Beyond the Highland Myst

by Highlander 01-08

  "How is this topping made?" she asked, changing the subject swiftly.

  "Much like butter. You churn it with paddles or shake it in a jug. It is merely cream skimmed from the top of milk, mixed with sugar and a touch of cinnamon. It thickens as you paddle it and add the sweetening. I used to watch them make it when I was a lad, flattering cook and anyone else in the kitchen to get my hands on it."

  Whipped cream in the fourteenth century, she marveled. She wondered how many things these "barbarians" had that modern scholars never discussed. But why wouldn't they have such condiments? In the few days she'd been in Castle Brodie, she'd noted many things that surprised her. It all just seemed too civilized.

  She fixed her gaze on her plate trying to prevent herself from rising from her chair, taking his spoon away, and giving him something else to lick. Her finger. Her lower lip. The hollow of her spine.

  Although she'd had little experience with men, she was innately sensual and she'd fantasized often. Perhaps more than most, because she'd tasted so little of sexuality. Tonight, with this magnificent warrior dining regally at the end of the table, her imagination took flight.

  In her fantasy he walked to her end of the table, capturing and holding her gaze with that subtle magnetism he had. His eyes were heavy lidded, banking a challenge: Become a woman, Lisa? He took her hand, pulled her to her feet, and kissed her, a soft brush of his lips, a quick velvety stroke of his tongue, promising so much more, slipping deep into her mouth when her lips parted on a sigh. Her fantasy picked up speed, fast-forwarded abruptly to his pressing her back onto the table, slipping the gown from her body, dropping whipped cream on her breasts, and licking it from her moist, warm skin with the same careful deliberation he'd given his spoon. Perhaps a dab of warm, rich cream would inadvertently fall where she'd touched herself before, and with his lips he would…

  Swallowing hard, she looked at him.

  He raised his eyes from the frothy concoction on his spoon at the precise moment she looked up, and their gazes locked over the length of the polished wood table. Where would you drip whipped cream on him, Lisa? The answer came with frightening swiftness and conviction: Everywhere. She wanted to explore his body, the hard ripples, the smooth skin. The candlelight bathed his olive skin with a golden hue, and his dark good looks were set off perfectly by his linen shirt and the splash of black and crimson draped across his chest. He was mesmerizing.

  "Are you hungry, lass?" He licked his spoon languidly.

  She couldn't tear her gaze away. "No. I've eaten quite enough," she managed.

  "You seem to be watching my dessert most intently. Are you certain there isn't something else you wish to sate your appetite?"

  Besides you to remove your clothing, lie on the table, and let me finger paint you with whipped cream, you mean? "Nope," she said casually. "Not a thing." She watched him for a moment; he still had a great deal of dessert left. How was she going to get through this? "Actually," she said, leaping to her feet, "I'm exhausted and would like to retire."

  He dropped his spoon and moved swiftly to her side. "I will escort you to your chambers," he murmured, taking her arm and tucking it into his. Lisa shivered. The man was throwing off the heat of a small forge. His scent enveloped her, faint but spicy. It was a fragrance she couldn't quite put her finger on. She was certain she'd smelled it before but couldn't figure out where. It was definitely a unique scent, one that modern-day perfumers would have killed to get their hands on.

  "I can walk by myself perfectly well," she said, removing her arm from his.

  "As you wish, Lisa," he replied easily.

  Her eyes narrowed. "Why are you suddenly being so nice to me? I thought you were angry with me. I thought you didn't want to marry me. I thought you thought I was a spy."

  He shrugged innocently "First, I've always been reasonably pleasant to you. Second, I doona have any choice but to marry you, and third, marrying you renders distrusting you obsolete. I am a logical man, lass. When a warrior realizes he has only one course of action, he makes the best of it. Anything else would be foolish. That doesn't mean that I doona still have many questions. I plan to learn everything about you, lass," he said meaningfully. "But I am no longer going to fight my situation." Not one bit of it, he added silently. Not my magic, not my dark side, not my adherence to rules. I am a new man, Lisa Stone, he told her inside his head. And it felt good. Never before had he accepted any portion of what he considered his dark side, but never before had he been so tempted by a woman to do so. He had a feeling that a man might need a little magic to woo and win Lisa Stone.

  They ascended the stairs in silence. He smiled, thinking he'd finally managed to still her acerbic tongue merely by being as nice to her as he'd wanted to be, but, constrained by his oath and his rules, had resisted. She would encounter no further resistance from him.

  At the door to her chambers, she stopped and looked up at him. He was pleased by her action, for it told him clearly that she desired his kiss.

  And he planned to give her much more than a kiss before the night was through.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 16

  lisa waited, cursing herself silently. during the walk to her chambers she'd thought of a dozen excuses to escape him and flee to her room alone, but one thing had prevented her: She wanted a good-night kiss. Dinner had been perfect, and she wanted to end it like a real date. With a real kiss.

  So she faced him and turned her face up expectantly.

  But he neither kissed her nor left her there. Rather, he reached around her to the door, pushed it open, and smoothly backed her into the room.

  "What are you doing?" she asked uneasily.

  "I thought merely to visit with you awhile, lass."

  "I don't think that's a good idea," she said. "You may bid me good night now." Her fantasy was too fresh in her mind. She wanted a simple kiss to dream on, not the whole man. She couldn't handle the entire man.

  "Why? Do I make you uncomfortable, lass?" He stepped farther into the room and closed the door behind him.

  "Of course not," she lied, moving away from him quickly. "Infuriate me? Frequently." She suddenly realized she was pacing and forced her feet to still. "I just don't see any reason for you to be in my chambers. Go." She waved her hand at him.

  He laughed, a husky rumble. "I think you find being in a room with me and a bed disturbing."

  Lisa moved swiftly to the plump mattresses and plunked herself upon them defiantly. "No, I don't. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. It's simply that I'm tired and would like to sleep." She yawned hugely.

  "Quite a yawn. Lovely pink tongue, by the way. Do you recall how it feels when yours jousts with mine? I haven't forgotten. I want more."

  Despite her resolve not to, she looked at him, fascinated.

  "I want your tongue in my mouth."

  She averted her gaze with effort.

  "I want mine all over your body."

  Lisa swallowed. "I am not interested," she said faintly.

  "Doona lie to yourself, Lisa. Doona lie to me. You want me. I can feel it in the air between us. I can smell it."

  Lisa didn't dare breathe. She harbored an absurd hope that he would just leave after declaring that truth and not force her to confront the enormity of it. She did want him. Desperately. Fantasies collided in her mind, daring her to relinquish her innocence and embrace womanhood.

  He moved slowly toward her and sat on the edge of her bed. She scooted back hastily, her back flush to the headboard, and hugged a pillow to her chest.

  "You enjoy looking at me, doona you, Lisa?"

  She enjoyed doing more than looking at him. She liked fighting him with her kisses. Tasting the salt and honey of his skin.

  With deft fingers, he untied the laces of his linen shirt and shrugged it off over his head. The muscles in his abdomen rippled, the curves of his biceps flexed. "Then look," he said, his voice rough. "Look your fill. Think you I doona recall how you gazed at me in my bath?" When his wide shoulders
were revealed, she shook her head and sucked in a breath.

  "St-stop that! What are you doing?" Lisa exclaimed. Lounging at the foot of her bed was six feet seven inches of dark, seductive man, with rippling muscles beneath bronzed skin; a warrior in every sense of the word. Fine black hair dusted his powerful chest and thick forearms. A finer trail of hair skittered down his abdomen and crept beneath the brilliant red and black tartan knotted at his waist. All in all, Circenn Brodie was the most desirable man Lisa had ever seen.

  "Use me, Lisa," he encouraged softly. "Take whatever you want." When she made no reply, he said, "You have never been with a man, have you?"

  Lisa smoothed the coverlet, her mouth dry. She had no intention of discussing this with him. She wet her traitorous lips and was appalled when they parted and said, "Is it so apparent?"

  "To me. Perhaps not to other men. Why? You are old enough to have been with many men. You are beautiful enough that many must have tried. Did you find none to your liking?"

  Lisa hugged the pillow tighter. In high school, she'd had several boyfriends, but they'd always seemed so immature to her. Catherine said it was because she was an only child, that she was more accustomed to being around adults. She'd suspected her mom was right.

  "Did I take you from someone? A lover perhaps?" A muscle twitched in his jaw.

  "No. There's been no one."

  "I find that difficult—nay, impossible to believe."

  "Trust me," Lisa said with a self-deprecating laugh. "Men were not exactly beating down my door." If they had been, they would have fled shortly after gaining entrance and discovering her financial straits and her caretaker role.

  "Ah, perhaps they were afraid of you, because you are so much woman?"

  "I am not fat," Lisa bristled. "I'm… healthy," she supplied defensively.

  Circenn smiled. "That you are, but that is not what I meant."

  "Well, I'm not too tall. A giantess wouldn't be too tall for you." At five feet ten, she had towered over many of the boys in her class until the last two years of high school.

  "Not what I meant either."

  "Then what did you mean?" she asked, feeling wounded.

  "You are smart—"

  "No, I'm not," she said. Anything but smart.

  "Yes, you are. You were smart enough to realize it would be foolish to escape me at Dunnottar, and clever enough to deduce a way out of my chambers. Aye, even fearless enough to dare it. Tell me, do you read and write?"

  "Yes." Inwardly, Lisa glowed. She was smart in the fourteenth century.

  "You are persistent. Tenacious. Determined. Strong. You doona need anyone, do you?"

  "I haven't had the opportunity to need anyone. Everyone's always been too busy needing me," she muttered, then felt guilty for voicing her most secret resentment.

  "Need me, Lisa."

  She searched his face. What had changed him? Why was he acting this way? It was as if he genuinely cared and sincerely desired her.

  "Need me," he repeated firmly. "Use me to explore the woman who has never been given the opportunity to live. Take from me, need from me, and satisfy all that curiosity I feel burning in you. And by Dagda, let go of that maidenhead. Do you wish to live and die, never having known passion? Never having tasted what I offer you? Be bold. Take." He uttered the last word in a low, masculine tone.

  Take. The word lingered in her mind. It was almost as if it had rolled from his tongue imbued with some kind of sorcery. What would it be like to take, as he said it—to utterly consume without guilt or fear? Take because her blood demanded it, because her body needed it. Lisa's lips parted as she contemplated his words. His upper torso was a vast expanse of olive skin that would be velvety to the touch. Her fingers ached to trail over the hard ridges of his chest, to linger over his shoulders, to curve around his powerful neck and drag him into a kiss that would make her forget where he began and she ended, "I thought you medieval men prized virginity. Don't you think it's wrong for a woman to have her own desires and act on them?"

  "Your virginity is a piece of skin, a membrane, Lisa. My first love was long ago and it has not changed who I am in any fashion. Mind you, I am not saying you should give the gift of lovemaking to just anyone. But an obsession with virginity is absurd and serves no purpose but to make a woman turn away from a fine part of her nature. Women and men have the same desires—at least they do until the priests have their go at the women and convince them it is shameful. What the priests should be saying is 'choose well.'"

  "How many—" she broke off quickly. What a stupid question to ask. She would sound like a childish, possessive adolescent. But she wanted to know. It said something about the man. A man who'd been with hundreds of women had a real problem, as far as she was concerned.

  "Seven." His teeth flashed white against his face.

  "That's not very many. I mean for a man, you know," she added hastily.

  What would she think if she knew it was only seven in five hundred years? Thousands of times with those seven, enough to know well how to please any woman, but only seven all the same. "Each woman was a country, rich and lush as Scotland, and I loved them with the same dedication and thorough attention I give my homeland. I confess, the first few were naught but the man in me celebrating life when I was less than a score of years. But the last two were wonderful women, both friends and lovers."

  "Then why did you leave them?"

  A shadow crossed his beautiful face. "They left me," he said softly. Died. Too young, in a land too harsh.

  "Why?"

  "Lisa, touch me." He moved closer, close enough that she could smell the spice of his skin. Close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his body, mingling with the heat from hers. Close enough that his lips were a breath and a "yes" away from hers. Tempting, more compelling than her need for basic survival. Fingers extended, she reached for him, but at the last moment she dropped her hand, forming a fist in her lap.

  He was silent for a long moment. "You aren't ready yet. Very well. I can wait." He rose in a fluid motion. As he stood, the knot on his tartan slipped and the fabric dropped lower on his hips, giving her a sinful glimpse of what she was denying herself. Her gaze fixed on the black trail of hair that fanned below his belly button, then dropped lower to the thicker hair that peeked above the tartan. The sight of it gave her a heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach, an awful empty pressure. Whether he moved or the plaid slid, she didn't know, but suddenly it dipped lower, revealing the thick base of his shaft amid silky dark hair. She couldn't see the length of it, but that wasn't what made her heart pound. It was the thickness of him. She would never be able to wrap her hand around it. What would it feel like to have him push that inside her? Her mouth went dry.

  His eyes lit appreciatively as her gaze snagged there. "I could pick you up and wrap those lovely long legs of yours around my waist. Slip deep inside you, rock you against me and love you till you lay in my arms and slept like a babe. I will spend each night stretched beside you, teaching you what you want me to teach you. I can feel that you want it from me. Yet it will be at your pace, when you choose. I will wait as long as I must.

  "But know this, Lisa—when you are across the dinner table from me on the morrow, in my mind I am pushing you back on a bed. In my fantasy"—he laughed, as if at his own brashness—"you are discovering yourself with my willing body. Who knows, perhaps even laying siege to the heart that beats within this chest." He thumped his chest with a fist and silently admitted she'd already begun to do that, otherwise he wouldn't have offered himself. But she didn't need to know that. He knotted the tartan slowly, never taking his eyes from hers.

  "Good night, Lisa. Sleep with the angels."

  Her eyes stung from quick tears. It had been her mother's nightly benediction: Sleep with the angels. But then he added words her mother never had:

  "Then come back to earth and sleep with your devil, who would burn in hell for one night in your arms."

  Wow! was all her reeling mind co
uld come up with as he slipped from the room.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 17

  three days had passed since their first dinner in the formal dining room. That was seventy-two hours. Four thousand three hundred and twenty minutes, and Lisa had felt each one of them whiz past her—gone forever.

  Nine shifts of nurses had changed at home. Nine meals had been taken by her mother—bland food, she was certain. No ripe plums and apricots carefully selected from the market on her lunch hour. Illness had changed Catherine's appetite, and she'd developed a craving for fruits.

  Lisa had spent the days snooping as furtively as possible, but she had begun to suspect it was futile. She didn't have the first idea where to look for the flask. She'd tried his chambers several times during the day, but the door was always locked. She'd even gone to the turret to the left of his chambers to see if there was a way she could manage to scale the outside wall to get there, but it was hopeless. His chambers were on the second floor of the east wing, and there were guards on the battlements above it at all times.

  She'd passed the evenings indulging herself in offensively sumptuous meals. Last night, the first course had been a mixture of plums, quince, apples, and pears with rosemary, basil, and rue in a pastry tart. The second course had been a chopped meat pastry, the third an omelet with almonds, currants, honey, and saffron, the fourth roasted salmon in onion and wine sauce, the fifth artichokes stuffed with rice. By the honey-glazed chicken rolled in mustard, rosemary, and pine nuts, she'd been wallowing in guilt. By the berry pastries with whipped cream, she'd despised herself.

  And each night, he'd savored his dessert with the same lazy sensuality that made her long to be a berry or a fluff of topping. She couldn't fault his demeanor, he'd been an impeccable dinner companion and host. They'd made cautious small talk; he'd told her of the Templars and their plight, spoke of their training and extolled the strengths of his Highland fortress. She'd asked about his villagers, whom he seemed to know surprisingly little about. He'd asked about her century and she'd made him talk about his instead. When she'd asked about his family, he'd turned the tables and asked about hers. After a few moments of strained evasions, they'd mutually conceded to leave each other alone on that topic.