Spell of the Highlander (16 page)

She lost her breath in a
whoosh of air when he pushed her off him and flipped her onto her back.

A hot purr rumbled deep in his throat.

The concrete felt cool in contrast to the burning heat of her skin. Lowering himself over her, he propped his formidable weight with his palms splayed at each side of her body. Burying his face in her breasts, he—oh, thank you, finally—drew one nipple after the next deep into his mouth. He suckled. He nipped. He rolled the taut buds between his tongue and his upper palate, scraping gently with the edges of his teeth. Shifting his weight to one forearm, he slipped his hand down to work at her jeans.

“Cian,” she gasped.

“Aye, lass?” His mouth moved lower, trailing hot, wet kisses over her tummy, pausing at her navel to dip in and lave it.

“Oh, God, Cian!” She twisted her hips to give him slack in the waistband of her denim second-skin.

A few moments later, a soft, wicked laugh escaped him and she knew he’d just unbuttoned her jeans and seen the words
LUCKY YOU
emblazoned in gold down the inner fabric of the fly.

“So that’s why they’re called
Lucky
jeans,” he murmured.

“Uh-hmmm,”
she managed.

“You’ll get no argument from me, lass. I ken I’m a lucky man.” He paused. “Woman,” he said then, “I’m going to make you forget every other man you’ve ever known.”

“But—”

“Hush.” Then his demanding mouth was hot on her body again, scattering tiny love-bites over the delicate skin of her hips as he peeled her jeans down inch by inch.

She didn’t hear them—the people approaching.

She was too lost in an erotic haze for anything to penetrate.

Fortunately, Cian heard the furious voice snapping, “Did you hear that? I’m telling you, she’s back there!”

Jerking back from her, he cocked his head, listening. Abruptly, he tugged her into a sitting position and began yanking her jeans back up over her hips.

Befuddled, dazed by desire, Jessi sat up on the cool concrete, gaping at him.

Someone comes, he mouthed, miming a gesture to be silent. He stood, hoisted her into midair by the waistband of her jeans, and jiggled her back into them, the muscles in his arms bunching and rippling.

His eyes glazed over a little when he shook her, and he got a wild look in them. He turned sharply away, leaving her to fasten them. After a long moment, he turned back with her sweater and helped her tug it over her head.

It was so snug it got stuck above her breasts.

His eyes took on a stark, defeated expression. He backed away, unbuttoning his jeans. Jamming a hand down the front, he sucked in a slow hissing breath and repositioned himself.

She finished squeezing herself back into the sweater and slipped on her jean-jacket. Scooping up her backpack, she slung it over her shoulders.

The rat-a-tat-tat of high heels tapped a brisk staccato across the concrete floor, drawing ever nearer, accompanied by softer-soled shoes—many of them.

God, she’d completely forgotten about Stone-face! In a matter of minutes. Kissed brainless once again. What in the world was wrong with her? How could a man’s touch so utterly obliterate the calm, cool intellect and impressive powers of reason on which she’d once prided herself?

She frowned at him, eyes narrowed, trying to figure out what it was that Cian MacKeltar had that no other man had.

She was familiar with the theory that women were instinctively sexually attracted to men who were their most favorable genetic complement; men who possessed the DNA that would strengthen hers, and vice versa, thereby guaranteeing stronger children and
ensuring the human race’s greatest odds of survival.

Was Cian MacKeltar biologically her most favorable match? Was she doomed to be hopelessly and helplessly attracted to him? Was Nature herself conspiring against her in some diabolical evolutionary plan to get her pregnant?

If so,
a devilish little inner voice proposed,
then we should probably just sleep with him and get it over with, huh? Don’t you think?

“Nice try,” Jessi muttered.

Though the anthropologist in her appreciated the logic of the theory, she greatly preferred to believe that love and sex were matters of level-headed choice and free will.

There wasn’t a single thing levelheaded or remotely free-willish about her response to Cian MacKeltar.

“I can’t imagine what she’s doing back there!” Stone-face was saying. “Can you? Did you hear that noise? She’s like a wild little animal. She didn’t just hit me. She brutally assaulted me. I hope she has an attorney, because she’s going to need one. I’m suing. My face might never be the same. I’m probably going to need plastic surgery.”

Oh puh-leeze. Jessi snorted.

Cian glanced at her, the raw sexual frustration in his dark amber gaze tempered by amusement.

You hit her?
he mouthed.

I had to get to you somehow, she mouthed back, wrinkling her nose. Smoothing her sweater. Trying not to blush, remembering what they’d just done and, worse still, what they’d been about to do. Good grief, she thought crossly, maybe she should just throw her virginity at him the next time.

Oh, gee, wait a minute, she’d just tried to do that.

His shoulders shook with silent laughter. He stepped closer, ducked his head, and pressed his mouth to her ear. He kissed the dainty ridges, tasting it lightly with his tongue. “You’d do a Highland husband proud, lass,” he whispered.

She shivered from the hot eroticism of his tongue against her ear. “Thanks,” she whispered back. Coming from a ninth-century warrior-Druid, that was quite a compliment. “I knocked her out with a single blow too.” She couldn’t help but brag on herself a little bit.

His shoulders shook harder.

“So, Mr. Druid-turned-dark-sorcerer, we’re in a bit of a fix. Think you can get us out of here?”

He tossed back his head and laughed out loud. The deep sound rumbled from his chest, echoing in the warehouse.

“Did you
hear that?” From a few aisles away, Stone-face sounded scandalized. “There’s a man in here with her! How in the world did that creature get a man in here with her?”

Cian flashed Jessi a cocky, sexy smile that couldn’t have been more full of himself. It was the smile of a man who knew his power and thoroughly enjoyed having it.

“Aye, I can. Just you sit back, woman, and relax. I’ll take care of everything.”

Jessi had no doubt that he could. And, damn, but she liked that in a man.

16

Scotland:
bounded by the Atlantic, the North Sea, and England; approximately half the size of its neighbor; comprised primarily of moors, mountains, and seven hundred and eighty-seven major islands, including the Shetlands, Orkneys, and the Inner and Outer Hebrides.

Jessi’s sticky memory made her a lint brush for facts.

She knew that if one were to draw a straight line from the far south of the rugged country to the far north of it, it was a mere
275 miles, although its coastline covered a scenic 6,200 miles.

She also knew that the true collision of England and Scotland had predated the clash of politics and hot tempers by some 425 million years, when continental drift had caused Scotland—previously part of a landmass that had included North America—and England—previously part of Gondwana—to collide into each other, not far from the current political boundary.

A historical treasure trove, Scotland was close to the top of a lengthy list of places Jessi had long wanted to see, along with Ireland, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and all of what had once been part of ancient Gaul where the P-Celts had so passionately lived and loved and warred.

Still, she reflected, swerving to avoid a pothole in the meandering, single-lane dirt road, she’d never imagined she’d make it to Great Britain so soon.

And certainly not as a hunted fugitive, in the company of a ninth-century Highlander, driving a big black stolen SUV into the Highlands.

Cian was back in the mirror now, and being downright pissy about it.

She wasn’t. She was relieved that it had sucked him back in so soon after he’d used Voice to escape the airport and commandeered their “rental” vehicle.

Twice now, she’d nearly given him her virginity. In fact, had they not been interrupted, she would have either time.

She didn’t understand it. She was a woman who did nothing without a solid, well-thought-out reason. She knew the largest part of why she hadn’t slept with a man yet was because she’d watched her mother go through four husbands. She had three sisters, fourteen stepsiblings (some of them step-steps from the man’s earlier marriage), a bad case of cynicism, and an intense need for commitment as a result.

She adored her mother, and if anyone dared criticize Lilly St. James, Jessi would slice and dice ’em. Nobody put down her mom.

She even liked all of her stepsiblings.

But she hated having such a complicated family; it was one of the reasons she’d left Maine for Chicago and stayed there, preferring long talks on the phone every Sunday with Lilly to being fully consumed by the chaos that was the St. James household. Though not currently married, her mom was dating again, and sometimes that was worse than suddenly getting a few extra brothers and sisters who borrowed clothing and car keys with teenage impunity.

Birthday dinners and graduations inevitably turned into scheduling disasters. Holidays were a nightmare. Jessi would never be able to fathom her mom’s idea of marital commitment. A commercial realtor, Lilly treated the sacred vows of matrimony like any of her other “deals”: a short-term contract with an option to renew—that she rarely exercised.

Jessi was getting married once. Having babies with one man. Three or four kids would be just fine; maybe a boy and two girls who would never suffer any confusion about who they were related to, and how, not to mention the often-baffling whys. Her mom had picked a few strange ones from the parade of boyfriends.

Jessi wanted a small, insular, well-tended world. The fewer people one tried to love, Jessi believed, the better one could love them. She was a quality girl, not a quantity one.

Yet, with Cian MacKeltar, all her well-thought-out prequalifiers for relationships went sailing right out the window.

He looked at her—she got wet.

He touched her—she melted.

He kissed her—her clothing started coming off.

She couldn’t come up with a single reason for it. Yes, he was sexy. Yes, he was pure male and—so what if it wasn’t in keeping with the current feminist movement that seemed to prefer emasculated men—she
liked
manliness in a man. Liked them a little rough around the edges, a little untamed. Yes, he was fascinating, and she really couldn’t wait to get him somewhere that she could pick his brain about the ninth century, and find out just what had happened to him eleven centuries ago.

But he was also a logistic impossibility.

He was currently living in a mirror. He was a sorcerer with a blood-grudge against another sorcerer. And he was
way older than she was.

He wasn’t the marrying kind. Not even the keeping kind. And she knew it.

But despite all that, whenever he touched her, she instantly began de-evolving into one of her primitive ancestors, driven by the three basic prime directives: eat, sleep, have sex. Though if she were going to line those directives up in the order
she
would enjoy them, it would be sex first, while she felt skinny and her tummy was at its flattest, then food with lots of decadently sedating carbs, then sleep. Then wake up and have sex again, with the added benefit of working off some carbs. So she could eat again.

But that was neither here nor there.

Here
was a man she couldn’t seem to keep her hands off of.

And no doubt when he came out of that mirror, they were going to fall on each other again. And she wasn’t going to be able to count on an interruption way up in the desolate hills where he was taking her, unless a meteor were to serendipitously plummet from the sky, or they were overrun by marauding sheep.

“I’m sliding again, lass,” came the disgruntled growl from the seat beside her. “Naught but a view of the ceiling over here.”

Jessi slowed and pulled over to the side of the road. When they’d gotten into the SUV, Cian had originally positioned the mirror across the two back rows of seats, then slid into the front passenger’s seat. But when the Dark Glass had reclaimed him less than an hour outside of Edinburgh, en route to Inverness, he’d instructed her to push the front seat back as far as it would go—which was pretty far in the roomy SUV—tug the looking glass forward, prop it at an angle, and strap it in with the seat belt so he could see where they were going.
I’m uncertain of the terrain, lass,
he’d told her.
I know where I want to go, but I doona ken how it will look after the passage of so much time. There will be roads and buildings and such that weren’t there before; however, I should be able to identify the mountains if I can get a good-enough view.

Unfortunately, the seat belt was designed to hold a person with assorted person-sized bumps and lumps, not a flat mirror, and the glass kept slipping down into a more horizontal position. If she’d had a single piece of luggage, she might have crammed it at the base of the frame, on the floor, but as it was, they were traveling outlaw-light. The only things in the SUV were three empty fast-food bags from the lunch they’d grabbed at the airport and a handful of maps and pamphlets he’d snatched from a newsstand while leaving.

As she leaned over to adjust it yet again, he muttered something in that mysterious language of his, and suddenly a book tumbled out of the mirror, narrowly missing her nose, followed by several more. She ducked out of the way. She’d broken her nose once already, that day at the climbing gym, and it was crooked enough, tipping slightly to the left.

“Wedge them at the base,” he commanded.

She blinked. “You have books in there?”

“I’ve accumulated a few items over the centuries. Things I believed Lucan wouldn’t miss. Once stolen and in transit, when the opportunity presented itself, I picked up still more.”

She arranged the books at the foot of the mirror, laying them end to end, gawking at the titles: Stephen Hawking’s
A Brief History of Time; Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language; Pliny’s Natural History; The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Universe; and Geographica, a massive book of maps and charts.

“Like a little light reading, huh?” she muttered. Personally, she went for Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series (she was a Ranger-girl herself) or any Linda Howard book, on those rare occasions she got to read for pleasure. Which was like once a year.

“I have endeavored to keep up with the passage of the centuries.”

She glanced into the mirror. After seeing him in the flesh only a short time ago, it was weird to be seeing him as a one-dimensional, flat figure in the glass. She didn’t like it at all. She was beginning to resent that mirror. Resent that it could take him back anytime it wanted to. She shook her head. A few minutes ago she’d been glad it had reclaimed him. Now she was irritated that it had. Would she ever be of a single mind around him? “For the day you’d finally be free? That’s why you kept up?”

He stared down at her, burnt-whisky gaze unfathomable. “Aye.”

Free. After eleven centuries, the ninth-century Highlander was going to be free in a little over two weeks. “Seventeen more days,” Jessi breathed wonderingly. “God, you must be climbing the . . . er, walls . . . or whatever’s in there, huh?”

“Aye.”

“So, just what is in there, anyway?” She tested the glass by shaking it gently, and deemed it secure enough. It shouldn’t slide now.

“Stone,” he said flatly.

“And what else?”

“Stone. Gray. Of varying sizes.” His voice dropped to a colorless monotone. “Fifty-two thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven stones. Twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixteen of them are a slightly paler gray than the rest. Thirty-six thousand and four are more rectangular than square. There are nine hundred and eighteen that have a vaguely hexagonal shape. Ninety-two of them have a vein of bronze running through the face. Three are cracked. Two paces from the center is a stone that protrudes slightly above the rest, over which I tripped for the first few centuries. Any other questions?”

Jessi flinched as his words impacted her, taking her breath away. Her chest and throat felt suddenly tight. Uh, yeah, like, how did you stay sane in there? What kept you from going stark raving mad? How did you survive over a thousand years in such a hell?

She didn’t ask because it would have been like asking a mountain why it was still standing, as it had been since the dawn of time, perhaps reshaped in subtle ways, but there, always there. Barring cataclysmic planetary upheaval, forever there.

The man was strong—not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. A rock of a man, the kind a woman could lean on through the worst of times and never have to worry that things might fall apart, because a man like him simply wouldn’t let them. She never met anyone like Cian before. Twenty-first-century society wasn’t conducive to churning out alpha males. What did a man have to hone himself on nowadays, test himself against, build character on? Conquering the latest video game? Buying the right suit and tie? Smacking little white balls around a manicured garden with ridiculously expensive sticks? Doing battle over the parking space nearest the store?

“Nope,” she managed. “No other questions.”

Eleven centuries of captivity. Hung on his hated enemy’s study wall. Eleven centuries of not touching. Not eating. Not loving. Had he had anyone to talk to?

Her face must have betrayed her thoughts, for he startled her by saying softly, “‘Tis no longer of consequence, lass, but thank you for the compassion. ’Tis nigh over. Seventeen more days, Jessica. That’s all.”

For some reason his words brought a sudden hot burn of tears to the backs of her eyes. Not only hadn’t eleven centuries turned him into a monster, he was trying to soothe her, to make her feel better about his imprisonment.

“You weep for me, woman?”

She turned away. “It’s been a long day. Hell, it’s been a long week.”

“Jessica.” Her name was a soft command.

She disobeyed it, staring out the window at the rolling hills.

“Jessica, look at me.”

Eyes bright with unshed tears, she whipped her head around and glared at him. “I weep for you, okay?” she snapped. “For eleven centuries stuck in there. Can I start driving again or do you need something else?”

He smiled faintly, raised his hand, and splayed his palm against the inside of the silvery glass.

Without an ounce of conscious thought, her hand rose to meet his, aligning on the cool silver, palm to palm, finger to finger, thumb to thumb. And though she felt only a cold hardness beneath her palm, the gesture made something go all warm and soft in her heart.

Neither of them spoke or moved for a moment.

Then she glanced hastily away, fished a napkin from the fast-food bags, blew her nose, shifted into drive, and resumed their winding ascent into the rugged Scottish Highlands.

Gloaming in the Highlands.

It had taken him most of the day to find the caves he’d played in as a lad.

The terrain had changed greatly over the past thousand years, and new roads and homes had made it difficult to recognize landmarks he’d once thought immutable and uniquely unmistakable. Even mountains looked different when one was gazing up at them from the busy streets of a city, as opposed to regarding them across a wide-open expanse of sheep-dotted field.

Unwilling to permit her to enter the caves until he had a chance to explore them for potential animal or erosive threats, he’d bade her prop the mirror securely next to the entrance to the stone lair so he could keep close watch on the vista around her. Armed with knives and guns, he was prepared for any threat, though he truly doubted one would come this evening, or even the next.

Now, from high atop a rugged mountain, Cian stared out of the Dark Glass at two of the loveliest sights that had ever graced his existence: Scotland at a fiery dusk and Jessica St. James.

His beloved country made a worthy backdrop for the woman.

Sitting cross-legged, facing him, scarce a foot beyond his glass, her short, glossy black curls were backlit by flaming crimson and gold, her forehead and cheekbones dusted burnt rose, her lips plush red velvet. Pretty white teeth flashed when she smiled, her eyes lit with an inner fire that nigh matched the sky behind her when she laughed.