or, as one of his female cousins had said, Tormand the man whose braies unlaced at the mere sway of a petticoat. He had sworn to himself that he would always be truthful with Morainn even though he anticipated many uncomfortable moments. This time, however, he could tell her the truth with ease.
“I have ne’er brought a woman here,” he said and watched her eyes widen with surprise. “I swear to ye that ye are the verra first woman to share this bed with me.”
“But why wouldnae ye bring one of them here?”
“Would ye believe me if I told ye it was to keep Magda quiet?”
“Nay, if only because the woman was ne’er here at night to see if ye brought a woman here or nay. Oh, did ye fear that their scent might linger here long after ye were done with them?”
He blinked in surprise as he realized that that was a very good reason to keep the sort of lovers he had had out of his house. “I ne’er thought of that but, nay, that wasnae the reason. I have a few kinsmen who were, shall we say, much sought after, including my own father. One once told me that the wisest thing to do is to keep your own home free of the women ye use just for pleasure or to scratch an itch. He said a mon should never soil his own nest.”
Before she could ask him exactly what that meant, he kissed her. With one stroke of his tongue in her mouth, she lost all concern about other women, well-used beds, and steeped-in-sin kinsmen who spoke of soiling nests. The fire that had briefly cooled inside her flared into full life again. She tentatively touched her tongue to his and heard him sharply catch his breath. That sign that he liked her to give as well as take caused her to feel almost bold and she was soon giving as much as she was taking despite her inexperience.
Tormand struggled to keep control of his raging desire. Despite how quickly she was learning to kiss in a way that had him panting like a hard run dog, he knew she was an innocent. Giving full rein to the passion that was racing through his body could easily be enough to frighten her away and that was the very last thing he wanted to do.
When she slid her small soft hands beneath his shirt, he groaned with the force of the pleasure that rolled over him. If he had been standing up he felt sure he would have been sinking to his knees. He yanked off his shirt and threw it aside, frustrated by the cloth that kept her tormenting hands from moving freely over his skin. He could feel the power of her shy caress all the way to the soles of his feet.
Kissing her again, starved for the taste of her, he began to unlace her gown. Tormand felt that if he did not soon feel their bodies touch, flesh to flesh, he could go mad. The anticipation of that first touch had him shaking. All the skills he had gathered in all those beds he had skipped through were slipping through his fingers with each touch of her hands, each kiss they shared.
Morainn felt shyness try to creep over her and cool her desire as Tormand removed her gown and began to unlace her shift. She had never been naked before a man. She did not think she had been naked before anyone since she had been a small child. Thinking of all the very beautiful women he had bedded made her fear that she could never compare favorably to them. Every fault she had ever seen in her own body suddenly leapt to mind. She forced herself to remember her dreams and how good it had felt to be skin to skin with Tormand. Slowly, she began to feel her shyness and unease ebb away. The feel of his warm flesh beneath her hands helped her to push aside all concern about how she would soon be naked before this breathtakingly handsome man, a man who had known so many women yet felt a strong desire for her. Instead she thought about how soon he might be as naked as she was, shedding his clothes so that she could see and feel all of his fine strong body.
The moment Tormand removed the last of Morainn’s clothes, he sat up and began to tear off his own with none of the care and practiced movements he had always used before. He did not want to play any flirtatious or seductive games; he just wanted to be naked with her as soon as he could. He could teach her the pleasure to be found in such games later.
He stared at her as he rapidly undressed. She was slim, but had beautifully full breasts and well-rounded hips. She was soft in all the places a woman should be. Her nipples were a soft rose color, hard, inviting, and temptingly long. Her unblemished skin was a soft golden color all over, just as he had dreamed it would be. Between her surprisingly long, shapely legs was a small arrowhead-shaped nest of dark curls pointing the way to paradise. He fought the urge to lift her legs up, drape them over his shoulders, and kiss that sweet spot for he knew that, for her first time with a man, he had to move slowly.
He saw how she studied his body, the warm look of appreciation in her eyes enough to make him want to preen just a little. Then her gaze settled on his groin where his manhood stood tall and proud. When her eyes widened and he saw the hint of fear steal some of the warmth and interest from her eyes, he quickly returned to her arms and kissed her. The feel of her soft, warm skin brushing up against his in every place where their bodies touched made him tremble like some untried youth. Tormand did not think there was anything in his life that had felt this good. He knew that ought to alarm him, but all he could do was revel in it.
A soft gasp of pleasure escaped Morainn when Tormand’s hand slid down from her neck and lightly stroked her breast. Until he touched the hard tip of her breast with his finger she would never have believed they could ache any more than they already did, but now the ache was so deep and fierce it was almost painful. He began to torment her other breast in the same manner, stroking and gently pinching the tips with his long, clever fingers as he spread kisses all round. She arched into his touch, needing more but not sure how to ask, or even what that more was. Then he took one aching tip deep into the moist heat of his mouth and suckled her and she knew.
Morainn felt a wildness seize her. She tried to touch Tormand everywhere, tried to pull him closer and rubbed her body against his in a way that the still sane part of her mind knew revealed her desperate need. The hard proof of his desire rubbed against her womanhood and she was soon aching there as well. Then, suddenly, his hand was there. Morainn flinched once in shock over such a deeply intimate touch, but her shock died quickly beneath the waves of delight caused by his caress. By the time he slid one long finger inside of her she did not care what he did so long as it eased the hunger that was nearly tearing her apart.
Tormand groaned at the feel of her wet heat surrounding his finger and knew he could wait no longer to possess her. Every soft cry of pleasure Morainn made, every inviting shift of her lithe body against his, snapped one more thread of the control he fought for. He knew he could easily spill his seed on the linen if he did not take her soon and that was an embarrassment he did not want to suffer. Moving his hand to her soft thigh, he settled himself between her thighs and slowly began to enter her, sweat sliding down his back at the effort it took to move as gently as he felt she needed him to.
When Morainn felt something a great deal larger than a finger start to push its way inside of her, she tensed despite all of her efforts not to. Her mind was suddenly crowded with every horror story women had told her about bedding a man, especially for the first time, and as a midwife helping with the results of those beddings she had heard a lot. Common sense told her that it could not be as bad as those tales implied or so many women would not do it repeatedly. As she felt herself stretched to accommodate Tormand’s invasion of her body, however, the voice of common sense began to be drowned out by the voice of fear.
“Hush, bonnie Morainn, my own,” Tormand whispered against her mouth as he felt her tense. “Hold fast and kiss me, sweet. Dinnae think of anything but how good we feel together.”
She did and the searing heat of his kiss began to burn away her fear.
“Now, wrap those beautiful legs around me. Ah, Jesu, aye. That is the way. Ah, ’tis as I thought. This will be your first time with a mon.”
There was a tone to his voice that slipped through the fog of the desire clouding her mind. It sounded very much like male pride and satisfaction, the voice of a conqueror. Morainn had a sudden ridiculous image of him strutting around like a proud rooster among the hens. Her wild thoughts abruptly ended when he suddenly pushed hard inside of her and a sharp pain cooled the heat in her blood like a bucket of icy water.
“Hush, loving,” he whispered as he brushed his mouth over hers when she cried out in pain. “It will pass.”
“How can ye ken that for sure?” she asked, both concerned by the stinging pain and fascinated by the way their bodies were joined. “Have ye bedded a lot of virgins?”
The very last thing Tormand wanted to talk about when he was finally seated deep inside a woman he had craved for what felt like years was the other women he had known. Then he recalled his vow to be truthful with her no matter how uncomfortable it might be. He knew it was the only way he could gain her trust and he had to accept that her trust was very important to him. Some would say he already had her trust or they would not be naked together, but Tormand knew passion could push aside a lot of doubts and concerns, if only for a little while.
“Nay,” he replied as he gently stroked her body, trying to restore the desire that had warmed him before he had ended her innocence. “I ne’er took a woman’s innocence before. Ye are my first.”
Morainn badly wanted to ask him why he had suddenly broken his own rules, but the fog of desire was filling her head again. As his kisses and caresses reawakened that wildness inside of her, she clutched his body tight against hers and began to shift against him in need. She knew he could give her what her body was again crying out for. When he drew away, she cried out in protest and then he pushed back inside of her and she cried out again in delight. This was what she needed. This was what her dreams had promised her.
Tormand tried hard to keep his movements slow and gentle, not wishing to hurt her any more than he already had, but Morainn was having none of it. She clung to him and began to meet his thrusts and parry them with a greed that he could not resist. Groaning as he succumbed to his need, he began to drive them both toward the release they needed so badly without worrying anymore about how tender she might be after her breeching.
When her body tightened around his and he felt her inner heat clench rhythmically around him, he cried out from the force of his own release as he drove home one last time. The laugh that escaped him when she drummed her small heels on his back as her release tore through her was a sound of pure exultance. The way her body greedily accepted his seed robbed him of all thought and strength and as the last shudder of his release went through him he collapsed upon her. He retained just enough of his senses to fall slightly to the side so that he did not crush her.
Awareness came to Tormand slowly, and he eased himself off the soft body sprawled beneath him. Morainn lay on her back, her arms falling to her side as he rose and dislodged their limp grasp on him. She looked asleep and a closer inspection revealed that she was. He grinned as he climbed out of bed and fetched a cool damp cloth to clean them both off. When she just scowled in her sleep as he washed her clean of all signs of her lost innocence and their lovemaking he had to bite his lip to keep from laughing aloud. Then he yawned, tossed the cloth aside and crawled back into bed. Tugging her warm body up against his, Tormand decided that a short rest was a good idea. Neither of them had been getting the sleep they needed.
A scream shattered his sleep and Tormand bolted upright in his bed. He was just reaching for his sword when he realized there was someone in the bed with him and that someone was thrashing and moaning. A heartbeat later his sleep-dulled mind cleared enough for him to remember what had happened before he had closed his eyes for a short rest. He turned to reach for Morainn even as his door was kicked open. Ignoring the men who rushed into his bedchamber, Tormand turned all of his attention to pulling Morainn free of her nightmare.
Hastily pulling the blanket up around Morainn even as he struggled to still her thrashing, Tormand called to her, “Morainn! ’Tis but a dream. Wake, lass. Wake up now. Come, open your eyes.” At the sound of his voice she ceased fighting his hold enough that he was able to gently shake her and speak quietly to her until her eyes opened.
Morainn stared at Tormand for several moments before she realized he was not part of some dream. She still shook from the terror of what she had seen and pressed herself up against him, seeking his warmth. Just as she was beginning to breathe a little easier, she felt someone watching her and her fear returned. She instinctively reached for the knife under her pillow only to realize that she was not in her own bed.
A candle was lit and Morainn looked around. All the Murrays and Simon were standing around the bed in various states of undress. Walter lurked in the doorway and a frightened Walin clung to the man’s leg. They were all looking at her in bed with Tormand, naked. Morainn almost wished it was the enemy in her dream she faced. It would be dangerous, but at least she would not feel so painfully embarrassed. Then she recalled what she had been dreaming about and hastily shook aside her humiliation. What she had seen in her dream was of far more importance than her shame over being caught in bed with Tormand.
“She hasnae buried her husband,” Morainn said, shivering as she saw the sight of the bloody, mutilated man hanging from chains. “She has only just finished killing him. I had thought she already had, but nay, she just considered him as good as dead. He is dead now.”
“Did ye get a name?” asked Simon.
“Only part of it. Edward. She called him Fat Edward and in the vision I saw him hanging in chains and he is verra fat. Or was.” Morainn closed her eyes as she struggled to hold the horrible image of the dead man in her mind’s eye. “Red hair and nay a pretty red, either. Freckles everywhere.” She shivered again and Tormand pulled her a little closer to him. “I am nay sure what he may have done to her, but I get no sense of true cruelty or evil in the mon. Yet, she killed him verra slowly and he suffered in great pain for a verra long time.”
“Did ye see where? Did ye see anything that might tell ye where and when this may have happened? I ken several men named Edward and none of them are small men. If I had a hint of where the body is, it could save me a great deal of searching.”
“All I saw was the room where he was hanging in chains. A dungeon, I think, for it was all damp stone and the light flickered as though it was coming only from a fire or torches.” She rubbed at her forehead, hating the need to try to remember clearly such a bloody dream, but she tried and then tensed. “A large door with a snarling dog, nay, wolf on it.”
“I ken where that is. ’Tis where Edward MacLean lives. He calls his home Wolf Hallow. ’Tis but a short ride north of town.”
“This time I am coming with ye,” shouted Tormand, as the men ran out of the room, Walter hastily taking Walin back to his bed.
When Tormand leapt out of bed, Morainn flopped back down onto the soft feather mattress and groaned. He turned to frown at her in concern, studying her carefully even as he continued to get dressed. She was looking a little pale, but he could see no sign that she had suffered with this dream as badly as she had suffered with her visions.
“Are ye weel, Morainn?” he asked.
Morainn groaned again and pulled the blanket over her head. “I have just been found in your bed by everyone in this house, even Walin. And I was found here naked.”
He forced himself to bite back an urge to laugh. “I got the blanket around ye before they saw anything.”
She sat up and glared at him. “They saw me.” Then she paled and put a hand over her mouth. “And how can I be so cold of heart, so verra selfish? There is some poor mon hanging dead in his own home, a mon who suffered all the torments of hell at the hands of his own wife and I am fretting because your friends and family now ken that I have shared your bed.”
Tormand sat down on the bed, pulled her into his arms and stroked her back. “Ye arenae cold or selfish. This has all happened so quickly, ye have had no time to e’en think it all through. One moment ye are having a nightmare and the next ye are sitting in bed with six half-dressed and weel-armed men standing around. And ye cannae take on the weight of these murders, loving. It will crush ye. As for those fools seeing ye in my bed, dinnae fret over it. And Walin? His only interest was to see that ye were nay hurt.” He gave her a kiss and then got up to finish dressing and arming himself.
“Mayhap ye shouldnae go,” she said quietly. “What if it is a trap or the ones who think ye guilty are out there and looking for a fight?”
“I will be with five armed men who have blooded themselves in battle. I will be fine.” He gave her another kiss and ran out the door, calling back, “Walter will stay here to watch over ye and Walin.”
Morainn cursed and fell back in the bed again. At least while the men were gone she would have time alone to conquer her embarrassment. Discovery had been inevitable, she told herself. It would have been impossible to keep the fact that she was sharing a bed with Tormand a secret in such a crowded house. She prayed Walin was too young to understand fully what her place in Tormand’s bed meant and she really did not wish to answer questions posed by a curious little boy.
She leapt out of bed, snuffed the candle someone had lit, and then collected up her clothing, donning her shift for modesty’s sake. There were still a few hours before dawn and she needed to get some sleep. Holding her clothes against her chest, she slipped out of Tormand’s room and went back to her own. Morainn suspected Tormand expected her to stay in his bed, but she would not do so until he said so plainly.
Once huddled beneath the covers of her bed with her cats curled all around her she began to feel calmer, certain that she would be able to go back to sleep. The sound of Walter’s distinct tread only added to her growing sense of calm, for she knew, just as Tormand had told her, she and Walin had not been left unprotected. There were a few things she had seen in her dream that she had not had time to tell the men, but there would be time on the morrow. Telling them that the evil woman had smiled at her in the dream as Morainn had screamed would only worry them.
“That is a sight I could have happily lived a long life without ever seeing,” murmured Harcourt.
Tormand was pleased to see that his cousin was looking a little pale. The remains of poor Edward MacLean had caused his own stomach to revolt strongly and he had only barely controlled the urge to empty his belly on the bloodstained floor of the dungeon. The smell of blood and death was so strong they were enough to gag a man. The killers must have tortured Edward for a very long time. The once very large man was only a shadow of the food-loving man he had once been. They had nearly skinned the man alive, broken all his fingers and toes, and castrated him. Tormand was sure there were other injuries, but the man was so filthy and so covered in blood he could not see what they might be and did not want to. He also suspected it was mostly the castration of the man that had drained all the blood from their faces and left them all so pale.
“I cannae think of anything this mon may have done to his wife that would have earned him this death,” said Simon, as he began his ritual of carefully searching the area around the dangling body of Edward. “He was an irritant, boastful, somewhat of a pig, and none too bright, but I ne’er saw him lift a heavy hand to anyone or e’en speak unkindly about anyone. He was, in truth, quite jovial in the manner of a not particularly intelligent fellow who found his own humor very amusing.”
“Did ye e’er meet his wife?” asked Tormand.
“Once,” replied Simon. “A shadow of a woman, quiet and easily forgotten. I would ne’er have thought her capable of such brutality.”
“Mayhap that is how she has gotten away with it for so long.”
“But where were his people?” asked Rory. “With a house of this size there should be a maid or two, a cook, and such as that. No one came to the door and I saw no one as we made our way down here.”
“She could have sent them away,” said Simon. “E’en if she didnae do it right away, I doubt anyone would have heard the poor man down here. I think she and her hulking great companion are also long gone.”
“Aye, they are too cunning to stay so close to a murder. She would ken that, as soon as we saw Edward, we could guess who she is. Do ye ken her name, Simon?”
“Nay. As I said—she was utterly forgettable. I will find someone who kens who she is though.”
“And then what?”
“First I will see if she has any kin near at hand or, more important, any kin that have recently been murdered. As soon as I gather as much information as I can on this mon’s wife, we return to our hunting. What I am truly hoping for is that someone can give us a good description of who her large companion might be.”
“The huge shadow that can move about silently in the darkness and disappear like mist on a sunny morning?” asked Harcourt.
“Aye, that one.” Simon started to walk out of the dungeon. “He cannae have remained in the shadows all of his life. Someone has had to have seen him. Let us search the rest of this house and see if we can find anything that will help us.”
“What about that poor old fool Edward? Do we just leave him hanging there?”
“For now.”
After several hours of fruitless searching, Tormand rode beside Simon as they headed back home. It bothered him to leave poor Edward MacLean hanging in the dungeon, but Simon wanted to come back with a few of his men and deal with the body then. He hoped Simon gave the men some warning of what they were about to see before they went down those dark steps into that blood-soaked room of torture and death. Tormand had hoped they would find some trail to follow, but he was getting used to disappointment in this hunt. If the mad pair they hunted suffered from a blood lust of some sort, he hoped it was well fed for now.
“So ye have seduced Morainn,” said Simon.
Abruptly dragged from his dark thoughts, Tormand needed a moment to comprehend what Simon had just said and he sighed. “Leave it be, Simon. I will but say that she is nay just another warm body to me. Let that be enough.”
“Are ye planning to marry the lass?”
“I dinnae ken. I dinnae ken what I feel for her or want from her. Weel, save for the fact that she makes my blood run hotter than any woman ever has. I could nay more keep away from her than I could cease breathing. ’Tis that simple and that complicated. Deciding what will happen next is hard when, for all I ken, I may yet be dragged up on the gallows.”
“Oh, nay, we willnae let that happen.”
He looked closely at his friend. “Did ye find something that makes ye believe we will soon capture these bastards?”
“I ken who she is now, dinnae I? It will help. It is also far more than we have had erenow. She may have been nay more than a wee shadow to me the one time I met her, but there has to be someone out there who kens who she is and what she looks like. I wager there is someone who also kens who her huge companion is. As I said, a mon as big as this one appears to be cannae walk around unnoticed, no matter how weel he can slip about in the shadows.”
“I had hoped for more.”
“To catch them with the bloodied knives in their hands?”
“Aye, and to end this. I need to end this and nay just because they are killing women, for all that makes me sound like a hard bastard. I just cannae shake the feeling that I am soon to be running and hiding like James was.”
“Nay, we would never let ye suffer like that for three years.”
Tormand nodded, then realized that Simon had not given him any assurances that he would not find himself running and hiding soon. He turned to ask his friend about that only to find Simon riding beside Harcourt. Tormand softly cursed and then told himself that running and hiding for a short while was still far better than hanging for crimes he had not committed. He hoped he could make himself believe that, when and if the time came that he had to use the bolt-hole Simon had already found for him.