Spell of the Highlander (23 page)

“Probably because I’ve never . . .
ah! . . .
done this before!” she managed to force out, swamped by raw, intense sensation.

He went still behind her, barely in her. “Tell me you jest,” he said tightly after a long moment.

“Cian,” she cried, “don’t you dare stop now!”

“You are maiden? At your age?”

“I’m not
that
old. Move, damn it!”

“By my time’s standards, ’tis unfathomable!”

“By mine, too,” she gritted. “So now that I’ve decided not to be a virgin anymore, is it too much to ask for a little h—
elp
!” He pushed forward, piercing her hymen in a smooth, even thrust.

He gave her but a moment of stillness to recover, to adjust. The brief stinging sensation passed quickly and once more she was burning with feverish need.

Gripping her hips with his big hands, he began to impale her slowly, inch by mind-blowingly delicious inch. Relentlessly he usurped every nook and cranny her body ceded.

“Can you take more, Jessica? I’m not yet half in, lass. Am I hurting you?”

“No! I mean, yes! I mean, yes and then no! Yes. More!”

He pushed yet more of himself in, stretching her, filling her, long and thick and hard.

She whimpered, clinging to the desk. It was unlike anything she’d imagined. She was certain there was no way she could take more of him inside her, but then her sleek inner heat would not only yield but thrill to him, both stretch and embrace, ease yet tighten hungrily around him. She was a velvet glove, custom-crafted for him. She’d been made for this man, she marveled, designed to sheathe him.

With one final, strong push, he thrust himself in to the hilt, the silky hair on his muscular thighs rasping against her silky bottom, and she cried out from the fullness of it. It was pain yet pleasure, it was too much, yet just exactly right. She was full of him, part of him, her body melting around him, adhering to him, making them one. It was raw, it was fierce, it was incredible.

Then he began moving! Easing out, inch by incredible inch, leaving her hot and empty and aching.

Filling her back up just as slowly. Driving himself into her sleek heat.

Cian stared down at Jessica’s pretty, silken ass as he worked himself in and out of her. Bloody hell, she was tight and hot and slick.

And virgin. He couldn’t believe it. He was stunned that this incredibly passionate, beautiful, smart woman had never lain with another man. He’d never have guessed it. He’d thought her an experienced woman.

But not Jessica. She’d come to him untouched by any other. And though it wouldn’t have mattered to him how she’d come, the fact that he was her first man, that he was the only one she’d
chosen
to accept, with the countless men who had undoubtedly tried to get where he was right now, filled him with an intense possessiveness, gave him a primal, masculine thrill.

The need to spill his seed in her had been riding him merciless as a Harpy since he’d pumped that first inch inside. He’d damn near exploded when he’d pushed through her maidenhead.

He stared down at her, bent over the desk, her delicate spine arched, the paler skin of her full breasts crushed to the desk, the generous plump mounds spilling out the sides, her small, dainty hands stretched above her head, fingers clutching the wood, her lush, sweet ass thrusting up to meet him, he watched himself pump into her. It was the most exquisite, sensual sight he’d ever seen.

He thought of his prison, to maintain control. He needed her to find her pleasure before he took his.

Gritting his teeth, he began mentally reciting the parameters of his hell.
Fifty-two thousand, nine hundred and eighty-seven stones.

He wanted to give her so much pleasure that each time she looked at him, her body would remember what he could make her feel, and begin hungering for it.
Twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixteen of them paler gray than the rest.

He wanted to be her every sexual fantasy, as well as her man and her rock and her best friend.
Thirty-six thousand and four more rectangular than square.

He slipped one hand in front of her, between her woman’s mound and the desk, found her silken nub with his thumb and began playing it, rolling his pad over it, lightly, gently.
Nine hundred and eighteen stones have a vaguely hexagonal shape.
Then faster and more firmly. Then backing off again, lightly, gently, rubbing slow circles all around her clitoris, without actually grazing it.

“
Oooh
—Cian, that feels so good!”

He eased out of her slowly, thrust back in powerfully. Teasing her nub with alternately slow and gentle, then frantic friction, he slid two fingers over her slick, swollen mound, pushing between her lips, to feel where they joined, where the thick, rock-hard shaft of his cock was entering her. Where they became one.
Ninety-two stones have a vein of bronze running through the face. Three are cracked.

Jessi writhed deliriously beneath Cian’s sensual assault. One of his big hands was on her behind, firmly cupping a cheek, holding her still; the other was between her legs from the front, delicately, expertly working her clit, backing off until she was ready to scream, resuming again just when and how she needed it. She gripped the edge of the desk, quivering uncontrollably, as if being shocked by little sizzling erotic pulses.

Her orgasm ripped through her so suddenly and intensely that she cried out, a long, wild half-sob, half-scream. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and lay whimpering helplessly beneath him, shuddering with wave after wave of pleasure, taking all he was giving her, convulsing as he milked every last ripple of climax from her with his pounding, with his clever, relentless hand.

Her hot, sleek warmth quivering around him was too much! He couldn’t hold it and stopped trying. Dropping forward, Cian covered her, gathering her back against his hard, muscled chest, and growled close to her ear, “You’re mine, Jessica. Do you ken that? Mine.
” He gave her two more powerful pumps of his cock and exploded in hot intense spurts inside her.

The inexplicable feeling of the
rightness of him coming inside her, coupled with the pad of his thumb deliciously abrading her orgasm-sensitive clit and his possessive words, kicked Jessi right back into another orgasm. You’re mine, too, Highlander was her last fierce thought, before they slipped down to the floor and dozed for a time beneath the desk in a sated, entwined stupor.

Cian sat on the floor near the fire, leaning his shoulders back against an ottoman, watching Jessica, entranced.

She was sitting cross-legged on a plush lambskin rug before the briskly crackling fire he’d just topped with sheaves of fragrant heather. Her jade eyes were sparkling, her short dark curls were softly tousled, and she had a velvet crimson throw tucked about her hips. She was talking animatedly, gesturing with her hands. And he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, he couldn’t hear a bloody damned word.

She was naked from the waist up and her pretty, high, round breasts quivered and bobbled with each gesture, her rosy nipples gently swayed.

The warm glow of the firelight highlighted chestnut strands in her raven curls he’d not seen before, and kissed her creamy skin with a brush of gold.

It was all he could do to keep his hands off her, but he knew that if he pushed her too far this night, he’d not be able to have her on the morrow, and the next and the next. He had to pace himself with her, though it was killing him. His palms itched with the need to caress her lush, sweet curves, to take her beneath him again and again.

He stretched out his legs and leaned back on his hands, keeping them well behind him, forcing himself to be contented for a time just savoring the exquisite vision before him.

Jessica St. James: half-nude, all woman, and glowing from his bedplay.

He’d known the moment he’d first glimpsed her that it would come to this. That he would have her this way. As certain as his vengeance, she’d been his destiny.

After they’d slipped beneath the desk and drowsed for a time, he’d stirred, roused her, and scooped her into his arms. He’d carried her here, before the fire, laid her back on the plush creamy sheepskin, and made love to her. Slowly, gently, showing her that he was more than a great big territorial brute, that there was tenderness in him too. He wanted her to know all the facets of him: ninth-century war-laird and sorcerer, and simple man and Druid.

They’d drowsed again, then stirred again, and begun talking lazily of small things, lover’s things: favorite colors and seasons, foods, and places and people.

But suddenly her gaze turned serious and she leaned forward. “How did it happen, Cian? How did you end up in the mirror?”

He leaned forward, too, unable to resist the full, soft breasts swaying toward him with her movement. He ran the pad of his finger beneath the lush curve of one beautiful, silken-skinned mound. “Och, woman,” he said softly, “you show me Heaven and ask me to revisit Hell? Not now, sweet Jessica. Now is for us. No grim thoughts. Only
us
.”

Cupping her breasts with his big hands, he ducked his head and slicked his tongue across one of those rosy nipples before catching it in his mouth with a husky, sensual purr. It hardened instantly against his tongue. He teased it lightly with his teeth, scraping it across the edge, then pressed it with his tongue against his palate, suckling deeply.

“Us,” she repeated breathlessly, clutching his dark head to her.

It was the most incredible night of Jessi’s life. It surpassed all she’d ever imagined that special night would be. It was searing. It was intimate. It was filled with sounds of passion that she was sure must have rung out from the stone walls, echoing sharply down the winding corridors of the vast, ancient castle. It was hushed and conspiratorial. It was raw. It was tender. It was perfection.

He’d taken her wildly, roughly on the desk, calling out to and laying claim upon the kindred wildness within her.

He’d made sweet, painstakingly slow love to her before the fire, cupping her face with his hands, staring into her eyes, caressing her so tenderly and seemingly reverently that she’d had to turn her face away from him to hide an inexplicable burn of tears. As he’d moved, sure and deep inside her, she’d felt as if he’d been making love to her soul.

He’d rolled over onto his back and raised her high above him, muscles bunching and rippling in those powerful, tattooed arms, then lowered her, inch by delicious inch, onto his hard, straining erection.

He was a phenomenal lover! He never went completely soft. Even after he came he was still hard. Once she’d rued his being Terminator-tough. But she wasn’t about to waste a single breath complaining about him being an unstoppable sexual machine. (Though, come morning, she might waste a few breaths complaining if, as she suspected was going to be the case, she could hardly walk!)

After their third intense, erotic bout, stretched on a velvety chaise, with her riding both of them to a brain-melting, panting orgasm, he bundled them up in soft woolen throws collected from various chairs, and they slipped out through the French doors of the library and onto a stone terrace beneath the pearly radiance of a half-full moon.

He stood behind her and pulled her back into his embrace, resting his chin on the top of her head. She was cocooned by the spicy, erotic man-scent of him. Mixed with that scent was a subtler one: the smell they made together. It was intoxicating to her—the scent of their lovemaking—sweat and kisses and come.

He held her like that in silence for a long time, staring out at the night, gazing at the mountains beyond.

And she watched the sky, brilliantly splashed with sparkling stars, marveling.

College was a lifetime away.

She could no longer remember the Jessi who’d so tightly scheduled her entire life. The one who had a coffee cup stuffed way in the back of her cupboard that said:
Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.

She’d finally stopped making other plans.

And this was Life.

Here and now.

She realized then, much to her astonishment, standing there beneath that wide-open Highland sky in the arms of her sexy Highlander, that she was no longer in such a hurry to finish her PhD. In fact, hanging out in Scotland and doing a bit of casual, unstructured digging around these mountains could probably keep her happy for a long time. Especially if Cian MacKeltar was around to carry her tools and keep her company.

And although she knew she would probably never be able to comprehend her mother’s lack of matrimonial staying power no matter how hard she tried, she suddenly completely understood Lilly’s desire for babies, and her unceasing, constant love for all her children: halves, steps, and wholes alike.

It was a complex emotion Jessi’d never felt before, because she’d never met a man whose children she’d wanted and whose last name she’d tried on for size:

Jessica MacKeltar.

For the first time in her life she wondered what kind of babies she would make with a man. What kind of children they could bring into the world together, she and this big, fierce, handful of a man. They would be something—that was for sure!

Jessi knew what was happening to her.

It terrified her even as it elated her. She suspected she was glowing every bit as luminescent as the moon above her.

Falling in love could do that to a woman.

22

“We’re coming in now,” the deep Scottish burr of one of the MacKeltar twins warned through the double doors of the library.

Jessi flashed Cian a cheeky grin. “Guess they got tired of waiting.”

“Aye, ’twould seem so, lass,” he replied, running a finger down the inside of the silvery glass. She mated the pad of her index to his.

She would be
so glad when he was finally free of that damned glass!

It had reclaimed him directly from the shower. In the early hours of the morning, they’d finally ventured from the library and wandered down corridor after corridor, peeking into various chambers, looking for a bathroom.

They’d found one befitting castle and king, with a fabulous shower sporting multiple pulsing heads and a reclining bench. They’d made love yet again, soaping each other slippery, sliding and bumping and grinding beneath the steamy spray. Then the powerful, muscled dark Highlander had dropped to his knees, pressed her back against the wall with his hands on her thighs, and, at a time when she would have sworn herself incapable of more pleasure, had kissed and licked and nibbled her to another shuddering orgasm.

She’d learned over the long, sizzling night that the forbidding man Cian MacKeltar showed the world wasn’t the same one that took a woman to bed.

That man—the lover—dropped barriers, opened himself, gave in small ways she’d never have suspected. That man watched every flicker of her eyelash, learning what pleased her, what made her smile. That man teased with the playfulness of a man who’d had seven sisters he’d obviously adored.

That man had disappeared while she’d been kissing him, leaving her alone in the shower, bereft and kissing air.

She’d fisted her hands with a fierce, hurt scowl.

It had been a bad moment, eased only by the thought that in fifteen more days he would be free of the stupid glass forever
.

She’d decided, as she’d finished rinsing off and stepped from the stall, that in retrospect, they were lucky Dageus had taken their SUV. Things couldn’t have worked out better.

They were now in the highly secure castle of Cian’s descendants, and she was pretty sure that—although his descendants seemed as bristly and testosterone-laden as he was—they would nonetheless do all in their power to keep him safe from Lucan until after the tithe was due. (And when it was all over, she was getting a sledgehammer and smashing that damned mirror into a thousand tiny silvery pieces. Who cared that it was a relic? It had held Cian captive for eleven centuries and she wanted it dead.)

Not once during her harrowing day yesterday had she imagined she might be starting this day—a gloriously sunny Highland morning, at that—having made hot, passionate love all night with the man of her dreams, in pretty much the safest place they could hope to be, with two other Druids present to stand additional guard between her and Cian, and any threat that might come to pass.

“Are you decent?” a woman’s voice called, pushing the door cautiously ajar.

“Nay, but we’re clothed,” Cian purred.

Jessi laughed. He certainly wasn’t decent. The man was shamelessly
indecent
. He was an animal in bed. And out. A great, big, hungry, uninhibited animal.

And she
adored it.

Gwen hurried into the library first, trailed by Chloe. Their sexy husbands brought up the rear. Jessi studied the twins with interest this morning. She’d been too tense and worried about Cian last night to look at them much. Now she examined them at a sexually-induced-endorphin-drugged leisure.

They were magnificent men, with identical, chiseled Celtic features, golden skin, strong noses, and chiseled jaws dusted by the same dark shadow-beards.

Though they were twins, there were significant differences.

Dageus’s long black hair was free this morning and spilled in a sleek fall of midnight silk to his waist. Drustan’s stopped about six inches past his shoulders. Dageus’s eyes were tiger-gold, Drustan’s sparkled like shards of silver and ice. Though both had powerful physiques and stood well over six feet and several inches, Dageus was leaner, ripped with muscle; Drustan was slightly taller, broader, and packed with it. Both were extraordinary men, but Jessi was willing to bet all Keltar males were. All those dominant-male, exceptional qualities that shaped Cian so uniquely were still there, present in his descendants, centuries later. There was simply something extra in their blue blood, programmed into their regal genes.

Gwen smiled warmly at her. “We thought you might like some clean clothes. Chloe and I rummaged through our closets and brought you a few things. We had a few other items taken to the Silver Chamber for you.”

Surprised and delighted, Jessi pushed to her feet. Clean clothes! The morning just kept getting better and better. As she hurried across the patterned rugs, Dageus and Drustan hastened past her, their fascinated gazes locked on the mirror.

“What make you of the runes on the frame, Dageus?” Drustan asked.

“I doona ken the language, do you?”

“Nay,” Drustan replied.

Jessi accepted the small pile of clothing, forgetting about the men for a moment. Gwen and Chloe hadn’t just brought “a few things,” they’d brought her everything she needed. There was a pair of low-ride, button-fly Paper Denim & Cloth jeans that she could never have afforded herself, a delicate pink tank with a lacy scooped neckline, and a matching, soft woolen cardigan. They also brought panties, socks, boots, and—wonder of wonders—a bra! She wasn’t going to sag prematurely after all. She fingered the plain white spandex appreciatively.

Gwen stepped closer and said in a low voice so the men wouldn’t overhear, “I know it’s not very pretty, but it’s the only one I had that I thought might fit. I wore it when I was pregnant.”

“Oh, it’s perfect,” Jessi said fervently. “It’s a bra. I couldn’t be happier. Thank you. Both of you.” She smiled at them.

“If you’re going to be staying with us awhile,” said Chloe, “we can go shopping. Or if you need to stick close to the castle, we can order some things off the Internet.”

Jessi blinked, feeling humbled by the two gracious women. Just like that, they’d accepted her. She’d burst into their home, unannounced and uninvited, they didn’t know the first thing about her, yet they’d made her welcome. They’d brought her pretty clothes. They cared that she had a pretty bra. “Thank you,” she said again, with heartfelt sincerity.

“There’s a half-bath just down the hall to the left, by the great hall, if you’d like to change there.”

Nodding, Jessi hurried off, looking forward to wearing clean clothes again.

When she returned to the library, the MacKeltars were seated near the fire.

They’d moved the Dark Glass from where it had been slanted against the bookcase, to the wall next to the mantel, facing them.

Cian stood, his powerful jean-clad legs widespread, his palms braced on something at the outer edges of the glass—she guessed a stone wall on each side—staring out into the library.

He was wearing the black
Ironman
T-shirt again, and the muscles in his tattooed arms rippled beneath the short sleeves with his slightest movement. She’d had those arms around her in just about every way imaginable last night. She was greatly looking forward to more of the same tonight, or whenever he could be freed next. An ottoman was propped at the base of the mirror to keep it from sliding on the polished wood floor.

On a nearby coffee table was an appetizing spread of iced scones, assorted fruits, cheeses and pastries, and three gently steaming carafes.

“The white carafe has coffee, the silver is cocoa, and the ivory one has hot water for tea,” Gwen told her.

Jessi hurried to the table, gratefully poured herself a cup of coffee, and reached for a lightly iced scone, before taking a seat and joining them.

Commandeering a few scones into his mirror, along with the entire pot of cocoa—much to the amazement and delight of both Chloe and Gwen, who made him send it back out and resummon it again—Cian brusquely explained their situation to his descendants, amid swallows of creamy chocolate and bites of pastries.

Jessi had heard it before, and he didn’t add any detail to it now. No one could ever accuse the man of TMI—too much information. He advised them that he’d been bound to the Dark Glass by a sorcerer named Lucan Trevayne eleven centuries past, thereby securing immortality for himself.

“So, that’s what its purpose is!” Dageus had exclaimed.

Cian had nodded and continued, telling them he’d been kept hung on one of Lucan’s walls or another for the past 1,133 years. That several months ago something had happened in London that had taken down all the wards protecting Lucan’s property while he’d been out of the country; a thief had stolen Trevayne’s prized collection; and that the mirror had been transferred from merchant to merchant for several months before ultimately ending up in Jessica’s hands.

He advised briskly of the tithe sealing the Unseelie indenture, that it was due in a mere fifteen days, that he must remain free of Lucan for another fortnight, until past midnight on Samhain, and that he was formally petitioning their aid to help him do so, and to keep “his woman” safe.

She loved hearing those words!
His woman.

“What then?” Drustan asked the same question Jessi had broached when she’d heard Cian’s story. “Once the tithe is missed and the indenture broken? What plan you then?”

Cian dropped his head down and forward, resting the top of his head against the inside of the glass. When he raised it again, his whisky eyes glittered with feral fury. “Then I will have my vengeance on the bastard who trapped me.”

The room was silent a moment.

Then Dageus said, “You said the gold tithe must be paid every one hundred years in the Old Way of marking time?”

Cian nodded. “Aye.”

“And that ’twas Lucan Trevayne who originally paid it?”

“Aye,” Cian replied.

“Hmm,” Dageus said. He paused a moment, then said softly, “Vengeance can be quite the double-edged sword, eh, kinsman?”

Cian shrugged. “Aye. Mayhap. But in this case, ’tis necessary I wield it.”

“Are you certain of that?”

“Aye.”

“Some blood is best not spilled, ancestor.”

“Doona be thinking you ken me, Keltar. You don’t.”

“You might be surprised.”

“Doubt it,” Cian clipped. “And you doona ken Lucan. He must die.”

“Why?” Dageus countered. “Because he imprisoned you? You seek vengeance for the slight? Is that vengeance worth everything to you, then?”

“What would you ken of the price of vengeance? What would you ken of the price of anything?”

“I ken many things. I broke the oath of the standing stones and went back in time to undo my twin’s death. For a time I was possessed by the thirteen souls of the Draghar—”

“Christ, you used the stones of Ban Drochaid for personal gain? What are you—mad? Even I gave that legend wide berth!” Cian sounded astonished.

“Appears to be the only thing you gave wide berth,” Drustan said pointedly. “Are you, or aren’t you, a sorcerer, ancestor?”

Jessi bristled. Cian was a good man. She was about to open her mouth and say so, but Cian said coolly, “I have done sorcery. It appears your brother has dispensed with the occasional Keltar oath, as well.”

Right. So there, Jessi thought. Nobody was perfect. She wasn’t quite sure she’d followed whatever it was Dageus had done, but it’d sounded pretty bad.

“Dageus did so of love. You’ve told us neither how you came to bear such extensive protection runes tattooed across your body, nor how you ended up in that mirror.”

“‘Protection runes’” Jessi echoed. “Is that what your tattoos are, Cian? I’ve been meaning to ask you if those runes are a language. What are they for?”

It was Chloe who answered her. “They hold the repercussions of meddling with black magycks at bay,” she clarified helpfully. “I’ve been reading about them lately.”

“Oh.” Jessi blinked, wondering what black magycks Cian had been messing with. She decided there was too much going on at the moment to press him on the subject. Later, when they were alone, she would ask him.

Right now, Cian was holding Drustan’s gaze, his lips curved in a mocking smile. She wasn’t sure she liked that smile. It was cold. It seemed doubly so after the wickedly heated ones she’d seen curving his sensual lips mere hours ago.

“Nor do I plan to discuss it,” Cian growled. “‘Tis of no consequence. What is—is. What’s been done, cannot be undone. All that matters now is stopping Lucan.”

Dageus began, “Not necessarily—”

“Och, aye, ‘necessarily,’ ” Cian cut him off. “I’ve not yet told you, Keltar, but Trevayne recently located several pages from the Unseelie Dark Book. He’s been hunting it since the ninth century. Are you familiar with the Unseelie relic?”

Dageus’s golden eyes narrowed and he stiffened. “Blethering hell!”

“Precisely,” Cian said flatly.

“He’s seeking the Unseelie Dark Book?” Drustan exclaimed. “Think you he might actually find it?”

“Aye, he will. ’Tis but a matter of time.”

“Wait a minute,” Jessi interjected. “What is ‘the Unseelie Dark Book’?” Although Cian had mentioned it once before, she’d been so preoccupied with her own worries that she’d not absorbed what he’d said.

“Do you know who the Unseelie are, lass?” Drustan asked.

Jessi gave him a dubious look. “Um . . . fairies?” Oh, that just sounded abjectly silly. Even for a girl who now believed in sorcerers and spells and Druids.

But no one else in the room seemed to think so.

Matter-of-factly, Gwen said, “We call them ‘Faery,’ Jessi, but they’re actually a race of beings from another world, an incredibly advanced civilization known as the Tuatha Dé Danaan. They came to Earth thousands of years before the birth of Christ and settled in Ireland.”