“The witch happened. Months I’d been in Kintyre, content spending much of that time alone. I’d been given word that someone had a message for me about a ship bound for America. I was to meet them in town at the tavern. I sat in the back with a view of the door, waiting. What I didn’t know at the time was a witch had disguised herself as a bar wench and kept plying me with ale. It was too late when I noticed no one was coming and I was drunk.” He paused before continuing. “We don’t get drunk like humans. The only thing that can get us drunk would be a demon potion.” He growled in what I assumed was frustration as it pained him to relive the past. “Then I saw someone. The pull was strong, much like we feel for each other. I stumbled out the door with the bar wench on my heels. She urged me on with little whispers about how it would feel to satisfy that urge I was feeling with the woman I’d spotted.”
He sighed before continuing. “I was too far gone to stop myself. I saw the young woman go into one of the small houses. I meant to ask her what the devil had paid her to trance me. But when I snagged her arm, what little control I had was gone. I woke the next morning with the poor girl cowering in the corner. Her father came raging in about me stealing her honor. I gave him all the coin I had and made him promise he’d let her marry the man of her choosing.”
Though he hadn’t said it, I could feel his guilt. “Was she unwilling?”
He shrugged. “I don’t think so, but I don’t remember. Not that it changed anything. I’d broken a vow and lain with a woman I couldn’t marry.” He rubbed at his eyes, the ones that held so much anguish. His voice broke. “I didn’t know I left her with child. I didn’t go back to town, choosing to stay in the castle and do penance until the day of the battle.”
I circled back to the start of his story. “So how did you hear the child and know he was yours?”
“There is a language our order speaks. It isn’t taught. It is known to us from our creation. It can’t be heard by human ears.” That was why no one else had reacted to the child’s cries, I thought. “We aren’t born, not in the way humans are. To hear a child speak the language confirmed who he was, especially when I stood at his dead mother’s feet. Even in death, that feeling, the witchery we feel now, was there.”
This piece of history was haunting him, much like the ghost in this castle. I bet he’d relived that memory a hundred times over since then.
I stepped forward. “If you had a chance to do it all over again, would you?”
With no hesitation, he said, “No.”
Surprised by that, I asked, “And lose your son?”
“He’d be better off. It is forbidden to be with a human. If a child results from such acts, they are hunted and killed.”
Horrified, I asked, “Why?”
He finally looked up at me. “Some vows I can’t break. I’ve told ye too much as it is.”
I didn’t mince words with my next question. “Are you an angel?”
He didn’t give me an answer and stood. “Ye should go to bed.”
“Duncan,” I said, snagging his arm.
We both felt it. The longer we were there in the room, the more the fire between us was ready to explode even if my hands were touching fabric.
“Let me go, Elin.” It was the first time he’d said my name and butterflies took flight in my belly from the sound of it. “The longer I’m in your presence, the harder it is to maintain control. I dinnae want to lose control like that ever again. It dinnae matter if no man in this land, including the king himself, would fault me for giving in to my desire, it’s not who I am.”
Too bad for him my control had snapped the moment I touched him. I got on my toes and pressed my lips to his.
“Damn you,” he said right before he scooped me up and walked me straight into the wall. His shaft, hard as a rock, was pressed just at the right spot to make me moan. He ground into me as he slid his tongue between my parted lips.
Then just as suddenly he set me back on my feet and put three feet of distance between us. He swiped a hand over his mouth. “This isn’t some fantasy. This is the devil’s work.” He held up his arm. “My kind can’t be marked. I will not be fooled again. Ye stay away from me.”