Ten years in the making…
"...it is foretold, in the feral times of man, that another will come to stand between you and that which you love most. If it should come to pass, if his vengeance against you should succeed, your spirit will forever walk this land. This will be the truth until your retribution breaks the bounds of nature and settles the balance. Blood will be spilt, hearts will be shattered, and vengeance once started will not be stopped—”
The Legend of the Viking e-book is available now for pre-order on Amazon.
A legendary love, an unforgiving Viking and a vow made for eternity.
In this second book of the Clan MacLaoch Curse Series we see our favorite characters, Rowan and Cole, return in their most passionate selves yet. Coming off the loss of the Gathering and the thought to be extinguished MacLaoch curse, Rowan finally has a chance at his happily ever after. That is until everything that he loves is taken for granted sparking events that once set in motion, cannot be stopped.
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Excerpt from The Legend of the Viking:
Prologue
The Year of Our Lord 1210
Outer Hebrides, Scotland
Quiet fell in the stone hall as the old woman made her way back down the long table, an engraved bone cup in her hand. This time she would not be turned away. The rushes scattered on the floor muted her steps and absorbed the echoes and murmurs of those gathered there.
“Grandson,” she called, her craggy voice carrying over the heads of the raiders. As she continued under the gaze of cruel men, she closed her eyes and moved toward her grandson and, with an ability she should not possess, around those in her way. She tightened her fist about the engraved cup she’d been given by a guard loyal to her. “Hear me, Grandson. Do not dismiss my warnings. For now, I have seen it thrice.” She held the cup for him as though to indicate the tea leaves within it.
“Silence,” he commanded her.
“You must know.” Her voice carried to him clear as crystal in the humid and smoke-tinged air. “You must hear me, Grandson.”
The room shifted as they looked to her then back to their self-proclaimed king.
“Once the boughs of love are gently rocked—”
“I said—”
“Rocked by her embrace,” she shouted over him. There was gasping and a small cry of outrage. “You will want of nothing else; it is foretold, in the feral times of man, that another will come to stand between you and that which you love most. If it should come to pass, if his vengeance against you should succeed, your spirit will forever walk this land. This will be the truth until your retribution breaks the bounds of nature and settles the balance. Blood will be spilt, hearts will be shattered, and vengeance once started will not be stopped—”
The Viking’s fist slammed down with a bang. “Enough!”
Earthenware cups and the boar’s carcass jumped as wine spilled, and another cry of alarm was heard. The old woman stopped and opened her eyes then.
He smiled distastefully at the seer the village folk called Völva. “His vengeance? Yes, you have said it again and again. So, tell me, Grandmother, what is the name of my enemy? I will slay him now.” His laugh shook the foundation.
The old woman hissed out in disgust, “Grandson, ’tis not a man you will know until you have crossed him. Only when his blade touches your skin will you comprehend my meaning. Only now is it not too late; you can stop him. Stop your lust for things you cannot have.”
His gaze cooled dangerously, and he gave her a warning he seldom gave to others. “What you speak of is treason. Will you condemn one of your people to a traitor’s fate?”
“I did not say that the sword would be held by your kin—”
“That is right—you said nothing other than ‘a man’!” After his icy outburst, he smiled at his people. “An ordinary man, whom I have yet to meet, will someday strike at me in anger.” He laughed again. His wolflike smile in place, he said, “Grandmother, you speak of every man who wishes to sit upon this seat.” He gestured to his intricately carved throne.
The old woman nodded and worked the rest of the distance down the long wooden table to him. She trailed one hand on the backs of the chairs for balance as the crowd murmured and laughed with their chief. She made her way to his seat and smiled, placing the cup down; she held her hand out to him.
“Then, peace, Grandson.”
“What is this? You wish to read more into my future? Perhaps get a name that I can use?”
She continued with her placating smile, her hand outstretched. “Let us be at peace.”
“Peace!” He laughed but placed his palm in hers. She grasped it then spat into it. The Viking tried to pull his hand back, but her grip was unusually strong. She traced the lines of his palm with her thumbs as her murmured words washed over him.
Trying still to pull his hand back, he hissed, “You are a pitiful old woman. Nothing but a bogeyman to scare children into obedience. I will make sure you pay for this.” To his guards, he barked, “Remove her!” and shoved her back with his other hand.
She stumbled but, catching herself, stood upright as if possessed. Her filthy wrap slipped from her shoulders. The room’s light dimmed.
Her eyes, having gone cold as snow clouds, looked sharply at her grandson, the most feared man of the Outer Hebrides. “Remember this warning”—the stone walls shook—“for it will be your last: Seek the unobtainable, and you will be blinded by love. She will outlive you and, in your absence, will suffer a fate worse than death. And your spirit, unable to succumb to the call to Valhalla, will roam these lands for eternity.”
Light snapped back as she folded down into the old woman she was. She picked up her heavily worn blanket and wrapped it tightly about her shoulders. A firm hand with a gold-clasped wrist gripped her shoulder.
Ormr Minorisson, Viking chief and self-proclaimed king of the Outer Hebrides stood then, towering over her. “Those words will be your last to me.” He gestured to his man who was holding her arm. “Take her to the church of the Misty Cliffs.” Then, to her: “You will stay there from now until your last breath.”
CHAPTER 1
2012
Glentree, Scotland
Rowan sat in the circle of light cast by his lamp. He glared at the bright screen of his laptop as he keyed in numbers.
As a child, Rowan had watched his uncle work the ledger, a large leather-bound book with lines that reminded him of rows of barley sprouting new and crisp in the spring’s rich soil. As soon as he took the helm of the MacLaoch estate, he transitioned the whole lot to computers, saving the knuckle of his right middle finger from the permanent ink stain his uncle had always worn. That ink stain was a tattooed reminder of how tied the clan was to the coffers. How tied the castle was to the coffers. How he was now tied to the coffers.
The cell where the Gathering monies was bloomed a big round zero, a black hole in the spreadsheet. The annual net revenue line had a seven-figure number. Seven figures below zero.
Rowan pinched the bridge of his nose. The clan was fucked with a capital F. Not “attempt to sell the Rembrandt in the upper hallway and hope the posh want to pay millions” fucked, but enduringly fucked, because next year, he’d have to do the same, and the year after, ad nauseum, until there was nothing left in the castle save for the stone itself. Add ten years in arrears on bank payments to the devil, and now the Reaper was calling to collect his dues.
Clan members had run for their lives last summer as thunder and lightning and bullets rang out and took their Gathering registration fees with them. No one bid on the million-pound silent auction items, and the hunt up at the lodge—a ten-thousand-pound-per-night experience—never happened. Instead, his cousin tried to kill him, and his uncle attempted to murder his newfound love.
Rowan’s mind skipped at the bittersweet thought of Cole.
Cole was asleep in the cottage. That cliffside cottage that was easier to live in and heat than an entire castle. Cole was his ray of hope in all this bleakness, like the rare Glentree summer sun when it kissed his cheeks. He took a pleasant sojourn away from the defeat in front of him and reminded himself of Cole’s sunset-colored curls reflecting the copper heat of that same sun and the fire she stoked in him. He wished she were there now. He desperately needed to do what he loved, to clutch a fistful of that fire and breathe her in as her arms wound around his waist, squeezing him tight. She was the only creature on earth who made him feel soothed, comforted, and completely at peace simply by being near him.
He knew that to pay respect to all she was to him he needed to officially make her his wife. It felt wrong to not have done it already, but as he looked back to the numbers, he couldn’t shake the feeling that to legally tie her to him was akin to tying her to an anchor and throwing both of them into the loch.
Then there was the bother of the ceremonies, vetting, and rites to follow, though the clan was currently occupied with raking him over the coals for the way the Gathering ended and squabbling about whether to chop his uncle Gregoire’s branch from the clan. It seemed selfish to ask them to rejoice in his love when everything else was going so wrong.
He leaned back in his great-grandfather’s Chesterfield desk chair—a three-thousand-pound appraised value—with a creak and blew out a breath. The phone call that had precipitated him sitting there for eight hours straight came back to him. If everything proceeded as the bank man had threatened, there might be no castle for he and Cole to live in much less a clan chief for her to marry after his people hanged him from the old oak in Glentree’s town square.
Rowan felt the pinch of his ulcer and reached for the pills he hid in the upper desk drawer. He dropped two powder-yellow tabs into his palm and tossed them back then picked up his tumbler and washed them down with whisky.
CHAPTER 2
It was late afternoon when, phone to my ear, I stood behind Rowan’s old oak desk up in his office in the castle’s fairy tower. It was a lovely place to be and made me feel closer to Rowan now that he spent most nights away from home.
“Uh-huh,” I said distractedly into the handset. I was at cord length on my tiptoes trying to see out leaded-glass windows, over treetops, down to the loch below. The late-afternoon sun was obscured behind the thick clouds, making the sky a hundred thousand shades of gray. I got a view of the black, rocky beach of Loch Laoch, but too little. I needed to be able to view at least fifty yards worth of that beach to ensure I didn’t miss that afternoon’s phenomenon.
An anticipatory energy filled my body, as when hearing an ice cream truck. I was going to have to end my call. Just thinking I might miss out made my heart skip a beat and stole my breath.
I touched the rubber band at my wrist and snapped it for some focus. It was on my wrist to help me reign in my temper after, a year ago, I punched a woman at the Gathering gala. She’d deserved it, but now, I simply wore it as a physical reminder to remain present. I hadn’t been angry in months.
I shifted my weight. The potential student intern I was on the phone with was excited to get a call back and was regaling me of a story about her and her granddaddy de-braining a particularly aggressive Highland bull. Her granddaddy was Glentree’s local large animal veterinarian, and she an undergrad in zoology.
“Adara—”
“But tha’s when we gave him a quick snip and—”
“Adara, thank you, yes, thank you—”
“Oh no, I’ve talked too much? Grandda’ warned me of talking too much if I were to get a call, and now, here I’ve done it. I’ve talked too much, haven’t I?”
I stretched again, another attempt to see more of the beach—the exact same place where Rowan had tossed me into the ice-cold water, gala dress and all, last year.
“Adara,” I said, “I was calling to say that you’ve got the position. I’m sorry, I’m in a bit of a rush, so I’ll email you the details tonight—”
Her ear-splitting scream had me yanking the handset away from my ear.
“Oh, my grandda’ will be so happy! We’re MacLaochs, ye know, and to study a site that hasnae been touched in…” Her Scots got thicker as her voice broke into a sob.
“Adara, honey, I’m so happy for you. That’s wonderful to hear that he’ll be proud of you”—another peak out the window and a look at my watch—“but I really have to go. I’ll email you.” And with an apology to her—and silently, my mother for my poor manners—I hung up. Quickly, I made a Post-it reminder, then began gathering my things. I picked up my to-call folder of folks and the miscellaneous résumés I had on the desk. Swiftly, I shoved them into the open folder and reached for my pack behind me on the desk chair. In my haste, the folder yawned, and the papers slipped out. They scattered like a blizzard over the Persian rug.
“Shit!” I shouted and went to my knees in the mess. Another look at my watch. Another curse. I only had a minute left.
Noticing that sheets had scattered across the room and under furniture, I cursed again and left them there. I scrambled to my feet, slipping on the papers, and was down the tightly winding staircase and out into the upper hallway in short order. The sun made an afternoon debut hitting the western flank of the castle, sending long, blazing beams of light over the parquet floors and down the main staircase. I was midway down the staircase myself, the sun warming my back, when Marion called to me.
She stood at the front administrative counter, her silver hair tucked behind an ear, and her cardigan was pale pink in celebration of spring.
Her blue eyes went wide with hope when she saw me. “Excellent timing, my lady! It’s teatime. Join us in the sunroom—”
“Nope! Nope, nope, nope,” I said with each step.
I ran past her and around the lower staircase then through the main hall to the rear of the castle.
She called from behind me, “Where are ye always headed at this hour?!”
“Nowhere!” I called back. It was my special secret, and I was telling absolutely no one.
Off the back steps I jumped, my rubber boots slapping my calves as I did so, and crossed over the closely cropped, aptly named bowling green. The scents of crushed grass and foliage tickled my nose as I stole a glance down to the loch. It was still obscured, this time by the stone balcony, and down those steps I jumped too, with another boot slap, then started up the rear gravel trail toward the whitewashed stone cottage.
My heart raced as I sprinted.
Was I about to miss it?
The trail split, forking toward the research field and the cottage that Rowan and I shared. I was going to neither. I hung a sharp left toward the cliff’s edge in the distance. My boots slipped as I exited the gravel path, making my arms whirligig to catch my balance. I slowed my pace as I got close—minding my step and the rocky edge between me and the tidal pools fifty feet below, I chanced a look up as the loch, all of it, came into view.
I was giddy with excitement and clasped my hands together. I hadn’t missed it after all. The entire swath of the black-rock beach, melting into the curve of Loch Laoch, was visible from here, making it the spot for my wildlife viewing. The spot where Rowan and I had our first real lip lock was small in the distance but clearly visible.
I turned my wrist, looking at the time, and smiled—soon. It would happen soon.
My insides pleasantly churned as I waited for my ice cream truck of a moment to arrive. The onshore breeze brought with it the tang of seawater and twang of birdsong as they flit and flew, darting over the exposed tidal pools. A few more minutes passed before heat spiked in my veins, and he strode into view.
The MacLaoch clan chief wore a form-hugging dark-blue button-down. I’d buttoned him into it just that morning, stealing a kiss off his distracted lips with every round mother-of-pearl shell I thrust into its matching hole. His black slacks fit his athletic, lean hips and legs like the pants had been stitched around him, showing off the high and tight ass that I smacked with erotic glee each time I was within arm’s reach. His sport coat, I frowned now, was gone. It would not flap like a flightless bird as he wrenched it off today. I conducted myself as I did during any of my wildlife biology observations and deduced: The laird was furious again today and would partake in his afternoon ritual. It wasn’t unlike sitting riverside, concealed downwind, from a grizzly as he fetched spawning salmon from the stream. It wasn’t wise to approach the bear but instead just enjoy from afar the display of prowess.
Things with the Gathering the year prior had not ended well. In fact, it was still going. The clan wanted answers and were holding Rowan to giving them. They were split into two camps: some said Kelly and his father, Gregoire, should be stripped of their clan rites, and others said to turn a blind eye. Each day Rowan “consulted” in his laird and chief roles, and he needed an outlet to vent.
It just so happened to be a beautiful outlet for me to watch, a capable man solving his problems.
A stone’s throw from the water’s edge now, Rowan stopped and toed off his shoes while working the buttons of his crisp, collared shirt, giving me mini flashes of warm skin. I sighed, ready for this angry caterpillar to shed its cocoon and thrust himself into the cold loch water and emerge after a mile of open-water swimming the beautiful, powerful butterfly he was. Finally, he sloughed off his shirt, and even from my distance away, I could see his shoulders were taught. The muscles of his upper back and arms firmed as he gestured angrily, stabbing pointedly into the air as if in argument with the people and their noise he had had to consume that day.
My fingertips itched to touch his bunched muscles, to dig into them and massage them loose. I kept my thoughts quiet lest they call to him and break this gorgeous routine.
With a flick of his fingers at his belt buckle, his pants loosened. His mouth opened, and after a second’s delay, his roar reached me. His warrior physique was primed for a fight. It appeared today had been extra hard. I noticed now that his black hair looked tossed and roughed up from his impatient hands running through it. Button and zipper undone, his pants and underwear were shoved down to rocks and kicked aside along with his socks.
I sucked in a deep breath and steepled my fingers, pressing them against my lips, holding in my erotic joy.
There he was.
Standing naked as the day he was born, Chief Rowan MacLaoch was the image of the Celtic warrior stripping bare to unleash his ferocity without a single item to hamper his movements. His heated skin was a sharp color contrast with the obsidian-colored rocks and the dark hair that ran from his navel to his cock. It stood impressive despite the cold.
His thighs and buttocks flexed their musculature as he navigated the rocky ground. The water, even though he’d been prepared for it, stole his breath, making him suck through clenched teeth. I could hear that intake of breath like a memory in my ear, a wordless tell that entering me in a surprise lovemaking session in his tower office was pleasantly intense for him as well.
He took four quick breaths before diving into an incoming wave, plunging himself into the depths of the loch. In awe, I watched as he expertly carved a path through the punishingly cold water. His bent arms kept time with the pace of a Highland jig, or a pub brawl. His fingertips were pointed and punishing, slicing the water out of his way, and then turned languid and caressing on his way back.
While he would go a short, and if by boat, easy, distance, it was the evening wind that kicked up a small chop on the water, making it Iron Man worthy. Each time he breathed, he had to do it through his teeth so as not to inhale wind-whipped water droplets off the chop. It would take all his focus to swim the round-trip mile.
If him sliding into the water was gold, him stepping out was diamonds. As he entered the shallow waters, his naked form became visible; it was a greenish hue under these waters, like a moving jade sculpture. I inhaled and bit my lip, waiting for it. Sensual excitement warmed my skin. It was one thing to ogle a man with whom you had no experience; it was another to watch a man with whom you did, knowing how that pelvis moved against yours and the petal softness of those lips on the skin of your breasts.
There in the shallows, he stopped moving, and like a monolith emerging from the water, he stood, the loch sparkling off him, running down his sharp edges. He wiped water out of his eyes, making his biceps go firm and round. My gaze wandered his body like a caress down to the V of his pelvic muscles where they were drawn deep, accentuating the lines of his abdominals. Each of his exhales was punctuated with water droplets that had run down his nose and off his upper lip. He pushed his way through the water with heavy steps, each one revealing more and more of his sculpted magnificence. I knew the weight of that body when it was on top of mine. I followed the tight midline of his stomach to his navel and then the dark path of hair down to his relaxed manhood. Despite the chill of the air, he was warm, hot even, and he hung longer and thicker than the average male would having just stepped out of forty-degree water. I bit my knuckles to suppress a shout and a wave to get those sapphire eyes to find me.
When Rowan reached his discarded clothes, his expression changed. Despite the distance, I knew his was a happy look—it was the one he gave over shoulders when his eye caught mine across a crowded room. Suddenly, I shivered. My skin now felt as cold as Rowan’s as our connection ignited, letting me feel the ocean water on his skin. His slow-blooming smile dimpled just one cheek. A hum moved across my skin before his face turned up toward me. I didn’t need to shout or wave; today, those sapphire eyes found me in silence.
CHAPTER 3
Rowan crested the trail a few minutes later, a moment that I would come to hold like a photograph in my mind when he left for his next clan fundraising trip. He wore not his pants and shirt but eight heavy yards of tartan around his waist, one end tossed over his shoulder. How had I missed seeing him carry that to the water with him?
I gave him an appreciative whistle and laughed as I walked to meet him. He could have been walking that same path for centuries and not have been out of place. He was a portrait waiting to be painted.
He grinned back and stopped a few feet from me. The cliff breeze pushed at a curl of raven hair loosening from the dense wetness of the rest of his thick head of hair.
“Miss me?”
“Who, me? Nah. How can I miss you when I’ve been stalking you this whole time? I’m surprised you didn’t hear my thoughts.”
“Must have been clean until just now.”
“Pure as the driven snow.” My smile turned gentle. “How was your day?”
“Fine,” he lied. “How was yours?”
“Fine,” I echoed. “Now that we have the formalities out of the way…”
I stepped up to him. His left hand went to my face and cradled my cheek as his other reached around and cupped my rear end, pulling me in against him. My own hands skated up his arms, enjoying the feel of his skin, both cool and hot.
“I’m not ever going to get used to having ye call to me like that.”
His eyes devoured me, and I bathed in their light. The flicking sapphire and Mediterranean blue against the gray day. “Good,” I said and went up on my toes, offering a kiss. It had been a fun year, exploring together how the love of our ancestors had created in us a bond that sometimes quite literally thrummed within us. But right now, I appreciated a connection more tangible.
He brought me in higher against him but did not provide the answer to my begging lips. He looked into my eyes, studying them like I assumed Einstein would if the theory of relativity were in his arms.
“Your eyes change color. Did ye know?”
“Hard to forget when you keep telling me. Now, stop delaying your gratification. Be more like me: if there’s cake on the table, eat it…ASAP.”
“I like cake…” His voice went soft.
“Then feast, my love.”
“I like to watch you a wee while before I consume you whole.”
Rowan was the master of delayed gratification. If he could reflect on the color of the sky mid-coitus to prolong the experience, he would.
We’d spent much of our last year apart, and reminding ourselves of each other’s features had become part of our routine each precious day we were together. The biggest thing I noticed about him was that his aggression in the water was taking calories out of his body faster than he could replace them, and as such, a new feature on his face was visible, long crevasses next to his full mouth. On one hand, I wanted to sit with my chin on my fist and stare at this new angle. On the other hand, I wanted back the exact face I fell in love with. I felt the urge to make a ten-course meal in his honor, then sit astride his lap and feed him every morsel from my fingertips. Now, my finger trailed that long crease.
“Your eyes change,” he continued, “different when you look at your field notes and when you’re standing here with me.”
“Is that so?” I wasn’t really listening. “I wonder why that is?” I didn’t really care.
His thumb swiped across my cheek. Yes, I begged in my mind. “Oh aye, I can guess.”
“It might be that my botanical studies don’t grab my butt. Nor do they tower over me and make me think of sex in castles, and discarded kilts,” I said, giving the fabric a tug. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled myself up against his firm body. “You know this kilt in particular ties me in knots,” I murmured against his lips. It was the first one I’d seen him wear, and even if I lived to be a hundred, I’d never forget it. With my nose nestled next to his, I continued, “I didn’t know you were wearing it today. I would have started stalking you a whole lot earlier than an hour ago.”
He dodged my lips, enjoying the game. “Found it in the locker room down there, seemed faster than pants.”
I knew that locker room—loved that locker room. It was the first place he’d put me on my back and kissed the hell out of me.
“Did you know you have nothing on underneath?” I whispered.
“Is tha’ right?” he said with mock shock.
“It makes me think you might want to kiss me, MacLaoch. So, do it, and tell me you love me as much as I love you, you beautiful human being.”
He took a deep, shuddering breath. He was losing his battle with himself. There was an obvious long and firm protrusion at his hip height pushing against me, telling me the exact direction of erotic due north.
“Come, Cole”—his pupils going wide; he was enjoying the words I was feeding him and the moves my body was putting onto him—“let’s go inside.”
I relaxed down against his front. Then pressed my hips against his and rubbed my body back up. “Sure, just one kiss first?”
His eyes went half-mast as the massaged north star under his kilt took control over his brain. Rowan groaned out a plea before lowering his face and losing his lips to mine.
The smell of brine and his exertion swallowed me whole. I dove into our connection like he had the loch. He’d been gone a few days the week prior and the week before that too, and on, and on, for months. He was going to be gone again.
I shoved at the fabric on this shoulder and as it fell discovered that his kilt had been hastily gathered about his hips and restrained only with the thin belt of his trousers. A belt that was built to withstand the fabric of a lightweight cotton blend and keep everything together in situations no harsher than sitting. It was not meant to hold up against a figurative ton of plaid and a lustful partner hell-bent on seeing her Scotsman naked. The belt snapped.
Rowan cursed; he was now in his birthday suit.
I smiled against his lips. “Oh no,” I murmured, “I’m so sorry.”
He grinned back. “Turnabout is fair play.” And those hands that had sliced through the water, powering him forward through the chop, grabbed the hem of my sweater. It was up, off, and tossed aside, soon followed by my pants and boots.
