Another night he might give in to the temptation to share such a dream, but right now, this woman needed true rest.
“You will not ache, but will rest.” He crossed the room to her bed and knelt beside it. “Relax, faolán. I will let nothing harm you here and no dream will bedevil you, either.”
“Can I trust you?”
“Aye.”
“You killed my brother.”
“Aye.”
“Another Éan might have later, if he’d kept hunting them.”
God willing. Yes. Though this, Eirik’s dream self did not say aloud.
Ciara sighed. “I loved him. So much. He told me he was glad I was a little sister, even when father was sad I was not a son.”
“He had some wisdom then.”
She smiled, her eyes closing slowly. “Yes, some wisdom. And a warm heart…when we were younger.”
Peace stole over her countenance and then she was asleep. Truly asleep.
Knowing it could do no harm and would probably help, Eirik’s dream self climbed onto her narrow bed beside her and took Ciara into his arms. She sighed, turned over and nuzzled into him as if seeking shelter in his arms.
Clearly she found it, because she did not waken again.
Lais was careful as he removed first Mairi’s plaid and then the blouse and shift beneath it.
She whimpered when he had to lift her arm to remove the blouse, but bit her lip and kept the sound inside as he gently tugged her shift up her body and off. She was a tiny thing, but her curves were generous. He had to swallow back a moan as first the golden curls between her thighs came into sight and then the pretty pink tips of her breasts.
They tightened in the air, but his libido could not compete with his horror at the sight of so much damage done to her fragile body. The fist-sized bruises marring her beautiful pale skin made bile rise in his throat even as fury rose to match it.
The MacLeod would pay.
This…this horrific evidence of abuse was after their healing session the night before.
She turned her head away. “I know they are ugly.”
“Aye.”
She flinched.
“But you? Mairi, lass, you are beautiful.”
She gasped and met his gaze. He let the heat he felt at the sight of her nudity, despite all, fill his.
“You find me attractive, even though you do not want me for a mate?”
“’Tis not a matter of want, it is what I can and cannot have. I cannot have you.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps one day I will tell you.” But not this day, not when he needed her open to him and his touch to effect her recovery.
“Do you have to lay your hands on me to heal me?”
“You know I do.”
“I am afraid.”
“Of being healed?” That made no sense.
“Of how I will respond to your touch.” She looked away again, her body tensing. “I do not know if I can control my reactions.”
Her artless desire and honesty about it would be his undoing.
“I have enough self-control for both of us,” he claimed with confidence he did not feel.
Not with the way his sex was trying to rise under his plaid. The pleated tartan hid more than the leather hunter’s kilt common among the Éan, but it couldn’t hide a full erection.
And he was afraid that was exactly where he was headed.
Innocently unaware of his body’s desire, Mairi looked at him with absolute trust. “Thank you.”
He nodded and then laid one hand over a particularly nasty bruise on her arm. He’d thought the bone might be broken the night before and had sent healing energy to it, but the injury still looked bad. He took up his amber crystal and pressed it very lightly against the center of the purple bruise.
He released his Chrechte spirit into her, the skin below his growing warm and he could see the wound without even focusing on his inner eye now. There was a crack in the bone and he concentrated on mending it.
She whimpered.
He looked up from the wound to her face. “It hurts?”
No one had ever complained of such before. Patients had remarked on the heat and even a tingling sensation, but never complained of pain.
She shook her head, an expression of desperation in her eyes. And then he smelled it. Her arousal. She was reacting to the spirit of his eagle even as Lais attended to her wounds.
“It is all right,” he promised.
“Is it?”
“Aye.”
“But I want things I should not. You are helping me and my mind is taking me to a different place a virtuous woman would not