But life never worked out like the movies, Hope thought bleakly. She had proved that just now.
She twisted wildly, all too aware of his thighs pressed against her fragile lace gown. “I s-said forget it, MacLeod,” she hissed. “I’ve changed my mind.”
“I don’t want to forget it.” He whispered a kiss against the curve of her neck.
Hope’s heart pounded. “I don’t want your pity.”
He eased closer. “Does that feel like pity pressing against your hips?”
Hope swallowed. “N-no.”
MacLeod still held the packet in his locked fingers, the foil unbroken. “Why did you run from me just now?”
Hope made a strangled sound of embarrassment. “I told you I wasn’t good at this. But right is right, MacLeod. This is 1998, and there are…ramifications.” Hope realized he still didn’t understand.
“Explain what you’ve given me.”
“It’s…just what it appears to be,” Hope said, rigid with embarrassment. “You must know.”
MacLeod drew a sudden breath. As he stared, his mouth twisted. “This is meant for a lover. It is to protect both of you.”
Hope shrugged. She wouldn’t answer what had to be completely obvious.
“I said nothing because I did not understand you, Hope. Such things were managed differently in my time.”
“Come on, MacLeod. You don’t actually expect me to believe—”
“In my time,” he continued flatly. “Back before television or municipal bonds. Back before plastic or cardboard or latex. When there was no queen on the throne, only a king who harrowed the Highlands. That is what I’ve been trying to tell you, Hope. This is not my time. This…protection you offered me was nothing I had ever seen.” He slanted his lips over her cheek and cursed softly. “I’ve never had a woman offer me protection before. You take my breath away.”
Hope closed her eyes, feeling the heat of his body stealing into her. She was suddenly aware of her hammering heart and his utter nakedness. “You…don’t need to use it for me,” she blurted. “I’m not—I can’t—” She drew a ragged breath. “I can’t make a child inside me, MacLeod. Something went wrong a while back. A minor glitch, but irreversible, I’m afraid.” She stared at the center of his chest, unable to look up. “There’s no need to worry about the possibility that we could—that I would—”
“Make a child,” he finished gently. “Dearly would I love to watch a child grow within that sweet body of yours, my heart.” He drew her hands around his waist until she was holding him tightly. Only then did he release her, slanting her face up to his. “I wish you would stop studying my chest.”
“This isn’t exactly easy for me,” Hope said unsteadily. “I’ve never owned one of these things before. I’ve certainly never offered one to a man whom I’ve just propositioned.”
“But you did now. With courage and wit that were singular.” He traced her bottom lip with his tongue. “I’ve wanted you like this. I’ve wanted you against my mouth, trembling while I made you forget every reason this is a bad idea.”
“You don’t have to make me forget. You don’t even have to convince me. I want you,” Hope said gravely. “I want what we’ll have together, even if it’s only for a week, a month.” Her voice shook. “A night. Even that, I don’t mind.”
“But I do,” MacLeod said savagely, resting his forehead against hers. “I want you tonight and all other nights. I want to stay and watch you work miracles with the house I never had time to make into a home. But I cannot,” he said bitterly.
“Why?”
Something dark filled his face. And still he hesitated.
“Tell me.”
“Better than that, I’ll show you.” Barefoot, wearing only his tartan at his hips, he strode to the door, tugging Hope behind him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“WHERE ARE YOU TAKING ME?”
Hope frowned as MacLeod crossed the hall, then plunged down the steep stairway in the old north tower. She shivered as he drew her to an abrupt halt before the portrait.
“Look at him, Hope. He seems familiar, doesn’t he?”
As always before, Hope was struck by the similarity of the high cheekbones and proud brow. “What are you trying to say, MacLeod?”
“The same thing that I said before. This house, that portrait…both are mine. Not now, but seven centuries in your past. This man whose features scowl in dark arrogance. See the faint trace of gray in his hair and the lines at his brow?”
“I see them, but I still don’t understand—”
“Maybe this will help you understand.” MacLeod’s eyes were hard as he moved to the wall where the portrait was lit by a single sconce. “Touch it,” he ordered, never taking his eyes from the figure.
“But I don’t—”
“Touch him.” Desperation edged his voice as he stared at the man who could have been his twin.
Gently Hope traced the shadowed cheeks, the mail-covered shoulders and the narrowed mouth, waiting to feel anything unusual. “I don’t understand. Nothing happened. The painting is whole and I’m still alive.”
“Exactly,” MacLeod said tensely. “But when I do the same…”
He braced one shoulder against the wall, closed his eyes, and reached out for the gauntleted fingers of Glenbrae’s ancient laird. Hand and shadow slanted together, touching the old fresco, and where they met the weathered image, they disappeared.
“Do you begin to see now?” he whispered. His shoulders were rigid, his body stiff. “I’ve only just discovered that this is my way home, Hope, the answer I have searched for since the night of the storm. I do not belong here in your time. My being, my molecules as you call them, are an affront to your reality. Somewhere at the edge of the portrait, that imbalance is corrected and whatever part of me touches it is sent home. To my time, Hope, not here but seven centuries back, in a Glenbrae without electricity or cars.” His voice fell. “In a Glenbrae without you.”
“No,” Hope breathed, torn between shock and raw denial.
“Yes, all of it is true. You still do not believe?”
“How can I?”
MacLeod nodded as if he had expected nothing else. His eyes burned into her face, almost as if to lock the image in his mind. “I’ll show you the rest now. Then you’ll have no choice but to believe. And if it fails—if I fail—” His hand tightened on hers, held, then slid free as he leaned toward the shadowed image on the wall.
Eyes closed, he moved forward. His shadow fell over the cold plaster until wall, man and shadow met, merged.
Then Ronan MacLeod vanished without a trace, swallowed remorselessly back into the past just as his hand had been.
Hope gave a ragged cry and dug at the wall, but met only stone and cold plaster. The man was gone. Only his image remained behind to mock her.
She swayed, dizzy with shock and fear. “MacLeod,” she whispered, palms pressed to the figure who studied her with icy arrogance.
Ronan’s face.
Ronan’s eyes.
Or the Ronan he would become, in a century Hope would never know. “Come back to me,” she said raggedly. “I believe you.”
Light touched the cold face. The wall lay rigid, insensate, without movement or understanding.
She closed her eyes, forehead to the cold stone. She prayed then, with raw, silent intensity. She sank to the floor, feeling the night close around her, flinging back her prayers. She shoved at the floor, the stairs, desperate to find any hole or fragment of an entrance.
There was none.
MacLeod had vanished beyond any contact, pulled back to his own time in a world where he was the King’s Wolf, hated and feared.
“Don’t go,” Hope whispered.
Shadows covered the icy face. The proud, sensual mouth did not move.
She turned away, a hand thrown before her eyes, unable to bear the sight of this picture that was such a pale imitation of the man she had come to love, a warrior of honor and generosity who had fou
nd her across time.
Why had she doubted him? Why hadn’t she just believed him? His story had never wavered. He was a man who did not know how to lie.
The realization came too late.
Hope shivered, shoulders bowed. He had told her the truth, for all the good it had done him. His tales of Edward and the Crusades were fact, not the ravings of a scarred mind. And the scars on his back had been earned in war on horseback, on a steed who well deserved the name of Pegasus.
Hope could no longer hide from the shattering truth.
Nothing moved in the shadows. No warm laugh echoed through the curving tower stairs.
She pushed to her feet, one hand on the cold plaster. So the pattern stayed true. Once again she had lost the one she loved most deeply.
Blindly she started up the stairs, unable to bear the silence MacLeod had left behind him. She brushed the cheeks slick with tears, cold with regret.
Why hadn’t she believed him?
The sound came like a memory, soft and rustling.
Hope didn’t move, afraid to turn. Above her head something glinted on the wall, light that scattered in the pattern of a cross.
She waited, afraid to look, afraid to hope. “If you’re there, tell me. Don’t break my heart again…”
Something struck the floor.
First a foot, then a muscled leg and arms, shimmered into solid form and MacLeod toppled forward, white as death. “Hope,” he said hoarsely.
No illusion. A hard, beloved voice.
She flew over the cold steps, caught his swaying shoulders and helped him stand against the wall.
But away from the portrait. Far from where the icy image could do him more harm.
He coughed, his arm rigid at her shoulders. “Almost—couldn’t find you. Like two doors back to back.” He swayed forward, his face grim. “This time something—wrong. There was darkness, cold. Couldn’t find the way.” He bent double, broke into a wracking cough. When the coughing passed, he gave an unsteady laugh. “Maybe I do need your protection.” His hand found hers, linked, tightened. “Do you see now? Where I’ve come from, and why there are a thousand reasons that I should not be here wanting you. Loving you.”
Hope cradled his face and traced the scar just above his brow. “No reasons that count, MacLeod. None that I’ll let count.” She felt his muscles tighten beneath her fingers. “And I’ll do everything I can to prove that to you.”
“Is that—” he coughed once “—a threat, my heart?”
“A promise,” she whispered, lips to his jaw. “Another proposition. See what a wicked woman I’ve become under your influence.”
He made a low, lost sound, then straightened. A heartbeat later, she was in his arms, caught to his chest as he climbed out of the shadows and the cold.
“Ronan, stop,” Hope ordered, caught between joy and shock. “I can walk, you idiot. There’s no need to be so dramatic.”
“I want to be dramatic. As a knight, I’ve been trained well in all the rituals, and I would give you nothing less. For a long time I thought ritual was all there was, but you laid that particular lie to rest the first time I touched you.” His hands tightened and energy seemed to flood back into him. “You believe me now?” His eyes darkened. “The truth this time.”
Hope nodded. “I only wish I had believed you sooner. But, Ronan, how were you brought here? Why?”
He stilled her with a low, hungry kiss that made her heart tilt.
“Don’t ask me, for I have no other answers. I am a warrior, not a scientist. I know only that it happened and somewhere a door opened for us. This was the miracle I have prayed for in the cold, hard hours of the night.” He touched the curve of her cheek. “I saw you there sometimes, an image in my dreams. I thought it was a curse, my penance to see a woman I could never have or hold in my hands.”
He set her down slowly. “Do I go beyond this door, my heart? Do I take you as I’ve wanted to take you, without regrets or reservations?” His hands tightened. “Even if you wake tomorrow and find me gone, pulled back to that other place, and I can never find you again?”
She didn’t hesitate, didn’t need to. “Yes,” she breathed. “Yes to both and all. But I won’t let you go away again, I warn you.”
Ronan stared at her face, wishing it could be so easy and that her will alone could hold him here. But he wouldn’t think of loss, not tonight. The memory of that dead space beyond the portrait was still too fresh.
He slid a chain of beaten silver around her neck and straightened the etched cross that bore a single diamond at its heart. “For you. That’s what kept me—and nearly made me lose you forever. In my time it came from the hands of a very clever silversmith in Venice. I wonder if his canal is still banked by white roses.”
“It must be priceless,” Hope breathed. “Especially now. But you shouldn’t have taken such risks for me,” she said fiercely.
“Love is always a risk, the greatest risk of all perhaps.” He opened her door and lifted her across the threshold. “I might make mistakes tonight, Hope. In my time men and women were different about these things. There was less talk, less planning. What happened, happened.” His eyes burned over her face. “If I hurt you, tell me.”
“As if you could hurt me. As if I wouldn’t want anything you chose to give me, knight.”
MacLeod closed his eyes, need a fire that healed even as it burned. He carried her through her bedroom to an adjoining room where a long, glassed balcony overlooked the whole glen.
A single wood beam ran the bottom of the windows, and he pressed her hands around it. The firs moved below them, their dark needles tossed in the wind as Ronan slid the lace slowly from her shoulders and began a lesson without words, a lesson made of touch and tongue and hard, drawn breath. He bared her skin, inch by inch, with swift kisses that left her skin burning.
The lace slipped, trailed down, finally pooling at her feet.
She was soft. God, she was silver and innocence in the moonlight. He honored her strength with his mouth pressed to that supple spine and then to the sensitive hollow at the curve of her back. She was trembling when he slid his palms to the sensitive skin that crested in peaks, hard with desire.
“Ronan, I’m not—”
“Yes, you are. Beautiful. I’ll prove it to you now, mo rùn.”
Her voice broke as he turned her in his hands and nearly swayed at the sight of her.
“Don’t…look at me like that,” she whispered.
“I have to. Any man would. But especially a man who loved you.” He stroked his way down the curve of her breast, circled her slowly with his tongue, then drew her into his mouth inch by teasing inch until she swayed against him.
Almost as lost as he was.
“A man would have to be blind or dead not to want this,” he whispered, following the line of her chest, tracing her ribs and her stomach, then lower still.
Her soft curls were a mystery that he explored slowly, finding her taste and opening her gently. She trembled and would have fallen but for her hands locked on the heavy beam.
“Want me, Hope,” he whispered. “Want me inside you, while I show you how love can feel.” He slid into her velvet folds, teased a ragged moan from her throat, and knew she was close to the edge, just where he wanted her.
His fingers moved, parted, eased deeper. MacLeod felt her stiffen, then gasp his name while her hands rose to clutch at his rigid shoulders.
And then she raced over the crest, trembling against him, shaking like a leaf.
MacLeod knew the moment of her pleasure with the unerring instincts of a man who had known many women. He had liked most of them, pleased all of them, but loved none of them.
Not like this. Not with the blind, all-encompassing hunger Hope made him feel.
He waited until the tremors faded, then sent her up again, with tongue and stroking teeth, liquid against her sleek folds when she throbbed against him.
She swayed and began to sink, her fingers tangled in his long hair
. “Ronan,” she breathed. “I think I’m dead.”
“Not yet.” He drew her against him and let her feel the desire bladed against her thighs.
Her eyes darkened. “If that’s supposed to impress me, it’s…succeeding.” She found the edge of his tartan and worked the folds free. With a hiss the heavy wool struck the floor.
Hope’s lips curved in a crooked grin. “Dear me, MacLeod, now I’m really impressed. And I have just one thing to say to you.”
He waited, frowning, his logic broken into tiny pieces as it always was around her. “And what would that be?”
“I think I’ll show you instead.” She eased to one knee, tracing his rigid length slowly. Then her lips closed around him on a sigh.
MacLeod shuddered, lost in the sensation of her hands and mouth, his body locked in a fierce struggle for control. “Hope, no. No.” He pulled himself back from the edge, then tugged her up against his chest. “By God, you will be the death of us both, woman.”
“Is that good or bad?”
His jaw clenched. “Good. Extraordinary. Assuming that I live through it.”
“But I wanted to take your breath away—”
“You do.”
She gnawed at her lip. “I wanted it to be perfect.”
“Even if it isn’t perfect, it still is,” he said hoarsely. “So it is when love is given. The details do not matter. It is the look in your eyes that makes this perfect to me. That crooked smile and the husky, broken sound you make when I touch you.”
Her eyes were huge, luminous. “I don’t…”
“You do. You did it twice and once more just now.”
“So you’re keeping score now, MacLeod?”
“Keeping…track,” he corrected gently. “Of everything. I do not want to forget a single second.”
Her hands tightened. “In case something happens?”
“The chance is great. I will not lie, Hope. History says the King’s Wolf returned to Glenbrae.” He shook his head. “If history can change, I swear I’ll find a way to do it. Until then…” He eased her thigh across his, groaning while she cradled his heat. “Until then, we must write our own legends, my heart.”
Draycott Everlasting: Christmas KnightMoonrise Page 26
