heart was pounding in time to the beast’s sinuous, rhythmic movement. She could see the steam of its breath bloom in the cold air. It was exhilarating, the sheer speed at which they were travelling, effortlessly leaping the criss-cross of streams swollen with the melting of the first snow, which had fallen unseasonably early.
Gnarled branches of ancient trees snatched at her hair like the twisted, arthritic hands of an old fey wife. There were no pine forests near McKinley lands. She must be dreaming. Iona closed her eyes and surrendered to the liberating sensation, imagining herself fleeing from the life her father had decreed for her.
When she came to, she was sitting on the ground. Though the rain had stopped, she was wet through, her long copper-coloured hair hanging down her back in damp tendrils. “Cold,” she murmured, wrapping her arms around herself, not sure that she really was awake.
“Take this.”
Iona jumped. The voice, its timbre deep and throaty, its tone imperious, came from behind her. A soft fur cloak was wrapped around her. Her back arched against the luxurious dry warmth of it. At her feet, there was sand. She was on a beach. McKinley lands were landlocked, but she could definitely smell the sea. She screwed her eyes tightly shut, then opened them again. Awake. She was not dreaming now.
Completely disoriented, she stumbled to her feet. A hand steadied her. A muscular arm, a studded leather band at the wrist. Bare legs, no hose nor even shoes. She tried to twist round, but his grip held her firm. “Who are you? Let me go!” Rough chest hair on her cheek. A musky scent. Bittersweet. “I was attacked by a wolf. What happened?”
She felt, rather than heard, his laugh vibrating through his broad chest. “I subdued him.”
Such a strange turn of phrase. The accent, too, was unusual, not local. Iona wrenched herself free. “Where am I?” She looked around in astonishment at the beach, the sea, the forest. “How did I get here?”
“That matters less than where you are going.”
She saw him clearly for the first time, then. Tall. Powerful, but sinewy. Intimidating rather than frightening. Dangerous. She could see each well-defined muscle in the broad sweep of his shoulders, his arms, his chest, the dip down into his belly. He wore nothing save a rough filleadh beg held with a thick leather belt at his waist. Around his neck was an amulet on a leather thong, an ornate piece of gold inlaid with what looked like emeralds. His skin was tanned all over. His strong jaw was bluish with bristle. His hair fell to his shoulders, pushed back from his high brow. There was a sprinkling of dark hair on his chest and forearms, too. His handsome face was all hard planes and sharp lines, like the rugged granite landscape of the Highlands. Grey, his eyes were. There was something hypnotic about his piercing, impassive gaze as it caught and held hers. Something dark and deeply unsettling, too. Unknowable.
It was painful to breathe. She was afraid to move, yet afraid not to. Transfixed, just as she had been when she encountered the wolf. Such a magnificent beast. Such a magnificent man. An aura redolent of barely contained power hung like a haar around him. Intoxicating. With enormous difficulty, she dragged her eyes away from his. “Who are you?” she demanded. “I am Laird McKinley’s daughter, my father will…”
“I know exactly who you are.” Struan Tolmach eyed the maid with mild interest. She was a slight thing, typical of her kind, but much more attractive than she had a right to be, from what he remembered of her father. Presumably that copper hair and those big green eyes were inherited from her mother. Though that look, all defiance and belligerent pride, was definitely her sire’s.
“I demand that you take me home. This instant!”
“You’re in no position to make demands. You belong to us now,” Struan said dismissively, taking her roughly by the shoulder and pointing her in the direction of the sea.
The maid struggled, digging her feet deep into the shingle for purchase, but he held her easily. He was not used to human females displaying resistance—quite the opposite, though he had never once been tempted. Seductive as some of those Highland women had been, Struan preferred to hunt much closer to home. Whatever it was about his kind that made him so irresistible to mortal females, he had no interest in taking advantage of it. He sated his desires within his own tribe.
“Let me go!” She was panting with the effort to get free. “If you agree to take me back now, I’ll explain that you saved me from danger, from the wolf.”
Her scent was intensely female, but exotic, more delicate than a Faol woman’s. Under his plaid, Struan’s body stirred most inconveniently into life. “Safe from the wolf perhaps, but not necessarily out of danger.”
She stilled. “What do you mean?”
Struan turned her around in his arms, pulling her into the lee of his body. She felt good there. Too good. His erection hardened. He tried to close his mind to the rousing scent of her, but could not. What was wrong with him? He tilted her face up. Green eyes, determined to show no fear. He couldn’t help but admire her courage. That surprised him, too. “Iona…”
She struggled free. “How do you know my name?”
“Your father told me.”
“How do you come to know him?”
“He engaged my services some months ago.”
“In what capacity?”
“To help him defeat the MacEwans. Which I duly did.”
It was true, Iona recalled, the McKinleys had recently finally retaken the borderland illegally wrested from them by the MacEwans decades ago. Her father had been so overjoyed he had even thrown a celebratory ceilidh. “My father paid you to help him?”
“We agreed a fee. Twice now, your father has been reminded, and twice he has failed to honour his debt. He knew the price for defaulting.”
Iona frowned. “What price?”
He hadn’t told her, his own kin. It didn’t surprise Struan, but it disgusted him. “The terms were clear,” he said grimly. “He was to surrender that which is most precious to him.”
“You mean me?” Iona laughed bitterly. “Aye, that would be right enough. A prize asset to be married off to a neighbour as a brood mare, or now, it appears, used as a bargaining tool in some contract dispute.”
He had expected tears. Pleading. Not this. “I don’t think you fully grasp your situation. Your father reneged on his bargain with the Faol. Unfortunately, you must pay the price for his treachery.”
“Faol? You mean you’re a Faol?” Iona shrank back, her eyes wide with shock. “I’ve heard the stories, but I thought they were just tales of bogeymen, invented to frighten bairns.”
Struan took her hand and placed it on his chest. “Do I not feel real to you? As to our powers, they are real enough, too. Those who dishonour us have every reason to be afraid.”
Iona snatched her hand away as if she had been scalded. “You don’t frighten me,” she declared, and it was true. He was so formidable she doubted not what he said, but his air of danger excited rather than scared her. She could scarcely believe she was actually in the presence of a wolf-clan warrior. “My father would surely have told me if he had employed you to fight for him.”
“And risk alerting his enemy?” Struan mused with a curl of his lip. “Not even he would be so foolish.”
“And what about the MacEwans? If they had offered you more, would you have fought for them?”
Struan threw back his head contemptuously. “We do not sell our prowess to the highest bidder. We fight only for those who have just cause. Faol warriors are supreme. Why should we not use our talents for the benefit of our clan? How dare you presume to judge us!”
As his anger flared, the savage life-force contained within the man showed fleetingly, and Iona felt it again. A sort of edgy elation. All her senses were on alert. The world seemed to shrink, leaving just the two of them, cloaked in his all-pervasive aura. Her