“We’re fortunate this is here, aren’t we?” There was sarcasm in his voice, distress at his own lack of dignity.
“I’d make love to you on a bed of stones.”
“You may very well get that opportunity.” He knelt beside her, and his hands slid under the fabric of the sweat pants she’d borrowed. He jerked them roughly over her hips, and as he did his fingers brushed over her abdomen. “Because I can’t seem to keep my hands off you no matter what pain it might cause.” His hands were shaking. He was angry with himself; it was in his voice, but his hands were still shaking with need.
“You’ll only cause me pain if you don’t make love to me.”
“God knows, I hope you believe that forever.”
She felt his hands gliding over her hips, her legs, and finally the tug of the fabric as he freed her from it. His belt buckle clanged as he undid it, and a small explosion announced that he had unsnapped his jeans. There was nothing graceful or seductive about the way he stripped them off. They were in the way, and then they weren’t.
Billie’s breath caught at the sight of Iain completely unclothed. He was lean and beautifully formed. He only stood still long enough to gaze back at her, as if he needed that one lingering look but was too impatient for more. She could feel her body flush under his scrutiny, but not from shyness or fear. Heat suffused her skin and erupted through the most sensitive parts of her body. Then she was experiencing him in a different way. He was beside her, and they were face-to-face. He flung a muscular leg over hers and edged her closer. Her breasts flattened against his chest. The sweet agony of patience dissolved; thought dissolved. She burrowed against him, mindlessly seeking pleasure and release.
“Oh, no, we have a bit more self-control than that.” He turned her to her back and half covered her. “We’re going to make this last for a moment, anyway.”
She let her eyes plead with him. “There’ll be other moments.”
“Not nearly enough.” He kissed her as his hand moved slowly, mercilessly, over her. She arched against him, seeking all the magic his talented, elegant fingers could wield. “I wish I could give you all the moments a man can give a woman.”
She was melting inside, melting too fast. “I’ll just settle for you.”
“Settle, is it?” His blue eyes were the dark of midnight, but his hands poured sunlight through her and told her everything she needed to know. He touched her as if she were a treasure he had lost and reclaimed. He murmured sounds that told her his pleasure was as great as hers.
She shifted restlessly and became the magician. On her side she draped her arms around his neck, and then, as he turned to accommodate her, she eased over him, leg to leg, hip to hip. “Will you settle for me?”
“Woman, what are you doing?”
She kissed his forehead, pushing his hair back as she did. She graduated to his nose, then brushed his lips with hers. His lips were moist and greedy, but she gave him only a hint of sustenance before she kissed a trail along his jawline and the base of his throat. His chest was warm under her lips. She could feel his heart thrumming unevenly, and she lingered there.
The firelight danced on the walls and expanded until the room seemed as bright as the sunshine expanding inside her. From somewhere she heard the fluting of songbirds and the shrill call of an eagle. She could feel Iain’s hands sliding along her spine, nipping at the sides of her breasts, urging her against him. The feelings cascading inside her were older than time.
So much older.
He was so dearly familiar. She knew what he wanted, what he loved best. She had explored him this way before. He had been the one to teach her how a man showed his love for a woman. In a secluded glen, beside a thicket of blaeberries and under the scented shade of a hundred pines.
He was as hard as iron; she was velvet and silk in comparison. She rocked against him, and her mouth trailed lower. She possessed the fierce heat of him with her hands, cradling him and moving to his own inner rhythm. “You like this, don’t you?” she whispered. “I know. I remember.”
The eagle called again. A breeze wafted over them, warm and fragrant with blooming heather. His voice was hardly more than a growl. “You’ve bewitched me again.”
Again. Aye, again. Just as she had once before. In a secluded glen, where bees buzzed among the wildflowers, and birds sang as they stripped the blaeberry bushes of their fruit.
Her mouth moved lower. She whispered against his abdomen. “And why not? You’ve bewitched me. Why else would I be here?”
He groaned and with one mighty effort turned her to her back again. He settled over her. Her heartbeat was like the roll of drums. “You’re here because you love me,” he said.
“Your fault entirely.”
“Fate’s.”
She could feel his smile, his voice cutting through her like the sunshine that surrounded them. He lifted her chin and touched her lips with his. The gentleness of the kiss was almost her undoing.
“Now,” she whispered. “The moment has ended.”
Still holding her chin in his hands and staring into her eyes, he lifted his hips and thrust into her triumphantly.
It had been this way from the first. Gentle strength. Quiet power. A mating of minds and spirits and bodies. She could feel herself dissolving against him. Just as she had once before. From the beginning, in the scented shade of a hundred pines.
“Mo boirionnach boidheach!” he cried.
She was his woman. His beautiful woman. She was his. She called his name and moved against him. And all the moments left to them merged into forever.
* * *
She didn’t want to come back to earth, to time and the limitations of the flesh.
The flesh. The magnificent, soul-expanding flesh.
Billie opened her eyes and watched the way the firelight played over Iain’s body. The flames shifted, grew brighter and dimmed, and with each flicker, each liquid burst of brilliance, the shape of him seemed to change.
“You called me Ruaridh.”
She let her gaze travel to Iain’s eyes and saw that he was awake. Slowly she gathered her forces to respond. “No. I didn’t. I couldn’t have.”
“You called me Ruaridh.”
“Mo boirionnach boidheach.”
“What does that mean?”
“That’s what you called me. Your beautiful woman.” Billie tried to sit up, but Iain was warm against her, and her body fit his too perfectly. She contented herself with narrowing her eyes. She was so boneless, nerveless, that it took moments to achieve. “I did not call you Ruaridh.”
“Aye, you did. At the end, Billie. And you misunderstood. I don’t speak Gaelic.”
She managed a smile, but her heart felt tight in her chest. The boneless inertia of complete satisfaction was stiffening into fear. “You are Iain Ross. I am Billie Harper. We finally made love.”
He managed a smile, too, but his eyes were clouded. “But it can’t happen this way again. I almost forgot to protect you.”
“But you did. Primitively, but definitely.”
“I am never careless. My God, I could have given you a child.”
She saw a thousand torments in his eyes. She smoothed her fingers over his eyelids and watched them close. “You weren’t careless. You took care of me, of both of us. You had more presence of mind than I did. Much more. I could only think of…” She hesitated. “You.”
He rested his face against her shoulder. She could feel the even whisper of his breath against her breast. He was silent for a long time, such a long time that she believed he had fallen asleep. She couldn’t concentrate on her doubts and fears while he held her in his arms. She found herself drifting, too, to a place where the sunlight was warm and bees hummed in a grove of scented pines. She was nearly asleep herself when he spoke again. “You called me Ruaridh, Billie.”
She could no longer deny it. She could think of only one explanation. She lifted her head. “I suppose, just for that moment, I was thinking of Ruaridh and Christina.�
�
He shifted and pulled her to rest in his arms. “Perhaps I was thinking of them, too.”
CHAPTER 13
Dwarfed in the center of Iain’s huge and ancient bed, Billie looked like a particularly fetching china doll. She had sprawled in that position all night—or at least the part of the night when he had allowed her to shut her eyes. She was an energetic sleeper, who staked a claim to more than her own half of the mattress and defended it with vigor. She was also a cuddler, who even when immersed in the deepest dreams had entwined her legs with his and splayed her fingers against his chest. Until now he had preferred distance and measured affection.
Until now.
Iain’s parents had slept in this bed together. After the worst of his early childhood nightmares, he had sometimes slept here with them, despite the outraged warnings of his starched and proper nanny. When he had moved back to Fearnshader after his years at Oxford he had considered choosing another room or simply getting rid of the bed. But one didn’t put a seventeenth century state bed on the rubbish heap. And even though he could have sold it for a fortune, he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of strangers sleeping in it. So he had custom-ordered a new mattress to fit the bed’s outrageous proportions and installed himself in the room.
And until last night, no woman had ever slept there with him.
Billie murmured something. Iain was too far away to hear what it was, but he had already learned that she talked in her sleep, as if days were too short and sleep too wasteful. He wanted to go to her, to smooth back the hair feathered against her forehead and kiss her awake. He knew that her arms would slip around his neck, and she would open to him with sweet, passionate generosity, despite a similar encounter in the night. The human male might have physical limitations, but the human female had none—and a certain human female named Billie Harper was perfectly capable of convincing Iain that his own limitations were easily overcome.
Instead, and regretfully, he turned away from the bed. The night had been enchanted, but the sun had risen an hour ago. In the light of day he was plagued once more by fears that he had destroyed her life. In the bed where generations of Rosses had slept and loved, he had promised her things with his body that his heart believed were impossible.
He shaved in the bathroom just off his bedroom and stepped into the shower. He ached in ways he never had before, in places where he had never truly been touched. Not the way Billie had touched him. She held nothing of herself back, and she had demanded the same from him. He was a passionate man, but he had never begun to explore the depth of his passions until last night.
He loved her. It was so clear, so simple. He was ashamed at how easily it had happened, and how powerfully. For so many years he had steeled himself against love. He had isolated himself in all the essential ways, schooled himself to remain distant. But all that had been possible only because he hadn’t yet met Billie.
He thrust his whole body under the shower, as if it might help wash away his fears. Water sluiced over his head and beat down on his shoulders. He didn’t hear the first scream, or rather, he didn’t recognize it for what it was. The second sent him shooting out of the water and straight through the connecting door.
* * *
“It can no’ be!”
Billie sat up in bed and tried desperately to remember where she was. She came awake by leaps and bounds, but still not fast enough. She could only manage to pull a sheet over her naked breasts before the woman screamed again.
“You’ll both be destroyed now, both you and Master Iain. Have you no’ heard the curse? Do you no’ see what you’ve done? You’ve brought destruction into this house, Billie Harper, and terrible, terrible torment!”
Billie stared at the woman, then at the shattered teapot forming puddles at the woman’s feet. “I’m sorry. Did I order tea?”
“Gertie, what in the bloody hell are you doing?” Iain came out of the bathroom, wrapping a towel around his waist. Billie fixed her eyes on him. The sight was infinitely more pleasurable than Gertie’s fury. She watched his gaze dip to the floor, then back up to Gertie’s face. “Oh, I see,” he said. “I thought you were visiting your son until Friday. I didn’t expect you back.”
“What is it you’ve done, Master Iain?”
Billie watched some close relative of humor creep into Iain’s eyes. “I think what I’ve done is perfectly apparent. But I’m sorry you didn’t know not to bring me my tea the way you always do.”
Gertie would not be put off. “You’ve summoned the curse! The two of you have summoned it together. Did you no’ think of that when you brought this woman here?”
“I believe I was thinking of other things.”
“You can no’ laugh in the face of the devil, and it is the devil’s messenger—” she inclined her head toward Billie “—her very own ancestor at whom you’re laughing!”
“That’s enough.” The hint of a smile died in Iain’s eyes. “We’re not laughing at anyone. What we feel for each other has nothing to do with anyone except us. Now I’ll expect you to show some discretion and keep this to yourself. Understood?”
Gertie’s eyes blazed. She turned to Billie. “What is it you did, lass, to bewitch him?”
Billie remembered Iain’s words as they had made love last night. You’ve bewitched me. Why else would I be here? Memories of a grove of pines and the drifting fragrance of blooming heather tugged at her. Unsuccessfully, she tried to push them away. “Gertie,” she said, as the memory played on in her mind, “this is the twentieth century. We don’t believe in ghosts or witches or curses anymore, remember? I have no control over who my ancestors were, but it doesn’t matter. They don’t matter.”
“Leave us alone,” Iain told Gertie. “And for God’s sake, don’t bring us any more tea.”
“Aye, I’ll go. But I’m leaving Fearnshader, too. I will no’ stay here and be a party to your destruction.”
Billie knew that Iain was fond of the old woman. She tried to soothe her. “Gertie, please don’t go because of me.”
“No, lass. I will no’ stay. How can I stand by and watch as a strong, proud family falls to its knees?”
“Oh, look, you’ve got the wrong lass there. I couldn’t bring down a nest of starlings.”
“I will no’ be back!” Gertie stalked to the door, flung it open, then slammed it behind her.
“And some people think Scotland is a relaxing place to visit. A few tunes on the old bagpipe, a peek at the Loch Ness monster…” Billie rested her chin on her hands. The sheet slipped just low enough to be enticing. “Maybe somebody will do me a favor and revoke my passport.”
“You’re upset.”
Billie looked up at Iain, who had come to stand beside the bed. “I’d apologize, but I can’t summon a reason why I should. I was asleep, and then the next moment I was Satan in a nightgown.” She looked down. “Out of a nightgown. I suppose that was the problem.”
“Gertie’s an old woman, and she’s seen more than her share of troubles.”
“Actually, now she’s seen more than her share of me.” She held the sheet a little higher. “Was she here when your father died?”
He nodded curtly.
That explained a lot, but Billie didn’t want to talk about Gertie anymore. “Did you think about the MacFarlane curse last night when we made love?”
He didn’t answer, and by now she knew what that meant. “What part of you resides in the twentieth century, Iain? On a scale of one to ten. One being prehistoric.”
“Aye. I thought of the curse. Would you like to know what I thought?”
“What did you?”
“That had I been Ruaridh, and you Christina, I would not have been able to deny myself the pleasures of being with you. Even if I had known what horrors waited for me in the future.”
Something smoldered in his eyes, behind the torment, the questions and fears. She lifted her head and her hands. The sheet fell to her lap. “And had I been Christina, I would have pledged to die a tho
usand deaths for the privilege of sharing just a part of your life.”
He didn’t want to come to her. She saw his struggle. She held out her arms.
And with a helpless groan, he struggled no more.
* * *
Iain was gone when Billie awoke again. Late morning sunlight made a drab attempt to pierce the gloom of the bedroom. She wrapped a blanket around her breasts and limped to the window to pull back the heavy draperies, only to discover why they were closed. Cold air streamed through cracks around the ancient windows. The draperies were primitive insulation.
She shivered and ran her hands up and down her bare arms. She hadn’t noticed how cold the room was last night because Iain had kept her warm. Now she wondered where he had gone. She pictured him having breakfast alone in Fearnshader’s gargantuan dining room, sitting at the end of a table long enough to seat half the village.
She was looking through his wardrobe for something to wear when there was a polite knock at the door. The young apple-cheeked woman who had instructed her yesterday on the proper route to the conservatory appeared in the doorway. “Pardon, Miss Harper, am I intruding?”
Billie was balanced on one leg, wrapped in a blanket in an unfamiliar bedroom, and the young woman had walked right in. It seemed the definition of intrusion. “Umm…nope.”
“These were delivered here for you this morning.” She held out a pair of well-worn crutches. “From Dr. Sutherland. And I’ve your clothes. They’ve been washed and pressed, and the smell of smoke is gone.”
“Darn, and I was going to sell them to a Manhattan bistro. Heather smoke could very well be the next craze in haute barbecue.”
“Aye, Miss Harper. I’m sorry.”
Billie took pity on her. “I’m teasing. I appreciate your work on the clothes. I was just about to take a shower, and I was wondering what to wear.”
“Would you like your breakfast up here?”
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