Highland Defiance - By Sky Purington Page 0,41

he wanted to pull her close but she saw in his eyes that he wouldn’t. It was important that she believed what he said more than what he did at this point. If ever there existed a time when she wanted to look away from someone’s gaze it was now, but she would not. Adlin was a man who deserved to be looked in the eye, a man who deserved respect.

Then it occurred to her.

He didn’t demand.

Not of her, nor of his people. That’s what he’d been trying to tell her the night before, however oddly he went about it. Adlin was not a wizard first but a man, one whom wanted people to want what he wanted of their own… free will.

“It was what you wanted most that ultimately surprised and disappointed you,” she whispered.

“Do you know why?” he asked.

“Yes, because you had to learn to relinquish control.”

He wrapped the cloak tighter around her, the gesture protective and treasuring. “It was a hard lesson to learn. But one worth learning.”

So Adlin had trudged the long road between two belief systems and found that he loved both, would always defend both. What was it to be both Christian and Pagan?

With a heavy sigh, Adlin’s eyes stayed locked with hers. “So you ken who I am now, Mildred.”

She cupped his cheek gently. “You’re a man who loves.”

“Aye,” he whispered and leaned down, his lips brushing over hers feather-light before he said, “I’m also a man who needs to be loved.”

Though her eyes watered she was unable to say the words she knew he longed to hear. Instead, she said, “Where did you want to take me?”

With a warm, understanding smile he turned and pulled a fur cloak over his shoulders. “Come. We’re almost out of time.”

Chapter Eight

It was the last thing she expected.

The best of what she ever could have hoped for.

Cold, northern wind blew back her hair as Adlin led her down a narrow path onto a sheet of craggy rock. Long and dim the North Sea stretched out, reminding her of its recent near-death grasp on her soul. Warm, reassuring, his hand pulled her forward until they stood within feet of what was easily a hundred foot cliff that dropped sharply to the crashing ocean below.

In a confident move, he pulled her in front of him and wrapped his arms around her waist, anchoring her securely high above the sea’s wrath. Wind whipped and shoved and seemed angry by their intrusion. She knew Adlin looked right back, defiant. So she became a willing prisoner to what he wanted seen.

It didn’t take long.

Within a minute of their arrival, a sequence of loud crashes boomed below as twenty foot waves slammed into an unforgiving rock wall and sent sea spray bursting into the air. For a split second all she could envision was his hot body bucking inside her and his own violent release.

The bliss it brought.

As if her thoughts materialized in front of her, the sun’s first rays burst from the horizon, their light orange rays surfing the waves until they too slammed against the cliff walls and peeked over the cliff.

With Adlin’s warm body against her back, the ocean’s salty mist fell over her face at the very moment submissive sunrays lit her skin. Eyes wide she watched as the sun introduced another hue, this one lighter, faster moving. It speckled the wave tips and dove over the cliff. Then another came, light orange mixed with purple, swarming over the ocean, filling every crevice until it crawled over the rock and her skin like an exciting warning of what was to come.

Mildred folded her arms over Adlin’s, cuddled back against him, and realized that he offered her a show unlike any other.

An interested, tentative deep red broke over the horizon. The minute it saw Scotland it roared over the ocean and them, freeing the beginning of a sunrise that few would ever see. The hair on her arms rose as the red shaved down to a thick, moody crimson and sat on the horizon, watching them. Within seconds it roared and boosted forward a feisty reddish-purple ripple that searched until it covered everything with its striking, powerful hue.

“Watch this,” Adlin murmured into her ear.

As he said it, the sun rose up a bit further. Bit by bit, the sky transformed into a wide array of reds, oranges, yellows, purples and blues. It covered the ocean and sky and all of Scotland in between. With it came another swath of