Reclaimed (A Highland Historical Trilogy) (The MacKay Banshees 1-3) by Kerrigan Byrne Read Free Book Online

herself away from him. His arms tightened as though to hold her prisoner, but she used her Banshee ability to levitate away from him, above the water. “Nay, that shouldn’t have happened.” She’d not meant to cause him such extreme pleasure; he’d found it on his own.
    “Why not?”
    “Because I’m here to kill you, not kiss you,” she snapped.
    A lazy smile slanted across his lips. Katriona tried not to look at them, to remember how they felt on hers. “Well, if ye canna do one, what’s wrong with the other? I’ve wanted to do that for longer than ye can imagine.”
    “With the woman you are bound to marry a few doors away?”
    Rory winced, a hand coming up to rub new lines that appeared in his forehead. “All of that was set into motion before yesterday, before I knew ye were still—”
    “ Alive ?” she bit out. “Because I’m not, Rory. I’m dead. And there’s nothing in our past or future but death. Yours if I have my way.” Despite what they’d just experienced, the debt of vengeance still had to be paid. The blood of her sisters called for it.
    And hers still did too, didn’t it?
    “But… ye canna kill me. Ye said so yerself.”
    “When did you die?” She repeated her earlier question. How in the bloody hell had they strayed so far from her purpose?
    “What does it matter?” He sat forward in the bath, all the remnants of pleasure drained from his features and shadows took its place.
    A part of Katriona mourned the loss. Her emotions felt much like the water in the tub, displaced by Rory’s unrelenting mass until they spilled over.
    “ Tell me, ” she keened, her Banshee voice splitting the air between them like a blade.
    Rory cringed and held up his hands. “All right, I’ll tell ye what I think happened,” he promised.
    Katriona crossed her arms, valiantly keeping her eyes on his face and away from the enticing curve of each individual stomach muscle as they flexed and glistened with his movement. She’d never forget what it had been like to have all that power beneath her. At her mercy. And that fact irritated her to no end.
    “I was a lad, maybe all of sixteen or so,” Rory began. “Angus and I were boar hunting on Cape Wrath.”
    Lip curling at his brother’s name, Katriona bit back a snarl.
    “I’d had so much to drink the night before and it’d been the first time I’d—” Rory’s gaze snagged on hers. “We’ll I’ll say my head wasna on the task.” He shifted in the water, his eyes sharpening.
    “We’d cornered the boar between a rock crevice and a sea cliff. We had to climb down to kill it. I lost my grip on a mossy hand-hold and fell some distance onto the rocks below hitting my head and breaking my arm.”
    A bleak distance blanketed the observant clarity in his features. “I remember floating above it all, looking down at my brother and wondering why he was so afraid. He skidded down the rocks, screaming my name. Then, he hoisted me over his shoulder and carried me up the cliff face to the safety of the grasses.” Rory shook his head and let out a mystified breath. “I weighed at least a stone more than he, even then. It should have been impossible for him to lift me, but I’ll be buggered if he didna.” A sad, wry laugh burst from his chest, and his gentle sorrow released something inside of Katriona that reminded her of when the frozen Highland lochs thawed and broke into jagged pieces of floating ice.
    “It was in that moment I truly I realized that I was watching him try to save my life, from outside my skin. I felt the pull of my body, but also the presence of a nether world. It terrified me, that dark unknown, and I knew I wasna done here, that I had to live. So, when Angus jumped on his horse and went for help, I decided I needed to be inside my body when they returned.” Rory shrugged. “That’s the last thing I remember for a full month. Maybe more. That entire summer’s a wee hazy.” He reached up and massaged the back of his scalp,