Mayhap, Cian’s blood had quickened at the thought, it could even show the coming of a Keltar’s life mate.
The mere opening of a door that night, of not heeding a mother’s words—how life drew its complex design from the simplest of choices, the smallest of moments!
All those he once loved had been dead for more than a thousand years.
Was Lucan out there, counting the hours to Samhain—or the Welshman’s counterpart known as Hollantide, a night of ghostly visitation, divination games, and bonfire burning—as was he? Though he spoke aloud of days, Cian knew to the minute how long he had.
“A little over sixteen days, Trevayne,” he growled into the chill Highland night, “and you will answer for all you took from me.”
In three hundred eighty-four hours and forty-three minutes, to be precise, vengeance would finally be his.
His gaze dark, he glanced down at Jessica.
He’d never thought it would be such a double-edged sword.
17
Cian MacKeltar was a machine.
And Jessi didn’t like it one bit.
After their intimacy at the airport and the warm camaraderie of their conversation last night, after sleeping drenched in the sinfully sexy man-scent of him, dressed in his clothing, sprawled on top of more of it, after having wickedly erotic dreams about him in which they’d had sex that would have made the author of the Kama Sutra sit up and start taking notes, after waking to find him standing naked over her, staring down at her from his mirror with that incredible rock-hard erection that had made her mouth dry and other parts of her oh-so-not-dry-at-all, she’d expected . . . well, at least a few hot, slippery kisses.
She’d not gotten a single, quick brush of his lips.
Not even a horny comment.
Just a Are you awake?
She’d blinked, unable to tear her gaze away from him. The man had, quite simply, the most amazing package she’d ever seen, and although most of the ones she’d seen had been in pictures, she still considered herself a fair judge. Uh-huh, I’m awake, she’d managed breathlessly. Some parts of her more than others.
Call me out.
She’d obeyed, wetting her lips.
Six and a half feet of muscle-ripped, naked Highlander had separated from the glass and reached toward her . . .
And past her, retrieving his clothing.
He’d dressed, for heaven’s sake—covering up all that magnificent masculine nudity with swift efficiency. Then he scooped up the mirror and loaded it into the back of the SUV. He’d returned, scooped her up as well, and dumped her into the driver’s seat.
As he’d deposited her behind the wheel, he’d pecked her freaking forehead.
When he’d lowered his head, like an idiot, she’d actually puckered, thinking he was finally going to kiss her. She’d smooched air, putting her in a positively foul mood—no matter that the sun was shining and it looked like it was going to be a glorious, unseasonably warm autumn day in the Highlands, and she was alive to see it.
Behaving with all the automated efficiency of a cool, detached Terminator, with steely insides and computer chips dictating his every move, Cian had referenced one of the pamphlets he’d swiped from the airport along with the stack of maps, and directed her to a store called Tiedemann’s, an outdoorsman’s store, specializing in camping equipment and survival gear.
For the past thirty minutes—ever since he’d so unceremoniously “parked” her at the front counter—he’d been oblivious to her, examining everything, asking the salesman he’d ensorcelled dozens of questions, selecting and sending to the counter insulated clothing, sleeping bags, a small gas stove, cooking implements, along with dozens of other things she had no idea what he planned to do with.
We will gather foodstuffs next, he’d informed her brusquely on one of his circuits through the store.
That had cheered her a bit. Her stomach was growling. She was starved. Food would be heaven. A cup of steaming cocoa or coffee with it would be even more heavenly. The skintight Lucky jeans he’d swiped for her days ago weren’t nearly so snug on her waist as they’d been when he’d procured them, and they were in serious need of a washing. She’d slept on the plane in them, she’d slept on the ground in them. She’d been living in them twenty-four/seven for four days now. Same panties too. It had been four days since she’d last had a shower, and if she didn’t get one soon, she might hurt somebody.
Pushing up on her tiptoes, she spied a collection of women’s athletic gear and outdoor clothing just beyond the tent department. The least he could do, she decided peevishly, was Voice her some new clothes. And she wanted a bra, damn it. Even a sports bra would do, and it looked like there were several racks of them. She doubted she’d find panties in this store, but she’d settle for a few bottles of water and some soap to wash them out by hand.
Shoving away from the counter where she’d been dutifully obeying his “wait right here” command, she wended her way through the camping gear to the women’s department. As she approached the sports-bra racks, she saw the sign for the ladies’ rest room and veered off toward it.
Just in case she didn’t get a shower today—and there was no telling how any of her days were going to go in the care, custody, and control of one Cian MacKeltar—she was opting for yet another paper-towel bath to be on the safe, not-quite-so aromatic side.
“You will tell me how many of these gas refills I will require to use such a stove for sixteen days in the wilds. Assume it will be in constant use.” Cian needed to keep Jessica warm and prepare meals for her, but dare not risk the smoke of a wood fire, inside the cave or out. Colorless, odorless, virtually smokeless gas was a welcome discovery.
The salesman performed a series of calculations and gave him a number, his hazel eyes glazed by the spell of compulsion, his gestures jerky, as if automated.
Cian had been using Voice since the moment he’d walked in the door. He wanted in and out fast. He had too much to accomplish today to permit the indulgence of the slightest of his personal desires, to waste even a moment of time. If he was lucky enough to have eight hours free of the glass today, he could accomplish all of his goals. He’d only had three hours and forty-two minutes free yesterday, so he felt it reasonable to expect a longer reprieve today—if aught about the Unseelie Hallow could be expected to function in accordance with even a loose definition of “reasonable.”
Jessica was feeling slighted, he knew. He hated that, but it had to be for now.
She seemed not to ken that he had an inferno of need for her raging inside him and that if he fed it the least bit of oxygen, the blaze would burn out of control and consume him, along with the entire day, leaving it in a waste of ashes around them.
Then nightfall would come and she would not be safe enough. And it would be his fault. He refused to bear such blame or take such risks with her life. By eventide she would be as safe as he could possibly make her. Until that time, he dare not begin touching her, or he’d not be able to stop. He’d watched her sleep all night, studying the planes and angles of her face in the changing light, from moonlit night through a rosy dawn and finally in the brilliant blaze of full sunrise, committing them to memory. Were he a sculptor, he could now carve her face in stone, even were he blind.
It had been agony to stand watching her, caressing with his gaze what his hands could not. It had been a joy. He’d learned centuries ago to suck from life what pleasure his hellish circumstances would permit.
When she’d awakened, she’d rolled over and stared up at him with sleepy-sexy eyes. She had three cowlicks, unruly thatches of hair that curled wildly. Now he possessed an image of her that only a lover might know—how she looked in the morning with her face sleep-flushed, her lips sleep-swollen, and her curls askew in a short, dark tangle. She woke up looking soft and warm, more than a little bemused, and utterly sensual. Made a man want to scoop her into his arms and devour her.
He’d briefly envisioned himself stepping from the mirror, yanking her
jeans down, taking her hard and fast, then throwing her in the SUV.
But he’d known better than to delude himself with the notion that he could be “hard and fast” with Jessica. Hard? Aye. Fast. Not a holy chance in hell. If he got started, he’d not be able to stop, and her life, and his vengeance, was of far more import than his lust.
Today was for the procuring of sheltering goods, foodstuffs, dyes and needles and wardstones.
Tomorrow was for the claiming of his woman. And the next day and the next and the next. Once she was safe, he would devote every moment of his freedom from the glass to the thorough claiming of Jessica St. James.
“Shall I package these items up for you as well, sir?” the salesman asked.
Cian nodded, glancing over to where Jessica was standing. Last he’d looked, her arms had been crossed over her bountiful breasts, shoving them together and even higher, her lower lip had been sulkily and delectably pushed out, and she’d been tapping one foot impatiently.
She wasn’t there.
Where the bloody hell was she? He’d told her not to move. In English. And there was naught wrong with her hearing of which he was aware.
“Sir, did you wish the tent, as well?”
“Nay,” Cian growled, eyeing a man who now stood, with his back to him, at the same counter where moments ago his woman had been.
Was that why Jessica had moved away? Had the man behaved toward her in some unseemly fashion? He’d kill the son of a bitch.
Cian assessed the interloper. The man was tall and powerfully built, wearing black trousers, black boots, and a black leather jacket. His long black hair was braided and folded under, wrapped and bound by a leather thong.
It was a manner in which Highlanders had once worn their hair, before even Cian’s time. When they hadn’t been liming it for battle to make themselves look more terrifying to the effeminately tidy Romans.
The man thought much of himself; ’twas obvious in the way he stood, the way he held himself. He reeked of arrogance. Cian didn’t like him. Didn’t like him at all. If the bastard had breathed so much as a single improper word to Jessica, he was dead.
“Jessica!” he barked. “Where are you, lass? Answer me!”
There was no reply.
He scanned the store, seeking the top of her head, her glossy black curls. There was no sign of her. Where had she gone?
He couldn’t deep-listen to her, he couldn’t compel her, but he suspected a deep-scan of the store would detect her presence. Hers was a unique imprint, a space of serenity and silence in an otherwise clamorous world.
He stretched his senses, casting a wide net, probing.
Something probed back so unexpectedly and with such ferocity that he flinched.
He immediately slammed up mental walls, one after the next, sealing himself off. Sealing out whatever the frigging hell that had been.
They were walls he’d never needed before.
No one had ever been able to probe him, not even Lucan with all his dark arts. It had been one of the things that had so infuriated his captor. Lucan still couldn’t probe him, even after a thousand years of continually gaining more power and knowledge, though he’d never stopped trying, convinced that Cian knew spells he was hiding (he did and was), determined to get them one way or another (never going to happen).
During none of Lucan’s attempted probings had Cian ever felt anything touch his mind. Trevayne hadn’t been able to get even that far inside his skull.
But just now he’d felt a distinct push against his mind. A distinct presence, though he hesitated to say a single presence, for what had pushed at him possessed such complexity of character, such ancientness—older even than he—that he was unable to call it . . . well . . . exactly human. Or if it was, ’twas unlike any human he’d ever encountered.
Focusing his mind, he pushed back in the general direction from which it had come, trying to isolate it.
The man at the counter suddenly whipped around, gaze seeking restlessly, scanning the store.
Unusual golden eyes met Cian’s and locked over racks of clothing and aisles of camping equipment. They were old eyes, aware eyes, eyes full of fierce intelligence.
They were the eyes of more than a mere Druid.
Cian shoved past the glassy-eyed salesman and stalked toward him, pushing racks of clothing out of his way. “Who the hell are you?”
“Who the hell are you?” the man flung back coolly. Softly. Arrogantly. The man moved toward him as swiftly and surely as Cian stalked the man; there wasn’t an ounce of hesitation in him.
They met in an aisle, stopped half a dozen paces apart, and began circling each other, sizing each other up, like two dark, wild beasts, preparing to battle over territory and mating rights.
Cian felt a rapid battery of hammer blows against the mental walls he’d erected. He permitted them, analyzing them, assessing his foe’s strength.
Then he lashed back savagely. Just once.
It should have nigh split the prick’s head.
If his opponent felt anything, he betrayed naught. Who was this man? “Where is my woman?” Cian snarled.
“I haven’t seen your woman.”
“If you’ve so much as touched a hair—”
“I have my own woman. Yours couldn’t hold a candle to her.”
“You have a death wish, Highlander.”
“Nay.” The man laughed. “Laid that to rest some time ago. On an icy ledge outside a Manhattan penthouse.”
The man spoke nonsense. “Leave now and I won’t kill you.”
“Can’t. I’m picking up hiking boots for my wife. She wants them today and ’tis her good graces that signify.” His tone was lightly mocking, his smile a hundred-proof testosterone, spiked with dark irreverence.
Just the kind of smile Cian usually wore.
Och, aye, the man had a death wish.
There was no telling what Cian might have done next had a hand not closed over his forearm at that moment. He glanced down, his muscles instantly sliding smoother beneath his skin. Jessica was gazing up at him, lovely as ever, and unharmed.
“Woman, where have you been? I instructed you not to move from that counter.”
“I stood there for half an hour,” she replied crossly. “I went to the bathroom. I’m starving. Can we eat soon? I need coffee. And I want a shower. I took a little towel bath in the ladies’ room, but I’m starting to feel like the wild animal that woman at the airport accused me of being. Cian, why is that man staring at you like that? Do you know him?”
“‘Cian’?” the man demanded. “Your name is ‘Cian’?”
“Aye. What of it?”
The man stared at him a long moment. Then he laughed, a darkly amused sound, and shook his head as if he’d been pondering an absurdity. “Nay. ’Tis not possible,” he murmured.
“What?” Cian snapped.
“Nothing. ’Tis nothing.”
“What’s with all these ’tis’s? I didn’t think Scottish people still talked like that,” Jessica said, sounding puzzled, as she stood looking from one to the other. Suddenly, she sucked in a breath and cocked her head, staring back and forth again.
“You have my name. Give me yours,” Cian said sharply.
“Dageus.”
Cian looked down at Jessica. “Did this ‘Dageus’ say aught untoward to you, lass?”
She shook herself, as if jarred from thought. “How could he? This is the first I’ve seen of him. Do you know—”
“He was standing at the counter where I left you. You were gone when next I looked for you, and he was there.”
She shrugged. “He must have gotten there after I’d already left. Cian, do you know that the two of you—”
Cian turned his attention back to Dageus. “You may go. But doona cross paths with me again, Highlander. ’Twill result in bloodshed. I doona care for you.”
“I doona care for you, either,” the man replied coolly. “But I’m not going anywhere until you release that salesman
from your spell.” He nodded past Cian, where the salesman waited. Where he would wait dazedly until Cian was through with him.
“What ken you of spells?” Cian asked softly.
“More than you, I’d wager.”
“Not a chance. Stay out of my affairs.”
Jessica tried to interject, “Do either of you see the slightest re—”
“This village and all in it is my affair. This is my world, stranger,” Dageus retorted flatly.
“‘Twas my world long before it was yours, Highlander.” Cian’s smile showed teeth, but no amusement.
Dageus went motionless but for that intense golden gaze, scrutinizing Cian thoroughly. Again Cian felt a push at his mind, more subtle than the last, yet much more forceful.
He shoved back, much more forcefully, as well, and this time the man’s unusual eyes flickered the tiniest bit.
“You doona mean what I think you mean by that,” said Dageus.
“Thinking implies sentience. I see little of that in you.”
“Look in a mirror, you’ll see even less. I’ll have your clan name, Highlander. What is it?”
Jessica piped up, “Speaking of looking in a mirror—”
“You’ll have my clan name and a battle. ’Tis Keltar,” Cian spat. “And yours?”
“Keltar,” Dageus spat back.
Cian stared at him, stunned.
Beside him, Jessica exclaimed, “I knew it, I knew it! That’s what I was trying to tell you, Cian. That the two of you look alike!”
18
“Get back here. You can’t be finding out that you’re my kinsman and then just go stomping off,” Dageus snapped at Cian’s broad retreating back.
“Watch me,” the towering barbarian flung over his shoulder. To the dazed salesman, he ordered, “Pack it all up and load in the black SUV outside the door. Here are the keys. Lock it when you’ve finished. I’ll return for it anon. You will not speak of me or my woman to anyone.” Banding an arm around the curvaceous, raven-haired woman’s shoulder, he steered her toward the door. “We have much yet to do. Come, lass.”