by Brenda Joyce
Randall choked, realizing she hadn’t been all that honest with him while in his bed.
Macleod was almost at the door. Randall seized it, flung it open and rushed out. He didn’t even go to the elevator, where he’d have to wait for it to arrive at the eleventh floor. He ran desperately for the stairs and vanished into the stairwell.
Macleod actually laughed. “What a puny man! What a coward!”
Tabby backed away, sinking down on a chair by the couch. She covered her face with her hands. She actually felt sorry for Randall. But he had called her a lying whore.
She heard her front door close. She felt Macleod approach, although she didn’t hear him—he was too skilled and his steps were soundless. Through her hands, she saw him holding out her keys. “Go away,” she whispered. Her mind was blank now, and she wanted it to stay that way. She was pretty certain that in a moment, she was going to think about every damned minute that had transpired in the past quarter of an hour or so.
He didn’t move. “Ye wanted him to leave.”
Her head ached terribly now. Don’t think, she begged herself. Just go to sleep and deal with this—with him—tomorrow!
“Ye despise him. He treated ye horribly when ye were his wife. Ye wanted him gone,” Macleod said flatly.
Tabby looked up. “Okay. I wanted him gone. But not that way.”
“Then what way?”
“I was going to ask him to leave politely!” Tabby screamed at him.
Macleod’s eyes widened.
Tabby covered her mouth with her hands. What had happened in that bathroom?
He had touched her and she had gone insane. One touch, the feel of him beneath her hands, and she’d been frantic and desperate and sexually crazed. She’d had a violent orgasm, right off the bat.
It always took her hours to climax, usually during gentle, thoughtful sex, with a good and very private fantasy thrown in.
What was she going to do?
He said, “He doesna respect ye and he wouldna leave if ye asked nicely.”
Tabby stood up and her knees buckled. Macleod reached out and steadied her. She struck his hand away, so hard it hurt her own wrist. His eyes were wide, wary, and he kept his hands to himself. “You treated him terribly! Rudely—violently. You acted like a…a thug!”
He was silent, but his eyes flashed with displeasure. Then he said, “I dinna like him verra much. He called ye a whore.”
She was close to tears. Now, images from their very brief encounter in her bathroom were replaying wildly in her mind. She’d tried to climb up his body! She’d clawed his shoulders—literally! His skin had to be under her fingernails. And had she begged him to do it? What was wrong with her?
“It doesn’t matter what he called me. You are violent, savage…bestial!”
He crossed his arms, his face hard and tight. “But ye liked it a moment ago.”
Tabby struck him across the face as hard as she could.
He didn’t flinch, when her blow would have made another man reel. His eyes widened—and then narrowed.
Tabby could barely believe she’d hit him. She’d never hit anyone or anything in her life. She did not retreat, however. “Violence is the way you live. I get it. But here, in my time, in my home, we don’t abuse guests!”
He made a harsh, disparaging sound. “So ye wish to treat him as a guest when he insults ye?”
“That’s right!” she screamed again. Her stomach was churning. Why didn’t he get it? He had rescued her, but they could never be friends, much less lovers. Their values were too different. He lived by the sword, when she used magic to help others. But she had just had raw frantic sex with him on her bathroom floor. And now, damn it, she could not forget it. She would never forget it!
But it wasn’t shame or guilt that was foremost on her mind. It was shock.
She’d been uninhibited and passionate. She’d taken, instead of given. The more she kept recalling it, the more dismayed she was—and the more her body was quickening with the memory. It was so hard to breathe!
“If ye were a man, ye’d die fer that.”
Tabby hugged herself, just looking at him. “Then I’m lucky, aren’t I? Go away. I need to be by myself.”
“Ye dinna care fer Randall. Ye dinna even like him now.”
“Go away—far away!” she shouted.
“He has no respect fer ye. He thinks to use ye fer his own gain.”
He was right on that last point. “Like you respect me?” she cried. “Because I do believe that you were using me a few minutes ago!”
She heard him exhale harshly. He said, “We used each other. Ye wanted me, I wanted ye. ’Tis natural. And I gave ye pleasure.” He added, “I enjoyed yer pleasure.”
She so wanted to hit him again. But he was right—it had been mutual. She stared at him furiously and he stared back impassively. The memory of their brief encounter made it hard to think clearly.
But she did know one thing. “This will never work.”
His brows slashed upward. Then his expression changed, becoming cold and speculative, at once.
“It will never work!” she repeated, pointing at him. Did men die for that rather rude gesture, too? Of course they did!
His hands had fisted. “Ye said,” he said low and carefully, “that many women in yer time take their pleasure when they wish. Now ye’re like most others.”
“I am not like other women. I am a prude, and if you don’t know what I mean, look it up!”
A bewildered expression crossed his face and Tabby simply didn’t care. She pointed at him again. “I am sorry I cast that spell to bring you here. It backfired. You were supposed to come from An Tùir-Tara, all bloody and burned and grief-stricken, so I could help you! Instead, I get this murdering warrior without a soul or a conscience!” She could not control her tone. She was probably hysterical and she didn’t care. “I don’t know why I had to be the one to see you at the museum, damn it! I don’t know why you think you’ve seen me haunting you for a hundred years! And I don’t care.” She stopped, panting.
“Ye care.”
“No, I do not! In fact, tomorrow I am sending you back to Blayde, and we can both say a little prayer and hope you wind up where you belong!”
He folded his arms and stared coldly at her. “Like hell.”
Tabby finally became silent. Their gazes locked.
“Someone has to protect ye.”
“Not you. My sister can do that.”
He scoffed at her. “A woman? I dinna think so.”
“Sam is a warrior. You cannot stay here. You do not belong here. That is really obvious.”
“I will stay until I vanquish the evil behind the boys.”
“Shit!” Tabby cried. He wasn’t going to budge. She didn’t even know if she could send him away. If he refused to go, she had a terrible suspicion that he might be able to resist any spell she might cast. “You haven’t taken vows, but now, suddenly, you’re a protector?”
“Ye’re the woman sharin’ my bed.”
She inhaled so sharply it hurt her ribs. She saw his strained face as he loomed over her, his hand in her hair, holding her still, so he could kiss her the way she’d never been kissed before.
He intended to continue this.
What was she going to do?
Image after image came, brutally and erotically now. His huge body, driving up into hers. Her back against the door, on the hard floor. And the incredible ecstasy…
Her blood was so hot she thought her skin might start smoking. She swallowed. “We’re from different worlds,” she said slowly. “Your world is violent and savage—too violent and savage for me. Being together makes no sense. Surely you can see that?”
“I live by my word…an’ my sword, Tabitha. If I dinna destroy my enemies, they will destroy me.” His gaze was hard, but it was also searching.
“I know. And that’s the bottom line—our worlds are too different.” She turned abruptly, her back to him, and reached for her bedroo
m door, tears finally forming. They burned her eyes. She didn’t know why she was upset. She didn’t know why she wanted to curl up and cry. She prayed he wouldn’t come after her. If he did, she was really afraid of what would happen next.
“Our worlds are nay as different as ye’d like to believe.”
His tone was bedroom soft. Tabby rushed into her bedroom and slammed the door closed, shaking. He was wrong; she was right! Then she covered her face with her hands, giving into utter despair and utter exhaustion, her head feeling explosive.
They did not share any Destiny. It was a mistake, or one big fat celestial joke; it had to be.
The sooner he went back to 1298, the better.
They had nothing in common except for the war on evil.
But what about the desire that raged between them?
Maybe, just maybe, it had been a shocking abnormality—one single instance in her life that would never be repeated, an event that had come out of the terrible trauma of that day.
Tabby felt her tears start to fall. She wanted to be that wildly passionate woman—just not with a medieval man who callously beheaded his enemies at whim! She stumbled over to her bed and collapsed on top of the comforter there. She was so tired she couldn’t move, not even to get under the covers. But she knew she’d never sleep.
Because now, instead of seeing him roughing Randall up or beheading Angel, she saw him in the bathroom, stripping down, naked, absolutely immodest and too physically perfect for words.
Tabby wanted to moan. Her attraction to him hadn’t changed, and she didn’t know what to do about it. She suddenly wondered if she simply thought about him and what he could do to her, she might find that rapture again. She blushed.
Her bedroom door opened abruptly.
He’d been listening to her. Tabby lay very still, her body suddenly inflamed. He was going to come onto her—and she was probably going to let him.
But he knelt beside her bed, and his large, strong hand covered her mouth.
Tabby tensed, alarmed.
“Dinna move,” Macleod whispered. “Evil,” he said.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TABBY MET HIS gaze, alarmed.
He removed his hand and leaned over her. “Evil is close by, an’ tryin’ to get inside.”
His breath feathered her. She sat up, shocked. “Here?” It was impossible. The loft was fortified with her grandmother’s powerful spells. Evil had never gotten inside. Slowly, with growing dread, she looked past him and into the living room.
He’d left the lights on. Tabby stared into the living area, only able to partially glimpse her kitchen. If she’d been developing a sixth sense for evil, she did not have it now, because her loft looked exactly as it should have. Nothing felt awry.
She glanced at him. “Are you sure?”
He was crouched by the bed, one hand on the mattress by her hip. He nodded. Their arms touched, bare skin against bare skin. Her body began to vibrate in response to his. Just as she was about to ask him how he could tell that evil was close by, someone rapped on the living-room window.
The loft was on the eleventh floor, but the fire escape was outside.
A new tension began. Tabby looked at him and he nodded. She understood him completely. She slipped from the bed and went to the threshold of the bedroom, Macleod behind her, his hand on her waist.
Outside, the city night was bright and illuminated. The rapping continued on the same window she’d opened earlier to let him in. There was no one standing on the fire escape.
The rapping ceased.
Tabby looked at him, a sick feeling beginning. “What is that?”
He kept his focus on the window. “A ghost, I think.”
“Ghosts can be seen—even if only partially. They haunt us in their human form,” Tabby said. The words weren’t even out of her mouth when whatever was out there began rapping on the other living-room window, this time more insistently.
A chill went down her spine as the knocking intensified, as if the thing was angry. She saw the windowpane shudder.
Tabby tensed. Macleod was right. An entity of some kind was trying to get into her loft. But surely it would not be able to get past her grandmother’s spells.
Glass shattered, exploding into the room.
Tabby cried out, Macleod shoving her behind him. The other window exploded, as well, and Macleod flung a blast of energy at whatever was out there. Power sizzled from his hand, but it was a weak blast, nothing like what she’d seen at school. The glass seemed to hang in the air. He blasted the perimeter of the room again. This time, silver danced along his fingertips, but nothing else happened and the suspended shards of glass finally fell.
Macleod cursed. He spoke in Gaelic, and Tabby did not have to know the words to comprehend them. “What happened to your power?” she cried as the last window began rattling so vibrantly it was almost visibly moving.
“The gods,” he said flatly. He blasted the window again. This time, not even silver shone from his fingertips.
For some reason, he was without his power. A veil of calm slipped over her as a furious knocking on the remaining glass window began. Tabby closed her eyes and concentrated with all of her power on the evil being trying to get into her loft.
“Evil get out, evil be gone. Grandma’s spells grow stronger, evil is here no longer.”
Sweat poured down her body. She tried to feel the “thing.” But Macleod was standing in front of her, his power like a shield, interfering with her senses. She felt Grandma Sara’s concern and presence so strongly that she smelled her rosewater scent. But she was a distraction, too. Tabby focused as hard as she could—harder than she ever had. The evil was vicious in its hatred, she thought. Its malice began to entrap her, as if an invisible web was twisting around her and drawing her in. It became frightening in its intensity. She strained for the entity, for its evil lust. Tabby began to feel lost in a cycle of hatred, and feel that she was spinning in it, but she repeated the spell again and again. She did not dare stop.
Suddenly there was only her and the evil’s vicious desire to destroy her.
And Tabby was shocked out of her trance by the extent of its hatred.
As her eyes opened, she saw the third and last window shatter. Macleod turned to embrace her, pushing her down to the floor and shielding her from the flying projectiles of glass with his huge body.
She could not lose her focus now. She tried to slip back into the evil. She felt the web of sticky clawing tentacles grasping at her. She felt the terrible, hellish pull. There was only her and “it” now. And “it” wanted to destroy her—or them.
“Evil get out, evil be gone,” she chanted, as the evil pushed at her, battering her. And suddenly she was blown back against the wall by a huge wind, in spite of Macleod’s grasp as he cradled her. “Evil get out, evil be gone. Grandma’s spells grow stronger, evil no longer. The Rose will triumph here!”
Lamps crashed to the floor, chairs were blown over, pots flew from the stove, dishes from the sink, and papers whirled everywhere from her and Sam’s desks. She kept chanting the spell, the hatred of the thing filling her, trapping her. And then the hatred began to fade and suddenly the web that felt like a prison was gone.
An absolute stillness filled the room.
Tabby felt her body give way and she collapsed in exhaustion in Macleod’s arms. Instantly she was acutely aware of being in his powerful and protective embrace. She recalled how he’d held her and tried to shield her during the attack. She began to tremble, fully lucid now. He had refused to take his vows, but this was the second time he had protected her fiercely, giving no thought to himself.
And they were on the floor. His body was huge, inherently and blatantly male. Her pulse was already high; it soared. She couldn’t move away—she didn’t want to move away. Now, no matter what had already happened between them, his body had become an incredibly safe harbor. Stunningly, his embrace felt powerful and right.
Slowly she raised her face. The dange
r gone, his blue eyes were glittering with heat. She tried to ignore the way that look affected her. It sent a fist through her belly, causing an aching need. She looked over his shoulder at the devastated loft. Had a hurricane swept through, it could not have been worse.
His large hand closed around her arm. “’Tis gone, Tabitha.”
She shivered, aware now of the frigid cold blasting through the loft. The cold went right through her. She met Macleod’s steady and reassuring eyes.
She wasn’t going to even try to deny that she was really glad he’d been with her just then. He had enough courage for an entire army, she thought.
Tabby rose to her feet, still shaken. Macleod let her go and he stood, too. She looked at him grimly. “What just happened?”
He didn’t answer, but she hadn’t expected him to. She left Macleod and walked over to her laptop, which lay on the floor, at least ten feet from the coffee table where she’d left it. She picked it up and held it tightly to her chest. Macleod touched her shoulder.
She hadn’t heard him come up behind her. “Is it broken?”
“I don’t know.” What had tried to get into her loft? She shivered. “If it’s broken, I have a desktop over there.” She pointed at the desk at the other end of the loft, where her Mac was, and stiffened. The computer lay on its side, and the monitor that had been on her desk was on the floor. “I can buy a new laptop first thing tomorrow, if I have to. All my files are backed up.”
“Ye’re brave.”
She went still. In that instant, she knew how important courage was to him and she had the inkling that he did not toss praise about lightly. She smiled grimly. She wasn’t brave, not really, but she wasn’t about to reveal how scared she’d been. She was a Rose, and she’d done what she’d had to do. She thought of how unflappable he’d just been—even without his powers. She couldn’t help but respect and admire his courage, too. But clearly Macleod would never panic, especially not in battle.
She put the laptop on the coffee table. She powered it on, and then went to the kitchen for a garbage bag. “My sister is a warrior—she likes nothing more than to slay demons. She’s the really brave one. You’ll probably meet her in the morning.” She was not going to think about the rest of the night, she decided.
