Once Upon A Highland Christmas Read Online Free

was crushed to him. He plundered her lips, drinking deeply of her as if he were dying of thirst and only she could quench his parched need. The fever was a raging in his veins, making him burn.
    Shocking him, too, for no other woman had ever affected him so powerfully.
    Not with a mere kiss.
    He could so easily devour her whole. By Thor, he wanted nothing more.
    But something was jabbing into his side. And in the moment he realized it was the end of Archie’s crummock, the aged laird let out a hoot jarring enough to split the ears of the loudest banshee.
    Breena started, her eyes flying wide.
    Grim tore his lips from hers and lifted his head. His heart thundered and his breath was ragged. “By all the glories of Valhalla,” he snarled, releasing Breena from his arms, most regretfully.
    “Sir!” She stared at the old man, her eyes even rounder at the sight he presented in his flowing bed-robe and with his hair sleep-mussed and standing up in tufts. “It’s late for you to be about.”
    “Pah! A good chieftain ne’er sleeps, lassie.” Archie turned to Grim and gave him another poke with his walking stick. It was a hard jab that belied his yammers about being achy and frail. Leaning forward, he waggled his brows. “What did I just see here, eh? Kissing the maid, were you?”
    “So I was, aye.” Grim discreetly stepped before the
Cailleach Nollaigh
, hoping to avoid a confrontation about the Old Christmas Wife’s transformation into Greer MacGregor. “There is a ball of mistletoe hanging o’er our heads.”
    “Is there now?” Archie tut-tutted but didn’t look up.
    “Indeed, and a very fine ball it is.” Grim glanced at the heavy black ceiling rafter and the sacred plant dangling at the end of a bright red ribbon.
    Archie harrumphed. “Kissing unsuspecting lassies…” He let the words trail off, shaking his head disapprovingly.
    “I didn’t mind, sir.” The breathlessness of Breena’s tone confirmed her admission.
    “No good comes of such foolery.” Archie remained grumpy.
    “It was my festive duty to kiss her as we passed beneath the mistletoe.” Grim held out his hand to display a white mistletoe berry. “I claimed a berry before my lips touched hers, as the old gods demand.”
    “Humph! I dinnae care about the ancient ones and their auld, moldy customs.” Archie glowered at the berry before turning a fierce scowl on Grim. “Belike there’s folk beneath my roof who cannae remember a man’s simplest wishes. That fashes me more than tradition.
    “There’ll be no Yuletide at Duncreag. No roaring fires, no feasting. To be sure, no merrymaking.” He looked from Grim to Breena and then back to Grim, shaking a finger at them both. “No’ this year or e’er again.
    “Men should spend their nights patrolling the battlements and keeping their eyes on the shadows, no’ dancing jigs and reaching for mead horns.” His bushy brows drew together. “Such frivol can cost a man, dinnae forget.”
    “Everyone respects your wishes.” Breena went over to him, her soft voice soothing. “Indeed, it would seem the gods agree with you.” She flashed a warning look at Grim as the night wind howled past the windows. A strong gust, it rattled shutters and even lifted the edges of the leather curtains that kept the worst chill from the hall’s raised dais where Archie’s high table stood empty.
    “See?” Breena gave the old man a fond smile. “Haven’t they sent a cold north wind to blow into the hall and carry away every bit of greenery?
    “I shouldn’t have decorated.” She patted his arm. “We’ll have the mistletoe removed as well, I promise.”
    “Aye, then!” Archie swelled his chest, importantly. “I wouldnae ken who dared affix such foolery to my great hall’s rafters, but”—he shot a narrow-eyed look at Grim—“I’m having none of it.”
    Grim folded his arms and said nothing, knowing when to keep his peace.
    An empty linen sack was tied around the crook-head of Archie’s