Regan was banging around upstairs when Sonia finally joined her in her bedroom. The six suitcases and one large cosmetics bag they’d purchased three days earlier were all open and littering her bed, her window seat and even the floor.
“The boys will be here soon. You go find the things that you want to take with you. Don’t worry if you miss something. Julianna can send it if you remember something you’d like to have.” Then she paused, whirled on Sonia and exclaimed, “Oh no! The boxes are in the garage. I’ll need to go get them. You! Pack your clothes. I’ll run and do that.”
“Regan, what on earth?” Sonia started but she was talking to no one. In the blink of an eye Regan was gone.
She followed her mother-in-law and found her in the kitchen for some reason struggling with large, flat-folded cardboard boxes and tape.
Regan glanced her way before babbling, “We should have done this before but I didn’t want… just in case…” She hesitated. “Well, obviously, if something happened, you’d be staying here so I didn’t…” She paused again and went on, “Anyway, Callum ordered me to do it and if we don’t get it done by the time he arrives, he won’t be best pleased.”
Even though Sonia had no idea what Regan was talking about she figured that last part was the sorry truth.
Regan continued, “And Caleb said Callum wants to leave for home the minute he gets to the city so we must be ready.”
“Regan, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sonia told her and Regan stopped and looked at her as if perplexed.
“You’re moving to Scotland with Callum,” she replied. “I thought I explained that to you.”
“Yes, but –”
“There’s no time to waste, Sonny.” Regan threw down a box. “You do this. Build the boxes. There’s that bubble wrap stuff and tissue paper for packing in the garage. Anything you want from here, pack it up in the boxes. I’ll see to your clothes.”
“Regan –” Sonia started again but Regan’s phone rang.
She lifted a hand palm up for Sonia to stop speaking and she answered her phone. While listening, the palm went down but she twirled her hand adamantly toward the boxes.
On a sigh (even though Sonia was going nowhere), she started to build the boxes as Regan listened, mumbling, “Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Right.” Regan flipped her phone shut and announced, “We have less time than I expected. The boys will be here in an hour and a half. Let’s get cracking.”
Before Sonia could utter a word, Regan flew up the stairs.
Sonia stood amongst the boxes and decided, for Regan, she’d do as she was asked. She could easily unpack them later when she told Callum she wasn’t moving to Scotland.
An hour and a half later, Sonia stood staring out her window in shock as her six full suitcases, one full cosmetic case, Callum’s three suitcases and five boxes full of her family’s Christmas decorations, her stuffed wolf, her photo albums and a few odds and ends were whisked away by one of Callum’s men.
That’ll make unpacking tonight a bit more difficult, she thought as she bit her lip and worry began to nag her.
Any hope she had of staying put was dashed fifteen minutes later when Callum arrived.
The door opened and Sonia, sitting and enjoying a mug of herbal tea with Regan in the living room, got to her feet, turned to her mate and opened her mouth.
Then she froze and stared.
Callum’s body, hair and clothes were clean although his clothing was wrinkled.
However, the beard that had grown in the weeks she’d been with him was now immensely thick and untrimmed. Further, his hair seemed to have grown tremendously in that short time and it went from overlong to just plain long falling past the collar of his shirt.
Further, his face appeared so exhausted he looked almost haggard, something she would never have guessed as he always seemed alert and energized.
And his eyes were hungry and not in a good way. The lines beside them deeper, and they were positively seething, not with anger but with wrath. A rage so deep, so strong, it emanated from him and filled the room with its terrifying intensity instantly.
He looked wild, even savage and Sonia was frozen to the spot when Callum didn’t look at his mother who had risen at Sonia’s side. He came directly at Sonia and she had the desire to flee, to run away from him as fast as she could. However, her terror was so absolute it felt her feet had grown roots into the floor.
She didn’t move a muscle when he used one arm to hook her brutally at the waist and yank her body so that it crashed into his. Then he used his other hand to twist viciously in her hair causing so much pain it didn’t feel sensuously pleasant, it only felt like pain. Then his mouth slammed down on hers and he kissed her in a way he’d never kissed her before. In a way that Sonia didn’t even know you could kiss.
It was violent and merciless and seizing and even cruel.
Therefore, when his head came up and he glanced dismissively at his mother, Sonia didn’t say a word.
“We’ll see you at home,” he growled, his voice rough with all that was in his eyes, all that was carved in his features and every line of his enraged frame.
Then he took Sonia’s hand and dragged her out to his SUV.
Yes, dragged.
She even tripped twice trying to keep up with his ground-eating strides and he didn’t even glance at her.
She was buckled in and he was speeding casually through the streets before she realized he hadn’t muttered a word to her.
He hadn’t even said hello.
She was too terrified of him to suggest it or say it to him.
Definitely too terrified to tell him she wasn’t going to Scotland.
He took her to an airfield, tossed the keys of the SUV to a waiting Saint and dragged her up the steps into an aircraft.
When she got inside she saw to her shock it was a personal jet. There was a set of four, wide, comfortable seats upholstered in rich, tan leather facing each other over a gleaming wood topped table, four more seats in the back, two on each side of a door. There was a bar and refrigerator on the wall opposite the jet’s door, the bar also made of highly-shined wood where glasses and bottles were in snug, secured shelves. There was a television screen on the wall behind the cockpit. And there was a long, wide, deep-seated couch running the opposite side to the seating area and bar.
Callum turned to her and commanded tersely, “Strap in.”
Looking into his forbidding, hostile eyes, without a peep, Sonia did as she was told. She chose a seat at the back by the window and buckled in.
He stuck his head into the cockpit and said one word, “Go.”
Then he strapped himself in beside Sonia.
She tried to get her heart to stop beating so crazily. She tried to find one thread of courage. She tried to catch a single thought.
She failed at all of these things in the face of this new, fearsome Callum.
When they leveled off in the air, again without saying a word to her, he unbuckled her, picked her up and carried her to the couch.
Sonia tensed as Callum all but tossed her on it then came down on top of her.
With most of his body pinning her between him and the back of the couch, he tucked her face in his neck and, within moments, the tightness left his body, his enormous weight settled into her and he fell fast asleep.
She was shocked at this, shocked silent and still for long minutes.
Then the shock wore off and she realized she was not comfortable nor was she tired, primarily because she was scared out of her mind. But anytime she tried to shift out from under him, his arm tightened reflexively, pulling her further underneath him.
So Sonia gave up and lay mostly under him, trying to get comfortable, sometimes dozing (as he slept for nine hours straight without moving a muscle) but most of the time deciding that she couldn’t live this life.
No matter how good they were, she couldn’t live for the times when Callum remembered she existed and at least attempted to be the mate he didn’t
want to be but it was his duty to be as king. She couldn’t rail against the times when he forgot to do that and was just king.
She couldn’t bear this for a lifetime.
She knew she couldn’t leave but she also couldn’t live like this.
She’d been right all those weeks ago. Living like this would drive her mad.
Before she came to a single conclusion and thus before she made that first plan, Callum woke.
It was moments before the captain announced over the intercom that they would shortly be landing and they needed to take their seats and fasten their seatbelts.
Callum used the restroom at the back as did she, finding it wasn’t a restroom but a full on bathroom, four times the space as in a regular airplane’s. It even had a shower.
When she came out, his arm extended to her, he pulled her into his lap and kissed her, this time slowly, lingeringly, reminding her how good it could be and how much she missed it.
Her heart lurched as her belly tightened but her mind fought against the sweetness of it even as her body rebelled and relaxed into his.
Then he nuzzled her neck, flicking her ear with his nose and he whispered, “Buckle in, baby doll. We’re almost home.”
She did as she was told, the frightening Callum still fresh in her mind even though his voice was no longer harsh, his eyes were no longer hungry or enraged and his warm tone indicated an extreme sense of relief.
When they alighted from the plane, one, tall, dark-haired man was standing beside a hunter green Range Rover that Callum, holding her hand, guided her to immediately.
The man was looking at Sonia curiously but he did not drop to a knee.
He bowed his head deeply to her and to Callum before he lifted his head and, to Sonia, he murmured reverently, his Scottish burr evident even though he spoke two words, “My queen.” When she nodded and gave him a tremulous smile, he grinned at Callum and said, “She’s pretty, your grace.”
“Yes, she is, Drogan,” Callum answered as the man threw Callum a set of keys which Callum caught.
“Good to have you back,” Drogan called as Callum practically pushed Sonia into the left side passenger seat.
“It’s fucking good to be back,” Callum answered, slamming Sonia’s door without bothering to introduce her to Drogan.
“Hail victory, my king,” Drogan went on, his voice was soft but it was also filled with pride and relief.
“Hail victory,” Callum repeated, his voice was threaded with a vein of steel.
Callum drove them through the darkening afternoon of a wooded countryside just as swiftly as he drove them to the airfield hours before.
She wanted to ask him to slow down. She was too numb to speak.
He didn’t bother.
However, finally he said, “There she is.”
Sonia turned her head from her silent, angry, fearful contemplation of the countryside whizzing by on her left to look straight ahead.
On a small rise sat a castle.
In the waning light she saw it. Not exactly large and also not like any castle she’d ever seen in the times Gregor had taken her to France and Germany.
This one was like out of a fairytale.
It had eight (she counted them) turrets upon which long, streaming pennants flew. It seemed to have no straight sides, no sharp angles. It was all rounded with sweeping edges. It didn’t ramble across the rise but was compact and tall, at least three stories except the turrets which were much higher.
She barely got a good look at it before Callum swung around the circular drive which had a small, round fountain dancing in the middle, stopped the Rover and parked.
She also barely got a good look at the two statues (she could swear they were wolves) guarding the banisters on either side of the six (or seven, or even eight) foot wide set of steps. These led to the studded, wooden, arched double doors that seemed fifteen feet tall and had enormous, scrolled, iron hinges.
She also barely got a look at anything in the welcomingly lit interior as he dragged her up a winding, stone staircase lit by sconces on the wall and cut by thin tapestries hanging on the rounded walls.
One flight, two, three, four and on the landing of the fifth he walked them straight into the only room that led straight off the landing. A bedroom that she didn’t see at all.
Because she was concentrating on the fact that Callum was almost tearing her clothes from her body.
“Callum –” she began.
“Quiet,” he ordered in his kingly voice.
“Cal –”
He kissed her.
She struggled. Not against him but against the urge which was fighting to emerge during his deep, heady, hungry kiss. She struggled because she was never going to sleep with him.
Not ever again.
But concentrating on her inner battle, she lost track of him taking off every last stitch of her clothing.
So when she was naked and he had his hands on her bottom, lifted her and threw her on the bed but caught her ankles and yanked her forward at the same time he pulled her legs apart she was losing the fight in her head.
And when Callum, still fully clothed, dropped to his knees beside the bed, that was when Sonia was lost and the urge took over because he bent forward and suddenly his mouth was between her legs.
The soles of her feet planted themselves at the edge of the bed. With a brazenly deep moan of pleasure starting at the core of her, tearing its way up her throat and through her lips, her hips surged up to meet the voracious, consuming demands of his mouth. He cupped her bottom in his big hands and took from her like a man who’d been wandering a desert for days without water and had just dropped to his knees at the pool in an oasis.
In what seemed like seconds, Sonia came against his mouth. Her orgasm was so intense she barely noticed him flipping her to her belly then tugging her hips up. Her knees going into the edge of the bed, he entered her savagely.
The urge devoured her, causing her to reach her arms straight out in front of her and her fingers to fist in the hides there as he took her, rough and fast and hard. Then harder, then harder and she met his every thrust with mindless abandon and reared back in desperation to deepen the contact. Her first orgasm seemed never to stop as the next one came and then the next before he seated himself to the root one last time, filling her full, and growled his release.
But he wasn’t done.
He took her again, Callum on top, Sonia wrapping her limbs around him and letting him ride her, again hard, again fast, again rough, until they both climaxed.
And he took her again, Callum behind her, his hands on her inner thighs holding her suspended and steady for his thrusts as she grasped the headboard of the bed, her head back on his shoulder, her whimpers piercing the air.
And he took her again, Sonia on top and riding his shaft as Callum, sitting up, coaxed her to go faster with one hand on her hip and the other hand cupping her breast and feeding it to his mouth where he tormented her nipple.
And lastly, he took her again, but neither of them climaxed as they were spent, lying on their sides, spooning, his shaft sliding tenderly, almost lazily, in and out of her and his arms were wrapped around her tight.
“Sleep, baby doll,” he whispered after he seated himself to the hilt and remained there.
Exhausted, all she could do was as he commanded.
Now, she lay in his bed in his castle in Scotland, her body exhausted and aching but content by his play. Content in the knowledge that he again fell asleep inside her and she again fell asleep full of him. All of which she told herself she would never be and would never again do.
Humiliation crept into her muscles alongside the ache and the bitterness that guarded her heart turned to hatred.
The tears of that bitter hatred started stinging the backs of her eyes when she heard a knock on the door.
She froze and stared, silent, hoping whoever it was (for it wasn’t Callum, she would smell him, and anyway, he would never bother to knock) would go aw
ay.
They didn’t.
The head of a tall, very pretty woman peeked around the door. She had dark hair burnished with coppery highlights and a huge smile on her face.
“You’re awake!” she said brightly, her words also softened by a Scottish burr, and she threw open the door, balancing a tray in one hand and closing the door behind her with a hefty kick of her foot.
Sonia sat up, holding the hides to her bared breasts. The woman, wearing jeans, boots and a pretty, bright orange, woolly sweater with a fluffy scarf in orange and red and purple stripes wrapped around her neck, walked into the room. Then she put the tray on the bedside table and dropped immediately to a knee, head lowered.
Sonia stared at her, stunned.
Then she remembered what she was supposed to do.
“Please rise,” she invited and, with abundant energy that startled Sonia so much she jumped, the woman surged to her feet.
“My queen!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been waiting ages! Everyone has! Ages and ages and ages! And look at you! You’re even prettier than I expected!”
“Um…” Sonia muttered, taken aback by her exuberance and, of course, the small fact she was naked in bed and confronted with a stranger. “Thank you.”
The woman burst out laughing while she turned and rushed to Sonia’s six suitcases (and one cosmetics case) that somehow were all lined up with Callum’s cases in the room.
“She’s thanking me because she’s pretty,” the woman said to no one. “Hilarious!” she cried.
Then she started opening suitcases in apparent abandon. She was digging through Sonia’s possessions while Sonia stared in shock, uncertain what to do and unable to do anything seeing as she was naked and the woman had four inches and at least fifty pounds on her.
“I’m Maraleena. I’m Drogan’s mate,” she announced while opening another suitcase and still digging. “Drogan is Steward of the King’s Estates.” She snatched something out of a suitcase and whirled, brandishing Sonia’s stretchy, black, cotton nightie with the deep hem of black lace and matching lace covering the cotton at the bosoms. “Ah ha!” she cried and rushed to Sonia. “You can put that on. Then you need to eat. Everything. King Callum said he wanted me to bring down a clean plate.”