The Morrigan: Damaged Deities (35 page)

“I’m not even going to ask.”

“Look,” Bev’s voice dipped and Morrie could tell she was holding her phone close to her mouth. “Shit’s about to go down for you, too.  Trust your instincts, okay.  And remember, he’s always loved you.”

“What?” Morrie cried.  But the connection was cut. 

Morrie stared out at the corral and never felt so helpless.  Her prophetic sister had her hands full.  Her magic had gone AWOL and apparently something big was going to happen to her.

Morrie blew out a steadying breath.

“Fuck my life.”

S
he had done it again.

Without even opening his eyes, Kade knew that he’d been left alone in bed.  Again. 

He’d be pissed about it if he didn’t feel so much better than he did yesterday. 

Morrie had that affect on him. 

He’d start out angry at her for her actions, her skiddishness, but then as soon as he was near her all rational thought seemed to leave his mind. 

Regardless of how her presence improved his spirits, Kade was not going to let the lass off so easily.

After showering and dressing in a rush, he marched downstairs, determined to teach the lass a lesson once and for all. 

It seemed all the windows in the manor were open, their curtains drawn back to let the rare sight of the sun and cool breeze inside.  For a late October morning, it was a bit warm and Lorna took advantage of that by airing out the house. 

Kade passed the always-busy housekeeper bent over the kitchen sink, her sleeves pushed up past her elbows as she scrubbed away at a large pot. 

Without turning away from her task, Lorna said, “She’s at the stables.”

The old lady was either becoming a psychic or everyone at the manor was aware of Kade’s obsession with the little American. 

Pressing his lips together, Kade threw open the kitchen door and stepped out into the yard. 

He covered the small trip from the manor to the stables quickly and came upon Morrie just as she was turning towards him.  As if she anticipated an attack.

The anger must have been written on his face for she threw up her hands and took a step back. “Whatever you’re about to—”

“Just once,” Kade cut her off approaching so that she backed up into the stall gate. He leaned against it on either side, caging her within his arms. “Just once I’d like tae wake up and no’ find myself alone.  Ye will no’ do that again, Morrie!”

Fire lighted her round eyes, at once offended and possibly aroused, before that scowl of hers dug its way on her pale brow.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do, you Neanderthal!”

He shook his head once, biting down on his frustration.

“I doona mean tae!  But ye canno’ keep treating me like some cheap one-night-stand, rather than the best thing ye’ve had between yer thighs and yet to have inside ye.  And I stress
yet
.” He growled the last word and by the way her eyes widened, she knew it was a promise, not a threat.

Though her cheeks colored, she crossed her arms over her chest and shifted her weight to one hip.  Rolling her eyes, she glanced away with a twist of her lips and said, “It wasn’t…that great.”

The little liar.

The world raged with his shock and anger. 

Kade knew she was lying, but saw red nonetheless. 

He knew because of the false expression on her face and the light stutter he heard in her heartbeat. 

Because she always paused just before she spoke her lie and she had paused when she spoke those blasphemous words. 

“Ye lil’ liar,” he seethed. “Ye know as well as I do, I’ve ruined ye for any other.  Just as ye have ruined me.

A moment of confused panic before she quickly blinked it away—an odd reaction. 

But then she scoffed, her mouth opening and closing.  “I wouldn’t go that far.” 

She couldn’t even look at him! 

She was awful at this and while it lessened the blow to his pride, her insisting on lying to him only enraged him more. 

With an affected boredom, she lifted one shoulder.

“It was okay.”

The wood of the gate creaked under his grip, threatening to splinter and dissolve. 

He wanted to strangle her.  It didn’t matter that just being in her presence made him lighter.  That she made him whole.  Right now he wanted to throttle the infuriating lass.

He lowered his head and leveled a stern glare at her, pausing a moment so she fully understood how serious the warning in his next words were.

“Take it back.”

She frowned and exasperated, pulled her face back from him. “I will not.”

With her eyes darkening and her lips in a pout, she looked like a petulant child and behaved like one, too.

Something sinister and dark stirred and he knew she could see it in his eyes.  He gave her one last warning.

“Take it back or I’ll make ye.”

She frowned but just before Kade moved to take her over his knee, she threw up her hands.

“Okay, I take it back,” she rushed the words, keeping him at arms-length. I take it back and I’ll make it up to you.”

Taking a step back, Kade scowled.  What she playing a trick?

Her blue eyes gazed up at him, full of vulnerability and entreat.  “I really do mean it.  You were right, you are the best I’ve had.  And if you help me trap that horse tonight,” her hand moved to cup his cock, her touch stealing his breath, “I’ll let you inside me.”

It was a threat.  It was a promise. 

It was going to happen.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

“It is well that war is so terrible,otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”

Robert E. Lee

“It’s going to start raining again.”

Morrie glanced up at the cloudy night sky and nodded her agreement. 

She was less concerned with the prospect of rain and more at the look of concern and barely masked fear on Kade’s face. 

It wasn’t until they were trudging their way through the high grass of the forest outlying the lake that Morrie remembered the way Kade’s youngest brother died. 

Rolling her eyes at her own stupidity, she slowed down her pace.

“You know, you don’t really have to do this,” she said to Kade’s back, watching as his big body moved with surprising grace through the brush and around the fallen branches. 

The thin material of his white cotton t-shirt clung to his torso, highlighting the defined movements of the muscles in his back each time he bent under a branch or reached to move the overgrowth out of her way.  He was like a beast himself, but one made of dangerous beauty and power. 

Power he knew too well how to wield. 

“I know what I said earlier,” she explained, “but you don’t have to come with me if this is too hard for you.”

He glanced over his shoulder with a look like he thought her crazy.  Maybe he was right. 

She certainly thought that way of herself after going through ten stages of emotion over his earlier behavior. 

He’d had a look of dominance in his eyes when he stood close, daring her to continue to lie.  In him was a will forged of greater metal than iron.  There had been a fight in him and she knew.  She knew Kade would continue to fight for her, to fight for them.

Chulainn wouldn’t have made the effort.  He would have thought her an insolent woman and walked away.  Kade was proving more the warrior than Morrie had expected.

And she wasn’t quite sure what to think about that.

That frown of his followed her while they trudged the rest of the way to the lake, though it had transformed along the way.  Turned its attention to some other unwitting target in the dark, though what, she didn’t know. 

“The last time I walked these lands, I go’ caught in a bog not far from here,” Kade gestured to a grassy area on the horizon.

What he said sounded familiar to her.  Morrie looked at him. “What were you doing?”

“Chasing a cow that go’ loose.  Took me damn near all day.”

And then Morrie recalled one of her first conversations with Lorna, her first ride to the manor as Lorna went on and on about her master. 

With realization, Morrie closed her eyes and smiled. “She’d been talking about
you
.”

“What’s that?” Kade asked. 

Superman and Clark Kent had been Kade and Kamden.  Or maybe just Kade,

Morrie shook her head and said, “Nothing.  Nevermind.”

They were getting closer to the water.  Morrie could smell it in the air.  Beyond the rain and grass, the loch had its own scent…murky, mossy, deadly. 

She knew its rocky shore wasn’t much further ahead. 

“We’re almost there.  I’ve seen him a couple of times here, so maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“About time someone does,” Kade quipped.  She threw him a glare that he accepted with a shameless grin.

Above their heads the moon peeked through the thickening clouds.  It would be full in just a few days. 

Her ever-haunting reminder of her waning time in Scotland, Morrie now glared at the glowing rock and silently cursed its timing.

Maybe she wasn’t ready to leave yet.  Maybe she wanted to see if Kade could rid her of her past, replace her memories with new ones. 

After two thousand years, maybe it was time to finally move on.

But she wouldn’t really know if she and Kade could work until she got this horse out of the way.

A noise in the distance to her left—a branch snapping?  Morrie took off in a sprint towards the sound.

“Morrie, wait!” Kade cried, his footfall thundering behind her, but she was too fast. 

Her magic might be buried away beneath centuries of humanity, but her speed was still supernatural. 

Just to her right she knew she drew near the loch, following parallel to its shores until the trail suddenly veered inside the woods.

Before her in the dark she could sense movement. 

She pushed herself faster. 

Just as a clearing opened up, dead-ending at a tall alcove of rocks, Morrie skidded to a stop.

Hunched and quivering against the stone, a small rabbit shook with fear, his large, black eyes quivering up at her.

Morrie’s shoulders slumped.

“Sorry, little fella.  I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Turning around, she made her way back to where she had left Kade.

H
e lost her. 

One moment Kade had Morrie in his sights, he always had an eye on her and then the next she was gone.  Took off after whatever sound spooked her and now he couldn’t find her.

The infuriating, hot-footed lass!

Maddening woman—to take off into the dark so.  Out alone in the woods where a monster lurked. 

Fear splintered Kade’s heart and set him storming through the woods like an unleashed lion. 

“Morrie!”

Being so close to the loch didn’t help. 

Ever since Kristian’s death, Kade couldn’t go near it without breaking down.  His intuitive little horse trainer knew that, too. 

That’s why she had given him an out. 

But it wasn’t just sex that was his prize at the end of the night, though the thought of it had taken up permanent residence in his mind.