Bound To The Wolf Prince

“Tolmach? I have never heard of that clan.” His accent was strange. Neither Highlander nor Lowlander, it was deep, sonorous and less lilting than she was accustomed to. “What do you want? What happened to the guards?”

Eoin smiled. “I took care of them.”

“I saw a wolf. I suppose you’ll tell me you took care of that too,” Freya said with a disbelieving curl of her mouth.

Eoin’s smile deepened. “I did, in a manner of speaking.”

His presence made her feel light-headed. It was too male. Something else too, something visceral. She would not let him intimidate her, though as with the wolf earlier, she couldn’t take her eyes off him. If she did, she felt certain he would pounce. “Three guards and a wolf,” she said dryly, “and yet there is not a mark on you. No man would emerge from such an encounter unscathed.”

“True, but then I am no mere man,” Eoin said. Her scent was delightful. That mouth of hers looked sinful. Sumptuous, that was the word for her. She was made for sinking into. Soft where he was hard. And he was becoming very hard.

There was a sheen of sweat on his chest. Freya couldn’t seem to breathe properly. Her mouth was dry. Fear? It should be, but it wasn’t. Whoever he was, he was not come from the earl, that much was clear. “No mere man,” she said mockingly, “what’s that supposed to mean?”

“I am Faol,” Eoin said proudly.

“Faol?” Freya had been trying to edge away. Now she stopped dead in her tracks. “A member of Clan Wolf? No, that’s not possible. They are reputed to be able to turn into—oh my God!” Her voice rose with every word, but she was powerless to contain her shock. “You’re saying that wolf was you?”

“And I am that wolf.”

She didn’t like the way he was smiling. It was disturbing. It made her hot then cold. The way he looked at her too, disturbed her. And his proximity. More than a wolf. More than a man. My God, she believed him. “You have come to kill me,” she said, shrinking back.

His laugh was deep. “Kill you? On the contrary, I’ve come to rescue you. Your father begged for our help when no trace of you could be discovered after two months searching. Retrieving a kidnapped daughter is a just cause, worthy of the services of a Faol warrior. He was desperately concerned for your safety, as any father would be.”

“Concerned for my inheritance, more like. He would rather see it in the hands of his own kin than the Earl of Tarbert. That is the extent of my father’s care for me.”

The bitterness in her voice surprised him. The toss of her head, the scornful curl of her mouth, almost fooled him, but the over-bright sheen in her big brown eyes, the telltale clenching of her fists, gave away her hurt. Eoin felt a stab of anger on her behalf. She was right, her sire had indeed seemed much more concerned for the fate of her wealth than her well-being.

But mortals and their motives were none of his business. “Your father wishes you returned safely to him, and that is what I have promised to do.”

“And why should I trust you?” Freya demanded belligerently. “How can I be sure that I’m not simply exchanging one abductor for another?”

Eoin’s eyes narrowed. “You have the word of the Faol. You require no other assurance. I, on the other hand, do. I apologise, but your father was most insistent that I take every precaution. Show me your left foot.”

Freya paled. “No! There is no need.”

But he was already on his knees before her.

“No! Do you imagine the Earl of Tarbert has more than one heiress held captive?” She tried to free herself, but he had her foot held firmly in his hand. Embarrassment and mortification flamed her cheeks. Though she had been but a bairn when it had happened, the mark still filled her with repugnance. Each time some would-be husband or his kin examined her foot, she felt diminished. It defined her, that mark. That, and the full coffers which went with it.

Eoin untied her garter and rolled down her stocking. Like the rest of her, her leg was delightfully shaped. Curved calf, slender ankle, fine-boned little toes. Perfection, marred only by the ugly red scar. The outline of a coffer key branded into the skin, just as her father had described. He touched his finger to it.

Freya flinched. “Are you convinced now?”

“Why would they do this to you?”

“Brand me like a prize heifer, you mean? To help identify me, were I taken as a babe,” Freya said scornfully. “My nurse told me once that I was lucky, she’d heard tell of another bairn who’d had the tip of her finger bitten off to mark her identity.”

“Marking of any kind is a barbaric act unworthy of any civilised society,” Eoin said with undisguised ferocity. In the three years since he had been Prince of the Faol, he had ensured that their own practice of Marking had been abandoned. He lifted her foot to his mouth and pressed a kiss on the scar. She tasted just as he’d expected, of flowers and sunshine and human female. His tongue traced the outline of the coffer key.

Freya was shocked into stillness. No one had ever touched her there before, certainly not in such a way. His lips were soft on her skin. His fingers were stroking her calf. “What are you doing?”

Good question! Reluctantly, Eoin got to his feet. There were other, more pressing matters to attend to. “Here, put this back on, we must make haste,” he said, picking up her stocking and shoe.

It was what she had dreamed of since she’d been brought here. Rescue. Escape. But Freya stood her ground. He did not frighten her, this Faol warrior, but something about him made her afraid of herself. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“Yes you are,” Eoin said, throwing her bodily over his shoulder.

Chapter 2

“Put me down! I demand you put me down at once, I’m not a sack of potatoes.” Freya felt, rather than heard, his laugh in the shaking of his shoulders. She beat her fists against his bare back. “Put me down!”

“As you wish,” Eoin said, dropping her unceremoniously at his feet. “I take it you want me to leave you here?”

“No! Of course not,” Freya said, annoyed at having her bluff called. “You said you would return me to my father.”

“I will, all in good time, but I have weightier matters at home to attend to which require my presence on Kentarra. If you are to accompany me to my world, you would do well to learn a little respect.”

He was already making his way down the turret stairs, travelling at some speed in his bare feet. “What do you mean, your world?” Freya asked, trailing in his wake.

Eoin paused at the door of the guard’s room to kick a dirk in the direction of the men. “Wait a while before you release yourselves,” he said curtly, “and do not even think of following us.”

Outside, the sky was almost black. Rain was falling in big fat drops. The wind whipped the sea into a broiling mass of white-crested waves. Freya eyed the conditions with some trepidation. “We surely can’t sail in this weather. What are we going to do? Why did you give them a knife? They’ll come after us. Why did you…”

“Do you always ask so many questions? If you were mine I’d be tempted to lock you in a tower myself.” With an exasperated sigh, Eoin threw her once more over his shoulder, setting off towards the beach, stopping only to retrieve his plaid and his weapons from their hiding place behind the rock. His long legs covered the short distance effortlessly. Seconds later Freya found herself sitting inside the boat.

Eoin pushed the craft down from the shingle into the water. A huge wave caught it and tugged it into the depths but somehow he managed to leap aboard, soaking wet, laughing as he undid the sail and took the tiller. “We will be drowned, for sure,” Freya said, gripping the side of the boat as it tilted and rocked, dipped and heaved.

Eoin grinned and pulled the sodden piece of cloth which had stood in place of his plaid from around his waist and threw it overboard. For a brief moment he was gloriously naked, before he clad himself again in his own filleadh beg. “Come sit with me here, you’ll be safe enough,” he said, pulling her to him at the helm.

“Safe!” Freya exclaimed. “Is that some kind of a jest?” She didn’t like the way her body was reacting to his nearness. She didn’t feel at all safe, though she was beginning to think that the sea posed less danger than the man at her side. She tried to edge away, but the narrowness of the seat constrained her. Though the tiller was between them, his thigh touched hers. It was cold in the force of the wind but she could feel heat emanate from his near-naked body.

Eoin scanned the horizon, his night-sight probing the haar-encrusted outlook. “Kentarra is more than a day’s sail from here. Perhaps you’d prefer to ride out the storm on dry land?”

“Of course I would, but where? There is no land anywhere near.”

Eoin smiled with satisfaction as his eyes alighted on the tiny islet, no more than a dot on the horizon. “You just need to know where to look,” he said, adjusting the tiller and the sail.

It was tiny, no more than a large outcrop of rock, but a small stand of trees on the summit offered the prospect of some welcome shelter. They beached the boat and clambered up the steeply shelving shore, then Eoin gathered some wood and made a fire, by which Freya huddled gratefully, spreading her skirts to dry.

Beside her, Eoin was quite unaffected by the weather. Leaning back on his elbows, he looked at Freya afresh. Three months, she had been away from her kinfolk, yet she seemed remarkably self-possessed. “Did they harm you?” he asked.

Freya shrugged. “When they first captured me they threatened to, if I did not submit. But the Earl of Tarbert knows as well as I do that a marriage without consent can easily be annulled.”

“You seem well versed in the laws of matrimony.”

“As an heiress, I’ve little choice. I’m twenty years old, and I feel like I’ve spent my life being pursued, by both fair means and foul. A bride with a bounty such as mine is irresistible, it seems.”