by Allie Mackay
She breathed sensuality of the darkest, most primal sort. Generously made and bold of eye; just looking at her would send lust beating through any man. Already, Alex’s blood was heating and he could feel love juices gathering on the knob of his shaft.
But there was an old dog casting about in the rushes nearby – an old dog that looked strikingly like Ben and that stopped its snuffling to fix Alex with an unblinking stare.
An unblinking, accusatory stare.
“Well, my friend? Will she do?” Bran was eyeing him, one brow arcing. “If no’, there’s plenty more to choose from. Red-haired lasses, raven-maned lovelies, dusky wenches from afar. Even a maid or two, if you prefer them untried.”
Alex shook his head, his choice made. He’d seen enough to know the Norsewoman would suit. Best of all, her hair was white-blond and not burnished bronze. Her frank gaze the clear blue of a spring sky, not the amber-gold of sun-warmed honey.
“Aye, she will serve me well.” He nodded to her, knowing she would. Wishing the admission didn’t make him feel like the world’s greatest lout.
Doing his best to ignore the old dog’s glare.
Instead, he kept his attention on the beauty, letting her bounty make him forget. The sensual curve of her lips sent a jolt of heat to his groin, and he could even see her nipples through the transparency of her gown, the shadowed vee of her nether curls. Her creamy white skin looked silky-smooth, her curves lush enough for a man to drown in.
“Lady Galiana – I welcome your company,” he said, the words thick, but honest.
He needed her. Just not for the reasons she surely assumed.
But she appeared pleased as she inclined her head, the slight flaring of her eyes revealing her consent, her eagerness to share pleasure with him.
“Then, so be it!” Bran announced, patting her ample bottom, and then giving her an affectionate nudge forward. “Take my friend Alex to the finest chamber available and see to his comfort.”
Then the big Islesman turned away, dropping his bulk into his laird’s chair and yanking another lovely onto his lap, one hand already sliding inside the maid’s low-cut bodice.
“Lord Bran knows how much a woman enjoys a man’s touch.” Lady Galiana stepped close to rub her full breasts against Alex as she slipped her hand through his arm. “I would know if everything I’ve heard about the touch of Douglas men bears truth?”
A slow smile curved Alex’s lips. “Show me abovestairs and you shall see.”
“O-o-oh, I can already,” she purred, smoothing her hand across his hardness as they exited the hall. She leaned into him, letting her fingers cup and measure his fullness, the thick, steely length of him. “You are a man like no other.”
Alex doubted that and almost told her so, but her skilled ministrations felt too good for him to care. Exaggerated praise or nae, so long as her fingers spun such magic, her cooed words mattered little.
She clearly knew her way with men and, already, her roving fingers were chasing Mara MacDougall from his mind.
Blinding him, too, for at the end of a dimly lit corridor, just before the entrance to an even darker stairwell, they collided with a solid object.
A tall, broad-shouldered craven with raven black hair and a tented plaid to rival Alex’s own.
“By the gods!” Alex blinked at Hardwick.
“Bluidy hell!” Hardwick stared back at him. “What are you doing here?”
“That should be obvious.” Alex glared at him. “Or is your memory so short that you dinnae recall suggesting I pay Bran a visit? For the fine Hebridean air and other delights?”
Hardwick frowned. “I but jested, as I thought you knew.” His gaze flicked to where Lady Galiana’s fingers moved with deliberate slowness over the ridge of Alex’s arousal. “You have no reason to visit this haven of sirens. The only female you need awaits you at Ravenscraig.”
Alex stiffened. “I saw you earlier, you rogue,” he said, putting back his shoulders. “It would seem you don’t mind dipping your own wick in Bran’s offerings.”
Hardwick’s mouth twitched. “Perhaps because my heart is no’ given.”
“You think mine is?”
“Think?” Hardwick snorted. “I know it is. I have seen the way you look at her.”
“She is a MacDougall.”
“You love her.”
Alex clenched his fists, something inside him twisting. “I am a ghost – if you’ve forgotten!”
Hardwick laughed. “She does not care.”
Alex could feel the back of his neck flaming. “I love no woman, you fool.”
“‘Tis you who are the fool,” Hardwick shot back, sending another disapproving glance to Alex’s groin, where Lady Galiana continued her sensual assault. “If you dinnae hie yourself back where you belong, I shall be tempted to challenge you to meet me in Bran’s bailey.”
This time Alex snorted. “Take yourself back to the hall and seek amusement where you will. I shall do the same, with or without your approval.”
“I was but speaking as your friend.” Hardwick sounded offended. “You’re incapable of seeing into your heart.”
“I have no need to do so.”
Hardwick shook his head. “You err, my friend. No man’s need is greater.”
“I’d be tending those needs about now, had I not had the misfortune of running into you,” Alex snapped, but Hardwick was already gone.
And Lady Galiana was reaching for him, pulling him with her up the curving stairs.
Unfortunately, each upward step hammered Hardwick’s words deeper into Alex’s mind. The meddling bravo had achieved at least one of his goals.
He’d ruined Alex’s evening.
As for his other intentions, he’d wasted his breath. Alex didn’t need to search his heart. He already knew it.
Only too well.
He did love Mara MacDougall.
May the fates have mercy on him.
***
Tick, tick, tick.
Mara tossed in her bed, punched her pillow a few times, then pulled another one over her head. When had her alarm clock turned so ridiculously loud? Tick, tick, tick. It sounded more like Big Ben than a travel-sized number no bigger than the palm of her hand.
“Oh, stop,” she pleaded, rolling onto her stomach. She frowned into her pillow. Why didn’t she just admit it? She knew exactly when the ticking had become so grating.
The moment Alex had stepped into her dreams and loomed above her, resplendent in his great plaid, a huge Celtic brooch gleaming at his shoulder, his Highland magnificence dangling right above her.
It’s been a display of pure male eroticism, rousing beyond belief.
She could still see everything, his large, heavy balls, the long thick length of him, and the nest of springy dark curls, shadowed by the folds of his plaid.
No red-blooded female should have such glory dangled above her so provocatively.
At least, when she couldn’t have it!
She drew a sharp breath, dug her fingers into the pillow. In truth, he hadn’t dangled for long.
It had taken little more than her startled gasp for him to run full stretch. And even less for the sight to make her all hot and shivery. Watching him fill and lengthen had undone her, sweeping her with a desperate, streaming need she doubted would ever be quenched.
She was still damp.
Still aching.
On fire and tingling, just as she’d been when she’d reached for him, closing her fingers around his cock, reveling in how hot, silky and hard he felt as she stroked him, how she’d struggled to hear only his husky moans of pleasure, and not the incessant ticking of her travel alarm.
But the tiny clock had won. The annoying clatter overpowered her sexy Highlander’s burr until she heard nothing else. Then, sadly, even the hard, male length of him was no more than a thick fold of MacDougall plaid clutched in her hand.
A very thick fold.
Mara groaned, desire winding inside her, her frustration almost devouring.<
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“Damn,” she cried, blinking back the stinging heat wetting her lashes.
They’d come so close!
She’d felt him in her hand, breathed in the rich muskiness of his clean, male scent. One, two more strokes and she just knew he would have whipped aside his plaid and yanked her up against him, taking her with all the fierce, urgent passion she needed.
If only in a dream.
“No-o-o,” she choked, places deep inside her hurting so badly she could hardly breathe. She bit back a sob, willed her body to stop burning for him, tried to ignore the wild blaze enflaming her. The shattering of her heart.
Instead, the infernal ticking grew louder by the second, each metallic click making her crazy. Fisting her hands on the pillow, she lifted her head and glared at the offending timepiece.
Two-thirty in the morning.
She hadn’t slept a wink.
Not that anyone could blame her. Sitting up, she crammed a few pillows behind her and surveyed the room, finding it worse than she’d feared. The night shadows didn’t begin to hide the damage. The Thistle Room looked ransacked, demolished by a lunatic.
A crazed fool named Mara McDougall.
She frown, swiped a hand across her cheek. Who but a deranged person would listen to the advice of a crackpot like Prudentia and turn an exquisite tower room fit for a princess into a something best described as a haven for aura readers and other such New Age fruitloops?
It was pathetic.
Her entire life was out of control.
Worst of all was her frustration in losing her dream. Mercy, even in imaginary form, Alex owned more sensual heat than any flesh-and-blood man she’d ever encountered.
She wanted him.
Ghostie or no. She didn’t care.
If she could just have his kisses, touch him without having him vanish, she’d die a happy woman. He didn’t even have to really take her if he couldn’t. Just sitting before a cozy fire with him, enjoying his smile and listening to his husky-deep voice would be enough.
If she could just have him.
But she doubted she could, and the unfairness of it gutted her.
All her life, every supposedly good thing had always come with a catch. Every bowl of soup, a fly in it. Everything she’d wanted always seemed to skip along ahead of her, just inches out of grasp.
Especially love.
“Love.” She snatched a crushed delphinium from beside her pillow and threw it toward the fireplace. It sailed in a promising arc but didn’t make it past the end of the bed. Like so much in her life, it missed its mark, and landed with a damp splat against one of the bedposts before sliding down to settle in a wilted clump on the bed coverings.
No, a stinking clump.
Mara wrinkled her nose. No wonder she hadn’t been able to sleep. The room smelled awful. Damp wool, dead flowers, old incense, and the pungent scent of burned sage contaminated the entire bedchamber.
American heiress dies of asphyxiation after inhaling anti-ghost charm fumes in Scottish castle.
Hah! Such a headline would set the tongues wagging. Back home and beyond. Puffing a curl off her brow, she imagined the repercussions.
The sniggers and scandal.
The Cairn Avenue shrew’s beady eyes glinting with I-knew-she’d-come-to-no-good satisfaction. Her father’s sorrow and mortification. Kindly old Solicitor Combe overcome with guilt and remorse. Anti-ghost fumes, indeed. Her lips twitched in an almost-smile.
Thank goodness.
If she could see humor in her plight, she hadn’t completely lost it.
Feeling somewhat better, she slipped from the bed, swirled a plaid around her shoulders, and crossed the room. A swift yank was all she needed to pull aside the newly-hung MacDougall drapes and allow silvery light to flood inside.
Moon glow alone wouldn’t dispel the stench of her foolish attempts at exorcism.
She needed fresh air.
Lots of it.
And not just for her room. More than anything, she had to clear her head.
“That, and banish Alex and his Highland magnificence from my mind,” she muttered, opening the door to the wall-walk and stepping outside.
She went straight to the crenellated wall and leaned against one of merlons, lacing her hands on the cold stone as she stared out across the firth. The isle-strewn waters looked almost translucent in the clear silver light, and a pale half-moon glimmered in the pearl-hued sky.
It was cold and the air smelled of heather and pine, a hint of the sea and wet rocks on the wind. Shivering, she drew the plaid closer around her shoulders. Rarely had she seen such beauty. She would not imagine a tall, splendidly-built Highlander standing beside her, sharing the night’s magick.
And it was an enchanted night.
She could feel it in her bones, in the way the soft air hummed with romance.
Highland Scots were proud of these nights of luminous half-light, and rightly so. Such beauty up close and shimmering all around her was almost more than she could bear.
But she’d be damned if she’d flee the battlements as easily as she’d run from her bed. Not even if her bare feet froze to the icy stone flags of the wall-walk.
What was a little cold when she might never again see the man she’d come to love so deeply?
If you could call a ghost a man.
Mara lifted her face to the wind. She would not bemoan her fate. Sir Alexander Douglas was more than enough man for her. All she needed. He was the only man who’d ever truly stolen her breath, filled her with impossible dreams, or made her heart weep with wanting him.
But he wasn’t here now, and there wasn’t much she could do about it, so she stared down at the shining water, the odd green glow at the base of the cliffs.
Odd, green glow?
She blinked, looking closer. The glow was definitely green and strange. More unsettling, it pulsed.
She opened her mouth to gasp, but nothing came out. Instead, she clutched a hand to her throat, her eyes widening as the faint sheen grew into a whirling shaft of iridescent green light.
Radiant, otherworldly light moving slowly down the shingled strand. And coming in her direction! Too stunned to move, she watched in fascination as the glowing column took the shape of a woman.
A beautiful woman, lit from within.
And transparent as glass. Mara could see the curve of the shore right through her.
The woman was a ghost. And with the realization came a horrible suspicion.
Maybe Alex had sent her?
Mara’s heart stopped. She couldn’t believe it. That she’d been standing out here, shivering in the cold, aching for him and wishing him back, only to have him send a see-through female friend to do what he hadn’t been able to do, scare her away.
No, it couldn’t be so.
She refused to believe that. Nor was she going anywhere.
Not tonight. And not in a year. Ravenscraig was hers now, and she had no intention of giving it up.
If the green beauty had other reasons for drifting along Ravenscraig’s cliff strand in the middle of the night, perhaps to lay a claim to Alex, she’d be in for a surprise.
Mara wasn’t about to share him.
But whoever the ghostie was, she wasn’t giving Mara much of a chance to challenge her for she’d already disappeared.
Vanishing almost before Mara was even sure she’d seen her. But she had. The trembling in her knees and the pounding of her heart proved it.
She’d been there.
“No kidding,” Mara gasped, reaction making her mouth dry.
Holding fast to the merlon, she leaned out as far as she dared and stared down at the deserted strand. Nothing but moonlight shone on the water, and no iridescent female shapes glided among the rocks.
Everything looked as it should.
And she felt silly.
She took a deep breath and pushed away from the wall, the lure of sleep overwhelming. Quickly as she could, she sought her bed, pulling the covers to her chin.
A green lady! Had she imagined the whole thing? Perhaps seen the Scottish version of swamp gas?
She didn’t know and it didn’t matter.
All she cared about was making Alex hers.
The sooner, the better.
Chapter Eleven
“Does this please you?” Lady Galiana shifted Alex’s bare foot in her lap, drawing it closer against the vee of her thighs. “Is the oil warm enough?”
“Oh, aye.” Alex leaned his head against the rim of the cloth-lined bathing tub and gave her a slow smile. “I am well pleased.”
The flaxen-haired beauty locked eyes with him. “I have not even begun to pleasure you,” she purred, massaging more scented oil into his toes.
She held his gaze, pulling gently on each toe. “If you think this is bliss, wait until I massage higher,” she vowed, never breaking her rhythm, her caressing fingers working a sensual magic he’d never dreamed.
Alex swallowed, his world contracting to the wooden bathing tub, the curls of steam rising off the heated water, and the Nordic beauty’s tantalizing ministrations.
Bran hadn’t exaggerated her talent.
Her erotic mastery took his breath and each glide of her fingers across his skin made him feel as if a thousand sweet, soft lips were playing over his foot. He shifted in the tub as delicious sensations streaked from his toes to his loins, hardening him. Most encouraging of all, his ache for Mara was receding. Not much, but enough to give him hope. And the little stabs of guilt Hardwick had hurled at him no longer sat quite so deep.
After all, it was in the Ameri-cain’s best interest that nothing came of their attraction. Someday she’d thank him for ending it all before a true tragedy unfolded.
So he settled more comfortably in the tub, endeavoring to just enjoy the warm, oiled water lapping round his naked body. Flickering torchlight gilded the Norsewoman’s bountiful curves and he watched her gladly, enjoying how her magnificent breasts rose and fell in time with her movements.
“Sweet lass, you asked if the oil is warm enough.” He caught one of her hands and placed a kiss in her palm. “Were it any hotter, I’d melt.”
She smiled and dipped a hand in the steaming water, trailed dripping fingers down his chest. “Then perhaps we should move to the bed?” she suggested, her gaze following the path of her fingers as they slid lower.