Charmed by His Love (36 page)

Had he really said he loved her? Out loud?

He was kissing her like he loved her more than just wanting to have sex with her.

She probably should kiss him back. But honestly, she was terrified that loving Duncan would kill him.

His kiss ended with a sigh and he leaned his forehead against hers. “I hope ye consider yourself lucky that I’m a patient man, lass, with a healthy enough ego that your lack of response doesn’t send me into a hopeless depression.”

“Excuse me. Did you say
patient
?” she whispered against his mouth as she fought a smile—because it was either smile or burst into tears. And hadn’t she already learned he would pounce on any sign of weakness? Okay, maybe two weeks
was
long enough to get inside a guy’s head. “This from a man who turned my life upside down within minutes of arriving in town,” she growled when she felt his thumbs lowered to the pulse on her neck, “and who made me sell him gravel too cheap and go on a picnic I didn’t want to go on, threatened to take the flat of his sword to my backside, tricked me into buying a truck for my own good, kidnapped me, bought me size twenty pants and size four panties but no bra, and … Should I go on, or are you going to kiss me to shut me up—again?”

“Are ye wearing a bra now?” he asked way too quietly.

“No.”

She was flat on her back and he was settled between her legs before she even managed to gasp. “I had every intention of waiting,” he said thickly, “but I can see you’re quite eager to experience the consequences of my finding you outside after dark missing some important clothing.” He brushed the hair back from her face with a gentle hand and kissed her softly on the lips, then lifted his head. “Say ye want me, Peg. Give me permission to make ye mine; right here, right now, in this great cathedral.”

“I want you so much it hurts, Duncan, but I’m scared.”

“My word of honor, ye can’t kill me by loving me. You can only do that by not letting me prove I’m more powerful than a curse.”

“How … But how can you know that for sure?”

“I was born knowing. Go quiet, lass; can ye not feel the mountain humming through every cell in your body?” Except he apparently mistook her trying to feel the mountain for hesitation, and she heard him sigh again as he dropped his forehead to hers. “I’ll tell ye what: It’ll take us about two hours to reach a pretty little pool at the base of a gushing waterfall. Ye spend the hike listening to my magical tale, and tell me then if you want to continue on to the cave or …” This time
he
hesitated. “Or if ye want to make camp and share the one sleeping bag I brought.”

About an hour and forty-five minutes into their hike, Duncan felt like he’d been walking for two weeks and eleven years. He’d spent most of the trek telling Peg how Mac’s father, Titus Oceanus, had built Atlantis on which to cultivate his Trees of Life; about the drùidhs—some of whom he was related to—and their role in protecting the Trees, one such species growing right here in Maine; about Robbie MacBain’s role as clan Guardian; and his, Robbie’s, and Alec’s fathers and Laird Greylen actually being eleventh-century highland warriors.

Peg had quietly listened for the most part while asking only the occasional question, but had grabbed his pack and pulled him to a stop when he’d mentioned the time-travelers. Her big blue gaze—looking more fearful than disbelieving—had risen
to the hilt of the sword on his back, and she’d asked if he could just disappear one day like the elder MacKeages had from their families eight hundred years ago. He’d assured her it wasn’t any more likely to happen to him than it could to her, and suddenly there had been no more questions or any more soft snorts of disbelief, even after ending his long-winded tale with why he needed her help to attain his calling.

With the last fifteen minutes of their trek being made in complete silence, Duncan both assumed and worried that Peg was trying to decide if they would continue up the mountain tonight or bed down together in the sleeping bag—preferably naked—by the pool. He hoped she chose the latter, as it was important to him that she believed that together they could break her family’s curse
before
she witnessed the full extent of the power he was about to gain. Because, hell, he was just red-blooded enough to want his woman to want him for himself rather than what he could do.

Had Mac had that same worry with Olivia? He knew Ian had captured Jessie’s heart before she’d discovered the truth about him, because Duncan had outright asked his nephew last weekend. Ian had grown amused and in turn had asked Duncan if he wanted to spend the rest of his life wondering if his woman had a believer’s heart before he had to hit her over the head with the magic to open her eyes.

But Peg could hear the mountain breathing, which meant she must be a believer deep down inside where it counted, and he was also fairly certain that neither his mountain nor the whale would have so openly welcomed her if they didn’t know her heart.

He was the only one who didn’t know a goddamned thing, apparently, which was why he needed Peg to willingly give herself to him
before
she saw what was in the cave. Because as he’d told her earlier, a man needed a little encouragement from the woman he was hopelessly in love with.

Christ, why wasn’t she saying anything?

“C-can we stop?”

He stopped so quickly she bumped into his back, making him have to catch her even as he stifled a curse at how pale she was. “What’s the matter?” he asked as he tried to read her eyes in what stingy moonlight was filtering through the trees.

“I … These new jeans are stiff and they’re … chafing me,” she whispered to his chest. “And my feet are starting to blist—”

He dropped a hand behind her knees and swept her into his arms, not even trying to stifle his curse. “Just once could ye simply
ask
for my help instead of being so goddamned stubborn?”

She also didn’t stifle a rather impressive curse, or even bother to mutter it under her breath. “I’m too heavy,” she growled right back, even as she wrapped an arm around him when he started up the trail again. “You’re going to trip and break both our necks. No, wait; I forgot you can see in the dark by magic.”

“It’s
the
magic,” he said softly, this time stifling a smile. “There’s only one, lass, and ye seem to be forgetting what I said about offending it.”

“I thought it was Providence we’re not supposed to offend.”

“They’re one in the same. So,” he said above the sound of the gushing stream as he stepped into the clearing made by the glistening pool, “it appears ye don’t get a choice after all whether or not we’re spending the night here.”

“I don’t?”

“It’s another mile to the cave, and then another mile inside.” He skirted the pool, set her down on one of the boulders at the bottom of the waterfall, shucked off his pack and sword, then knelt at her feet and started unlacing her boots. “So here’s the plan: I’m going to build a fire while you strip off and go for a swim to soothe the chafing. Then,” he continued despite her gasp, “I’ll wash your jeans and give them a good beating on the rocks and set them to dry on a branch by the—”

“That water’s got to be freezing!” she cried before he could finish.

He grabbed the hand trying to push him away from her boots and held it in the water, smiling when she gasped again. “It’s warm!”

He went back to taking off her boots, being careful when he felt her foot flinch. “Isabel warned me you’re a warm-water bass, not a trout. Speaking of which, if ye feel little nibbles on your toes, see if you can’t sneak up on the lucky buggers and catch us a couple of trout for supper.”

“That water’s too warm for trout to live in.”

He reached up and gently tapped the tip of her nose, then straightened. “Not for a magical stream, it’s not.” He stood up. “Just leave your clothes here on the rock and I’ll get them as soon as I have a fire going.”

“You promise not to peek?”

He turned away with a snort. “No.”

A boot hit him square in the back and another one dead center of his chest when he turned. He caught the sweatshirt that came at him next just as he saw Peg roll into the pool wearing her jeans, her laughter stopping when she slipped underwater.

Oh yeah, the woman definitely owned his heart.

And they weren’t leaving this mountain until she understood what that meant.

The sting of her chafed legs having eased from lounging at the base of the falls to get the whirlpool effect, Peg lazily floated in the shadow of a towering spruce as she glanced across the moonlit pool at Duncan reclined beside the blazing fire he’d made. Charmed, Olivia had called him. But to Peg he was an old-fashioned, sword-carrying, kiss-stealing, scary-driving knight in leather armor, determined to save her from a five-generation curse she desperately didn’t want to pass down to a sixth.

But could she chance it would be different this time, considering how high the stakes were? Then again, maybe it already was too late for Duncan, because she wasn’t sure if the curse applied just to husbands or if a man only had to fall in love with a descendent of Gretchen Robinson to meet a quick demise.

But then yet again, if she hadn’t personally witnessed an earthquake that had moved several mountains and split Bottomless Lake wide open without cracking a window in Spellbound Falls and Turtleback Station, Peg might think Duncan was at the very least delusional and at worst insane. But she
had
felt the mountains moving and heard the booming thunder, and she
had
arrived home to find saltwater spilling into her gravel pit without so much as a chipped dish in her cupboards. So a good deal of his fantastical tale had to be true,
considering the proof was staring her in the face every time she looked out her kitchen window.

Peg smiled up at the moonlight showering the unusually tall trees surrounding the unusually warm pool with soft white light, and decided she liked Duncan’s idea of the forest and mountains being God’s cathedral. As for his dad and those other men traveling through time, and Mac being from Atlantis, and Trees of Life growing right here in Maine, if Duncan had told her all that stuff hoping to persuade her to have sex with him … well, he’d certainly caught her attention. Of all the arguments he could have made, having the power to break her family curse was the most potent. Because not only would he be saving her daughters’ futures, Duncan would also be saving hers. And honestly, she didn’t know how much longer she’d survive sleeping in a small empty bed every night before the part of her heart not filled up by her children finally atrophied.

Peg glanced over at Duncan again, looking big and strong and unkillable as he reclined on the mat and sleeping bag he’d unrolled on the moss next to the fire. After, that is, he’d beat the jeans she’d tossed to shore against a rock before spreading them on a branch—after she’d watched him secretly peek at the label to see their size. Now he was lying with his head propped in his hand, pretending to be gazing at the fire like the patient man he was even though she knew he was secretly peeking past the flames in hopes of seeing something interesting.

When in the name of God had she fallen in love with him?

She’d caught herself being attracted to Duncan the day he’d helped her butcher the deer, which to her dismay had turned into desiring him when he’d stolen a kiss the night his equipment was being sabotaged—which had then turned into her desperately needing him sometime when she hadn’t been paying attention, apparently. And if she had to wait much longer to feel him inside her, Peg was afraid she was going to be the first
female
to die of the Robinson curse.

She’d thought, much to her delight, he was taking the decision away from her down by the beach when she’d lied and said she wasn’t wearing a bra. But the contrary man had suddenly backed off, and then made her spend two friggin’ hours
watching the moonlight play over his broad shoulders as he’d carried a sword that had to weigh at least twenty pounds, and the heavy backpack, and eventually
her
up the mountain.

Damn, big strong men turned her on.

And really, it’s not like he hadn’t been forewarned that making love to her might kill him. So what was she doing here in this magical place with this magical man—with no danger of being interrupted and all the time in the world, apparently—acting like some seventeen-year-old virgin planning to give herself to her boyfriend on Valentine’s Day? God, she’d been a romantic idiot when she was seventeen.

Yeah, well, she was twenty-eight now, a full-grown woman with four children, an empty bed, and a hole in her heart the size of a house. And if she had to go through the worry of letting a man see her naked for the first time again, she really couldn’t have devised a better setting. She might not have a seventeen-year-old’s body thanks to three pregnancies, and her boobs may be heading south and she might have a few stretch marks, but moonlight and water were great disguisers of imperfections.

Peg rolled onto her stomach, quietly swam toward a rock embedded in the sandy gravel shore, and folded her arms on it to rest her chin on her hands. “I still have that card, you know. The one you gave me eleven years ago.”

He sat up. “Ye do?”

She nodded on her hands. “I’d forgotten about it, actually. But your telling me that it was you on TarStone that day, I remembered slipping it inside the torn lining of my jewelry box when I got home from the ski trip.” She smiled, knowing the fire was casting enough light for him to see it. “And your kiss did leave quite an impression on me. I had some pretty erotic dreams for a virgin that winter.”

God, she’d swear his chest actually puffed up.

“Are you going to make me try to catch these trout all by myself,” she asked, “or come in here and help?”

The fire certainly cast enough light for her to see him go still but for the sudden flare in his eyes. “I didn’t bring a swimsuit with me, lass,” he said thickly.

She shrugged. “Last I knew, red-blooded females consider swimsuits just one more obstacle to get past.” She reared up
slightly and pushed off the rock to glide on her back to the center of the pool. “Come swim in this magical pool in God’s cathedral with me, Duncan.”