Chapter Six
DECLÁN SWORE HIS heartstood still the entire time Riona climbed down Raghnall’s castle wall. While she presented quite the sight from this angle, fear squelched any possibility of arousal. Well, anything did, really. He had spent the better part of the past few hours flirting with Siobhán and trying to find Luna when he would have much rather saved Riona and taken off.
Because she most certainly needed saving despite her current stunt.
A stunt well timed as this was when Raghnall and Siobhan religiously communed with the gods every night. While he found it curious, he couldn’t be more grateful he had sensed this was the best place to wait for her if she decided to escape.
More grateful still when she made it all the way to the bottom only to nearly step off a cliff had he not grabbed her. Before she could say a word, he pulled her back against him under a rock overhang, put a hand over her mouth, and warned her to be quiet, only to tense when her secret slammed into him.
“You were hiswife,” he exclaimed.
She mumbled against his hand and struggled to break free, but he held fast, trying to ignore his response to her soaked body despite his shock. Trying to ignore the feel of her backside squirming against him even though nothing would likely come of it. But what if it finally did? If he could finally, at last, get properly aroused by someone?
“Whose wife?”she shouted into his mind. She lurched against him again, but he didn’t budge.“Let me go!”
“Quiet,” he hissed in her ear. “Lest ye draw Raghnall and Siobhán from prayer. Do that, and ye’ll never see yer way off this land. Never see yer sisters again unless ‘tis to end them at Raghnall’s behest. Is that what ye want?” He knew what bothered her most, though, so he made things clear. “I didnotkill yer dog, Riona, nor would I have had I found her.”
“You didn’t?”
“Nay.”
“Then where is she?”
“I don't know, for she is a slippery wee thing.”
Thankfully, that seemed to make sense because she relaxed ever-so-slightly against him.
“Can I uncover your mouth?” he asked, instinctively switching from ‘ye’ to ‘you’ to make things seem more normal.
She nodded.“Please.”
So he did but didn’t let her go. Not yet. Not when he finally had her in his arms. Especially not when he realized she very likelydidbelong to Raghnall. That the King of Munster had every right to keep her with him.
Or, so that would be his way of looking at it.
“Raghnall,” she whispered hoarsely, clearly realizing her secret now too. “We couldn’t have...I couldn’t have....”
“Married him in another life?” he said, as distraught as her. “Why not, considering how drawn you were to him when you first arrived?” He hated to ask but had to know despite what he knew about Unnamed Ones. “Or was that all a lie? A means to get closer to your enemy to see what you could discover?”
She cleared her throat. “A little of both, if I were to be honest.”
“So youcanlie?”
