Soon enough, they were under his blankets, nothing but skin between them, and this time there was less furious, frantic passion in their movements to hasten their lovemaking. Elena felt Brendan’s hands across every inch of her body, exploring it like a foreign country, and in return she planted kisses over every inch of his broad, muscular body, finding every sensitive or ticklish spot she could and grinning to herself when he groaned and gasped at her attention. Finally, satisfying a curiosity that had been itching at her since their first session of lovemaking, she took his manhood into her mouth, kissing and licking it until he was rigid with desire, groaning and bucking his hips wildly as his passion overtook him…
Then, he took her into his arms and pushed himself inside her again, and this time they moved together slowly — almost agonizingly slowly. She could feel the force of his body, held in reserve, the way he was holding himself back from her, keeping their pace slow and sedate… she could feel her climax building agonizingly slowly with each long, powerful, languorous stroke of his hips, driving himself into her again and again and building her climax with every touch… and when they crashed over the edge together, it felt less like being hit with a tidal wave, and more like a kind of exhalation, a simultaneous, powerful release of every bit of tension that had built up in them both over the past month.
Elena lay in his arms, unbelievably content, but not quite on the brink of falling asleep yet — for all that she’d been up all night. It was just so pleasant here in his arms, her body pressed against his, the feeling of their sweat mingling together and cooling. And he had a very nice room here, she noticed lazily, sitting up on her elbows to peer around. There was lots of space — a desk covered in paperwork, a fireplace with a couple of soft chairs in front of it… this was rather a lot of space for one person, wasn’t it?
He was clearly watching her scope out his room, and he grinned lazily when she looked back at him, impossibly gorgeous with his dark hair in utter disarray and his eyes soft on her.
“This is a room designed for two people.”
“Oh, is it? Why’d you get it, then? Because you’re too much man for a one-man room?”
He laughed delightedly. “Aye, that’s it, got it in one.” He hesitated, his eyes sparkling. “What I’m saying is… there’s plenty of room. If someone wanted to move in.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Who’d you have in mind?”
“Well, I was thinking that Una might want to…” He was grinning at her, clearly trying to get her to laugh along with the joke, but the smile faded from his face when she didn’t laugh. “Too soon to be joking about her?”
“A little, yeah,” Elena said, smiling at him as she reached out to squeeze his hand. “Sorry. She was… it’s weird. She was a friend. I know it was all… magic, and enchantment, and whatever, but … I’m sad she’s dead. She killed a lot of people, caused a huge amount of pain, it was the right thing to do, but… I can’t joke about her. Is that okay?”
“Of course it is.” He hesitated. “You don’t have to live here. If you don’t want to. Your room will be available again once that man’s back to his own quarters — “
“Are you kidding? I’ve already moved in,” Elena laughed, nudging him affectionately. “You sure it’s okay? Having some woman around, cramping your style?”
Brendan chuckled, drawing her into his arms and kissing her throat until she was wiggling and sighing under his touch. “You, Elena Cross, are not just some woman. You are the most remarkable, fascinating, clever, funny, powerful woman I have ever met, and it would be my most humble privilege to share a bed, a room, a castle, or anything else with you. I’ll stay with you as long as you’ll stay with me.”
She blushed to the roots of her hair — but she looked back at him. She knew this was important — knew she needed to make it clear how she felt about him. “I’ll stay with you,” she repeated emphatically, “as long as you’ll stay with me.”
He tilted his head to the side, a look of curiosity in his eyes. “Aye? Even if you could go back to Baltimore?”
“Even if I could go back to Baltimore,” she confirmed, realizing that she meant it. She’d always miss home — especially the conveniences of modern life — but this place… this place was more her home than Baltimore had ever been. This place was where she belonged. “Brendan — I love this place. I love the castle. And — and I love you.”
His eyes widened. She held her breath, terrified he’d rebuff her — she’d never been the first one to say it, never had to hang in this terrifying limbo for this long — and then he was on top of her, laughing and pressing kiss after kiss to her face. “Elena Cross, you ridiculous woman, I love you, I love you, I love you …”
They spent the rest of that day in bed together. They had a lot of sleep to catch up on, after all… but somehow, sleep just kept getting delayed. Oh well, Elena thought dizzily, gazing down at the face of the man she loved. Sleep can wait a little while.
After all, they had their whole lives ahead of them.
* * *
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Chapter 1
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At midnight, Audrina James finally laid her head down, gratefully onto her pillow. It had been another grueling day in Trauma One, it was always the worst when the nursing staff and doctors of the trauma ward lost a child. Audrina looked at the ceiling where she had taped pictures of stars, lush green fields, exotic ancient castles and the forests of her ancestral homeland, vowing to herself that she would visit Claran Castle in Scotland someday. Audrina had put the pictures up so that she could clear her mind of the gruesome scenes that she faced in the E.R. day after day, night after night. They’d worked hard to save the boy from the ravages of a car crash, but Donald Nightingale, of sunny northern California, flatlined at eleven-thirty, after half a day’s worth of surgeries, blood transfusions and plasma bags. Audrina didn’t cry much anymore after working in the trauma center. But there were a few patients who tugged at her heartstrings. Donald would be one of them.
“Look at the pictures. Look at the pictures,” Audrina chanted to herself. She used them as a platform to spring her mind into more pleasant thoughts before she drifted off to sleep. Audrina had been fascinated with the stories and lore of her ancestry when her grandfather used to sit her on his knee and recount tales of his youth, roaming the Highlands of Scotland. That was before a potato famine reached his homeland and forced his family to immigrate to the United States. Audrina would spend hours, daydreaming as she roamed the redwoods behind the house, pretending the tall trees were the ancient forests of Scotland. She knew now that Scotland was much greener, and the forests were made of tall oaks, and rowan trees, beech and pine and ash. But she had promised herself she would visit and discover it for herself someday.
That was all a couple of decades ago, when Audrina had been just seven. After high school, she had gone on to nursing school, and now was faced with the ever-increasing violence of the San Francisco Community Hospital that came through the doors. The timing had just never felt right. There was always one more case to oversee, or one more patient to look after and successfully care for until they walked out the door of their own volition, and not in a body bag or stretcher.
Audrina certainly had the money saved for the trip, but she always felt there was something holding her back. Some small fear she had that there was something Grandfather neglected to tell her about the ancient folklore. Audrina never quite made the jump to buy the plane ticket or book the hotels. She’d never really been sure why, but as she laid there, thinking about all of the never did’s that young Donald was never going to experience, she t
hought, “Why am I holding back? I have no solid reason, no proof that there is anything in Scotland I should be afraid of.”
“I’m going to request the time off tomorrow and start booking tickets after my trip to the museum,” she vowed out loud.
There was no one to hear her proclamation, she realized. There wasn’t anyone in her life that she could tell really. “I guess that makes it kind of sad, maybe even a little pathetic. Sure, I have my co-workers, but they would all say, “Finally, you are taking a vacation,” when I tell them,” Audrina thought.
Audrina had become a trauma nurse after Mom had suffered the same fate as little Donald. She winced as the memories of that day entered her mind. It had been much like Donald’s parents rushing into the hospital. The only difference between her grandfather being informed, and Mrs. Nightingale’s heart-wrenching screams, had been significantly different, but as equally as devastating. That’s when Grandfather had taken her in. She didn’t know who her dad was, and it never occurred to her to go looking for him. She knew that she was loved when Grandfather took her, a scared little girl, home that night. He had cared for her and she didn’t need anyone else. Anyone, that was, except her mom, but she wasn’t coming back. When Grandfather had passed away she was twenty-one, she was left with no one. She hadn’t even bothered getting a pet. Audrina was never home because she worked so much. She’d always felt like it was her duty to save people because, well, she couldn’t save her mom back then.
Audrina tried to roll over onto her side. She was disgusted with herself that she was caught up in her own head and wallowing in self-pity. Her vow was just that and she was sticking to it. She realized, as she flipped back onto her back, that she had never been able to fall asleep unless she was looking up at her pictures. Grandfather had printed them for her the week that Mom had passed. He wanted her to have something to think about, other than the sadness of losing her mom.
As Audrina’s eyes began to flutter closed, and she emptied her mind save for thoughts of faraway lands and lost familial ties, something, perhaps the moonlight, sparkled in the pictures above her. A small light that glowed in the tower of the castle, appeared to be brighter in the picture. But she squinted at it, and then chalked it up to fatigue and weary eyes. Her lashes batted against her cheeks one last time, and she fell into a deep, sound sleep.
* * *
Candles surrounded her in a circle, haloing the circular room with an ethereal glow. Long thin tapers of white sheep’s fat burned low and lit the gloom of the dark tower. She’d been locked in there for so long, she had lost track of time.
There was a straw mattress, in a splintered bed of Ashwood. The thin blanket cast across it, was worn and frayed at the edges. A small wooden chair, equally as uncomfortable, sat at the base of the bed. It wobbled on three legs, having relinquished one of the legs long ago, for the usage of a handle for a torch. The torch, had long ago burnt to ash, and was scattered and lost amongst the dust and dirt that caked the cold stone floor. She rocked back on her heels and murmured a soft prayer to the Gods, the Spirits, anyone who would listen. The tower was a prison, a tortuous place that seeped into the soul like the smoky blackness of a demon, coming from the bowels of hell to inhabit and ingest the goodness of the person’s humanity.
There were bones in the ashes and they cried out to her. Begging her to release them of their captivity. She couldn’t help them that night. They would remain tethered there until the angels came for them on the day of reckoning. Thunder clapped outside the castle and lit up the tiny room in an intense light that threw the stark furnishings of the room into harsh contrast. The candles flickered, and she feared they would blow out. Cotswold Castle had many frivolities, protection from the elements in the prison tower, was not one of them.
Rain lashed against the stone tower and sprayed into the room in droves of unending dampness. It rained often in Scotland. She hadn’t been dry since she was thrown into that room. The water collected in puddles at the base of the windows. She sat in the middle of the room in an attempt to keep herself and her activities dry.
She knelt over a carnelian kilt pin. It glowed in the candlelight like fire. She reached out her hand and touched it as she murmured. The contact sent a spiral of heat through her fingertips, and she jerked her hand back. How could the stone set in silver be warm to the touch? There was no fire there. The brooch had not been warmed against constant contact with her skin, as she had been shivering since she arrived there. The cold was such that it seeped not only into her bones, but into her very soul. There was no possible way the stone could be warm.
Her eyes fixated on the glowing center of the gem as she continued to murmur, “Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, through spans of time, I cannot rest. Seek thee my kin, and pardon my sin, that I may reincarnate, and new life begin. And with this pin I shall be returned to my love, cast through the ages, by touch of mine blood, and light from sun up above.”
The kilt pin glowed ever-brighter in a hue of burnt orange that lit up not only the room, but blazed like the dawning of the early morning’s sun, sending spirals of light from the tower window. She heard shouts from below and quickly loosened the stone nearest the door, about halfway up the wall. She hid the pin behind the stone, where someone had hollowed out the stone behind that, and replace the stone so that it looked seamless. She prayed that someone would find it someday, and that she might rise up, released from the ashes of the debris of bodies from that hellish place. She heard footsteps on the stairs and boots clunked up the stone steps. She hurriedly pushed the stone back in place and managed to take one step back, as the door was thrown open and she screamed in terror as…”
* * *
Audrina woke, sitting bolt upright in bed.
“What the hell?” she muttered as she glanced up at the pictures. “What the heck was that?” she wondered to herself as she let her tired body fall back against the pillows. She stared at her pictures and then pushed herself back up to a sitting position. She used her hands and pushed to stand up, so that her upturned face was almost nose to nose with the picture of the castle. Audrina stared at the tiny light in the tower. It had faded over the years, but she could have sworn last night it glowed brightly. So brightly it almost lit up the room.
And then…and then, that dream. What a strange dream. Who was that woman in the dream? What happened to her? She must have died there. Audrina could feel the drive of her trauma nurse training kick in. She had to save her. But how? That’s silly. The woman…me…that was centuries ago when she cast the spell. And what kind of a spell was that anyway? Audrina’s mind began to fog over, the dream becoming misty around the edges, as reality and the present day slowly seeped back into her mind. She looked around the modern-day bedroom and laughed at the absurdity of her mind’s vehemence that the dream was somehow a reality way back when.
She climbed off the bed and hit the shower, enjoying the feel of the warm jets hitting her body as the ache from the previous day’s strenuous shift was washed away. She combed out her dark red hair and swiftly braided it down her back as she stared into her own brown eyes in the reflection of the foggy mirror. She wiped away the condensation and flashes entered her mind. The reflection of a woman in the puddles on the floor as the lightening lit up the room. Did she have brown eyes like my own? Audrina wondered. She shrugged and finished her braid and then donned her typical casual wear of jeans, an oversized tee-shirt and a ball cap. The ensemble fit well on her athletic frame, and it was just what she needed to walk down to San Francisco’s Museum of Natural History. Audrina enjoyed the casual wear on a rare day off, and she was equally as pleased that the museum was hosting an exhibit on loan from Scotland. She figured she could kill two birds with one stone. She could get her walk in and surround herself in ancient artifacts that made her yearn for a time and place that she had not yet discovered. She pulled her ballcap low over her eyes as she walked out the front door, not minding in the least that she had been accused on more than one occasion of being
a tomboy.
Chapter 2
When Audrina reached the museum, she purchased her ticket and queued to get in line to be let into the exhibits. She was about ten minutes early and so she began to read the pamphlet that was handed out at the ticket booth. She had been to the museum so many times, she was only interested in the exhibit on loan from the Scottish Museum of Ancient History, but she figured she might peruse a few more on her way out. She read about the various artifacts that were on display, quite impressed with the vast array of items that have been amassed.
As she flipped the cover open, she paused, staring down at the pamphlet stupidly and didn’t really register what she was seeing and reading on the pamphlet. As she stared down at the glossy photo, the memory of the dream from last night was a bit hazy, but there was no mistaking the kilt pin from the dream. The one that the woman, that she, had cursed. Or maybe the woman in the dream, she, had placed a spell on it. But there it was, shining back up at her from the brochure. Audrina blinked rapidly in the sun, thinking that maybe she was mistaken, and this was another pin that was excavated from some site in Scotland, and it just looked similar. But as she continued to read, the weighted feeling in her stomach became heavier and heavier.
“The Cotswold Pin, a rare and expensive carnelian-gem set pin, was discovered last year in the ruins of Cotswold Castle’s eastern most tower. Archeologists and Historians know very little about the pin, except that it was discovered hidden behind a lose stone near the doorway to the tower, where a mason was reinforcing the towers infrastructure. Cotswold Castle is host of a long and bloody history in the Scottish culture and it is well known that Lord Cotswold, imprisoned many native Scotsmen, in his long and cruel English reign over the Scottish people. It is speculated that the pin was hidden by one of the prisoners. Most likely in the event of their impending death and the desire for such a rare gem to not fall into the hands of the English. It is known that Lord Cotswold’s reign was filled with such terrors and atrocities against the Scottish people, such as imprisonment, torture, and rape. He often invoked the First Rights, also known as Prima, against many young Scottish Brides. It was well known that many of the ones he impregnated he had accused of, tried, and found guilty of witchcraft and subsequently sentenced to death. It is no wonder that whoever was bequeathed such a rare treasure as this gem-inlayed kilt pin, would have wanted it hidden from such an atrocious and vindictive lord and ruler.”
Swept By The Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance-Highlander Forever Book 3 Page 37