“Yes, I want to hear all of it.”
“I hurried to the screams as fast as I could and came upon a horrific scene. A man was brutally stabbing a woman. I did not hesitate, I attacked him. He was a large man and much quicker on his feet then I would have expected. He was also much more skilled with a dagger than I was. I took a few minor wounds to my arms, and when I think about how he sliced my face, I now wonder if it was a small price to pay, for it saved my life. It had gotten him close enough to me, so that I could catch him in the gut. And I did just that. As he sliced my face, I sliced his gut.”
Wintra grew sick at the thought of it, and her heart ached even more for him.
“The woman was beyond help. The only thing I could do was hold her while she died. She looked upon my face and told me she was sorry I had suffered so.” He shook his head. “She was dying and she was sorry for me. She also managed to tell me of the man responsible for her own suffering and death.”
“It sounds as if she took a while to die,” Wintra said feeling her stomach roil, thinking of how the woman had to have suffered as well as Torr, since his wound hadn’t received immediate tending.
“An hour or more, I believe. She passed moments before my father’s warriors came across me. He had been worried that I had been gone too long and with dusk not far off, he had sent warriors to look for me. Good thing he did, for I had not wanted to leave her body for the animals to ravage. She had been ravaged enough in her young life, barely having reached ten and six years.”
“Who was the man responsible for her death?”
Torr stared at her a moment before saying, “Owen McBride, her husband.”
Wintra’s mouth dropped open in shock.
“It seemed that Owen had convinced her that he loved her and sought her hand in marriage. Her father was chieftain of a small clan and too old and feeble to tend to his duties, so he granted his only child’s request. I suspect he thought he had done the right thing and that Owen would see to improving the land and village. Not so. Shortly after they wed, her father died in a fall. Owen began to beat her, among other unspeakable things, and she ran away fearing for her life. The man with the dagger found her and informed her as he stabbed her repeatedly that Owen told him to make sure she suffered for being such an ungrateful wife.”
Wintra shuddered, thinking that the poor woman’s fate could have been her own. “He is a monster.”
“He is a depraved man who appears to stop at nothing to get what he wants and that makes him a very dangerous man.”
A thought suddenly hit her and she grabbed his hand and squeezed tightly. “What if Owen plans on killing you, making me a widow so that he gets another chance of taking me as his wife?”
“If I died, Cree would look after you and he would never allow Owen near you,” Torr assured her.
“What if the King did?”
“He would have no reason to.”
“We do not know that,” Wintra said. “A madman is capable of anything and Owen is definitely insane.”
“Listen to me,” he said bringing their joined hands to his mouth and kissing hers. “Nothing is going to happen to me—”
“You do not know that.”
Torr laughed. “After what we shared tonight, nothing—absolutely nothing—will keep me from sharing it with you again and again.”
He turned and nuzzled her neck, causing gooseflesh to run down her arms. And his hand slipped over her breast to cup it and give it a tender squeeze. A sigh ran from her lips and she titled her head back to expose more of her neck for him to nibble on.
“God, I love the taste of you,” he murmured and feasted on her delicate skin.
Jolts of pleasure shot through her as his thumb teased her nipple, turning it hard.
“I love you, Wintra, and whether we had been married or not, I still would have fallen in love with you from the moment I saw you. You stole my heart, Princess, and now it belongs to you and always will.”
She did not mind him calling her Princess anymore, since she realized that he had made her a princess—his princess—from the very first time he had called her it.
Ripples of pleasure began washing over her body and a question shot from her mind straight to her mouth. “We are permitted to make love more than once a night?”
Torr looked at her and grinned. “The only permission we need is from each other. I want to make love again, do you?”