Courting Carolina

by Chapman, Janet

  Oh yeah, the lass was no wallflower.

  Alec ran his tongue around her beaded nipple before closing his mouth over it, smiling when she arched into him and abandoned his hair in favor of digging her nails into his shoulders. “Ohmigod, yes,” she rasped on a moan, unwrapping her sexy long legs to lift her hips into his. “Whatever you do, don’t stop.”

  “Not a worry, lass,” he said on his way to her other breast, which he then closed his mouth over and suckled. He settled lower on her body so that his naked chest was touching her mound, which turned her responding moan into another gasp. Alec once more sent his mouth downward, relishing the feel of her heated skin quivering beneath his tongue as Jane grew restless, her hands tugging and pushing and kneading at him as he sipped a path down the tightening muscles of her belly.

  She reared up, her hands going to his hair again. “Alec,” she cried hoarsely in surprise. “W-what are you doing?”

  He lifted his head just enough to smile at her and gently nudged her back down. “Close your eyes and focus only on feeling what I’m doing to you.” He settled lower, sliding his hands under her bottom and opening her to him, and kissed her mound before lifting his head again. “Are they closed? I need ye to turn your mind’s eye inward, Jane. Can ye trust me enough to take you to a wonderful place?”

  “Y-you have to come with me,” she softly petitioned, even as her hips lifted in anticipation. “I want us to go there together.”

  “Not this time,” he said thickly, lowering his head to kiss her more intimately, pulling another gasp from her as she stilled on an indrawn breath.

  Assured he had her undivided attention, Alec found her bud nestled in a bed of moist warmth, and lightly suckled. Her responding cry of pleasure went straight to his groin; her thighs quivering against his shoulders as she rose into his intimate kiss. He felt her muscles contracting and slid his hands up to capture her restless fingers as every little sound she made, every shudder of her building passion, brought him closer to the edge of his own control, until Alec feared he really might disgrace himself.

  And still he continued, his own mind’s eye picturing Jane bathed in moonlight, her head thrown back with abandon as she spiraled headlong into the storm he was creating inside her. She was so responsive, so alive with passion that he nearly lost it when she suddenly crested. She stilled on a keening cry of release that lasted several pounding heartbeats, and Alec gently soothed her breathless journey back to reality until he felt her relax on a ragged sigh.

  He slowly sipped his way back up over her heated skin to her breasts, and kissed first one and then the other of her softened nipples. He continued on to the racing pulse in her throat with a deep sigh of his own, then carefully moved to settle alongside her. She immediately rolled into his embrace and buried her face in the crook of his neck, and he pulled his shirt she’d been lying on up over her shoulder as she gave a sensuous shiver. After kissing her cheek, he used his chin to tuck her head against his chest, and grinned at the realization she was fighting back sobs.

  Jane Smith might be aware of what her saint-tempting smile and sashaying bottom did to men, but it was obvious she hadn’t realized all that a man could do to her. And truth be told, he was rather humbled that she had trusted him to give her a glimpse of what—or at least some of what—she had to look forward to. His brain slowly starting to function again, Alec ran his fingers through her nearly dry hair and tilted her head back. “Ye know,” he said thickly, “I do believe I’ve never been so glad I was born male.” He brushed his thumb over her flushed cheek. “Ye don’t ever worry about being anyone but yourself, Jane, because you’re a treasure to be cherished.”

  She blinked up at him, pulling in a shuddering breath. “I…I don’t want to be some treasure that gets locked away for safekeeping.” She smiled sadly. “I want to be an ordinary woman a perfectly ordinary man could love, and live in a house overlooking the ocean that we’d fill with beautiful, ordinary children.”

  Alec hugged her to him again, his heart aching with the knowledge of just how impossible her dream was. “Would ye settle for camping out in a lean-to with a ski bum for a while before ye go in search of this perfect man?” He rested his lips on her hair. “Because I’m thinking that when you do find him, ye might like to have something by which to judge this paragon of…ordinariness.” He tightened his embrace, partly to still her trembling, but mostly to tamp down the image of her with another man. And then he took a deep breath and stepped in front of the bus. “And if ye want, I will stand beside you as you stand up to your father.”

  She reared back. “You can’t. No one can fight my father.”

  “You have, quite successfully for over two years.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I’ve never much cared for the antiquated notion that men have the right to bully women under the guise that it’s for their own good.”

  She leaned as far away as his embrace would allow. “My father’s not a bully. He’s just…he’s just being a father.”

  Alec pulled her against him again to hide his smile. So she didn’t hate her old man; she just didn’t care to have him deciding her fate. “Does that mean you don’t want me to help you remain missing?”

  She tilted her head back again, her eyes narrowed. “Only if you promise that if he does find me, you won’t confront him. This is my battle, and I won’t allow you or anyone else to become casualties.” Her fingers dug into his chest. “You men don’t have a monopoly on waging war, you know. I might not have your physical strength, but there certainly isn’t anything wrong with my brain.”

  “Nay.” He chuckled. “And that’s what really worries me.”

  She poked him hard enough to make him grunt. “Give me your word that you won’t step between me and my father if it comes to that.” She poked him again when he hesitated. “I mean it, Alec. If you don’t promise, I swear I’ll disappear on you, too. I won’t have your damnation on my conscience.”

  “Did you make the friend who helped you run away swear such an oath?”

  This time Jane hesitated. “Why are you men so stubborn? You actually make everything more complicated with all your male posturing.” She sighed, pressing her nose into his chest. “I’m never going to find an ordinary man to love me, am I?”

  He snorted. “Sorry, lass, but I’m afraid we all become posturing, lust-blinded idiots when there’s a beautiful woman watching.”

  Her poking fingers started stroking his chest. “Speaking of lust,” she whispered, “when are you going to finish what you started tonight?” One of her really long legs ran up the length of his and wrapped around his thigh as she pressed forward into his groin. “I thought you were going to make love to me.”

  “I did,” he growled, jerking his hips back.

  “But we didn’t actually…We never…And you didn’t—”

  “Oh, but I did, lass,” he lied with a derisive chuckle. “Just like a schoolboy.”

  Her eyes rounded, her mouth forming a perfect O.

  Alec kissed her, then rolled away and sat up to stare out at the fiord, noticing the tide had reached the rock he’d been sitting on. “Not that it matters, because my pants will be staying on whenever we’re horizon—”

  She was on her feet and running before he even finished. Alec jumped up and caught her in three strides, only to have her hand shoot out of the sleeve of his shirt and poke him in the chest again. “You’re no different from all the other men,” she snapped. “You haven’t even met my father and you’re too afraid to make love to me.”

  He pulled her to him before she could poke him again. “This isn’t about your father, Jane, it’s about you. And until you want to make love for all the right reasons, nothing more than what we did tonight is going to happen between us.”

  “What do you mean, all the right reasons?”

  “I mean that until ye see me only as a man you want instead of a good way to get out from under your father’s rule, your one lonely condom is staying in that pouch with your other precio
us jewels.”

  Her mouth opened only to snap shut again, and Alec saw her cheeks flush and her eyes well with tears.

  He pressed his hands to her face to keep her looking at him. “I’m sorry for being so blunt, but ye need to know how I feel. You’ve managed to hold on to your virginity this long; please don’t toss it away merely to win a senseless war. Give it to the man lucky enough to earn your love.”

  “Do…do you know why I’m still a virgin?” she whispered, her tears spilling free. “Because all the men I’ve ever been allowed to be around were too afraid even to hold my hand. And those I’ve been with since I’ve been on my own were…I didn’t…I couldn’t…” She pulled in a shuddering breath. “Never mind, I understand. If you’ll be so kind as to let me stay tonight, I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

  “No,” he growled, tightening his grip when she tried to step away. “You can’t run forever, Jane. Stand up to your father here and now, with me standing beside you.”

  “But at what cost? Because you were right, you know; you’ll be in the direct line of fire if this all goes to hell in a handbasket, and the price you could end up paying is more than I’m willing to live with.”

  “I’m not afraid of your father, lass.”

  “You should—”

  He kissed her before she could finish, then swept her into his arms and carried her across the pebbled beach to the stream. “I’ll make a deal with ye, then,” he said over her sputtering protests, standing her next to her satchel. “Let me worry about finding a way to deal with your father that doesn’t involve using your condom, and you worry about finding the best way to deal with me.”

  She stilled. “What do you mean, deal with you?”

  “I mean,” he said quietly, getting right in her face and stifling a grin when she didn’t back away, “that every time I catch you lying to me or acting clueless, I’m going to kiss you. And every time you look embarrassed or grateful, I’m going to strip you naked right on the spot and do exactly what I did to you tonight.”

  Her eyes kept widening with every threat he made—only to suddenly narrow. “And if I catch you lying to me, I will return the favor,” she snapped, giving him a shove and bending to grab her satchel.

  Alec used the momentum to pivot away and headed down the beach toward the boulder. “Ye certainly have my permission to try.”

  “Wait, where are you going?”

  “For a swim,” he said without looking back.

  “In the fiord? But it’s freezing!”

  “It won’t be by the time I’m done. Get dressed and call your pet so we can leave. I have one more stop I need to make before we head back to camp.”

  Chapter Six

  Alec stood several yards back in the woods, waiting to see if Jane intended to keep her promise to stay put, only to be pleasantly surprised to realize she did. He patted the spark plug he’d slid in his pocket after stashing her and Kit a mile down the shore from Inglenook—which had once been a camp for families that Olivia had run for her ex-in-laws, but was now the base for the scientists studying the two-year-old inland Bottomless Sea—and silently turned and ran through the forest to go ask a friend some questions. Not that the answers would make much difference, considering he’d already stepped in front of the goddamned bus. But he really couldn’t imagine living with himself if he abandoned Jane to her fate despite there being a good chance he could die if he took up her battle—seeing how her father was the most powerful magic-maker on the planet and her brother the second most powerful. Christ, even idiots knew that incurring the wrath of either man was tantamount to suicide.

  So what was Sam Waters doing helping Jane?

  Alec stopped fifty feet short of Inglenook’s grounds keeper’s cottage and saw light coming from several of the windows and only Sam’s SUV parked in the driveway. He crept through the shadows around the small house, hesitating at the bathroom window long enough to decide that Sam was showering alone, then slipped back to the kitchen door and silently let himself in—only to grin when he saw the table was set with candles, two wineglasses, and a sad-looking bouquet of flowers. And if he wasn’t mistaken, there was a distinct smell of burning chicken in the air.

  Alec walked over and turned off the oven, grabbed one of the strawberries off the platter and dipped it in the bowl of chocolate, then popped it in his mouth as he crept down the hall. He pressed his back to the wall when the shower shut off, and grinned again when the door opened and Sam came limping out wearing nothing more than a towel around his waist—only to stop mid-limp when Alec came up behind him and touched the blade of his knife to his throat.

  “I have some questions to ask you, Waters, and if I don’t particularly like your answers, you’re going to spend a very long night watching yourself slowly bleed to death. We’ll begin with why you told Carolina Oceanus to come to me if she gets into trouble,” Alec quietly growled, having already figured out that Jane landing in his neck of the woods had been no accident.

  “Have you ever seen my son-in-law angry, MacKeage? Because I think it might really piss him off if you kill me.”

  Alec pressed the knife deeper. “I’ll take my chances with Mac.”

  Sam Waters very carefully nodded. “Which is exactly why I told Carolina to run to you if she ever found herself in more trouble than she could handle.”

  “Why me? Why not her brother?”

  “For as much as he loves his sister, Mac’s hands are ultimately tied, because when push comes to shove, she’s still Titus’s daughter. And in their world, that makes the old man the boss of her.”

  “Again, why send her to me?”

  “Because the way I figure it, the only hope Carolina has of ever being the boss of herself is to find a champion who understands the magic and isn’t afraid of it. And,” Sam rushed on when Alec put more pressure on the knife, “if I had to pick the one man who might stand a snowball’s chance in hell against Titus, it’s you.”

  “Why goddamn me?”

  Alec canted the blade when Sam hesitated and slowly drew it across his windpipe. “Shit. Okay. I picked you because whenever it was decided a mission was doomed to fail from the outset, we simply sent in…the Celt.”

  Alec went as still as stone. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Twenty-two missions in eight years,” Sam continued. “And that bastard always came back. Sometimes on a gurney, but he always returned successful.”

  Alec stepped away, dropping his hands to his sides.

  “I personally sent him on most of those missions, although back then he was only a thick file to me,” Sam went on as he rubbed his throat. He turned with a glare and wiped his bloody fingers on his towel. “But even after getting to know him up close and personal these last two years, I still can’t reconcile the carefree, boyishly charming Alec MacKeage with the ruthless, utterly focused weapon we just had to aim and pull the trigger on.” He shook his head. “Shit, half the time we expected you to blow up in our faces and the rest of the time we almost wished you would, because I swear the more difficult the mission was, the scarier you got.”

  “You obviously have me mixed up with someone else.”

  Sam shook his head again. “Your own parents don’t know you as well as I do. I bet your mother still doesn’t know all those packages she sent to Afghanistan through your three tours of duty were being opened and photographed in DC so you could write and thank her for the maple cream cookies and blue socks. And I’m damn certain your father doesn’t know you had a vasectomy nine years ago.” He arched a brow. “Been rethinking that decision since you got ou—”

  Alec was on him before he’d even finished, this time pressing his arm to Sam’s throat and the tip of his knife into the towel below Sam’s waist. “You know why I always came back?” he quietly asked. “Because I had no intention of dying until I found the bastard who blew our cover on my sixth mission out.”

  Sam’s eyes flared briefly, then suddenly narrowed. “That’s why you walked away thre
e years ago without so much as a backward glance. You didn’t get out because you botched the job and got your partner killed; it all went down exactly like you planned.”

  The phone rang and neither man moved; Alec because he hadn’t gotten all the answers he wanted, and Sam likely because he still had a knife in his groin.

  “Sam, sweetie,” a feminine voice said after the beep, “your not answering better not mean you plan to meet me at the door wearing only a towel again.” A sigh came over the line. “You promised we’d at least get to light the candles and actually eat this time before we…” Her laugh was husky. “Well, I’m just turning onto the Inglenook road. Be there in a few minutes, sweets.”

  “Ah, do you mind?” Sam said as he carefully lifted away from the knife. “I’d really hate to disappoint my lady friend this evening.”

  Alec stepped away with a snort. “Now I see why you’ve been gaining weight this summer.” He arched a brow. “You do know that Vanetta’s husband nearly beat her to death, don’t you, and that he accidentally died of carbon-monoxide poisoning when he got drunk and left his car running in their garage?”

  “I know,” Sam said with a nod as he adjusted his towel. “But what worries me is how you know. Netta told me everyone believes she moved here from Alabama and bought the Drunken Moose because she needed to get away from the fond memories of her dead husband.”

  Alec turned and walked to the kitchen. “It must be my boyish Celtic charm that makes people want to confide in me.”

  “Wait,” Sam said, causing Alec to stop with his hand on the doorknob. “If Carolina ran to you, she must be in some pretty bad trouble. Is she in danger?”