Page 42 of The Sinner
“Magnus wants ye back alive, that’s all,” Fingall said. “We’ll have some fun with ye on the way back.”
* * *
Alex whistled to himself as he walked down the side of the hill through the tall, wet grass. Glynis wasn’t just another woman, but this was just another affair for him. All he’d needed was some time to roam on his own to realize he’d exaggerated it all in his mind. When it came to women, it didn’t pay to think too much.
A scream echoed off the hills and reverberated through his bones.
Glynis.
Alex ran hard for the camp, icy fear coursing through his veins. The camp was empty. Without pausing, he continued running in the direction from which her scream had come.
“Alex!” Glynis screamed his name this time.
His feet pounded down the path toward the lake. He drew his claymore as he burst through the low-hanging trees into the clearing.
The details of the scene before him ticked in his mind in an instant. Glynis, her dirk in one hand, a stick in the other. A body at her feet. Six warriors, their weapons out, in a half circle in front of her. They had Glynis backed up against the horses, who were rearing dangerously close to her.
Alex shouted to draw the men’s attention as he ran straight at them. As he jumped over a log, he threw his first dirk. It caught the man closest to Glynis in the chest and dropped him. Another of the attackers reached for her, and Alex threw his second dirk into the man’s throat.
Four men left. Alex swung his claymore into the one brandishing an axe. When Rosebud reared, he shoved another under her hooves. Red fury pounded through him as he swung his claymore into yet another.
“Move away from the horses before they trample ye!” he shouted at Glynis, as the last man came at him.
Alex pulled another dirk from his boot as he ducked below the swing of the man’s sword. As he came up, he buried the dirk under the man’s rib cage.
The last attacker was down. Alex blew out his breath.
Then Glynis screamed again. When he turned, Alex saw that the man he’d thought was dead when he first came into the clearing had gotten to his feet. Blood poured from a wound on his head as he stumbled toward her. She swung too soon with her dirk.
Alex was running hard toward them as the wounded man caught Glynis’s arm that held her knife. Before the man could pull Glynis in front of him to use her as a shield, Alex skewered the wretch. He pried the dying man’s fingers from Glynis’s wrist and pulled her into his arms.
“Are ye all right, lass?” he asked when he could get the words out.
“Aye,” Glynis said into his shoulder. “They were Magnus’s men.”
Christ have mercy. He never should have left her for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a shaky voice. “I didn’t realize I could be seen from the loch.”
“It’s my fault. I never should have brought ye.” Alex was so accustomed to these sorts of dangers that he hadn’t recognized how foolish it was to take a woman by himself on this journey.
“I did hide,” she said, “but then I saw one of them hurting the horses.”
“O shluagh!” Alex called on the fairies for help. “Ye risked your life for the horses?”
“He was whipping Rosebud.” Glynis leaned back and looked at him with wide eyes. “I only saw the one man at first, and I knew ye hadn’t gone far. As soon as I saw the others, I screamed for ye.”
“What if I hadn’t gotten here in time?” In the blink of an eye, one of those men could have slit her throat or had her on the ground with her gown up to her waist. “Ye are a danger to yourself, woman.”
He was furious with her. And at the same time, he wanted her so badly his teeth ached.
* * *
The hillside was covered with wildflowers, with a few sheep grazing here and there.
“I thought you had tired of me,” Glynis said, in her usual direct way, as she lay in his arms.
After the attack, Alex had brought Glynis straight up to the top of the highest hill where he could see for miles and miles. Once he was certain no one else would surprise them, he’d made love to her first frantically and then quite thoroughly.
