Donna Grant: Dangerous Highlander

“Lucan?”

There was no time to explain to Fallon, the eldest of them, what Lucan planned. The girl’s life was at stake. He hurried from the castle, unmindful of the rain and wind that whipped at his hair and clothes.

He ran under what was left of the gate house when he heard her scream as the soil moved beneath her. He leapt into the air and landed a few feet from her just as her hand closed over a necklace and the ground began to give way.

Lucan dove across the space and latched onto her wrist before she could plummet to the rocks and water below. Hanging by his hand, her feet dangling over open air, she blinked up at him, her dark eyes wide with fear.

“Hang on!” he yelled over the storm.

Her muddied hands slipped in his grasp and her feet scrambled for purchase in the rocks of the cliff. She screamed, her tears mixing with the rain.

“Please!” she cried. “Dinna drop me!”

Lucan used his strength and began to pull her up when the earth moved once more. He held on to her as he slipped over the side. At the moment when they both would have fallen, his fingers grabbed hold of a rock.

He looked from the edge of the cliff to the woman. He would have to swing her up, it was the only way to save her, but if he did . . . she would see him for what he really was.

“I’m slipping!”

He couldn’t get a better grip without dropping her, but if he didn’t do something soon, she would slide out of his grasp. He tightened his hold, but the more he fought against losing her, the more she slipped.

Until suddenly he held nothing.

Her scream echoed through him, wrenching his gut. Without a second thought he unleashed the god within him, the monster he kept locked away. In two leaps down the cliff, he was at the bottom amid the rocks with enough time to hold out his arms and catch her.

He waited for her to screech in terror once she saw his face, but when he looked, he found her eyes closed. She had fainted.

Lucan let out a sigh. He hadn’t thought beyond saving the girl, but now that she was in his arms, he didn’t regret it. It had been decades since he had held a woman, and her lush curves and soft body made him instantly hard. And wanting.

The rain continued its assault, but Lucan couldn’t stop staring at her heart-shaped face and high cheekbones. The gentle curve of her neck as her head tilted toward him.

“Shite,” he mumbled, and bounded back up the cliffs.

He landed as softly as he could so as not to disturb the woman and found Quinn watching him with narrowed eyes full of malice and hate. It was a look he had gotten used to over the course of three hundred years.

“Well, well, Brother,” Quinn said between clenched teeth. “What have you been keeping from us?”

Lucan pushed past him and strode to the castle through the driving rain. There would be time for questions later.

Quinn caught up with him. “What in God’s bones do you think you’re doing? You can’t bring her to the castle.”

“I canna leave her in the weather, either,” Lucan argued. “Do you want to take her to the village like this? Besides, she’s fainted, and I don’t know where she lives.”

“It’s a mistake, Lucan. Heed my words.”

They might be monsters, but that didn’t mean he had to act like one. For too long they had hidden in the castle, watching the world through the windows of their crumbling home. This was his one chance to do something good, and he wasn’t about to pass it up.

Not when she feels this delicious in my arms .

Lucan cursed his body and tamped down any more thoughts of the woman’s full breast pressed against him or her scent of heather and earth that filled his senses. The soaked material of her gown molded to her body like a second skin and gave him a glimpse of a hardened nipple.

He swallowed, wanting to close his lips over the tiny bud and suckle. His balls tightened and his blood heated until he shook with need.

With a kick, he opened the castle door and walked into the great hall. Fallon sat up from lying on the bench in the center of the room and raised a dark brow in question.

“Lucan, I’m drunk, but I’m not inebriated enough to miss the fact you have a woman in your arms. In the castle. Which isna allowed, I might add.”

Lucan ignored his brother and took the stairs two at a time to his chamber. It was one of the only ones in good enough condition to put the girl in. Fallon never used his chamber, and Quinn had destroyed his in one of his many fits of rage. None of the others had ever been seen to.

There hadn’t been a need.

Once Lucan laid her on the bed, he built up the fire to help warm her and tried to calm his raging body. The need, the hunger , he felt for her alarmed him. When he straightened, he wasn’t surprised to find Fallon and Quinn standing in his doorway.

“Should we undress her?” Fallon asked, his eyes focused on the girl. “She looks soaked through.”

“She is.” But Lucan wasn’t about to test himself with that kind of temptation. Not until he held his hunger in check. His hands fisted just thinking about pulling the material away from her body and drinking in the sight of her creamy skin. Would her nipples be as dark as her hair?

Quinn stepped forward and lengthened his claws. “I’ll remove her gown.”

With lightning speed Lucan moved between his brother and the bed on the opposite wall. The girl was his responsibility. If he left her to Quinn he would likely tear her in two with his wrath, and Fallon would forget her when he turned to his next bottle of wine.

“Leave her to me,” Lucan said.

Quinn’s lips pulled back in a snarl. “All these years you’ve lectured us on how I’ve given in to the god inside when all along, Brother , you’ve done the same.”

Fallon ran a hand down his face and blinked his red-rimmed eyes. “What are you talking about, Quinn?”

“If you’d stay off the wine long enough you would have known,” Quinn bit out.

Fallon’s dark green gaze, so like their father’s, narrowed on Quinn. “The wine is better than what you’ve become.”

Quinn laughed, the sound mirthless and hollow. “At least I know what day it is. Tell me, Fallon, do you recall what you did yesterday? Oh, wait. It was the same thing as the day before and the day before that.”

“And what have you done besides tear up everything Lucan builds?” Fallon’s eyes snapped with fire, and a muscle in his jaw jumped with his anger. “You cannot control the beast long enough to take a piss.”

Quinn smirked. “Let’s find out.”

“Enough!” Lucan bellowed when the two took a step toward each other. “Get out if you’re going to fight.”

Fallon chuckled, the sound empty. “You know I won’t fight.”

“That’s right,” Quinn said, resentment lacing his voice. “We wouldn’t want the great Fallon MacLeod to tempt his god.”

Fallon closed his eyes and turned away, but not before Lucan saw the despair in his elder brother’s eyes. “We all have our curses to carry, Quinn. Leave Fallon be.”

“I can take care of myself,” Fallon said, and faced Lucan. Fallon glanced from the girl to Lucan. “What were you thinking, bringing her here? You know no human can enter our domain, Lucan.”

The girl shifted on the bed, and all three of them stilled, watching to see if she would wake. When she didn’t, Lucan blew out a breath and motioned for them to leave.

“I’ll be down in a moment,” he promised.

Once they were gone, he pulled off her sodden shoes. He needed to get her out of her gown lest she caught a chill, but he didn’t trust his body—or his hands—to keep away from the temptation of her curves.

Her hair, a glorious chestnut, had darkened with the rain. He moved a lock of hair that stuck to the side of her cheek and marveled at the feel of her smooth skin. Her face, fair and unblemished, captivated him with her high forehead and delicate structure.