My Heart's in the Highlands (38 page)

“Happy New Year, my love
,” he grinned as the fiery bursts continued.  Retreating from her body, he plunged again, driving even deeper.  Fervently, he drove into her again and again, using the movement of his entire body against hers to push her higher, take her to the edge of paradise. 

Mikah cried out, her body pulsating around
Jace, and her release gripped her as lights flashed and rockets burst, her body exploding as if they were all inside of her.  Jace drove into her one last time, holding her tightly against him as he joined her ecstasy with a long moan. “Yes!” she cried out in rapture as his hips thrust.  “Yes, Ian, yes!”

Chapter Forty-Seven

Jace lay panting, his face buried in Mikah’s shoulder, stunned by the intensity of his release and by the joy they had found together.  His heart was pounding furiously, and he felt hers doing the same, the rhythms becoming one.  One.

Bloody hell.

He lifted his head.  “Look at me,” he panted.  “Mikah.”

She opened her eyes, “Ian.” Her
fingers trailed lazily up his back.

“Nay, my love.
  Look at me.”  He waited.  “Say my name.”

“Ia
…”  She stopped before the word was complete and corrected herself.  “Jace.”

With a grunt,
Jace rolled off of her onto his back to stare at the ceiling with one arm behind his head.

“
Jace?” Mikah said uncertainly, pushing up onto one elbow so that she could look down at him, her lovely eyes filled with worry.  Her tousled blond hair tumbled around them and Jace couldn’t resist reaching up to twine a lock around his finger.

He smiled ruefully.
  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t think it would matter.  I know Hero is in your soul.  I know she is there, just as Ian is in me.  When you look at me, I know you see him.  It’s what I wanted you to see because I was him and in many ways I still am.”  He brushed his knuckles down her cheek, glorying in the soft texture he had once thought he would never feel again.  “I realize that I have known about you longer than you have known about me.  I’ve had a chance already to wrap my head around this, but I don’t want you looking at me and seeing another man.”

“Are you saying that you are jealous of yourself?” Mikah asked
with a disbelieving grin.  “Just moments ago you were trying to convince me that you are Ian.”

Jace
raised a brow at that.  She had him there.  “Are you Mikah or are you Hero?”

“I am both.
  I’ve officially surrendered to the madness, and you have no one but yourself to blame,” Mikah said, running a palm up his chest, and Jace felt his arousal, so recently satisfied, stir once again.  “As you said, the memories aren’t hers or mine.  They are ours.  Didn’t you say that?”

“Aye, but
…”

“But you can’t stand hearing a woman say another man’s name?” she asked.
  “Even if it’s kind of your own as well?”

“Perhaps.”

Mikah couldn’t help but laugh.  She leaned forward, her breasts brushing against his chest as she whispered in his ear,  “Maybe you’ll just have to win me away from him.”

“That’s not amusing
,” he growled, running a hand over her bare thigh.  “I want you to look at me and think Jace, not Ian.  I cannot believe it matters when I have already called you Hero several times tonight.”

“It’s your male ego talking.”

Jace snorted.

“We wouldn’t be here without
Ian,” Mikah reminded him gently, reaching out to run her fingers down his cheek.  “You said so yourself.  It was becoming them that brought us together now.  What you want will come in time, I’m sure, when we have new memories that are even better than those.  Memories like this.”

“Mikah,” he groaned as she climbed over him until she was straddling his hips.
 

Mikah looked down at
Jace, his handsome face so familiar yet new.  He wasn’t exactly the same as Ian.  Jace was older, and his face and body showed the evidence of a life spent much differently.  There was a scar at his temple that Ian didn’t have, and his body was harder.  The laugh lines were still evident, but perhaps Ian had smiled more easily.  She traced a finger across his forehead and his thick brow. 

“
I could not love you without having loved him first, you know.”

“And do you love me?” he asked, his dark eyes
intent.  His fingers curled into her thighs.

The answer mattered as much to him as it did to her.
  Perhaps more.  Jace had chased her across continents. Faith had always been his before, and she didn’t want him to lose that now.  Not when hers was rising to meet his.  Heart pounding, Mikah spoke the simple truth:  “I always have.”

With a groan,
Jace lifted his head and drew her down for a brief but passionate kiss.  “I was lost without you.  Miserable.  I never want to feel that way again.”

“Neither do I.”

“
Ooh, you're the best friend that I ever had, I've been with you such a long time
You're my sunshine and I …
” Freddy Mercury’s voice crooned and Mikah leaned over the side of the bed to pull her phone out of her purse.  She sat up again, sweeping her hair to the side as she answered chidingly, “Really?  You’re calling now?”

She listened
, her eyes locking with Jace’s and lighting with humor. He was toying with her hair impatiently. “Why yes, Kris, that’s exactly what I’m doing.  If you knew that, why did you call?”

Jace grinned and ran his hands up Mikah’s thighs.
 

“Yes, it’s very nice
…  You’re killing me, really.”

His hand went high enough to make her gasp.

“What?” Mikah frowned suddenly, her hand slapping down over Jace’s, bringing him to a halt.  “Are you kidding me?  Why would you do that?”

Jace frowned as well.

“Well, thanks a lot, Kris!” she said sarcastically, climbing off Jace before she found a robe and shrugged it on.

“What is it?” he asked, concern written plainly on his face
, but Mikah only rolled her eyes.

“You should have known better,” she went on
, indignantly.  “Yes, I know you talk to them every New Year, but did you have to tell them?  Slipped out?  You are the worst friend ever!”

Mikah shook her head, her vivid eyes locking with
Jace’s.  He could see something there beyond the irritation.  Panic?

“How long do I have?” she asked
and her eyes widened.  “Ugh, I hate you!”

Jace could hear Kris’s protest even from a distance.
  “Fine!  I love you but you owe me big … Yes, you better get over here and help save my ass!  Fine.  Bye.”

Mikah hung up the phone and gripped it tightly as she dropped down on the edge of the bed
, staring at Jace.  “I so hate to do this to you, Jace.”

“What
is it?”

“My parents are coming
.”

“Beg pardon?” he asked with a blink.
  While the idea was unexpected, it certainly wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

“Kris’s parents call him every New Year’s Eve at midnight
… silly, I know.  My parents do it, too.”  Mikah paused and stared down at her phone with a frown.  “They didn’t tonight, and I guess I know why.  Kris told his parents about you and they were out with mine, so I suppose they told them and they’re not even bothering to call …”

“Mikah, you’re rambling.”

“Yes, I do that when I’m nervous, you know.”  She ran a hand through her hair and stood, trying to tug the bedclothes back into order.  “Get up and get dressed, please.  Quickly.  They were in town for the Harley party, so we have only about fifteen minutes.  Twenty minutes tops.”

“Do you expect me to run?” he asked with a smile.

“I want to.  Why wouldn’t you?” she asked, dropping her robe.  Her slender nudity was his for only a moment longer before she yanked on a sweatshirt that she just as quickly discarded.  Instead she pulled on the same dress she had been wearing.

“I’d love to meet them,” he said
, but Mikah answered that with high keening. The sound was one of utter disbelief.

“Mikah, I am an earl.
  A captain in the Queen’s Army Air Corps,” he said with some hauteur, though he did rise and pull on his trousers.  “I’m sure I can handle your mother and father.”

The half
laugh, half whimper sounded again as she straightened her dress and hair and returned her frantic attention to the bed.  “Are you kidding?  You want to try explaining this to them?  I haven’t had a boyfriend in years, a single date in months, and all of a sudden a man like you shows up and is in my bed in minutes?  They’ll grill you up and down.  They’ll want to know where we met, when we met, how much you make.”

Her parents had been wonderful over the past couple of months
, but they worried as parents did.  Her father, especially, knew that there was something deeper going on, though Mikah hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell him everything.  Her question on the plane had related to him much of what had been left unsaid.  He would want answers.  Demand them.  What could she say?

“
I don’t even know your birthday.”

“March tenth.
  I will be thirty-four.”  Jace buttoned his shirt slowly as he watched her fidget with the covers, torn between amusement and concern.  “I always thought you were very calm in a crisis before.”

“Yea, well
, this dad isn’t quite as easygoing as the last one,” she said flippantly, twitching at the covers once more.  “And now I have four older brothers to boot.”

Ahh, that was it then.
  She was nervous about how he would be accepted by her parents.

“Mikah,” he said softly, his brogue a subtle purr.
  “Look at me.”

She did, her eyes a little wild
, and Jace smiled, reaching for her hand and drawing her close.  He stroked his knuckles down her cheek, and the tension escaped her with a single sigh.  Mikah softened against him.  Trusting.  Jace swore then and determined never to let that faith be misplaced.  “I will handle it, I promise.”

“How?” she asked
, loving the feel of his strong hand diving into the hair at the base of her neck and gently massaging the muscles there.  Of their own accord, her arms slipped around his waist, the urgency of her situation forgotten with just a touch.

“I will simply tell them
the truth,” Jace said softly as he cradled her head in hands, his dark eyes holding hers with the emotion that shone so clearly.  “I will tell them that I fell in love with their bonny daughter the moment I first laid eyes on her.  That she holds my heart undeniably and I would conquer time itself to keep her.”

Emotion seized Mikah’s heart at his tender words.
  It was a powerful love, a meeting of souls that had always been.  It could conquer anything, even a father’s fierce protection.  “That might just work.”