Chapter Six

Ronan

By Mother Nature, the woman is the most vexing creature I’ve ever come across. All I tried to do is help her out, and look where it’s gotten me. She hates everything, slags my home and my country, and acts as if I should be prostrating at her feet for some reason.

Don’t you know who I am?

I growl inside as I refill the stove’s water reservoir, having emptied pretty much all of it so that Princess Savannah won’t freeze her wee tushie off. And it isn’t that wee, my aching cock reminds me. She has a bit of a caboose going on in the back. Two perfect round globes of flesh for a man to grab onto when she’s on all fours, but what thanks do I get for my trouble? Not even a lick and a promise for all of that.

I decide I should get Mateo ready for the trip to town, so I don my mack and go to unlatch the connecting door to his shed when I hear him whinnying frantically from inside.

“What’s the craic, me boy?” I swing both sections of the door open to find him pacing and pawing the ground along the adjacent wall. “Steady on, lad…what’s the…” My query’s cut short by a piercing scream from the other side of said wall.

“Get out!” A long pause. “Help! Help!”

What the feck? I run past the frantic horse and open the shed gate rather than going back through the cottage. I nearly fall on my arse taking the slippery corner around the shed. “Oh my God, Help me!” Savannah shrieks. I regain my footing and plunge on toward the shower. The curtain flaps about, issuing puffs of steam from within, and some movement catches the corner of my eye.

I glance over only in time to see a shuffle of tree boughs at the edge of the wood, and a trail of paw prints leading to the spot. “Ach, hold on!” I yell. “What’s the matter?” I reach the shower just as Savannah’s dark, wet head peers out, the curtain clutched up to her chin.

“A bear!” she wails, her eyes wild in terror. “A goddamn bear attacked me!”

“Calm down, there’s not been a bear on this Isle since the tenth century. What did yer see?”

“It was big, and black, with pointy teeth,” she sobs, and I can’t help but lean forward and take her shivering form into my arms. I can smell her woman’s heat straight through my Mack but now’s not the time to explore it. “It came right in and growled at me, and its claws…” she pauses, catching her breath and holding up her hands. “It had long, sharp claws like a grizzly’s. It could have ripped me apart.”

I can tell she’s scared, but I can’t stifle a laugh at her overblown description and the look of sheer terror on her pale face. Her breath turns to vapor in the cold air and strands of her wet hair coil across her cheeks. They’ll be frozen in place if I don’t get her dry in a hair’s breadth.

“Oh, give over now. ‘Twas probably just a rabbit or the neighbor’s dog. Nay need to get a bee in yer bonnet.”

She stabs me with a poisonous green-eyed glare likely meant to slay me where I stand. In a huff, she pulls away from my warm arms and hides back in the shower. I immediately feel the loss of her against me. “I know what I saw!” She pokes me in the chest with her finger. “Don’t make fun of me, you…you…”

“What?” I tilt my chin, still chuckling at her melodramatics. I step nearer to her shivering form as she hides behind the curtain. The wet material sticks to her curvy shape, and I catch a glimpse of bare skin here and there. I want to pull her against me again, so I do. Right fecking now. “What am I now, still Grizzly Adamson? Or the abominable snowman, as it were?”

“Ugh! It’s Grizzly Adams,” she squawks, stepping back and snapping the curtain closed. “I don’t know what you are, besides crazy.”

I fold my arms and stand my ground, amused at seeing her bare feet dance around below the curtain as she dries and dresses. They’re bonny wee feet, delicately boned and with toenails painted the same shade of red as her fingernails.

“This whole place is crazy,” she mumbles between heaving sobs. My grin turns to a frown as I realize how truly upset she is and feel an unwelcome twinge in my heart that she so dislikes my place, my facilities—and most of all me. Best I get her out of here post-haste. My twitching dick takes a stand-down.

“Well, yer be shut of it soon,” I say grimly. “And don’t worry, I’ll stand guard out here against any more bears ‘til yer ready. Then we’ll head for town, yer can get a spot of breakfast there if yer like. My sister owns the inn in town. Been in my family for generations. Right good meals there, if yer ask me.”

I glance around the clearing, wondering what could have been brash enough to approach the cottage. Obviously, there is some kind of animal about, as evidenced by the footprints and Mateo’s reaction. But certainly not a bear.

As if on cue, Mateo plods toward me having taken the open shed gate as a hint.

“Yer knew somethin’ was afoot, didn’t yer, boy?” I pat him on his massive shoulder, admiring his glossy black coat. His hindquarters measure nearly a meter across, ample space and strength for carrying multiple riders. He gives a soft whinny and nudges my arm, looking for his own breakfast. “Aye, yer get yer feed in a tick,” I assure him with another loving pat. Some days, Mateo’s my only companion. I have a way with animals. Always have. Knew it since I nursed an orphan squirrel back to health the summer of my fifth year.

Suddenly, the curtain whips back, and I hear a frightened gasp. “Oh my God. What is that monster doing out here?”

I turn to see Savannah standing there, once again dressed in her form-fitting attire, but this time with a towel wrapped around her head.

“Huh?”

She points a long fingernail at me. “Is my showering the entertainment feature for your entire farm? Because in that case, the show’s over! Buy a ticket like everyone else!”

“Ach, take it easy, woman.” All of my sympathy drains away. “Mateo’s just lookin’ out for yer. He alerted me to yer distress, so don’t be slagging him. He’s very sensitive, and our lift into town, so he is.”

She scans Mateo’s imposing bulk from head to hoof, the whites of her wide green eyes showing. “I’m not getting on that thing,” she declares, her lips trembling, whether from fright or the cold, I can’t be sure. “I’ve had enough of wild animals for one day.”

“He’s hardly wild,” I answer, stroking his forehead, puzzled over her reaction since she’d already met the animal yesterday. But only his head. I suppose his full profile is a tad more intimidating. I frown as another thought occurs to me. “Yer not afraid of horses, are yer?”

Savannah edges sideways as if making ready to bolt. “I’m afraid of really large horses…like this one. And airplanes. I’m deathly afraid of airplanes.”

I shake my head, turn Mateo around, and begin to lead him back to the shed for his feed.

“Well, yer got two choices,” I call over my shoulder. “Ride or walk. Or flag a car and hitchhike. I ‘av to warn yer though. Cars only putter by about five times a day. I guess that’s a few options. Me, I’m headin’ into town on me lad, here. Take yer pick.”

I turn my back on her, expecting some indignant tirade to issue from her lips, but surprisingly, hear nothing. I keep on walking, until the relative safety of the shed shelters both me and Mateo from any further tongue-lashing.

With the Yule festivities just days away, I really should be busy with the preparations rather than playing nursemaid to this high-strung American woman. Maybe I’m barmy like she says. It’s my own fault in the end. I could have just turned back home when I came across her motor coach. Her safety’s not my concern. But something told me it’s important. The Cailleach Beare is never wrong. Big things are about to happen for Wintervale soon, and finding the bus seemed like an omen and a chance to do something good.

Savannah Starr is an omen all right. Of how right I’d been in choosing the life I now lead. Free of materialistic obsession, of technology and dependence on others. Trusting in the cycles of nature to bring meaning to one’s existence. She isn’t the sort who would ever understand that, and given our mutual interest in music, that realization saddens me more than it should.

I shake off my useless musings, and after he’s fed and readied, I bring Mateo around to the front of the cottage. To my surprise, wee Miss Pop Starr waits on the porch, bundled in her coat and scarf, her bag slung over her shoulder.

“Goin’ somewhere?” I ask, hiding a smirk.

Savannah squares her shoulders in defiance. Sparks fly from every cell in her body, I’ll give her that. Part of me wishes the ride to town were longer. If I had more time, maybe she’d soften enough that I could have my fill of her before I send her away.

With her gone, I’m not sure how I’m going to slake this aching lust without giving Mary the wrong idea. Every time I fuck the town woman to assuage my man’s needs, she tries to manipulate the physical act into something more than an offhand claiming.

It occurs to me I could pretend to take a ‘shortcut,’ but dismiss the idea just as quickly. The sooner she’s out of my cottage, my mind, and my cock’s indiscriminate sights, the better.

“Under the circumstances, and since there are limited options, I’d like a ride to town, please,” she says, not quite meeting my eyes. Apparently, crow isn’t on her personal menu. “Right now.”

I adjust Mateo’s stirrups and pat my hand on the saddle in invitation. “Since yer said please, by all means. Climb aboard.”

She hesitates, glancing suspiciously between me and the horse. I pat the saddle again. She steps toward us, attempting to retain her haughty air in spite of her lopsided gait on her damn broken heel, and comes to a stop a few feet away.

She lifts a regal looking brow. “Well?”

“Oh…” I splay one hand on my stomach, feigning ignorance. “A pox upon me…did yer require assistance, milady?”

She fixes her emerald gaze on me, and again, I feel an unsettling wave of familiarity. Like a name or a word exists on the tip of my tongue but slips away before I can utter it. I watch her pomegranate-red lips move as if in slow motion.

“Yes. Please.”