“You will cease ordering me to cease giving you orders,” she said exasperatedly. “I’m just trying to help.”
“The day I need help seeing to the needs of a woman is the day I may as well be dead.”
She gave him a measuring look. “Actually, it’d be nice if more men felt that way. Of course, you still need to lose that whole me-Tarzan, you-Jane thing.”
He had no idea what she was havering about, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was the getting of a room.
He escorted her where she’d pointed, GUEST CHECK-IN, and propped the mirror carefully against the short wooden wall.
A trim, auburn-haired, fortyish man with a bristly mustache came over, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else at this hour.
“You will give us a room. Now. And stop looking at me.”
Beside him, Jessica said hastily, “You’ll have to excuse him. He can be a bit heavy-ha—oh, for heaven’s sake!” She changed both sentence and direction of her gaze midstream, frowning up at him when the desk clerk obediently, and without protest whatsoever, averted his eyes and began processing the paperwork for a room. “People keep obeying you like you’re some kind of . . . of . . . well, god . . . or something.”
“Imagine that.” In my day, lass, I was.
“I can’t.”
“I’m excruciatingly aware of that,” he said dryly.
“Well, why do they keep doing it?”
“Mayhap, woman, they recognize a Man among men.” He couldn’t resist provoking her. “That would be Man with a capital ‘M.’ ”
She rolled her eyes, as he’d known she would.
He bit back a smile. There was no point in explaining to her about Voice. She wouldn’t understand; the wench was infuriatingly immune. Impossibly immune. His amusement faded. He narrowed his eyes, studying her for the hundredth time, trying to discern something—anything—different about her that might explain her condition.
He couldn’t discern a blethering thing. Of all the wenches the Fates might have appointed to serve as his reluctant savior, the humorless bitches had sent him the only woman he’d ever encountered that he couldn’t control.
“I’ll just need a credit card,” the man behind the counter was saying.
Cian opened his mouth to use Voice again, but Jessica was already handing the man something. He had no idea what it was. He shrugged. He didn’t mind letting her feel useful. He knew women liked to feel important too. ’Twas but that he preferred to make them feel important in other ways.
Like as women. In his bed. While he was inside them.
And this one, och, this one did something strange to him. A subtler version of that electrifying jolt he’d felt the first time she’d touched him had been happening each time he touched her. It made it nigh impossible to keep his hands off her. The entire time she’d been over his shoulder he’d felt a gentle current sizzling through the length and breadth of his body. Wherever their bodies were touching, he felt as if heat lightning crackled just beneath his skin.
And he knew, though she pretended otherwise, that she felt it too. When he’d put his hand so blatantly on her woman’s mound, he’d been prepared for indignation, outrage, a fierce tongue-lashing. He’d deserved it. He’d never treated a woman in such a possessive fashion—at least not until after they’d become lovers—bypassing any pretense of civility or seduction entirely. And yet somehow, at the same time, he’d known she wouldn’t lambaste him.
It was as if his hand simply belonged there on her. And she knew it too.
You’re getting fanciful, Keltar. Next you’ll be thinking she’s your one true mate.
According to Keltar legend, each Druid born into the clan was destined for a soul mate, a perfect match in heart and mind, as well as body, coming together with an explosive, incendiary passion that could not be denied. If the Keltar male exchanged the sacred Druid binding vows with his true love, and his mate willingly returned them, they could bind their souls together for all eternity, in this life and forever beyond. The vows linked them inextricably. ’Twas said if a Keltar gave the vows and they were not returned, he would be forever incomplete, missing a part of his heart, aching for the love of a woman he could never have, eternally bound to her, through this life and all his future existence, whether in the cycle of rebirth, heaven, hell, or even an eternal Unseelie prison. If aught must be lost . . . the legendary vows began, ’twill be my life for yours. . . .
He snorted derisively. He had no life to give.
Very little left of a soul.
Not much honor, either, if one wanted to go further into the oath. Which he didn’t.
“What?” she asked, wondering why he’d snorted.
He looked down at her. She was glancing askance up at him, her head tipped back. Her short glossy black curls glistened beneath the hotel lights, her creamy skin glowed with a kiss of sun-gold—the lass liked the outdoors—and the expression in her eyes managed somehow to be curious, irritated, worried, and determined, all at the same time.
Just looking up at him like that, she took his breath away. And he wasn’t the kind of man that happened to easily. It was more than what she looked like that did it to him—it was the woman inside the lush package.
Jessica St. James was a handful of a woman; precisely the kind he’d so long ago hungered to find. Scholarly, learned, she possessed spine and sauciness and independence of will. In the ninth century it had gotten to the point where he would have positively welcomed a temper tantrum from a woman, even if it had been completely unfounded—he would have appreciated any show of backbone—but as laird of the castle since birth, and heir to the ways of Druidry, virtually all he’d gotten from the lasses from a tender age on was obedience, deference, and awe. Aye, milord. If it please you, milord. How may I serve you, milord? Is the wine to your liking, milord? May I fetch you anything—anything at all—milord? And it had only worsened as he’d aged and become a formidably powerful man, sorcerer, and warrior.
He’d found himself increasingly drawn to more mature women, like this one. He suspected she had a good quarter century to her name. In his century she would have, like as not, had three or four babes and lost a few husbands by this time in her life. He preferred women who’d lived a good bit, women whom the passage of years had deepened and made more interesting. He liked to toop—bloody hell, did he ever!—but he also liked to be able to talk when the tooping was at a temporary hiatus.
This woman was certainly interesting. Beyond his compelling. Feisty and sexy and looking up at him with an enticing sheen on her plump lower lip.
He ducked his head and tasted her.
She was soft, silky, and utterly delectable. He nipped her lower lip gently, then brushed his mouth lightly against hers, savoring the sweet friction. He didn’t push to deepen the kiss; there would be time later for scorchingly intense kisses. He contented himself for the now with a purely hedonistic, lazy taste of her. Moving soft and slow, lulling her into him. When he felt her body melting forward, he pulled away with a slow, erotic tug of her lower lip.
She stared up at him with a startled, searching expression, her lips parted, the lower one slightly puffed out.
His mouth tingled from the touch. He wondered if she felt it too. Wondered what she was thinking, feeling.
He stretched his senses and probed, suspecting deep in his bones it wouldn’t work. If Voice had no effect on her, he highly doubted deep-listening would.
Deep-listening was the Druid art of reading the minds and hearts of others, and was another of his greatest skills. Nay, that wasn’t quite right. He excelled at all Druid skills. He always had.
He was an anomaly: the only Keltar ever to have been born with the full power of all of his ancestors, combined and compounded; an abnormality of nature; an anathema in an otherwise ancient, honorable, and predictable bloodline. While his da had excelled at healing, and his granda had been adept at predicting the seasons for the sowing and reaping, and his uncle had been highly skilled in b
oth Voice and alchemy, Cian had been born with all those talents a hundredfold, plus abilities no Keltar had ever displayed before. ’Twas much of why he’d ended up trapped in the Dark Glass.
Too much power for one man. Pull back, Cian, his mother used to say, with troubled eyes. One day you’ll go too far.
And indeed he had. He’d coveted the Dark Hallows himself, even knowing they bore the innately corruptive essence of black magyck, and that no man could own one and remain unchanged. Still, he’d hungered, just as Lucan had, for ever-greater power; but where Lucan had been perfectly willing to embrace evil, Cian’s error had been that he’d arrogantly believed himself incapable of being corrupted or defeated by either man or magyck.
How wrong he’d been.
But that was another time, a long-ago story, and one best forgotten.
She was now.
He opened himself, focusing his senses, probed gently at her.
Nothing. He probed harder. Silence. Utter and absolute.
Centering, he pounded at Jessica St. James, a battering ram at the castle gates of her mind.
Not a hint of an emotion. Not a whisper of a thought.
Astonishing.
To test himself, he fired a questing arrow at the man arranging for the room. He flinched back hastily. The desk clerk was a miserable man. His wife had recently left him for one of his best friends. Cian swallowed, trying to scrape the foul taste of the man’s despair from his tongue. Despair served no one well. He wanted to shake him and say, Fight, you fool. Fight for her. Never cede the battle. Never yield the day.
“Doona give up, man,” Cian hissed.
The desk clerk glanced up, looking startled.
“You can’t just let her walk away,” he growled. “She’s your wife.”
The clerk’s eyes narrowed, flickered uneasily. “Who are you? Do I know you?” he said defensively.
“What?” Jessica said beside him. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Forget it.” To the desk clerk he said, “Be at ease.” It wasn’t his place to save the world. Well, mayhap it was, but he knew what must be done, and it wasn’t this.
With a soft snort of exasperation beside him, Jessica accepted a packet from the once-again submissive desk clerk, twitched that sweet bottom of hers, and stalked off toward two huge burnished-gold doors in the wall. She cast a glance back over her shoulder at him, and her expression could not have more clearly said: Well, come on, you great, big, overbearing brute. I don’t like you one bit, but we’re stuck together.
Cian admired the view for a moment, before picking up the mirror and loping off to join her.
Twenty days with this woman.
Mayhap, somewhere, some divinity in which he’d not believed, believed in him. Believed he would redeem himself and was rewarding him in advance.
She stopped at the doors. Yawning, she stretched her arms over her head, arched her back, and twisted from side to side as if stretching out her spine.
Bloody hell, the woman was a woman in all the right places!
Who cared the why of things?
She was his for the next twenty days.
* * *
9
Jessi sat at the cherry writing desk in room 2112, hooking up her laptop, scowling into the small wall mirror that hung above it, wondering why hotels always put mirrors above writing desks. Who wanted to look at themselves while writing? Apparently a lot of people must, because every hotel she’d been in had pretty much the same setup: closet inside the door on the left; bathroom inside the door on the right (or vice versa); first bed facing a writing desk with requisite mirror hung above it; a small table between the beds sporting clock radio and phone; second bed facing a TV armoire/dresser; and, at the far wall, a small table and two chairs sat before a wall of windows.
This room was no different, though a cut above some she’d been in, with merlot-and-champagne carpet, patterned with a gold diamond design, walls papered in textured ivory with gold embellishments at the moldings, beds topped with crisp ivory linens and champagne comforters, the windows hung with billowy wine drapes.
Behind her, Cian MacKeltar was taking a shower, beyond the closed bathroom door.
She’d closed the door.
She’d also closed her eyes when he’d dropped his kilt right in front of her. Which wasn’t to say that she was a prude and hadn’t stared at him through the glass of the shower enclosure when she’d firmly shut the door a few moments later. She had.
The moment they’d entered the hotel room, his gaze had gone instantly to the double king beds. So had hers, and there’d been one of those intensely tense moments where people either jumped on each other or got as far away from each other as they could.
She’d done a little crab-scuttle sideways, nearly sidling right back out into the hall. He’d smiled faintly, mockingly, at her, then stepped past her and thoroughly scanned the entire room before positioning the mirror against the far wall, facing the entry door. She’d not missed that it also faced the beds, but was refusing to ponder it overlong.
For a moment she’d thought he was going to kiss her again, but, as he’d walked back toward her, his gaze had swept past her to the bathroom.
Christ, he’d exclaimed, ’tis a modern garderobe! I couldn’t see beyond the door to the one in Lucan’s study, though I’ve seen pictures. . . . He’d trailed off wonderingly.
Is that where he kept you . . . er, the mirror hung? In his study? How strange his existence must have been inside a mirror! She couldn’t begin to fathom it.
Aye. Though I’ve seen most modern inventions in books and the like in his study, I’ve not had the opportunity to examine the real things.
She’d been about to give him a quick demonstration—anything to get away from those beds—but he’d plunged right into things, just as he had in the car, taking command, twisting handles and turning knobs, squirting little bottles of shampoo and conditioner until the room had been a steam sauna, scented of perfumed toiletries.
Does this hostelry contain a kitchen and serving wenches, lass? he’d paused long enough in his explorations to ask.
She’d nodded.
Command us a feast, woman. I’m famished. Meat. Much meat. And wine.
When he’d unfastened his wrist cuffs, she should have gotten the hint.
Without further ado, he’d dropped his kilt. Had stood there, utterly unself-conscious, wearing nothing but a leather sheath strapped to one heavily muscled thigh, casing a heavily jewel-encrusted knife. Doffing that, too, he’d placed it high on the shower stall’s edge and stepped beneath the spray.
Pulse suddenly jumping in her throat, she’d turned sharply away and squeezed her eyes shut.
She could still taste him on her lips. The kiss he’d given her in the lobby had stunned her.
And scorched her right down to her toes. He’d not pushed for tongue, or tried to grab a breast the instant he’d thought he’d gotten her distracted with a kiss. No, he’d kissed her lazily, without touching her anywhere else at all, as if he had all the time in the world, brushing his firm, full, sexy lips back and forth over hers, gently sucking her lower lip.
She’d actually melted into the egotistical Neanderthal, had felt her lips parting.
Logic, reason, and awareness of current events had vanished from her mind as abruptly and completely as if someone had just vacuumed her brain out through her ear.
It was his gentleness that had gotten her, she’d decided on the way up in the elevator. It had surprised her, that was all. It was just that she’d not expected such a soft touch from such a hard-bodied, aggressive man. She’d not been prepared for it, any more than she had been for him to get butt-naked in front of her.
And, Crimeny, what a butt . . .
When she’d opened her eyes and turned back, she’d stared though the steamy glass at him—all six and a half magnificent naked feet of him.
Powerful muscles shaped his long legs and massive thighs, his ass was tight, perfectly formed, an
d packed with more sweet muscle. She loved a good butt on a man! Too many guys had none at all. Both legs and butt were dusted with fine, silky dark hair; he wasn’t one of those lady-killer bodybuilders or models that shaved—he was a man’s man, and proud of it. More dark hair dusted his forearms and beneath his arms.
He’d lathered himself up and begun scrubbing beneath the steamy spray. As his powerful hands moved over his body, prime, sleek muscle rippled beneath his slick, golden skin.
She’d been so engrossed, watching him wash himself, that when he’d squirted conditioner in his hand and closed a fist around himself, she’d continued dazedly watching. Not until he’d begun to rhythmically slip his hand up and down had she realized what she was watching him do.
Eyes snapping wide, she’d jerked her gaze to his face. His gaze had been locked on her face, his eyes narrowed, his gaze dark and hot. He’d flashed her a sexy, wicked smile that had been both invitation and challenge, catching the tip of his tongue between his teeth.
She’d backed hastily out and slammed the door.
The man was seriously hung.
An insane, utterly-uncaring-of-consequences part of her had wanted nothing more than to go right back in there, strip, get in the shower with him, push his hand away, and replace it with hers.
Get a grip, Jessi, she’d rebuked herself firmly. And not on mirror-man’s dick.
After shutting him in the bathroom and gulping a few steadying breaths, she’d gone to the phone and ordered room service, putting it also on her credit card.
“Why not?” she muttered to her reflection over the top of her laptop. “I may as well charge with impunity.” The way things were going, she probably wouldn’t live long enough to have to pay it off anyway. She made a face at herself in the mirror. It had been a long day and she was showing signs of the strain. Her makeup was as good as gone, her stubborn cowlicks were acting up, and her clothes were rumpled.
Plucking a tissue from a box on the desk, she dabbed at the remnants of mascara smudged on her lashes and ran a hand through her short glossy curls.
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