From the moment the Dark Glass had reclaimed him, the terrible possibilities had begun playing themselves, with chilling detail, in never-ending repetition through his mind.
An assassin had slipped onto the plane and into the seat behind them, then taken her captive the moment she’d disembarked. She was, even now, drugged and on her way to London.
Nay—the bloody frigging plane had simply plummeted from the air, crashing thousands of miles to the ocean below, sinking like a stone. He didn’t understand how the hell it stayed up there, anyway. It might have wings, but they didn’t flap. (This was the kindest of his hells; she suffered no indignities and death came more swiftly in this than any others.)
Nay—when his mirror was next uncovered, it would be to discover himself once again hung upon Lucan’s study wall, staring down at his beautiful Jessica, tied and gagged, being raped and tortured by his ancient enemy.
Nay—when his mirror was next uncovered, he would see only Lucan’s hated face and the bastard would do the same thing he’d done to him with word of Cian’s mother and sisters—never utter a word about Jessica again, no matter how Cian pleaded, leaving him to imagine the worst of all possibles every single day for the rest of his eternal existence.
Each hellish possibility was worse than the last, slicing like a sword into his gut.
Cian slumped down against the wall, hands fisted, jaw clenched.
Waiting. Waiting.
“Aha—there you are!” Jessi exclaimed brightly, as she rounded the corner. “Finally!” A dozen yards away, at the end of the very last row (did it ever work any other way?) with the words UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY emblazoned in red across it, between a few dozen smaller stampings of the word FRAGILE, the tall plywood crate perched on end.
She glanced anxiously at her watch. It had taken her forever to find him. She was afraid that any minute now Stone-face was going to come crashing through the doors behind her, with half of Edinburgh’s Airport Security in tow.
When she’d first pushed through those double doors, she’d expected to find a small storehouse, not an industrial warehouse that stretched the length of a football field, with tiers that climbed all the way to a forty-foot ceiling, and row after row of numbered boxes, crates, and assorted packages.
She’d wasted precious time searching aisles of numbered items, before deducing that the unnumbered items lacking tickets were probably stored at the far end of the humongous building because the staff knew no one would be collecting them anytime soon.
The crate must have been the most recent arrival, as it was all the way down in the final spot at the end of the row. Sprinting toward it, she called out the summoning spell. “Lialth bree che bree, Cian MacKeltar, drachme se-sidh!”
Nothing happened.
She repeated the chant, expecting light to blaze from the cracks, and the crate to begin rocking or something.
Again nothing.
Drawing to a breathless halt in front of it, she pressed her ear to the wood panel. “Cian?” she called. She glanced warily over her shoulder. Despite the vastness of the warehouse and her apparent solitude within it, she was nonetheless reluctant to make a commotion. Squaring her shoulders, she opted for something more than an exclamation but less than a shout: “Cian!”
She pressed her ear to the plywood again. Was that a muffled roar? She listened a moment. Sure sounded like it. Yup, there was another.
She drew back and pounded on the crate with her fists. “Cian, I’m here! Can you hear me? Come on! Get your butt out here now! We have to hurry. I don’t know how long we have before they find us. Lialth bree che bree, Cian MacKeltar, drachme se-sidh!”
Total silence.
Just when she’d begun to think something must have gone seriously wrong en route, or she had the wrong crate or something, brilliant light blazed from the cracks, the warehouse felt even larger than it was, and she heard the rustle of inner packing.
A powerful fist splintered through the wood half an inch from her left ear.
Blinking, Jessi scrambled back.
He heard her, calling him.
At first Cian thought her voice was but another figment of his tortured imaginings, then it snapped impatiently, “Get your butt out here now!” and he laughed aloud. She was his prickly Jessica; they’d made it to Scotland, and she was freeing him again.
Pushing against masses of packing and cushion-wrap, he shoved from the mirror and turned his body into a battering ram.
He crashed a fist through the wood, then another, kicked and pounded at the crating with all the caged fury and impotent rage that had been riding him for two endless days.
He demolished the front of the crate, ripping it to shreds with his bare hands.
When he glanced up from the splinters, it was to find Jessica backed up flush to a shelving unit, staring at him, her face pale.
“Och, Christ, woman,” he hissed. Devouring the space between them in two strides, he cupped her jaw with one big hand, tipped her face up, and claimed her mouth in a kiss. Once, twice, three times. Then he drew back and glared down at her. “I thought you were dead. I couldn’t fucking get out of there and I thought of a thousand things I’d done wrong and imagined a million deaths for you. Kiss me, Jessica. Show me you’re alive.”
Jessi blinked up at Cian, stunned.
Kiss me, Jessica, his words hung in the air. Show me you’re alive.
When he’d come crashing out of the crate, for a moment she’d genuinely thought he’d gone crazy, so stark and inhuman was the expression in his eyes. Then he’d turned a look on her that had scorched right through her clothing, her skin, seared all the way to her bones, and before he’d even spoken, she’d known it had been fear for her that had put that wildness in him.
She’d been stunned. She’d been secretly thrilled. Because, although she’d been refusing to admit it even to herself, the whole time she’d been sitting in the airport, trying to figure out a way to get to him, she’d been suppressing an ever-growing panic, and not just because he was her best chance of staying alive. Somehow, it had gotten personal. A thousand worries had been plaguing her. Worries about him: Where was he? Was he okay? What if the mirror had inadvertently gotten broken? Would he die? Would he be stuck in there forever?
What if Lucan had somehow gotten his hands on him? How would she find him? Would she have to hunt down this scary Lucan guy and steal Cian back?
What if she never saw the towering, dark, infuriatingly barbaric, sexy Highlander again?
It’s just hormones. Combustive chemistry compounded by danger, nothing more.
Whatever it was, his reaction was playing right into a fantasy she’d not even known she’d been having: that when she found him he would not merely stalk out of that mirror to save her, he would stalk out of it to claim her. Crush her against the steely, hard strength of his body, and take slick velvety possession of her with his tongue. Give her the most base, elemental affirmation that he was alive, and she was alive, and they lived to fight another day.
It was, she realized, how women throughout all of history must have felt each time their men returned from battle on their own two feet, not bound over the back of a horse, or piled, dozens deep, atop a wagon.
Desperate for every morsel of passion life had to offer.
Or, at least, for a few steamy kisses, anyway. Surely there was no harm in a few kisses . . .
Famous final words, she would think later.
She tipped her head back and wet her lips. He needed no further encouragement. Whisky eyes glittering with lust, he cupped the back of her head with a big palm and slanted his mouth over hers.
The moment their lips met this time, heat lightning crackled between them and they both went wild.
She’d seen crazy passion in movies, but had never experienced it herself. She did now.
Wriggling her backpack off her shoulders, she molded herself against him, trying to get closer. He thrust back in kind, pressing his thick, hard erection against her stomach.
She tried to scramble up his body, but her impromptu climbing attempt threw him off balance. He overcorrected and they banged against the metal shelving, then bounced off it.
Careening across the aisle, they stumbled and staggered over crate debris and crashed to the concrete floor.
Yet never broke the kiss.
Clamping her face between his big hands, he claimed her with hot, deep glides of his tongue. Closing his teeth over her lower lip, he gave it a gentle tug followed by a not-so-gentle suck, before resuming his sleek, erotic slides into the slick interior of her mouth.
He teased her with slow rhythmic thrusts, plunging in and out, and she sucked frantically at his tongue, as if it were some other part of him she was trying to capture and take deep inside her. He let her suckle him for a moment, growling soft and low in his throat, then he dragged his mouth away, lightly chafing his shadow-beard across her jaw, nipping the edge of it. He trailed scorching kisses down her throat, then bit her in the hollow where her shoulder met her neck, catching the tendon with his teeth.
She sucked in a hissing breath, her back arching, straining up against him. She tipped back her head, yielding greater access.
Pushing impatiently at the collar of her jean jacket, he bared her skin and scattered tiny love-bites over her shoulder, riding the fine edge between not-enough and almost-too-much.
She had a sneaking suspicion Cian MacKeltar rode that edge a lot.
God, what was happening to her? she wondered dimly. She was going to tell him they needed to hurry and get out of there. That Stone-face was coming. That Security was no doubt on its way. Just a few more kisses and she was going to tell him all of that. Any minute now . . .
She tugged at his shirt, worked her hands beneath it, gliding them up his sexy, sculpted abdomen, slipping them around to his magnificently muscled back.
He shoved his hands beneath her sweater, subtly shifting so the hot, hard ridge of his erection was cradled snugly between her thighs.
We have to go now, she was going to tell him. “I can’t breathe,” she told him. “You’re too big. I want to be on top.”
He made a half-choking, half-laughing sound and rolled her over on top of him. She slipped into a straddling position and glanced down, eyes widening. His bulge was straining the fabric of his faded jeans and he was worrisomely large.
“Take off that damn jacket.”
But we need to go, she opened her mouth to say. Except just as she was about to form the words, he pressed the pad of his finger to her parted lips, and she ended up nipping the tip of his finger then sucking it into her mouth.
He groaned, eyes narrowing, gaze fixed heatedly on her mouth.
She shrugged the jacket from her shoulders. When he tugged at her sweater, she raised her arms above her head and yielded that too. Her breasts sprang free, jiggling, her nipples hardening into tight puckers.
Beneath her, Cian stared up, lust stringing his gut tighter than a corded bow about to shoot wildly into anything that moved.
Bloody hell, she was magnificent!
She sat astride him, her lush, heavy breasts bobbing and swaying, and she was so ripely curved that a man could come just looking at her. Her skin was silk and cream, and he knew she was going to feel that way all over, inside and out. More creamy in some places than others, and he couldn’t wait to taste all of them. Her breasts were full, high, and sexy as hell. Her nipples were hard pink peaks swaying above his face. Abs contracting, he reared up from the concrete floor, caught those pretty boobs with his hands, and drew a nipple deep into his hot, wet mouth. He tugged lightly, gave it a delicate scrape with his teeth, savoring the pearly hardness of it with a lingering swirl of his tongue.
Back arching, Jessi buried her hands in Cian’s braids, moaning as he used his unshaven jaw to gently abrade the sensitive skin of her damp, kiss-puckered peaks. Then he started licking with slow, lazily erotic strokes of his tongue until she was squirming and wiggling impatiently on top of him. Turning his head from side to side between her breasts, he teased her nipples mercilessly with light flicks, intermittently taking tiny nips beneath the hard pink points.
Her breasts ached from his slow, teasing strokes. She needed more friction. She wanted his mouth closed firmly on them, his fingers pinching and rolling, the rake of his teeth. She wanted hot and hard and demanding. She wanted claiming.
She was so turned-on that she was achy, needy with it. His tongue flicked across one nipple, then the next as he doled out more of those torturously light caresses. “Please, Cian, more,” she whimpered.
She lost her breath in a whoosh of air when he pushed her off him and flipped her onto her back.
A hot purr rumbled deep in his throat.
The concrete felt cool in contrast to the burning heat of her skin. Lowering himself over her, he propped his formidable weight with his palms splayed at each side of her body. Burying his face in her breasts, he—oh, thank you, finally—drew one nipple after the next deep into his mouth. He suckled. He nipped. He rolled the taut buds between his tongue and his upper palate, scraping gently with the edges of his teeth. Shifting his weight to one forearm, he slipped his hand down to work at her jeans.
“Cian,” she gasped.
“Aye, lass?” His mouth moved lower, trailing hot, wet kisses over her tummy, pausing at her navel to dip in and lave it.
“Oh, God, Cian!” She twisted her hips to give him slack in the waistband of her denim second-skin.
A few moments later, a soft, wicked laugh escaped him and she knew he’d just unbuttoned her jeans and seen the words LUCKY YOU emblazoned in gold down the inner fabric of the fly.
“So that’s why they’re called Lucky jeans,” he murmured.
“Uh-hmmm,” she managed.
“You’ll get no argument from me, lass. I ken I’m a lucky man.” He paused. “Woman,” he said then, “I’m going to make you forget every other man you’ve ever known.”
“But—”
“Hush.” Then his demanding mouth was hot on her body again, scattering tiny love-bites over the delicate skin of her hips as he peeled her jeans down inch by inch.
She didn’t hear them—the people approaching.
She was too lost in an erotic haze for anything to penetrate.
Fortunately, Cian heard the furious voice snapping, “Did you hear that? I’m telling you, she’s back there!”
Jerking back from her, he cocked his head, listening. Abruptly, he tugged her into a sitting position and began yanking her jeans back up over her hips.
Befuddled, dazed by desire, Jessi sat up on the cool concrete, gaping at him.
Someone comes, he mouthed, miming a gesture to be silent. He stood, hoisted her into midair by the waistband of her jeans, and jiggled her back into them, the muscles in his arms bunching and rippling.
His eyes glazed over a little when he shook her, and he got a wild look in them. He turned sharply away, leaving her to fasten them. After a long moment, he turned back with her sweater and helped her tug it over her head.
It was so snug it got stuck above her breasts.
His eyes took on a stark, defeated expression. He backed away, unbuttoning his jeans. Jamming a hand down the front, he sucked in a slow hissing breath and repositioned himself.
She finished squeezing herself back into the sweater and slipped on her jean-jacket. Scooping up her backpack, she slung it over her shoulders.
The rat-a-tat-tat of high heels tapped a brisk staccato across the concrete floor, drawing ever nearer, accompanied by softer-soled shoes—many of them.
God, she’d completely forgotten about Stone-face! In a matter of minutes. Kissed brainless once again. What in the world was wrong with her? How could a man’s touch so utterly obliterate the calm, cool intellect and impressive powers of reason on which she’d once prided herself?
She frowned at him, eyes narrowed, trying to figure out what it was that Cian MacKeltar had that no other man had.
She was familiar with the theory that women
were instinctively sexually attracted to men who were their most favorable genetic complement; men who possessed the DNA that would strengthen hers, and vice versa, thereby guaranteeing stronger children and ensuring the human race’s greatest odds of survival.
Was Cian MacKeltar biologically her most favorable match? Was she doomed to be hopelessly and helplessly attracted to him? Was Nature herself conspiring against her in some diabolical evolutionary plan to get her pregnant?
If so, a devilish little inner voice proposed, then we should probably just sleep with him and get it over with, huh? Don’t you think?
“Nice try,” Jessi muttered.
Though the anthropologist in her appreciated the logic of the theory, she greatly preferred to believe that love and sex were matters of level-headed choice and free will.
There wasn’t a single thing levelheaded or remotely free-willish about her response to Cian MacKeltar.
“I can’t imagine what she’s doing back there!” Stone-face was saying. “Can you? Did you hear that noise? She’s like a wild little animal. She didn’t just hit me. She brutally assaulted me. I hope she has an attorney, because she’s going to need one. I’m suing. My face might never be the same. I’m probably going to need plastic surgery.”
Oh puh-leeze. Jessi snorted.
Cian glanced at her, the raw sexual frustration in his dark amber gaze tempered by amusement.
You hit her? he mouthed.
I had to get to you somehow, she mouthed back, wrinkling her nose. Smoothing her sweater. Trying not to blush, remembering what they’d just done and, worse still, what they’d been about to do. Good grief, she thought crossly, maybe she should just throw her virginity at him the next time.
Oh, gee, wait a minute, she’d just tried to do that.
His shoulders shook with silent laughter. He stepped closer, ducked his head, and pressed his mouth to her ear. He kissed the dainty ridges, tasting it lightly with his tongue. “You’d do a Highland husband proud, lass,” he whispered.
She shivered from the hot eroticism of his tongue against her ear. “Thanks,” she whispered back. Coming from a ninth-century warrior-Druid, that was quite a compliment. “I knocked her out with a single blow too.” She couldn’t help but brag on herself a little bit.
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