The Highland Dragon's Lady (17 page)

There was darkness—just darkness. No face of the deep here; no heavens, no earth; certainly no light, good or otherwise. Only darkness. For a long time that was all.

Or was it a long time? It felt that way, but she had no way of measuring. Everything was dark; then both pain and memory unfolded like the sudden snapping open of an umbrella. Reggie remembered who she was, the past few days—ghosts and dancing and dragon-men—and her stupid horse’s sudden stupid panic. She must have hit her head, she thought. It felt awful: swollen to three times its size, oddly numb at the same time that it throbbed with pain, and sticky on one side. She was lying on a field of rocks, by the way her left side felt, and it almost didn’t matter compared to her damn head.

Reggie opened her eyes a slit and immediately regretted it. The light seemed to be made of long needles that went right in through her eyes to her bruised brain. She groaned and snapped her lids shut, throwing her arm up over her face to be sure.

In that instant of vision, she did glimpse silhouettes: legs, hurrying toward her. She could hear voices too, above the sound of footsteps in the grass. They were male, and she didn’t need to concentrate very hard to recognize them. Colin and Edmund were here. How embarrassing.

“She’s alive. Conscious too,” Edmund said in the bluff pretend-nothing’s-really-wrong tone she’d only heard him take about horses and hounds before.

Colin said something rough. He said it in a foreign tongue—not French or German—and it had a number of syllables, but Reggie knew an oath when she heard one.

“…gonna hope,” she managed, though her tongue was as swollen as her brain from the feel of it, “you’re not mad ’m alive.”

“For the love of God, woman,” said Colin, “don’t
talk
.”

Close up—and he was close up now—his voice didn’t sound normal. His accent was very thick now. More to the point, his voice had dropped at least an octave, and it sounded almost sibilant. Reggie heard more swishing grass and felt a shadow fall over her, then a hand on her arm. It was Colin’s, she thought, but even hotter than he normally was.

“…’s wrong w’ you?” she asked. She didn’t want to open her eyes to find out, because of the light needles.

“A damned fine question,” he said. “Do
not
move. Do what I say this time.”

As Reggie wasn’t inclined to move anyhow, she held still while an equally warm set of fingers traveled gently but urgently over her head, at first avoiding the sticky place on one side and then probing lightly around its edges. No amount of gentleness could have made that not hurt, and she couldn’t manage to control herself. She cried out and batted at Colin’s arm. “Stoppit. Go ’way.”

“Damned if I will.” He caught her fingers in his free hand. “There’s a bloody great lump here,” he said, not to her, “but nothing feels broken. But she’s bleeding. Quite a bit, and would you for the love of God go get a doctor? Make yourself useful, man!”

“I—” Edmund started to retort angrily, and Reggie wondered if she’d have to get up and deal with the two of them, because she’d quite cheerfully kill them both if so. Moving hurt. Thinking hurt. Edmund and Colin shouting hurt. Luckily for everyone, she heard Edmund take a long breath. “I’ll go down to the village and get Dr. Brant if you take Reggie back to the house. We can’t bring him out here, and I don’t want to leave you both waiting—not when
she
might come back.”

She?
Reggie was puzzled for a moment, then remembered: Janet Morgan. Ghost, witch, and generally unpleasant person. Quite possibly the reason she was lying on the ground with spikes in her brain.

“Stupid cow,” she said.

“Stupid? I’d love it if she were,” said Edmund. “Reggie, do what he says. And don’t try to do anything yourself. Colin—I’ll be as quick as I can.”

He started off at a run. Listening to him go, Reggie felt a wave of affection. How many times had she gotten him in trouble? And he’d always covered for her.

“Poor bastard,” she muttered.

“Aye, well, he’s not the one with a head wound.” Colin’s fingers held hers tightly, and his other hand rested on her head, but either he was controlling his feelings or her pain and dizziness were blocking her abilities. “Reggie, sweetheart, I’ll need you to open your eyes. Just for a bit.”

“Ugh,” she said and sighed. “All right.”

The light still hurt. She was staring into Colin’s eyes now, though. They were the same metallic silver that they’d been in his dragon form, with serpentine vertical pupils. “You…” She waved a hand, trying to think of words. “You changed.”

“It seemed wise at the moment. And you can shut your eyes again. What’s your name?”

“Regina Talbot-Jones. Typical of a man to forget, after,” she said, laughing as the idea struck her.

Colin’s hand tightened on hers. “And what year is it?”

“Eighteen ninety-five.”

He sighed. “All right. I’ll be picking you up now. Put your arms around my neck, aye? And hold tight. This will take a while.”

“I guess you can’t fly me,” she said with a sigh of her own, “in the middle of the day.”

“For sixpence I would,” he said curtly, “and damn the daylight. But I’d not be able to carry you without hurting you, and you can’t hang on like this. Brace yourself.”

Then his arms were around her, beneath her knees and her neck. Colin lifted her and held her, her head against his hard chest. It would have been very pleasant to lie that way if the motion hadn’t sent her brain bouncing against the inside of her skull. She bit her lip. She would not cry out, because Colin was doing the best he could, and she would certainly not be sick, because it was disgusting and would just make her head hurt more.

Nonetheless, she heard him draw a sharp breath, and now she did feel a little of his emotions around her own pain—mostly remorse, at the moment, and worry. “None of this will be pleasant for you. I’m sorry,” he said.

“Not your fault.”

She settled her face against the hollow of his neck, smelling smoke and clean linen. She focused on that smell when Colin started to walk. It helped the nausea.

Even so, it was a very long journey.

She knew, from both his body and his mind, that Colin was going as carefully as he could, but every step still jarred her head and her stomach. When they walked out of the shade, the sunlight hurt even through her closed eyelids. She didn’t dare to open her eyes again. Reggie didn’t talk, either. The effort to hold on physically and mentally, not to scream or vomit or black out again, was taking every atom of concentration she had.

Colin was silent too, and for the most part, all of his mind that she could read was concentrating on walking. Memories crept in around the edges, though—most alarmingly, that of a stable boy who’d been kicked in the head, seemed fine, and fell over dead two days later.

She did speak then. “Horse didn’t kick me. Did he?”

“What?” Colin looked down, realized who he was talking to and why she was asking, and shook his head quickly. “It was only a branch. And on the side of your head, not the front. You’ll likely be fine.”

He was telling himself that just as much as he was reassuring her, Reggie knew, but he mostly believed it, and that made her feel better. After that, his concentration deepened, and she could sense less of his mind. She still picked up that he was angry at Janet Morgan, for obvious reasons, and at himself, for reasons she couldn’t make out, and that he was desperately worried about her.

Most of his emotions, she thought blurrily, felt rather close to human—or maybe those were the only ones
she
could feel. Dogs couldn’t see color. Humans couldn’t hear certain sounds. She’d gone to a lecture on that in London. Louisa had been there. Edmund was suddenly more interested in Louisa than Reggie would have thought.

Briefly, she forgot whose arms she was in and why, and muttered a profane question up at the man—handsome enough, but dashed impertinent to be toting her about like this.

“You hit your head, Reggie,” he said, and his voice reminded her that he was Colin.

“But you
are
a dragon,” she said, frowning up at him.

“You’re not imagining that part,” he said, his mouth twitching.

“And we—”

“We did.”

“Oh. Jolly good,” she said and let her head fall back against his shoulder.

The flickering pattern of darkness and light outside her closed eyelids became all light, and Reggie knew they’d come out of the forest even before she heard more voices, and then running footsteps. Mater was trying to keep everyone calm, including herself; Pater was talking of mad horses and getting the gamekeeper with his gun; the others were harder to make out, because she couldn’t read them as well. Edmund wasn’t there. Where was he? Ah. Gone to get the doctor.

Inside, then. Stairs. A bed. It was good to lie down, but she felt cold without Colin’s arms around her. He wasn’t in the room anymore, either—it was Mater, saying calming things, and women who were taking off her clothes and bathing her. Breathing helped her head, and she didn’t want to be sick any longer.

She opened her eyes. That wasn’t quite so painful, either. Miss Heselton was bending over her, washing the cut on her head with sure, gentle hands. Her lips were thin, but she didn’t look rigid or disapproving, just concerned.

“You should be this way,” Reggie told her. “Don’t—don’t make yourself less. It’s not worth it.”

Miss Heselton gave her a glance that said at first
What?
and then
Head
wound, I won’t pay attention
, so Reggie didn’t know that Miss Heselton had gotten the message. That was all right. Everything was all right. Life was like a dream, as the song said.

Dreamlike, Dr. Brant came in and examined her. He bandaged the cut, palpated her skull, shone a bright light into each of her eyes, and asked her a number of questions, then had her touch her nose with each hand. “She should be all right,” he told Mater, and then turned to Reggie and spoke firmly, as if she were still ten. “You’re going to sleep for the rest of the day, and you’re not to do anything strenuous tomorrow. Do you understand?”

“Mm-hmm,” said Reggie. Sleep sounded pleasant, and she was glad to close her eyes and slip down into darkness.

She had no dreams, thank God, and when she woke, her head only ached a little in a bruised sort of way. The room was dark, except for where moonlight spilled through a crack in the curtains. At first, she thought she was alone. Then she heard breathing.

In a chair in the corner, the shadows were thicker than normal: too thick and man-shaped. Momentary panic froze her where she lay.

She saw the figure’s moonlight-colored eyes just before he whispered. “Oh, damn—I didn’t mean to frighten you. Terribly sorry. I didn’t think you’d wake up.”

“Colin?” she whispered back. “What are you doing here?”

He shrugged. “Head injuries are tricky things. I’m not a medical man, but one never can tell. I thought it might be best if one of us kept watch. If I’d asked your mother or one of the maids to do it, they’d have just been nervous all evening.”

“Oh,” she said, thinking of the stable boy, the one Colin hadn’t meant to tell her about. He’d probably seen others: a long lifetime of unexpected deaths.

“I couldn’t heal you, not really,” he went on. “We can’t, as a rule, just as we’re not very good with animals—well, Judith is, but more from a distance. Healing magic takes a body like the one being healed, and ours are close, but not close enough. But I thought, if something did go wrong, I could probably manage a botch job and keep you alive until—until the doctor got here, I suppose. Or until I thought of something more useful to do.”

Helplessness must have been very new to him. Reggie smiled into the darkness and wished he’d been close enough to kiss—not out of passion, though she suspected that would happen regardless, but because he was dashed sweet at times.

Shadowed, he rose. “Regardless, you’re awake now. I should stop intruding on your privacy.”

No sound came from the hallway outside. No shape peered in at the window. They were alone, and his voice was low and warm in the darkness.

Reggie found that she could sit up without pain. She turned back the covers. “You,” she said, “should stay.”

The world around Colin screeched to a stop. If the crickets still sang outside or the grandfather clock still ticked in the hall, he couldn’t hear them. He wasn’t even sure that he breathed. He heard only Reggie’s voice, telling him to stay. He saw her turning back the covers with one hand, and the moonlight shining through the flimsy nightgown she wore, exposing the dark shadows of her nipples and the darker patch between her legs.

Yes
, said his mind, almost hissing it.
Yess, pleasse.

“That might not be the best idea,” he managed. His voice was thick, but he was proud that he’d gotten the words out at all.

The impact on Reggie was negligible. She shrugged and pointed out, “You must have had some way to get out of here tomorrow morning before anyone saw you. You can still use that. And you’ll be able to lie down and get warm, and maybe even get some sleep this way. Unless you sleep better on your own.”

“I don’t,” he said, caught off guard. In fact, he wasn’t sure how well he’d sleep with Reggie curled up mostly naked next to him, but he
was
sure he didn’t give a damn.

“Well,” she said, as if the one word indicated everything needful, and patted the bed next to her.

Colin braced his mind, braced his body even more, and settled himself onto the mattress.

The bed smelled of her: lilac and linen and woman. He sighed, both because he couldn’t avoid it and because he didn’t wish to.

“How did you get in here, anyhow?” Reggie asked, shifting her body to accommodate his. She was turned away from him, at least.

“Climbed down the tree,” he said.

“The window was locked.”

“Locks generally aren’t a great problem for me.”

“Oh.”

Satisfied, she snuggled back against him, tucking her head beneath his chin. Colin wrapped his arms around her, luxuriating in the warmth of her body, the firm curves that pressed against him through the nightgown, the little contented noises she made as she shifted to get comfortable. Disciplined as he was, he had to control both body and mind now, and one inevitably slipped his grasp.

“Colin,” she said, her voice low and amused. Lithely, she turned in his arms, so that her breasts were full and soft against his chest, and the juncture of her thighs pressed against his persistent and obvious erection. Dressing gowns did not hide a great deal. Neither did nightgowns. “Colin,” she said again, this time with a hint of a question.

Flushing for the first time in God knew how long, he cleared his throat. “Can’t really be helped, I’m afraid. Not now, not most of the time when I’m around you. Doesn’t mean I’ve got to do anything with it, either just now or in general.” Not with Reggie, at any rate. His rigid cock would demand some kind of satisfaction, sooner or later, but he thought it was best to stick to chivalry and reassurance just then.

Of course, then Reggie flexed the muscles of her thighs, which was a test of his honesty. Colin sucked in a long breath and reminded himself that he was more than a century old.

“What?” she asked into his neck, so that he didn’t understand her at first. When her hand slid over his thigh and inward, though, he became amazingly more adept at translation. “What would you like to do with it now?”

“Reggie.”

“I’m not naive,” she said, “but you may have figured out that I don’t have much experience in propositioning men. This is me trying, in case you haven’t caught on.”

Awareness was rapidly leaving his head and traveling south, to where he could only ache and hope for her touch. A small sliver of gentlemanly behavior still governed the mouth, though, and one hand. Colin put it over Reggie’s before she could achieve her goal. “You’re not well. You could barely talk this afternoon.”

“That was this afternoon. I feel much better now.” When Colin lifted his head to look at her skeptically, Reggie shrugged. “I’m not saying you should bend me over the nightstand and yank up my skirts—”

They both went still. Colin wondered if a man could go blind with lust. Certainly all he could see was the image—Reggie’s face in the mirror, mouth open in ecstasy, her hair tumbled down her back and her skirts around her waist, revealing all the hot loveliness of her sex—and all the air had left the room.

“I should take more care with my phrasing,” she said unsteadily.

“Oh, yes. You should.”

With effort, she cleared her throat. “It’s only, I get the impression there are a number of different ways to bed a girl. And that one can do it, at times, more gently. Though I hate to say it that way. Sounds like such a whimpering request. But I’ll do the wide-eyed begging act if it’ll get you to touch me.”

Between her thighs, his rod pulsed at almost every word. He wanted to move—to take those few thrusts that would likely bring him to climax even outside Reggie’s body. Colin held himself completely still from the hips down and lowered his head until he just breathed the words across Reggie’s lips. “You promise not to move.”

“Cross my heart,” she whispered back and directed his hand to the appropriate place. Her breast welled into his hand, soft and smooth, and he could feel the rapid beat of the pulse beneath it. He circled the nipple with his thumb, slow and gentle, until it tightened and pushed at him through the thin cotton of her nightgown. After a few moments of him touching both breasts in that fashion, Reggie, true to her word, hadn’t moved. She was simply panting and making little whimpering noises in her throat.

“I’ll let you sit up,” he said, trying to sound stern through his haze of lust, “but just to take this off, ye ken?”

“I…ken,” she said, mocking his accent in her own throaty voice.

That earned her a pinch on the backside, once the nightgown was off and Colin could slide down her body to suck at her nipples. He stroked her legs, first soothing the spot where he’d pinched, then running his fingers up and down the muscular curves of her thighs. She shifted, then caught herself, and he chuckled against one breast.

Such lovely legs she had: long and strong, silver and shadowed. More enticing still was the place between them, the nest of soft dark curls that Colin began to tease, brushing his fingers forward and back. He could feel heat there, and he swallowed when his fingertips grew damp. Patience, he told himself. Patience. Calmness. Caution.

He’d never been very good at any of the above.

When he lifted his head from her breasts, Reggie raised a hand as if to pull him back, then remembered her promise and dropped it to her side. Colin smiled at her. “Very good. Besides,” he added, shifting so that he lay between her legs, “you’ll like this.”

“Will I?” she asked, raising an eyebrow in pretend skepticism.

“Oh, yes. Open your legs for me, sweetheart.”

She complied instantly and unhesitatingly, and the trust of it made Colin’s heart skip a beat—as did the final revelation of her sex. He worshipped it with his mouth: the warmth, the wetness, the rigid little bud that made Reggie moan when he circled it with his tongue. Pressed against the mattress, his cock was torturously hard, sweet agony with every movement, but he held on to his self-control just as he held on to Reggie’s hips as she neared the end.

It wasn’t very long before she convulsed under his tongue, a rush of sound and motion and moisture that damn near sent Colin over the edge himself. When she lay quiet beneath him, he rested his head on her thigh, breathed in the scent of her, and tried to figure out what to do next.

Reggie, typically, addressed the issue.

“I could do that to you,” she said, still breathless. “Take you in my mouth. I’ve—heard how. I think I’d like it.” As Colin’s mind struggled to make sense of basic words, she began to sit up.

The motion helped. Or, at least, it pulled Colin’s attention away from the weight between his legs and back to Reggie’s condition. Willing or not,
passionate
or not, she’d taken a blow to her head earlier. Some activities went even worse with head injuries than what they’d already done.

“Later,” he managed, rasping the words. “I promise. I might demand. But not tonight. Lie back.”

She didn’t, but she paused. “But you—” Her gaze went to his trousers, which were barely containing a rather significant bulge. “You deserve—release, is it? And I want to touch you.”

“You will. I do.” Colin let out a long, shaky breath, his fists clenched at his sides. A better man—Stephen, perhaps—would have showed her how to bring him to climax with her hand, or done it himself, or gone away altogether and left her in satiated peace. Reggie was not an inch away from him, her smell surrounded him, and Colin had never been a particularly good man. “Lie back. Turn on your side.”

He was moving as he spoke, taking off dressing gown and trousers, so that he could stretch naked beside her and pull her into his arms. Sensitized from her earlier climax, Reggie caught her breath at the first touch of bare skin to bare skin, and when he ran his fingers down her spine, she wiggled against him in a way that could drive a man mad.

“I think,” she said, pressing her breasts against his chest, “that I might be insatiable. Dreadful sort of thing in a woman, I hear.”

From the sound of her voice, she was joking, but Colin responded emphatically anyhow. “You didn’t hear it from me. Or from any other man with sense.” He slid an exploratory hand between her thighs and found her wet and ready again. “Ahh. No. Certainly nobody would complain. Now—your leg, Miss Talbot-Jones.”

He helped her wrap her leg around his waist as she giggled, then guided himself smoothly inside her so that the giggle turned to a gasp. “Oh.
Oh.
I didn’t know—”

“The theory,” said Colin, already beginning to breathe raggedly, “neglects some possibilities. I’ll show you.”

It
was
gentle, what they did. He couldn’t drive himself into her; she couldn’t ride him, or buck beneath him and send him to greater frenzies. Instead, there was sweet tension, and a smooth rocking with his hand cupping one of her buttocks, guiding her in the unhurried motion that built until both of them hung on the edge. Then Colin slid his hand between them, circled, and felt Reggie’s climax grip him like an electrical current, blinding and binding. He couldn’t have stopped if his life depended on it. He couldn’t have moved, other than to spend himself inside her in burst after burst that made his whole world go blank.