Free Must Love Kilts by Allie Mackay

kissed by the Viking Slayer.

Chapter 4
    Early the next day, across time and in a far-distant place, Magnus strode from Badcall Castle, making for a certain thick-walled cottage. Nestled atop a pine-clad knoll, Windhill Cottage required visitors to climb a rough track through dense bracken and to be wary of hidden bog slicks. But there were rewards for the effort. One of the finest was the welcoming curl of peat smoke that always rose from Windhill’s thatched roof.
    A great, huge-bearded seer dwelt at the cottage, preferring seclusion to cast his runes, watch the roll of the sea, listen to the wind, or whatever else he did in his endeavors to unravel the mysteries of fate.
    This man was Magnus’s reason for leaving his hall on such a chill and drizzly morn. And why he carried a basket of smoked herring on his arm.
    Orosius was an unlikely prophet, but skilled at reading signs in elemental forces. Or through other means he didn’t care to divulge.
    Most times, Magnus appreciated the seer’s wisdom.
    Just now he only wanted to put an end to Calum’s blether about the realm of the dead and a naked, golden-haired siren he knew wasn’t Liana.
    He hoped she wasn’t the temptress conjured by Donata.
    The lushly curved vixen who’d appeared to him twice now. Once when he’d cut down Godred, and—he frowned—in the heated dream that robbed his sleep and left him so angry this morn. More than that, for ever since she’d visited him in the night, his tongue ached to tease and taste her. He’d wakened to find his entire body so tight that even breathing was an agony.
    His loins ...
    Magnus’s scowl deepened. He quickened his pace, glad for the damp air, the cold wind fretting his plaid.
    And for Frodi’s loyal presence as the old dog trailed him up the steep rise. A journey that, thanks to the spume-flecked maid from the sea, had never struck him as so torturous.
    Such intense, bone-aching lust hadn’t seized him since the first time he’d thrust his head beneath a woman’s skirts and breathed in the tangy musk of female desire. It galled him that he now felt an overwhelming urge to fill his lungs with the naked beauty’s feminine dew. Shoving the desire from his mind, he avoided a jumble of loose, moss-covered rocks and then leapt over a narrow, rushing burn.
    Without doubt, the sea siren had cast magic over him.
    He’d have been fine if she hadn’t taunted him by placing her hands on her hips, offering him such a grand view of her full, round breasts and her shapely, succulent thighs. The lush triangle of dark gold curls that set his blood to simmering.
    Even then, he might have remained unaffected.
    But his dream self had kissed her.
    And she’d sighed her pleasure, parting her soft, ripe lips. Somehow, before he realized what was happening, his tongue was tangling with hers and they were sharing breath, the intimacy scalding him.
    If the vixen hadn’t wished to seduce him, why had she kissed him back? Why deepen the kiss and let her tongue twirl so hotly with his, if not to drive him to madness?
    Why burst into his life wearing naught but pearls of water and sea foam?
    She’d even leaned into him when he’d seized her, melting against him so that he felt the delicious burn of her tightened nipples. The soft, beckoning heat of her woman’s place and the silky-wet delights waiting beneath her tangle of golden female curls.
    He might have been dreaming, trapped in the thrall of Donata’s curse, but he could almost taste the naked beauty now. He knew she’d be honeyed nectar on his tongue. Sakes, he’d kill a man just to run a finger down the slick, molten center of her.
    And that need fashed him greatly.
    Especially as he was certain Sigurd Sword Breaker or Donata Greer had worked some kind of dark, carnal magic to send the seductress to plague him.
    Donata would laugh when he succumbed to the vixen’s charms. Sigurd would wait until he mounted her and then plunge a blade through his back, piercing his