Spell of the Highlander (8 page)

As he continued to laugh, the fight went out of her, up in a puff of smoke. She was tired, she was freaked out, and she really just wanted to walk on her own two feet. “Would you
please
put me down?” she said plaintively.

She suspected he must have felt the diminishing of tension in her muscles, read her body language, and knew, mentally, she’d capitulated.

His laughter subsided. He bent and gently deposited her on her feet. His scotch-gold gaze glittered with amusement and sexual heat he made no effort to disguise. “Better?” He cupped her chin with one big hand, thumb brushing her lower lip.

She twisted her face away. “Better. Come on. Let’s get out of here before someone sees us with the professor’s—”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Jess?” Mark Troudeau barked sharply behind her.

Jessi turned disbelievingly. What—had the mere thought been a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Mark’s office was a few hundred feet down the hall from Professor Keene’s. When she’d passed it earlier, there’d been no lights on. Didn’t he have a life? What was he doing here so late?

Was nothing going to go right anymore?

Great, just great. This was just what she needed: Mark running off to tattle to anyone who would listen that not only had she crossed police lines and gone into the professor’s office, but she’d made off with a priceless, mysterious artifact. If the police did the least bit of checking into things, they would discover that what she’d taken was what the (murdered) deliverymen had delivered to the (murdered) professor.

And she would be oh-so-incriminatingly on the lam, nowhere to be found, last seen in the company of a tall, dark, kilt-clad stranger, “stealing” the fabulously expensive black-market relic that three people had already died over.

Without getting the slightest chance to tell her side of the story and point out that somebody’d tried to murder her too.

As if anyone would believe her anyway.

Shit, shit, shit. When all this was over, she really wanted to be able to finish her degree at the university where she’d begun it, not via correspondence courses from jail. That kind of stuff just didn’t look good on a resumé.

“Oh, for crying out loud, Mark, it’s two in the morning!
What
are you doing here?”

“I believe I just asked you that.” Close-set brown eyes behind rimless glasses darted from her to the half-naked, towering man toting the mirror, and back to her again.

What could she say? Dredging her mind, she drew an empty net. Try though she might, she couldn’t think of a single excuse for her current circumstances—convincing or otherwise. She would have been grateful even for an absurd one, but apparently her brain was done for the day.

As she stood there, staring at him like the biggest idiot, Cian MacKeltar took care of the problem.

“You will go back in that room from whence you came, and remain in there, silent, until well after we’ve gone. Now.”

Mark turned and cantered dutifully back down the hall toward his office without so much as a neigh of protest.

Wow.
Jessi blinked up at Cian MacKeltar.

“Hmm,” he murmured softly, staring after the retreating grad student. “Mayhap ’tis only her.”

“‘Her’? Do you mean me? What me?” Jessi said expectantly.

“Puny little man,” he scoffed, as Mark obediently closed the door.

Was that it? Was that why Mark had slunk off—because he was puny and Cian MacKeltar was so big and forbidding?

She tipped her head back, eyeing him. At six and a half feet, and a good two-hundred-plus pounds of pure muscle, he dwarfed people. With those wild dark braids tangling halfway down his back and those wicked red-and-black tattoos licking across his chest, up to the edge of that whisker-shadowed jaw, he looked downright primeval: an ancient, deadly warrior stalking the halls of the university. She supposed his mere appearance might have been enough to make Mark decide he clearly wouldn’t be winning any arguments with this man, so there was little point in beginning any.

How nice it must be to have such an impact on the world! If reincarnation was the way of things, she wanted to come back as Cian MacKeltar. She’d like to be the asshole man, for a change, rather than subject to asshole men’s dictates. And if she were going to be the asshole man, she’d like to do it up right and be the biggest and baddest.

“That was amazing,” she said fervently. “He is
such
a pain in the butt. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I could get him to just go away like that. Like he had no choice but to obey me, or something.”

“Come, Jessica.” Cian MacKeltar closed a hand around her upper arm. “We must away ourselves.”

They awayed.

8

An hour later they pulled under the canopy of the Sheraton in downtown Chicago.

Jessi had wanted to go home and get a few things, but Cian MacKeltar had immediately, vehemently vetoed that.

The next assassin could already be awaiting you there, woman,
he’d said, and she’d shivered. How creepy to think someone might even now be lurking in her dark apartment, waiting to kill her. How odd to think she couldn’t go home. Maybe not for a long, long time.

Maybe never again.

This was it, she’d realized while driving. She’d gone too far to turn back now. She was officially on the run. Her situation wouldn’t have been so dire if Mark hadn’t caught her leaving with the artifact.

But he had. That milk was spilt, and there was no point crying over it.

She glanced over at Cian, barely able to see him over the top of the huge mirror that was wedged sideways between the bucket seats of her car. A good quarter of the mirror was hanging out the open hatchback, which was bungeed carefully around it, with various bits of her clothing—jackets and sweaters and T-shirts that tended to accumulate in her car as the seasons changed—wedged protectively between metal and glass.

Head flush to the ceiling, he looked miserably uncomfortable. It had been as difficult to cram him into the tiny car as it had been to finesse in the mirror.

They’d argued over the top of the looking glass the entire way downtown. He took backseat driving to a whole new level.

Cease ceasing movement so abruptly! Christ, woman, must you
catapult
forward after each cessation? Are you certain you’ve strapped the mirror securely? We should stop and check it. By Danu, wench, try nudging this beast gently, not kicking it with both heels!
A silence, a slew of choked curses, then:
Horses! What the bloody hell is wrong with horses? Have they all been slain in battle?

When she’d finally cranked up her favorite Godsmack CD in an effort to tune him out, he’d let out a roar that had rattled the windows in her car:
By all that’s holy, woman, what is that hideous noise? Cease and desist! A battlefield at full charge could be no more cacophonous!

Huh.
She loved Godsmack. The man clearly had no taste in music.

Scowling, she’d stuffed in Mozart’s
Requiem
—which she reserved for only her broodiest days, usually during finals week—and in moments, he’d been whistling cheerfully along. Cheerfully. Go figure.

“You’re going to have to stay here,” she informed him. “I’ll get the room and come back for you.”

“I doona think so,” he growled.

“You don’t look like the rest of us.”

“Nay,” he agreed. “I am bigger. Stronger. Better.”

The look she gave him said she had something nasty on her tongue and couldn’t scrape it off. “That’s not what I meant. There’s no way we’ll be able to keep a low profile with you walking around dressed like that.”

“Leave it to me, woman.”

Before she could utter another word, he grappled with the handle, opened the door, and stepped out. Or rather uncramped and unfolded himself onto the pavement, closing the door behind him.

For a man from the ninth century, he sure seemed to know a lot about modern-day things, she mused, though it seemed to be from having observed them, not from having interacted with them. When he’d first gotten in, he’d examined everything, twisting knobs and pushing buttons. He’d even eyed the steering wheel consideringly. Fortunately, he’d seemed to think better of it. Unfortunately, she didn’t think his restraint would last long. He liked to be the one in charge.

“You will not look at me,”
she heard him say to the valets.
“You will see only her.”
A silence. Then,
“And you will not look at her breasts.”

Jessi blinked and burst out laughing. The man was such a Neanderthal! Like her breasts were his or something! What did he think—that the valets would just dutifully obey him as Mark had?

She had news for him: He wasn’t that impressive.

“You’re not that impressive,” she said, stepping from the car and casting a dry look across the roof.

Five valets stood around the car, looking at her, and only at her, and only at her face.

“May we take your luggage, ma’am?” one of them said, looking her dead in the eye.

Men rarely did that. At least not at first. She smoothed her pink sweater down and took a slow, luxuriatingly deep breath. That always worked.

Five gazes remained fixed on her face.

She glanced down; they were still there, round and perky and obvious as ever. Mystified, she said, “No luggage,” and removed her car key from the key ring.

Cian moved to the rear of the car and began unstrapping the mirror.

“We can’t take that in with us!” Belatedly, she realized it would have been much smarter to go to some seedy No-Tell Motel way out on the outskirts. But the Sheraton down on the lake was the only hotel she’d ever stayed in (during an archaeology seminar last summer), and when they’d left campus, she’d headed for it, driving on a sort of bemused autopilot, far too busy defending her driving skills to be thinking clearly. Getting him into a room without causing a memorable stir was going to be difficult enough. They needed to be inconspicuous. Taking the mirror in with them just wasn’t possible. Then again, she thought, frowning, they could hardly leave it in the car, either.

Again, he merely said, “Leave it to me, woman.”

It was then that she realized, with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, that it was only a matter of time before the police came and arrested her.

As if a grim portent, a few blocks down the street a police siren began to sound.

She shivered.

Oh yeah. Only a matter of time.

He still had it.
Bloody hell, he still had it!

There was nothing wrong with him. There was something wrong with
her
.

Mirror beneath one arm, the other wrapped around his woman, he steered her into the brilliantly lit, polished, and gleaming lodgings.

Christ, it felt good to walk free! And to walk free with such a beautiful woman on his arm? ’Twas heaven to be alive.

Even hunted. Even knowing what lay ahead. ’Twas far more than he’d thought he’d get at such a late hour in the game.

Her city seemed much like what he’d seen of London, with insignificant differences. Both enormous, both massively populated, frenetic with cars and people rushing to and fro, but her city had taller buildings than aught he’d glimpsed from Lucan’s study.

He continued tossing out commands in Voice as they strode into the lodgings she’d selected.
Doona look at us. Move out of my way. Do not notice the mirror. We are not here.

Memory spells were extremely complicated and could cause terrible, irreversible damage if done wrong. ’Twas easier to turn eyes away than attempt to make people forget.

Still, nonspecific commands such as “we are not here” weren’t truly effective. They served mostly to gloss things over a bit, make events seem dimmer. For Voice to be truly compelling, the commands needed to be concise, precise. Commands too vague or complicated could get messy. Orders strongly counter to a person’s fundamental beliefs could cause intense pain.

“Why don’t you just stand here and I’ll go get a room?” She tipped her head back and looked up at him. “And you don’t have to hold on to me,” she added peevishly. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

He smiled. He liked that. “Where?”

“‘Where’ what?”

“Where does one ‘get a room’?”

“Oh. Over there.” She pointed. “Wait here.”

“You will cease attempting to give me orders, wench.”
He tried Voice on her again, thinking perchance something in their earlier environment had conflicted with his use of magyck.

“
You
will cease
ordering
me to cease giving you orders,” she said exasperatedly. “I’m just trying to help.”

“The day I need help seeing to the needs of a woman is the day I may as well be dead.”

She gave him a measuring look. “Actually, it’d be nice if more men felt that way. Of course, you still need to lose that whole me-Tarzan, you-Jane thing.”

He had no idea what she was
havering
about, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was the getting of a room.

He escorted her where she’d pointed,
GUEST CHECK-IN
, and propped the mirror carefully against the short wooden wall.

A trim, auburn-haired, fortyish man with a bristly mustache came over, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else at this hour.

“You will give us a room. Now. And stop looking at me.”

Beside him, Jessica said hastily, “You’ll have to excuse him. He can be a bit heavy-ha—oh, for heaven’s sake!” She changed both sentence and direction of her gaze midstream, frowning up at him when the desk clerk obediently, and without protest whatsoever, averted his eyes and began processing the paperwork for a room. “People keep obeying you like you’re some kind of . . . of . . . well,
god . . .
or something.”

“Imagine that.”
In my day, lass, I was.

“I can’t.”

“I’m excruciatingly aware of that,” he said dryly.

“Well, why do they keep doing it?”

“Mayhap, woman, they recognize a Man among men.” He couldn’t resist provoking her. “That would be Man with a capital ‘M.’ ”

She rolled her eyes, as he’d known she would.

He bit back a smile. There was no point in explaining to her about Voice. She wouldn’t understand; the wench was infuriatingly immune. Impossibly immune. His amusement faded. He narrowed his eyes, studying her for the hundredth time, trying to discern something—anything—different about her that might explain her condition.

He couldn’t discern a blethering thing. Of all the wenches the Fates might have appointed to serve as his reluctant savior, the humorless bitches had sent him the only woman he’d ever encountered that he couldn’t control.

“I’ll just need a credit card,” the man behind the counter was saying.

Cian opened his mouth to use Voice again, but Jessica was already handing the man something. He had no idea what it was. He shrugged. He didn’t mind letting her feel useful. He knew women liked to feel important too. ’Twas but that he preferred to make them feel important in other ways.

Like as women. In his bed. While he was inside them.

And this one, och, this one did something strange to him. A subtler version of that electrifying jolt he’d felt the first time she’d touched him had been happening each time he touched her. It made it nigh impossible to keep his hands off her. The entire time she’d been over his shoulder he’d felt a gentle current sizzling through the length and breadth of his body. Wherever their bodies were touching, he felt as if heat lightning crackled just beneath his skin.

And he knew, though she pretended otherwise, that she felt it too. When he’d put his hand so blatantly on her woman’s mound, he’d been prepared for indignation, outrage, a fierce tongue-lashing. He’d deserved it. He’d never treated a woman in such a possessive fashion—at least not until
after
they’d become lovers—bypassing any pretense of civility or seduction entirely. And yet somehow, at the same time, he’d known she wouldn’t lambaste him.

It was as if his hand simply
belonged
there on her. And she knew it too.

You’re getting fanciful, Keltar. Next you’ll be thinking she’s your one true mate.

According to Keltar legend, each Druid born into the clan was destined for a soul mate, a perfect match in heart and mind, as well as body, coming together with an explosive, incendiary passion that could not be denied. If the Keltar male exchanged the sacred Druid binding vows with his true love, and his mate willingly returned them, they could bind their souls together for all eternity, in this life and forever beyond. The vows linked them inextricably. ’Twas said if a Keltar gave the vows and they were not returned, he would be forever incomplete, missing a part of his heart, aching for the love of a woman he could never have, eternally bound to her, through this life and all his future existence, whether in the cycle of rebirth, heaven, hell, or even an eternal Unseelie prison.
If aught must be lost . . .
the legendary vows began,
’twill be my life for yours. . . .

He snorted derisively. He had no life to give.

Very little left of a soul.

Not much honor, either, if one wanted to go further into the oath. Which he didn’t.

“What?” she asked, wondering why he’d snorted.

He looked down at her. She was glancing askance up at him, her head tipped back. Her short glossy black curls glistened beneath the hotel lights, her creamy skin glowed with a kiss of sun-gold—the lass liked the outdoors—and the expression in her eyes managed somehow to be curious, irritated, worried, and determined, all at the same time.

Just looking up at him like that, she took his breath away. And he wasn’t the kind of man that happened to easily. It was more than what she looked like that did it to him—it was the woman
inside
the lush package.

Jessica St. James was a handful of a woman; precisely the kind he’d so long ago hungered to find. Scholarly, learned, she possessed spine and sauciness and independence of will. In the ninth century it had gotten to the point where he would have positively welcomed a temper tantrum from a woman, even if it had been completely unfounded—he would have appreciated
any
show of backbone—but as laird of the castle since birth, and heir to the ways of Druidry, virtually all he’d gotten from the lasses from a tender age on was obedience, deference, and awe.
Aye, milord. If it please you, milord. How may I serve you, milord? Is the wine to your liking, milord? May I fetch you anything—anything at all—milord?
And it had only worsened as he’d aged and become a formidably powerful man, sorcerer, and warrior.

He’d found himself increasingly drawn to more mature women, like this one. He suspected she had a good quarter century to her name. In his century she would have, like as not, had three or four babes and lost a few husbands by this time in her life. He preferred women who’d lived a good bit, women whom the passage of years had deepened and made more interesting. He liked to toop—bloody hell, did he ever!—but he also liked to be able to talk when the tooping was at a temporary hiatus.