Page 55 of Darro

“Okay.” She thought of what she would write about the battle with the spiders in her notebook, and then got an entirely different idea. “I need to go back to the guest room.”

Once Darro told them all the spiders had been destroyed and the zed enchantment had been broken, Ben happily stripped out of his sour-smelling suit, and helped Una and Ulf out of the soaked burlap bags he’d put over their clothes.

“At least the vinegar kept us from being bitten,” he said as he looked all over the hunter’s face. “I was so scared I’d lose you. I’d rather become a zombie than see that happen to you.”

“Lass, would you give us a moment?” Ulf asked, and then dragged Ben by the hand into the storeroom at the back. Kicking the door shut, he advanced on him with a dangerously serious expression.

Ben held up his hands in surrender. “I probably should have let you go after Els instead of making you stay with me—oof.”

The hunter jerked him away from the crate he’d collided with and sat him down on a stool. “Stop talking, Benedict. ’Tis my turn now.”

He nodded and tried not to cringe.

“I love you both, but I’m weary of waiting,” Ulf said. “I dinnae care what the clan thinks, or what the other vassals say. We chose each other, and ’tis unlikely we shall hold another binding ceremony. If the world’s coming to an end, then I want my husband and our wife in our bed with me when that happens.”

“You know Elspeth wants to be formally married,” he reminded him.

“I dinnae care.” He took hold of Ben’s red curls in a tight grip as he leaned down, letting his mouth hover a scant inch above his. “I want you naked in my arms, so I may touch and kiss and fack you senseless. Then her. Then watch you two together. Then love as three, all at once. Just as we’ve ever and always wanted.”

“I know.” Ben understood how a brush with death could make someone hypersexual, but the hunter had always been like this. “It’s been hard on you, too. We just have to be patient a little longer.”

“I’ve no more patience, Benedict. Indeed, I’d fack you right here, were she with us. I intend fack you both this night, no matter what you prattle.” He kissed him hard. “You’re mine, both of you. Now you go and get her, and explain, and make her understand. When I see her again, all I intend to do is love her—and you.”

Ben nodded, and hugged him for a long moment before rising and walking out into the workroom, where the maid was standing over an empty bucket. “Una, where was the last place you saw Elspeth?”

“Near the laird’s chamber.” She grimaced as she squeezed her wet apron into the bucket. “If you dinnae need my aid, healer, I’d like to go bathe and change.”

“I’ll go with her and assure she arrives safely at her chamber,” Ulf said as he joined them, taking a moment to put his hand on Ben’s neck and draw him down for another, gentler kiss. “Meet me in our chamber with our wife, aye?”

“Aye.” He kissed him back, and then hurried out of the workroom.

On the way downstairs Ben stopped to check on some of the more dazed-looking vassals and clansmen, but all of their injuries proved minor. As he treated them he thought of the woman he adored, and how she would probably react to Ulf’s insistence that they sleep together. Elspeth had taken several lovers over the last few years, most notably Kelso McKeran, who had died during the MacBren’s previous attack. He suspected she had offered herself to that clansman because he had a reputation as a vigorous, demanding lover.

In a strange sense Ben understood that. I avoided sex because I couldn’t have her and Ulf, while she bedded Kelso to keep from thinking about us.

Ulf had admitted to being intimate with both men and women, but never more than one. He had always dreamed of finding a husband and a wife so that he would not have to choose again. Ben knew with his intense sexuality and voracious appetite that it was cruel to make the hunter abstain while they waited for Elspeth to find a solution to their problem. Ben’s own problem was his modern attitude toward her reticence. For him if she said no, it was no, and he wouldn’t pressure or seduce her into changing her mind.

Maybe I can persuade her, he thought. She had to be thinking of us tonight, too, and we’re running out of time.

He directed everyone not on duty to go to bed and rest, and then went into the kitchens to ask if any of the women there had seen Elspeth. Two of the maids burst into tears and ran out, while another sobbed into her hand.

“Is she… Is she dead?” he managed to say.

“No, Healer. She’s in the great hall now,” Doon told him. When he went in that direction, she caught his sleeve. “Matters, they’ve grown a wee bit complicated. Mayhap you should wait a bit, until she comes out again.”

“What matters? Did something happen to her?” he demanded.

The cook grimaced. “No’ her, lad.”

Ben couldn’t wait another second to see his woman, and ran the rest of the way to the hall. He stopped just inside the arch when he saw the laird and his wife speaking to a clansman who had an arm around Elspeth’s shoulders. The chambermaid glanced back at him, her expression miserable, which spurred him to join them.

“Is everyone all right?” he asked, turning to look over Elspeth, and then regarded the man beside her. The shock of realizing who he was made Ben step back. “How are you here?”

“I’m a lucky man,” Kelso McKeran told him with a broad grin before he bent down and kissed the top of Elspeth’s head. “I escaped death at the hands of the MacBren, as you see.”

Ben hadn’t seen Kelso die, but he knew he was fated to do so in each reset of the cycle of events. “Do you remember what happened to you?”

“I took an arrow in the eye for the laird.” The big man winked at Tasgall. “Only now I’m back, before my time, remembering all that came before. ’Twas love for my woman gave me another chance, I reckon. Now I vow naught shall ever part us again.”