He couldn’t be certain, but he thought a blush tinged her cheeks.
“Hardly an angel,” she whispered, and seemed to lean toward him in a way that told him she wasn’t aware of her action. “Your children, they have been so lonely for you. Would it be unforgivable of me to ask you what kept you from them all these years?”
His heart thumped so hard, he wondered if she couldn’t hear it. He’d never had someone dare to ask him such a question. His gaze darted about the chapel, until it landed on the long unused dark wood box with its royal-blue curtains. Perhaps, Liam thought, now was the time for confession. Maybe he could, just this once, unburden his soul.
His voice felt like gravel in his throat as he gave words to his darkest thoughts. “As I said before, there is a demon, of a more figurative kind, that has tainted the blood of the men in this family for generations. It burns through us until there’s nothing left but ash and char. I’ve fought innumerable battles in my life, but none as difficult as the one I wage with myself. Ye canna know what it is to live with this much fire. With so much anger and hatred that it chews through ye until ye’re nothing but a black void. I would save my children from knowing that kind of cruelty. I would protect them from the abject violence of it. For decades I thought that dark abyss would swallow me whole, and until I stepped away from its edge, I couldna risk taking them into it with me. And so I did whatever I had to do to keep it away from them, even if it meant … keeping myself away.”
“I don’t think you ever would have hurt them,” she reassured him after a thoughtful moment.
He shook his head. “But I couldna return until I was certain.”
“What changed?” she asked softly. “When were you convinced?”
Liam knew the exact moment; it was branded onto his soul. It haunted his nightmares. “When I lost my brother.”
“Hamish?”
A bitter sound escaped him. Of course she’d have heard about Hamish. He’d been a part of this clan. A part of their lives. Their father’s not-so-secret shame, and the man that their father would have preferred over Liam to be his heir.
“Our company was sent on a mission to put down a secret sect of Irish insurgents that had been hiding in Canada since the Fenian Rebellion. They’d taken a ship full of people and packed it with explosives. Their plan was to drive it into an English port and detonate it, killing masses of innocent people. We couldna stop the ship, but we boarded it, executed the mutineers, and Hamish was able to steer it back out to sea whilst the rest of us evacuated the civilians. It took longer than we thought to get them a safe distance from the blast radius. I was returning for Hamish, when I realized we’d run out of time. There was a fire on board, the fuse had been lit, and in that moment I knew if I boarded that ship, I’d not make it off again. That my luck as the Demon Highlander had run out.”
“Poor Hamish,” Mena murmured.
“Aye.”
“Was he a good man?”
“Nay, not really. But neither am I. We were forged by the same brutal father, though, and so I suppose ye could say we were bound in that way.” Liam let his shoulders lift and fall with a weighty breath. “I wanted to go back for him. I considered it, even though it would have been the end of me. But the only thing I could think of as the explosion ripped the ship apart was that I had to see my children. That I had so much to make up for.” His hand curled into a fist at the memory of his brother, begging for rescue. Pleading to be saved. “Something shifted the day Hamish … I just knew I needed to come home.”
When Mena laid her pale, elegant hand over his rough knuckles, it felt like a miracle.
“I’m truly sorry for all you suffered, and for all you lost. But regardless of the struggles you have with your children, they’re better for you having returned. It was the greatest choice you ever made. You must know that.”
The fervency in her voice tightened his throat, and for the second time that night he had to look away from her. “I made certain they never knew my father. I shielded them from their mother’s madness. All they’ve known of family is me, and Thorne, I suppose. But I never want them to meet my demon. My greatest fear is of them bearing witness to the evil of which I am capable. Of which I’ve proven myself capable.”
She squeezed his hand. “When you are subjected to such misfortune, it is difficult for those who are closest to you to comprehend it because you appear to be ordinary. Outwardly, you seem what you have always been, who you strive to show them that you are. But inside you are inconceivably altered, and perhaps you don’t even recognize yourself.” Her other hand joined the first, and she wrapped them around his palm, her voice growing with ardor. “I think, once you discover who you’ve decided to become, your children, your people, will get to know that man. And I have no doubt they will grow to love him. You are a good man, Laird Mackenzie, despite what you believe. I think your clan, and your children, know that more than you do.”
There it was, that reassuring smile again. The slight tilt of her sensual lips that coaxed a dimple into her cheek. Lord, but to look at her was pleasant. And to be touched by her, divine.
Bless her for what she believed of him, but Liam knew better. The maelstrom of emotion whirling through him at the depth of his confession suddenly flared into a physical inferno. His demon burst into flames of lust. Liam knew she could read it in his eyes, as she released his hands with a shocked gasp and made to rise. To retreat.
Well, if he was already damned, he might as well follow his wicked impulses all the way to hell.
At least he’d get to taste her again.
Liam sprang toward her, grasping her wrists and pulling her back down to him. He sank his fingers into her luxurious hair, loosening the intricate coiffure there, and pinned her head between his two strong palms as he took her wicked mouth with his own.
It was in the joining of their lips that Liam found what he’d come to the chapel seeking. He kissed Mena with a reverence he’d never felt in the entirety of his life. Driven by a hunger that welled from the darkest, most heretical depths of his soul, he knew he’d finally found something worthy of his worship.
Though he didn’t want to do so with soft prayers and humble words. He wanted to pay her homage in the most primitive way his Pict ancestors would have. With drums that beat with the rampant frenzy of his heart. With fire that licked at the black sky, ablaze with the strength of the heat spilling into his loins. Passion, years denied, clawed to the surface of his iron will as he feasted on her. Laid siege to her defenses as vigorously and mercilessly as he had so many walls and armies. He used the ruthlessness that had vanquished legions until he was the one man standing in the midst of the fallen.
Her hands closed around his wrists. She didn’t pull away, though he knew she wanted to.
They both knew she should.
Instead, a soft sound of surrender escaped her as she arched her neck, and opened her mouth to accept him.
Victorious heat surged through him, as he claimed her with his tongue, a delicious thrill spearing that dark place he’d always imagined had housed the Mackenzie demon. Her sweetness overwhelmed and stupefied him, and Liam realized that if anything, anyone, could bring him to his knees, it would be this singular woman. She could accept him deep into her body, and perhaps her soul. She could temper his fire, while illuminating the darkness.