Aislinn was swift and skilled, but she was not stupid. A quick assessment revealed only one exit, and it was behind all that prime male flesh. In this small space, made even more so by the hulking brutes now surrounding her, she would not be able to get past all of them, especially as she was unarmed.
Then she realized she didn’t have to.
She pried herself away from the wall and eased back onto the bed with a big smile. “Right! My dream! It must be one of those weird ones, when you think you’re awake, but you’re really not. I’m in a coma, and you all are just creations of my overactive and obviously sex-starved imagination.”
The men looked at each other, bemused. The big guy finally said, “Ye think ye are dreaming?”
“Well of course I am!” she said brightly. “And doing a fine job of it, if I do say so myself. I wonder if this is how Hannah Howell comes up with ideas for her novels...”
“Mayhap she is a wee bit touched,” the youngest looking one said quietly, tapping his temple.
“You mean crazy?” she laughed, drawing a small circle in the air beside her temple. “Yeah, I’m sure some people think so, but this is probably more of an NDE type of thing – you know, a Near Death Experience. I’ve had them before, but never like this. Or I guess it could be a total mental breakdown - which means the blow to the head I took was a lot worse than I thought and I’m probably not going to last the night. But if that means I get to live out what little time I have left surrounded by fierce, gorgeous Highland warriors, I can’t think of a better way to go.”
She leaned over and touched the hem of the one closest to her, intending to lift it. Shocked, he took a step back and slapped her hand away.
“Touchy,” she pouted. “But I guess it wouldn’t be any fun if it were too easy. The men in the books are always a little reluctant at first, but they eventually come around.”
The big guy – he was clearly the leader – frowned. “Ye were attacked? Ere ye came here?”
“Yep. The fucker came up behind me – kind of like those asshats tried to do to you earlier – but I didn’t have anyone watching my six. Hey – that might explain some of this. My mind couldn’t accept the fact that I’d die from such a cowardly act, so I created this whole scenario to compensate. Right now I’m probably lying in a hospital bed somewhere, and God’s finally taking some pity on me. Or, hell, maybe I’m still in the park and some homeless guy is pissing on me even as we speak.”
“I see what ye mean,” said the one who had slapped her hand. “She does no’ speak like any lass I have ever heard.”
“She took a mighty blow te the head, dinnae she?” whispered another.
“Aye. And she did lose a lot of blood.”
“What?” Aislinn touched the back of her head, then flashed a smug smile. “No biggie. You should see the other guys.”
“Now doona fash, lass, we will no’ hurt ye, but we need te ken if ye have other injuries.”
She grinned and waggled her index finger at him. “Naughty Celt. You just want me to take my clothes off. Why didn’t you just say so?”
Aislinn pulled her top up and over her head, revealing her favorite satiny black bra. Functional yet sexy, it gave her the support she needed while managing to make her feel pretty good about herself in the process. Soldier she might be, but she was also a woman.
Apparently it had a positive effect on big, brawny males too. As one, their eyes opened wide and they sucked in a collective breath. She reached to the front clasp to undo that, too, but before she could, the big one grabbed his plaid and threw it over her. In his haste, it covered not only the parts she had nearly exposed, but her entire body as well.
“What in the devil’s name are ye thinkin’, lass?”
She laughed, pulling the plaid down from her face. “Gonna pretend to be shy, are we? I doubt I have anything you haven’t already seen. You romance novel types are always well-experienced in pleasing a woman. In Hannah’s books, the lads usually start, uh, tupping the tavern maids around the age of fourteen or so, am I right?”
Without waiting for them to respond – their shock seemed to have rendered them temporarily mute - she tapped her teeth with her glossy black nail and regarded each of them carefully. “So... given that you are all probably at least in your twenties, and being that you are sinfully delicious, I would guess that you are all well-versed in the female anatomy.”
“Out!” the clearly panicked laird commanded the others, even as he was stepping backwards. “I will send Old Meg in te help ye,” he managed before he slammed the door behind him, leaving a laughing Aislinn alone in the room.
* * *
Lachlan found the motherly woman puttering around the kitchens, just as she had been doing for as long as he could remember. Old Meg had been around when his Da had been but a lad. No one knew exactly how old she was, and they weren’t stupid enough to ask. The quiet woman was a force of nature, thought of by Lachlan and his brothers as more of a favorite aunt than a servant.
After explaining the situation, she had nodded and assured Lachlan she would see to their new guest, then left to arrange for a bath and a change of clothing.
“She is unlike anything I have ever seen,” breathed Malcolm as they regrouped in the Great Hall. “Do ye ken who she is?”
“Nay,” Lachlan said, downing his ale before it even hit the table, trying to get the images of her creamy-looking skin and decidedly lush, barely-covered breasts out of his mind. He drank another down right after. “She appears to think that she is caught in some kind of a dream. She does no’ believe any of this – any of us – are real.”
And apparently, she didn’t think particularly highly of them, either. At least not at first. He hadn’t recognized all of the words she had spewed at him, but he did hear “liar” clearly enough and assumed some of the others were just as derogatory.
In retrospect, he probably should not have raised his voice to her as he had, not when she had backed herself into a corner and hissed at him like some frightened, feral kitten.
“But how can that be?”
Lachlan was asking himself the same question.
“The lass is clearly addled,” offered Aengus. “And ‘tis no surprise, given the bump ye found on her noggin.”
“More than a bump,” Lachlan corrected. “It looked like someone tried to bash in her wee skull with a cudgel.” He shook his head wondering for the dozenth time how she could have stayed upright, let alone fought like a right Furie with such a wound.
“I heard rumor of a young lass disappearing up north no’ so long ago,” Conall mused. “From what I recall, this lass would be about the right age.”
“Ye think it might be her?”
“Might be,” Conall shrugged. “She had te come from somewhere, dinnae she? I think if she was from anywhere around here, one of us would have remembered her.” He grinned. “She is no’ the sort of lass a mon easily forgets.”
Lachlan scowled, unsure why he suddenly found his brother’s lascivious grin so irksome. They were a randy bunch, to be sure, but it had never struck a nerve before.
“See if ye can discover more about this missing lass.”
Before anyone could comment further, a scream rent the air. Lachlan and the others rushed toward the guest quarters only to find Old Meg barreling out of the room, her hand clutched to her chest and her face as pale as the silvery moon.
“Meg, what is it?”
The old woman’s hand came up to her mouth and she shook her head, her eyes wild, before wrenching free of Lachlan’s grasp and scurrying down the hall.
Dreading what he might find, Lachlan opened the door very slowly, keeping himself between whatever was in there and his brothers. He was the one who had brought the addled female into the keep; he would bear the responsibility for her.
He looked around, half-expecting to find a crazed Furie, or at least the room in shambles given the intensity of Meg’s shriek, but all he saw was the female, perched calmly upon the rim of the b
athing tub, her back to him.
Naked.
He slammed the door shut behind him, barking orders for the others to tend to Meg and return to the Great Hall. Ignoring their protests, he turned, leaning his bulk against the door in case any of them thought to disobey.
The first thing he noticed were the swirls of black between her shoulder blades, an intricate and ancient Celtic design of incredible beauty etched into her very skin. As were the bands of interwoven knots along her upper arms. The dark black ink was crisscrossed with irregular white lines.
Scars.
Warrioress... the word echoed in his mind.
Then his gaze went lower, following the natural curve of her waist and the flair of womanly hips...
The sprite tossed him an amused look over her shoulder. “Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to scare her. I’m guessing women don’t normally shave in your time, huh?”
Only then did he notice the glint of the straight blade in her hand. Where had she gotten that? She was running it skillfully up and down her legs, despite the fact that her eyes remained on him.
“I probably should have done this before I left – the whole clean underwear theory and all that - but really. Only I could create a fantasy world in which I still had to shave.”
Incapable of speech, he watched, mesmerized, as she moved the blade from ankle to knee, then rinsed it in the water and repeated the motion. She did the same along her thighs, moving more swiftly than he thought was advisable, but the woman seemed unconcerned.
He couldn’t completely contain the choking noises that came from his throat, however, when she spread her legs and leaned forward, the slight, quick movements of her arms suggesting much smaller strokes. While she was still turned away from him, he couldn’t see exactly what she was doing, but his mind conjured the images for him.
And then, sweet and merciful Savior, she set the blade aside and dipped her lithe little body into the tub. When she rose and turned toward him, her lightly bronzed skin was wet and gloriously smooth. Lachlan had never seen anything like it. The slight glinting of metal captured his gaze, hung around her neck and nestled in her cleavage. He swallowed hard when he saw similar adornments in her breasts and navel.
“Yes,” she said, answering his unspoken question, the amusement evident in her voice when she followed his eyes southward. “I’ve got one there, too.”
Suddenly Lachlan felt as if he could no longer draw breath. Without a word, he opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, pale and shaken.
“Weel?” said his brothers, trying to glimpse into the room, but Lachlan’s large frame wouldn’t allow it. “Is everything alright?”
Lachlan turned stricken eyes on them. “No,” he rasped.
It might never be alright again.
He ushered them away from the door and back toward the Great Hall, forcing himself to follow along behind them. There were very few things that left Lachlan Brodie feeling as if he had been cold-cocked upside the head with the business end of a claymore. Seeing a wet, naked lass, flushed and completely hairless from the neck down was one of them.
Lachlan groaned and clenched his hands into tight fists with the nearly uncontrollable urge to run his fingers over all that pristine, smooth flesh. Or better yet, to taste it as he laved his tongue over every exquisite inch.
He would pay particular attention to those areas of the flesh decorated with ancient Celtic designs, symbols that added a particularly heated draw, for they very clearly marked her as one of his own. Add in the delicate, flashing silver and diamond adornments upon her most womanly parts, and his cock literally grew wet with anticipation.
Never mind the fact that she was quite possibly the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Or that she had saved his life.
It took every bit of self-control he had to walk away from that door and back toward the Great Hall where his brothers would undoubtedly want to know what had vexed Old Meg so and left him feeling shaken and a bit addled himself.
And what, exactly, was he going to tell them?
Chapter 4
“Oh, hell no,” Aislinn breathed, picking up the gown with two fingers of each hand, holding it up and away as if it might bite her. The older woman had literally flung the dress onto the bed and fled as if Aislinn was the daughter of the devil himself. That didn’t bother Aislinn in the least; she’d stopped worrying about what other people thought of her a long time ago.
But this was... not doable. The only time Aislinn had ever worn dresses had been long, long ago, when the social workers had insisted upon it. It was important, they’d said, to make a good impression on potential foster families.
And look how well that turned out.
There was just so much of it. Even if she could figure out which end was up, there was no way she was going to put that thing on. She guessed that the laird was trying to be accommodating, and she really didn’t want to offend him, but she was only willing to take things so far. Besides, she reasoned, this was her dream. She could do whatever the hell she wanted.
With that in mind, she carefully draped the gown over the high back of the chair and extracted her extra set of clothes from her pack – camo cargos and a black tank. Liberally applying some deodorant, she drew her hair up into a ponytail. She brushed her teeth, amazed at how such a simple act could make her feel so much better. Then she hand-washed her blood-stained clothes in the leftover bath water and draped them over the sill to dry.
Poor man, thought Aislinn with a chuckle as she remembered the look on the laird’s face when he’d come in and seen her in the bath. Even in this bizarre dream world she felt it safe to assume he’d never seen anything like her before. Then again, she was shaving and doing laundry in her dream-fantasy, so who was she to judge?
And, honestly, she had never seen anything quite like him before, either. Her body grew uncomfortably warm just thinking about him. About the laser-like intensity of those eyes. Of the sense of barely-leashed power held in check. All those delicious, rippling muscles. And, dear Lord, the man had a derriere to weep for.
She shook her head. All of them were gorgeous, really. But it was only the laird who made her heart beat faster, made her most feminine of parts tingle. Too bad it wasn’t real. Then again, creating fantasies was kind of a specialty of hers, a craft finely honed deep inside the mind of a little girl whose reality sucked ass on the best of days.
Aislinn reached into her bag and pulled out the small black velvet pouch containing her miniature BFF. “Hello, old friend,” she said softly.
A knock at the door startled her; she dropped the pouch and the little silvery device rolled out, right in front of the large feet of the man who stepped over the threshold. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to notice. His brows drew together as he took in her outfit, then glanced over and saw the gown draped across the bed. “The frock does no’ please ye?”
“It’s beautiful, really,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound too ungrateful. “But I’m not really a dress kind of girl.”
“Nay?” he asked on a breath, making that one word sound way more passionate than it should have. “I dinnae ken there was such a thing.”
She shrugged, suddenly feeling very small and way too hot. Was it possible that he had grown in the past few hours since she’d last seen him? Instead of cowering (or sighing), however, she drew in a breath and faced him head-on. Playing the submissive just wasn’t in her genes, no matter how much her overzealous hormones protested.
“I bet there are a lot of things about me that you never kenned.”
A slight blush rose in Lachlan’s cheeks, the hint of a shy, boyish smile dancing at the corners of his very grown-up, very masculine lips. It easily took ten years off his face, made him all but irresistible.
“You should do that more often,” Aislinn said, the knowledge that this was all a dream making her daring. “Smile, I mean. You’re beyond gorgeous as it is, but when you smile, it’s positively devastating.”
&nbs
p; Was it her imagination, or did his chest puff out a little at her words? Surely women said things to him like that all the time; the guy probably had to beat them off with a stick.
Except there weren’t any other women in her fantasy. Just him. And her. In her room. Alone.
“Not many lasses would be bold enough to say so,” he pointed out in that deep, rumbling voice. Internally, some of her muscles rippled right along with it. She tightened her abs and did a few Kegels in an effort to make it stop.
“My point exactly,” she said with a smile and a wink. She nodded toward the bundle in his hands. “So tell me what it is you have there.”
“Och, aye. I thought ye might be a wee bit hungry.” Lachlan lifted the lid of the large, hand-woven basket and the most delicious aromas filled the room. “Ye slept through the evening repast, but Old Meg managed te assemble a decent enough meal for ye.” He stepped forward, unknowingly kicking her little silver pocket rocket beneath the bed as he did so.
Aislinn blinked, nonplussed. If he had drawn a weapon or threatened her, she would have taken it all in stride, her shields always raised and ready. But his kindness was wholly unexpected, and therefore, caught her off-guard.
People were not generally kind to her. Fought with her, tried to control or take advantage of her, yes. Avoided her – check. But provide her with clothing and food with no ulterior motive?
It was a dream, sure, but some life lessons were pretty hardwired into her brain. In her nearly twenty-five years on this planet – dream state or not – she could probably count on one hand the number of times a man reached out to her without the intent to hurt, debase, or punish her in some fashion.
For a moment she considered the possibility that he had drugged or poisoned the food, but her instincts told her otherwise, and Aislinn had learned to always trust her instincts.
“That’s very kind of you, uh, ...” Aislinn frowned, realizing she didn’t even know his name.
Raising Hell in the Highlands: A Time Travel Romance (A Timeless Love Book 2) Page 3