Primal Moon by Brooksley Borne Page B

were demons who drank the blood of
others. But there, bloodsuckers took the form of virgin women. In
this barbaric land, they were surely tawdry men. The overseer pulled
away from the priestess to hold the bride’s still, whispering
in her ear. He lifted her jaw and bared her neck. The laird’s
brother drew down on her, burrowing his face to the arched porcelain
flesh. He was on her and he was in her, grinding mouth and hips to
both ends of her. The bride screamed out.
    Aziza joined her. Shrieking into
the universe in absolute terror.
    The overseer pulled back and
looked Aziza straight in the eye with an intimacy and knowingness
that made it feel as though he were inches from her. The edge gave
way beneath her and she was air-born. She flew on a magic carpet of
earth, plummeting down the cliff-like incline.
    Aziza hit the ground. She
passed out
    ****
    The forest whispered her name,
called to her and Aziza came to. She had fallen out of her under
garments and her clothes were in a tangle around her body. She
lifted her head but soon rested it. She tried and tried to progress
past that point but fairies spun around her head in a virtual Druid
crown. Finally, amid whispers and pests, she sat up, crossed her
arms in front of her chest to hide until she could get home. It was
broad daylight. This was how she imagined it to be after spending
the night with a lover.
    To be in love. Dizzy and sated.
    The whispered beckoning was
sensual and Aziza felt embraced by it. She relished the night’s
fingers still stroking her, bringing her to that honey place that had
her body clenching as she spied so wickedly, until the stark
recollection of the last images before she passed out.
    He bit her neck. He held her
down. He looked at her.
    Aziza quaked. Her disobedience
to the errant Jamie MacDunna had been luscious and ecstatic. Wet and
hedonistic. And absolutely the most horrifying moments she
experienced yet. Just as she was about to give thanks the laird was
absent, for he would surely take her as his brother took his bride;
just as she was avow to never come back to this forbidden place, she
felt a firm, very large hand grip her shoulder.
    She had been caught.
    “Are you all right, Aziza?
Have you been somewhere?”
    He stood up straight.
    Aziza almost shot out of her
skin. She blinked and blinked to focus. She could have wept for
what she saw. There standing in the clear sunlight, as giant as the
trees surrounding them was a Scotsman, one not familiar to her but
who knew her by name. He was magnificent. He was unnaturally so.
    His reddish blonde strands were
exactly like gold tufting in the tamed breeze that lifted all around
him. He folded his mighty arms across his chest as though he was
imitating her, and looked down at her sternly. Perspiration made its
untimely appearance above her lip. Though she was nervous, both
starved and sickened, his great deep voice stirred the evening’s
sweeter sensations. Like the whispers. To look at him made her ache
with an emptiness worse than the one created by the night’s
escapades, and she needed to be filled. Flooded with time-old
instinct and she wanted him.
    Aziza burned. Her prince.
    The giant apparently found
something funny as he plucked white petals of mountain flowers from
her ebony hair. He brushed them from her shoulders and off the front
and back of her shift with an almost intimate caress. She did her
best to contain the heavy breaths that rose from her at his very
touch. Aziza could not speak. She could only gawk.
    “Lass?” He smiled
affectionately as he tilted his head.
    “Who are you?” She
struggled to affect the most regal of voices but his stunning beauty
made her warble. “And how do you know my name?”
    He cocked his head again. “Am
I mistaken then? Is there another Egyptian lass here and I’ve
gotten you two confused?”
    Aziza woke up. “I am not
an ‘Egyptian lass.’ I was betrothed to the grand vizier
Ayyubid Saladin. I was a member of the royal