Spell of the Highlander

by Karen Marie Moning

  She stopped at the doors. Yawning, she stretched her arms over her head, arched her back, and twisted from side to side as if stretching out her spine.

  Bloody hell, the woman was a woman in all the right places!

  Who cared the why of things?

  She was his for the next twenty days.

  9

  Jessi sat at the cherry writing desk in room 2112, hooking up her laptop, scowling into the small wall mirror that hung above it, wondering why hotels always put mirrors above writing desks. Who wanted to look at themselves while writing? Apparently a lot of people must, because every hotel she’d been in had pretty much the same setup: closet inside the door on the left; bathroom inside the door on the right (or vice versa); first bed facing a writing desk with requisite mirror hung above it; a small table between the beds sporting clock radio and phone; second bed facing a TV armoire/dresser; and, at the far wall, a small table and two chairs sat before a wall of windows.

  This room was no different, though a cut above some she’d been in, with merlot-and-champagne carpet, patterned with a gold diamond design, walls papered in textured ivory with gold embellishments at the moldings, beds topped with crisp ivory linens and champagne comforters, the windows hung with billowy wine drapes.

  Behind her, Cian MacKeltar was taking a shower, beyond the closed bathroom door.

  She’d closed the door.

  She’d also closed her eyes when he’d dropped his kilt right in front of her. Which wasn’t to say that she was a prude and hadn’t stared at him through the glass of the shower enclosure when she’d firmly shut the door a few moments later. She had.

  The moment they’d entered the hotel room, his gaze had gone instantly to the double king beds. So had hers, and there’d been one of those intensely tense moments where people either jumped on each other or got as far away from each other as they could.

  She’d done a little crab-scuttle sideways, nearly sidling right back out into the hall. He’d smiled faintly, mockingly, at her, then stepped past her and thoroughly scanned the entire room before positioning the mirror against the far wall, facing the entry door. She’d not missed that it also faced the beds, but was refusing to ponder it overlong.

  For a moment she’d thought he was going to kiss her again, but, as he’d walked back toward her, his gaze had swept past her to the bathroom.

  Christ, he’d exclaimed, ’tis a modern garderobe! I couldn’t see beyond the door to the one in Lucan’s study, though I’ve seen pictures. . . . He’d trailed off wonderingly.

  Is that where he kept you . . . er, the mirror hung? In his study? How strange his existence must have been inside a mirror! She couldn’t begin to fathom it.

  Aye. Though I’ve seen most modern inventions in books and the like in his study, I’ve not had the opportunity to examine the real things.

  She’d been about to give him a quick demonstration—anything to get away from those beds—but he’d plunged right into things, just as he had in the car, taking command, twisting handles and turning knobs, squirting little bottles of shampoo and conditioner until the room had been a steam sauna, scented of perfumed toiletries.

  Does this hostelry contain a kitchen and serving wenches, lass? he’d paused long enough in his explorations to ask.

  She’d nodded.

  Command us a feast, woman. I’m famished. Meat. Much meat. And wine.

  When he’d unfastened his wrist cuffs, she should have gotten the hint.

  Without further ado, he’d dropped his kilt. Had stood there, utterly unself-conscious, wearing nothing but a leather sheath strapped to one heavily muscled thigh, casing a heavily jewel-encrusted knife. Doffing that, too, he’d placed it high on the shower stall’s edge and stepped beneath the spray.

  Pulse suddenly jumping in her throat, she’d turned sharply away and squeezed her eyes shut.

  She could still taste him on her lips. The kiss he’d given her in the lobby had stunned her.

  And scorched her right down to her toes. He’d not pushed for tongue, or tried to grab a breast the instant he’d thought he’d gotten her distracted with a kiss. No, he’d kissed her lazily, without touching her anywhere else at all, as if he had all the time in the world, brushing his firm, full, sexy lips back and forth over hers, gently sucking her lower lip.

  She’d actually melted into the egotistical Neanderthal, had felt her lips parting.

  Logic, reason, and awareness of current events had vanished from her mind as abruptly and completely as if someone had just vacuumed her brain out through her ear.

  It was his gentleness that had gotten her, she’d decided on the way up in the elevator. It had surprised her, that was all. It was just that she’d not expected such a soft touch from such a hard-bodied, aggressive man. She’d not been prepared for it, any more than she had been for him to get butt-naked in front of her.

  And, Crimeny, what a butt . . .

  When she’d opened her eyes and turned back, she’d stared though the steamy glass at him—all six and a half magnificent naked feet of him.

  Powerful muscles shaped his long legs and massive thighs, his ass was tight, perfectly formed, and packed with more sweet muscle. She loved a good butt on a man! Too many guys had none at all. Both legs and butt were dusted with fine, silky dark hair; he wasn’t one of those lady-killer bodybuilders or models that shaved—he was a man’s man, and proud of it. More dark hair dusted his forearms and beneath his arms.

  He’d lathered himself up and begun scrubbing beneath the steamy spray. As his powerful hands moved over his body, prime, sleek muscle rippled beneath his slick, golden skin.

  She’d been so engrossed, watching him wash himself, that when he’d squirted conditioner in his hand and closed a fist around himself, she’d continued dazedly watching. Not until he’d begun to rhythmically slip his hand up and down had she realized what she was watching him do.

  Eyes snapping wide, she’d jerked her gaze to his face. His gaze had been locked on her face, his eyes narrowed, his gaze dark and hot. He’d flashed her a sexy, wicked smile that had been both invitation and challenge, catching the tip of his tongue between his teeth.

  She’d backed hastily out and slammed the door.

  The man was seriously hung.

  An insane, utterly-uncaring-of-consequences part of her had wanted nothing more than to go right back in there, strip, get in the shower with him, push his hand away, and replace it with hers.

  Get a grip, Jessi, she’d rebuked herself firmly. And not on mirror-man’s dick.

  After shutting him in the bathroom and gulping a few steadying breaths, she’d gone to the phone and ordered room service, putting it also on her credit card.

  “Why not?” she muttered to her reflection over the top of her laptop. “I may as well charge with impunity.” The way things were going, she probably wouldn’t live long enough to have to pay it off anyway. She made a face at herself in the mirror. It had been a long day and she was showing signs of the strain. Her makeup was as good as gone, her stubborn cowlicks were acting up, and her clothes were rumpled.

  Plucking a tissue from a box on the desk, she dabbed at the remnants of mascara smudged on her lashes and ran a hand through her short glossy curls.

  People often told her she looked like a curvier version of the girl who’d played Virginia, the heroine in The 10th Kingdom, and she supposed she did—after Virginia had gotten her hair whacked off by the wolfman. After the gypsies had cursed her for setting their poor birds free. Jessi would have set the poor birds free too. Not that her hair looked like it had been whacked off or anything. She got it trimmed every six weeks down at the Beauty Training Academy, and they did a pretty good job for six bucks.

  She narrowed her eyes at her reflection. Breasts. They were undoubtedly her best feature. Some people got great nails and hair, some people got beautiful smiles or pretty eyes, some people got skinny little perfect beach-butts, those disgustingly ideal ones that actually stayed in bikini bottoms. She’d got
ten good breasts. It wasn’t that they were so big. Frankly, she didn’t think they were. It was just that they were really round and really high and really perky, and she had a short neck (which was why she wore her hair short—the girls at the Beauty Academy said it made her neck look longer), and sometimes even she thought her breasts looked fake in certain tops, but they weren’t. They were real. Perhaps a bit too enthusiastically perky, but she figured she should enjoy that while she could, because she fully comprehended complex equations like gravity plus time.

  The reflection of the glowing red face of the clock on the bedside table suddenly drew her attention, blinking as the hour rolled over.

  4:00 A.M.

  She stared at it in the mirror, aghast, realizing that in three hours and twenty minutes, classes would begin for the day. On Thursdays, she taught four one-hundred-level anthropology courses.

  Or she’d used to. She certainly wouldn’t be teaching any today.

  She considered calling in sick, but decided it was wiser not to. When this was over, she’d figure out what kind of story to tell. She might be able to get away with claiming to have been forcibly abducted and fully exonerate herself. Which meant if she called in sick now, it would make her look like a liar later. I know it’s odd for a kidnapper to let his kidnappee call in sick, but he was an odd kidnapper. Right. That would go over like a ton of bricks.

  Exhaling gustily, she returned her attention to her laptop and plugged it into the hotel line. She’d decided to check her E-mail while he was showering, partly in a no-doubt-pointless bid for the comfort of routine, but also to keep her mind off sex, which, with him around, was like trying not to think about chocolate while sitting in a person-sized fondue pot of the dark, creamy stuff, surrounded by flowering cacao trees.

  Her inbox was filled with the usual: newsletters to which she subscribed to stay apprised of significant developments in her field; E-mails from students in the undergad classes she T.A.’d, filled with impressively creative excuses as to why they should be the exception to the rule, forgiven their: a) absenteeism; b) failure to appear for an exam; c) late paper. The entertaining and inventive pleas for leniency were followed by spam spam and more spam, and finally, the one she liked best—the Naked Man of the Week pictures from her cyberfriends at RBL Romantica.

  She made short work of her correspondence, shooting the newsletters to a suspend folder for later perusal, denying any and all excuses/pleas for extensions that didn’t involve a death in the family, reporting the spam, and perusing the Naked Man pictures appreciatively before setting one of them as her desktop background.

  She was about to log off when a new E-mail popped in. She scanned the sender’s ID.

  Myrddin@Drui.com.

  She didn’t know a Myrddin@Drui.com and had a phobia about viruses. If something happened to her laptop, a new one wasn’t in the budget. There was no topic in the subject line, which meant, according to her stringent guidelines, there was no place for it but the Trash folder.

  As she slid the pointer over it, she got an instant bone-deep chill. She whisked her fingers over the mouse pad, jerking the pointer away.

  Slid it back again. An immediate, painful, bitter chill licked up her hand.

  She shivered, jerked the pointer off.

  Oh, that was just too weird.

  She frowned, thinking about the way it had arrived. Had an E-mail ever just popped into her inbox when she’d been sitting idle on the inbox page?

  Not that she could remember. Sometimes when she was refreshing a page, or reentering the inbox, new ones showed up, but one had never popped in like that when she was just sitting static on the page.

  Gingerly, she slid the pointer back over the topic line: NO SUBJECT. Grimacing at the immediate sensation that her hand had been plunged, dripping wet, into a Subzero freezer, she clicked on it hard and fast and yanked her fingers from the mouse pad.

  She pressed her palm shakily to her cheek. It was as cold as ice.

  Wide-eyed, she stared at the screen. The E-mail contained three short lines.

  Return the mirror immediately.

  Contact Myrddin@Drui.com for instructions.

  You have twenty-four hours.

  That was all it said. There was nothing else on the screen but for a line of nonsensical symbols and shapes at the very bottom.

  As she scanned them, a sudden shadow seemed to fall over the hotel room. The bedside clock dimmed, the overhead light in the little entrance foyer hummed, and the ivory walls took on a sickly yellowish hue.

  And as clearly as if a man were standing in the room with her, she heard a man’s deep, cultured baritone say:

  “Or you will die, Jessica St. James.”

  Whipping around, she scanned the room.

  There was no one there.

  Beyond the bathroom door, the shower still ran, and Cian MacKeltar still splashed.

  She sat perfectly still, brittle as glass, waiting to see if her disembodied guest had anything further to add.

  The moments ticked by.

  Her shoulders drooped and she stared morosely at her reflection.

  He’d called her Jessica St. James. Freaking everybody knew her name.

  Lucan removed his hand from the screen.

  She was gone. But for a moment there, he’d had her.

  Vibrant and young. By his measure, so very, very young.

  Beyond that—an enigma. Concealed by shadows he couldn’t penetrate. Who was this woman with Cian MacKeltar?

  Usually if he was able to secure a connection, he could deep-listen, probe, and get more than the general sense of her he’d gotten, which was why he’d attempted the contact to begin with. He’d wanted to see if there was anything he could learn about her and pass on to Eve so she could expedite matters.

  People were so concerned about viruses and identity theft, and so oblivious to the true risks of plugging themselves into the World Wide Web, wiring themselves to any and everything that might be out there, hungry, waiting. They worried about cons and killers, sexual molesters enticing their children. They had no notion how thoroughly they could be violated, probed, and coerced by a skilled practitioner of the Dark Arts across a phone line.

  Still, he’d not gotten far with this woman. The moment he’d pressed at Ms. St. James, he’d encountered some sort of barrier.

  Flipping open Roman’s file, which contained the dead assassin’s thorough evaluation of his targets, including photos, addresses—both real and cyber—vehicle registration, birth certificate, passport, lines of credit, available funds, and other pertinent facts, he studied Ms. St. James’s picture again.

  Her driver’s license supplied her vital stats. Twenty-four. Height: five feet six inches. Weight: 135 pounds. Eyes: green. Hair: black. Organ donor: no.

  She was a lovely woman.

  He had no doubt Cian MacKeltar wanted her. The Highlander would be as fascinated by her resistance to probing as was Lucan. He and the Highlander weren’t quite as different as the condescending bastard liked to believe.

  Closing the file, he punched in a series of numbers on his phone and conveyed a change in plans to Eve’s associate: The mirror was still the priority, but make every effort to bring Ms. St. James in alive.

  He’d enjoy cracking her open and studying her. He’d not been intrigued by a woman for a very long time.

  He would do it while the Keltar watched from his powerless perch high up on his study wall.

  “Oh, now that’s just not going to work,” Jessi said flatly when Cian stalked out of the bathroom. She hopped off the bed and moved to regard him from a safer vantage, over near the window. Sitting on a bed with that man in the room just didn’t seem wise. “You go back in there and get dressed,” she ordered.

  Funny thing was, she’d just been placing bets with herself about what condition the archaic Highlander would exit in: kilt-clad and modest, in a towel and semimodest, or in-your-face nude and on the predatory prowl.

  She’d decided on in-your-face nud
e. She owed herself five bucks.

  He placed his thigh sheath and jeweled blade on the writing desk, wearing two towels: one at his waist and the other wrapped turban-style around his head. It was barely better than nude. In fact, it only made her want to peel those offending towels away.

  As if reading her mind, he ducked his head and unwound the first towel, sponging the excess water from his dark mane. Righting himself, he tossed his hair back over his shoulders, metallic beads clinking. Tiny rivulets of water ran down over his magnificent tattooed chest, a thin channel of it slithered over that tattooed nipple. Muscles bunched and rippled in his tattooed biceps.

  She moistened her lips, wondering what on earth was wrong with her. She’d never had such an intense reaction to a man before.

  She had only to look at him to get all shaky-feeling inside. And it wasn’t as if she’d never dated a good-looking man before. She had. Kenny Dirisio had been a Grade-A-Italian-Stallion-Extraordinaire. Even brainy Ginger, who was every bit as focused and driven as she was, had said, “Jessi-chick, take my advice, drop a few courses this term and hop on that one. They don’t come along like that often.”

  But she hadn’t—hopped on him, that was. In fact, she’d volunteered to teach another seminar and they’d broken up over it, and now she knew why. While her brain had appreciated Kenny’s incredible looks, her body had just never quite kicked in. It never really had with any of the guys she’d dated.

  With Cian MacKeltar, however, despite the fact that her brain wanted nothing to do with him, her body wanted to do everything with him that was possible between a man and a woman. Her body had done more than kicked in; it was stoking up the oven for the baking of little MacKeltar buns.

  With a man that called a mirror “home.” This was not good.

  “Did you not send for food, Jessica?”

  Jessi blinked again, trying to refocus her thoughts. “Yes, but it won’t be here for a little while yet. Look, I’ve been thinking, what’s your plan, anyway?”

  “To bed you.”

  “No, I mean, your plan that might actually work.” She bared her teeth in a cool masquerade of a smile.