This is what I want, she thought.
And heard his soft curse.
I love you, she thought, and felt him lift her and part her slowly, with infinite care.
“Yes,” she whispered. Against his neck, his chest, his mouth.
Worlds collided.
Universes merged, flared, re-formed.
Pleasure surged, tightening every muscle to something bordering pain. Jared let them both feel the pulsing heat, made them both wait until raw sensation overwhelmed all other awareness.
Then his hand slid between them. “You feel like roses,” he whispered, stroking her slowly. “Hot, sweet petals. Tonight I’ll find how you taste, Maggie.”
She closed her eyes. Blindly she rose, fingers trembling in his hair as desire bloomed. Jared felt the flare through his own body, felt her wild silver rush of pleasure as she fell into spirals of wonder.
He drove her up anew, catching her soft cries with his mouth, greedy for the touch and taste of her shocked response. He was the first to make her shudder this way, he saw. The first to make her feel such blinding sensation.
His eyes closed as her nails dug at his back. He felt her silken contractions, pulling, pulling. Her response claimed the last of his control.
With a muttered oath he pinned her hands to the white bed and took her the final way, driving her over the sheets with exquisite friction. He felt her burning, caught in dark waves of pleasure.
The past clung close, shadowed and silent like the great old house as they took and gave, fought and tumbled, learning all the secrets that lovers share. Her sigh echoed his soft groan as skin moved to sheathe heated skin.
When her eyes beckoned, hot and entreating, Jared opened his hands against hers and followed where she drew him, down where her soul waited, calling to his. She twisted, hot and giving beneath him, and her broken sounds of pleasure frayed the last ends of his control.
She locked her hands on his neck and pushed against him urgently. “This is what I want, Jared. Not diamonds. Not silver. You—me. Now.”
She let him touch all her secrets, all her churning pleasure.
All his careful plans and strategies vanished like dawn mist off the great loch below his old home. Only this night mattered. Only the radiance of Maggie’s passion and the heat that shivered between them.
When he felt the next shudder sweep through her, he gripped her hips and drove deep, until her sleek skin parted to hold him and she could take no more.
“Jared, I’m dying.”
The word held no sting, he found, while her body moved beneath him. For whatever time he had left, he would stir her joy and make the days ring with her laughter. “I am too, but I’ll die inside you.”
Hot and sweet, she held him.
Hot and sweet, her mind reached out, out, part of a link that had waited here at the abbey for their return. Gwynna or Maggie, she was the sun of his world. As a warrior he would protect her. As a man, he would honor her with his name.
And as a lover, he would answer joy with joy while the abbey held them in its restless magic.
She gave a broken sigh of pleasure as he pinned her to the bed and filled her again with his straining length. Too long denied, skin parted, claimed, clung. Then her legs tightened, and the pleasure of her silken response drove Jared beyond control.
She arched, surprise in her cry as he took her up again, and then once more while the white damask bedspread whispered and shifted beneath their stormy need.
Her name was on his lips when his hot seed spilled deep inside her and Jared found the blind pleasure that had so long eluded him.
And there beyond the mists of forgetting, she stood waiting. Somehow he had always known she would.
All I ever dreamed, she thought.
And Jared heard, smiling even in the fury of his final pleasure just before they toppled together into a racing world of silver.
~ ~ ~
The bedspread lay twisted on the floor. The sheets were in a tangle somewhere near the pillows.
Maggie stretched, expectant and replete as moonlight lit her tousled hair. Her smile was radiance itself. “That was … devastating. In the very best way.”
“Not quite,” Jared said roughly. “That was just a opener.”
Her hand rose, nuzzling his jaw. “You’re kidding, right?”
He moved, hard again, meeting her heat with a need grown more fierce.
Her eyes widened. “Aren’t you?”
“There’s one other thing about MacNeill men. Something I didn’t tell you.” Movement, deep and sure. “We’re very quick in our recovery.”
“That’s not possible.” She gasped as desire rippled, built.
“I was thinking about this when you were driving me crazy with your hands, trying to free Max. I was wishing you were right here like this, trapped against the linen sheets.”
Maggie sighed. So was I.
She heard his low curse in answer. Then pleasure hit her, hot and sweet, and her response slammed back to Jared.
“That was adequate,” he said, taking her with hard, sure strokes. “But this, my beautiful Maggie, will be spectacular.”
Her laughter broke into a gasp as joy spun up and passion claimed them yet again.
~ ~ ~
One by one the stars rose above the moat. One by one the white swans appeared, gliding over the restless water.
And the great, dreaming abbey watched, welcoming the old lovers home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Jared drifted slowly, mountains before him and soft heather beneath his feet. Everywhere there was mist and cool wind, rich with the scent of peat fires. His body shifted, searching for something.
Warm arms.
Hair that filled his hands like silk. Stretching lazily, he reached out.
And met warm fingers. Pale dawn light on silken skin.
She was even more beautiful when she slept. Her skin glowed, and he saw the delicate tracery of blue veins where her hand lay outstretched beside him
A storm of emotions filled him, and greatest among them was love, something the Scotsman had been so sure he’d never find or deserve. He remembered the places she had taken him in the stillness of midnight. The feelings she had taught him as they’d tumbled over those crisp white sheets.
Every image had his body hardening. The desire snapped and growled through him like a wild beast. Somehow Jared caged it, savoring her stillness and the gentle colors of her mind beneath his fingers. She was dreaming of silver and hammered platinum. Bezel-set citrines and Siberian diamonds. He sensed the perfection of form before her, always beckoning, always eluding.
His hands cupped her wrist with infinite tenderness.
Never had he expected that loving someone could be so simple. All he had to do was breathe and the emotion was there, trapping him tight and filling him like sunlight in every cold corner and empty space. Never had he expected that sliding down into someone’s mind could be so painless—or so brutally addictive.
Almost without thinking he brought his palm up the creamy ridge of her inner thigh, then groaned as her pleasure flowed back to him, caught in waves of gold and pink. A voice whispered that it was dangerous to linger, to want so much and fall into another’s soul so completely.
If so, Jared would consider the price well paid.
Bending down, he skimmed her shoulder, then fit his mouth to hers. Unerring, his fingers moved to coax and tease the hollows that left her dry-mouthed and restless.
To hell with dangerous, he thought as he trapped her breathy sigh of waking just before it slid into a moan of dark pleasure. He would have her and hold her, enthrall and entice her. For as much time as he had left.
“Jared?” Her hands covered his neck. “You’re not wearing anything. You’re—”
He pulled her against him. “Convenient, isn’t it?”
“Is this going to be a habit with you?” Her smile was sleepy and entirely radiant as he fit his body to hers, already drawing her up into a
wave of pleasure. “If it isn’t, I don’t want to know.”
~ ~ ~
Someone was breaking bricks on his head.
Or maybe it was on his chest.
With a low oath, Jared struggled up from sated sleep. There were aches in his arms, nail marks on his back, and the tiny print of Maggie’s teeth on one shoulder.
She didn’t stir as he smoothed a strand of hair from her cheek. “Maggie,” he whispered. “I’ve got to go.”
“Hmmmm.”
He traced her cheek, loath to wake her, loath to leave the sunlit joy of her.
“It’s morning.” He frowned at the bedside clock. “Actually, it’s almost afternoon.”
She twisted, dragging the pillow around her head. “More silver. Melted. Hot.” Her lips curved in sleepy oblivion. “Incredible lines and texture.”
Jared was pleased to sense that he had more than a little to do with the graphic dream she was having. Smiling, he smoothed the quilt. “I’ll bring you breakfast. Strawberries and chocolate. Fresh scones with cream. Maybe even some champagne from the abbey’s cellar.”
Her nose crinkled. She rolled to her side. “Not the jade. Diamonds. Hot and white. Two more facets to go.” With an irritable sigh, she dragged the pillow onto her chest. “Need more solder.”
Jared realized that it was all the soft, intimate farewell he would have from her.
~ ~ ~
Ten minutes later Jared stood in the doorway outside Marston’s kitchen, listening to Christmas music while amazing smells drifted from the old Aga oven. Funny, he had forgotten that Christmas was only a few weeks away.
But he’d been a little busy.
The butler slanted one quick glance up from the pastry dough he was kneading on a marble slab. “Good morning, Commander.” His eyes narrowed at Jared’s tartan attire. “Is there some special occasion that I’ve missed?”
“None that I know of.” Jared ran a hand through his hair. He still wasn’t sure what had prompted him to take out the old kilt. Perhaps it was the rich boyhood memories he’d put away since his return from Thailand.
Or maybe he’d simply wanted to watch Maggie’s reaction. “Not unless you count the best night of sleep I’ve had in years.”
Busy sampling a steaming scone, Jared missed the crinkle at Marston’s eyes and his knowing smile. “I’m delighted to hear it. If you would like to eat in the breakfast room, I’ll bring things in directly.”
Jared enjoyed the feel of the heavy wool pleats and the memories of a happiness so thick and heavy he could hold it in his hands.
Spring afternoons tramping by byrnes that bubbled over peat-black earth. Summer dawns in a loch so cold it swept your breath right back into your chest.
Why had he been so quick to bury that past?
“Don’t bother, Marston. I’ll take another scone and have my tea outside. I need to check the electronics on that new gate and run a few tests on the outer security. Then I probably have a dozen messages to sort through.”
“Very well, Commander, though you leave me with precious little to do.”
“Go decorate the Christmas tree. But first I could use a bottle of that superb vintage La Trouvaille Nicholas thinks he can hide in the back of the cellar. Also two glasses to go with it and a basket of strawberries. Dipped in chocolate, if that’s manageable.”
Marston carefully kept any hint of satisfaction from his face. “Shall I be packing for one or for two?”
Jared’s smile was slow and dark. “Definitely two.”
The prospect made Jared run through his security checks even faster than usual. He finished examining the last feet of wire he’d laid the day before, pleased to see that every inch hummed.
Now he had the whole afternoon before him.
He strode toward the conservatory, wondering how much longer he could manage to stay away from Maggie for form’s sake.
Not that he had the slightest hope of keeping secrets from Marston. The butler had the eyes of a sharpshooter and the soul of a born matchmaker.
“Mac?”
Jared turned, his face creasing in a smile. “Izzy? What are you doing here? What could possibly drag you away from that glossy mainframe you’re married to?”
The tall man in carelessly worn blue jeans and a gray sweater could have been a football player or an actor. His lean body held no hint of flab anywhere, and every muscle was perfectly conditioned from the kickboxing that was Izzy’s specialty.
Jared was one of the few people who knew that Ishmael Harris Teague was a crack sniper and a seasoned soldier with electronics skills that made him highly attractive to all branches of the military service.
“Call it curiosity. I wanted to get a firsthand look at this house you’ve had me checking. Very impressive.”
Jared’s brow arched. “The architecture, you mean?”
“No, the ISDN lines.”
Jared laughed. “Just because Draycott Abbey has a few ghosts and some dusty armor doesn’t mean it can’t be cutting edge.”
Izzy’s handsome mahogany features eased into a smile. “I suppose I’d be a ghost myself if you hadn’t saved my tail on that last op outside Rangoon.”
“Just doing my job.”
Izzy slanted a look at Jared’s legs. “I like the skirt.”
“Don’t start.” Jared muttered. “It’s called a feiladh mor. A kilt, to philistines like you.”
“Hey, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck…” Izzy moved nimbly, dodging Jared’s right hook.
Jared shook his head. “Come in and have some tea. It’s probably still hot.”
“Nothing stronger?”
“You don’t know Marston’s tea.” Jared moved into the conservatory, brushing a pile of papers and magazines off the long table. Bracing one hip, he poured a cup of tea from the thermos Marston had prepared. “Speaking of ducks.”
“What?”
“You. Somebody had to keep an eye on you over there. You were so wet behind the ears that you left a trail of water, my friend. The bad guys saw you coming miles away.”
Izzy rubbed his neck. “What I didn’t know could have filled a library. But you can’t say I’m a slow learner.”
“Tell that to the men who had to bang your jeep back into shape every week. You’ve got to be the worst driver on four continents.”
Izzy shrugged. “I’m still God’s gift to anything with wings. You ought to see me jockeying a Night Hawk, Mac.” He used the old nickname that had come out of their days together in Thailand. They still spoke with the sort of shorthand that came from long hours spent sweating together in dangerous places.
Izzy spread his powerful, dark hands. “Sweet and silent, Mac, my boy. I’ve still got the magic touch.”
Jared turned away.
He remembered all too clearly seeing those broad, competent hands stretched out on a rough bamboo wall while a swaggering Thai drug lord prepared to drive a spike through each palm.
The bastard hadn’t succeeded. Jared had seen to that by sweeping into the courtyard and hosing down the area with an HK-37.
Izzy remembered too. There was a little crinkle in his eye that told Jared enough time had passed that he could look back at the event with detached black humor, an attitude that had kept them both alive during their two-year stint in the drug wars of the Golden Triangle.
“So what gives, Mac? Who is this lady of mystery?”
“It’s Daniel Kincade’s daughter. Have you come up with anything I can use?”
“Maybe. Kincade had no real estate holdings of note, but I thought you’d be interested to know that he was involved in a start-up French electronics company located outside Marseille. Their specialty is miniaturization of microwave communications.”
Jared considered this new information. “How would that relate to gemstones? I suppose that would include lasers, since most are generated through rubies.”
“Microwave research is the hot new kid on everybody’s block. Every electronic firm with a staff of mo
re than two has an R & D person working in that area and you don’t want to know how many technoids the western nations have slaving over that particular fire.”
Jared tapped at a bag of potting soil. “So it’s big enough for someone to get killed over?”
“Godzilla looks like a one-celled organism next to this kind of stuff.”
“And Daniel Kincade might have been involved with some new technology that required gem material.” Jared pushed to his feet, frowning “If so, didn’t anyone know?”
Izzy shrugged. “These guys aren’t your usual computer nerds The stuff they’re juggling is certifiable national security. Some folks are saying that microwave technology will be the only technology in the next twenty years, and I happen to believe them.”
Jared gave a silent whistle. “That means Daniel Kincade’s work might have gotten him killed.”
Izzy laughed darkly. “The way I see it, if he was working on cutting-edge stuff, the question wouldn’t be if someone killed him but which one of a dozen nations arranged to pull the trigger. That’s how cutthroat this stuff has become.”
Again Jared felt a kick of surprise. Izzy was no tenderfoot. He was skilled in every branch of electronic technology and an expert at programming. This information took his investigation in an entirely new direction. “Do you still have people guarding Maggie Kincade’s cousins?”
“Both are in place. Handpicked. Armed, and highly deadly.”
Jared chuckled at the image. Woe be to any nasty who took on one of Izzy’s people At least he could stop worrying about Maggie’s cousins for the time being. “Maybe you can find out what that French company was working on when Kincade disappeared.”
“I’ll have a look.”
Jared stared out at the abbey lawns, gold and brilliant green in the early afternoon sun. “What else did you turn up on Kincade?”
“Damned little you don’t know already. For a famous man, he kept a low profile. Comfortable house, quiet family, passable credit. But when I was tracking his career I started picking up things.”
Jared stopped pacing. “What kind of things?”
“On the surface, it was all perfectly normal. Every year he took routine visits for jewelry buys, but major gem and hardstone sources aren’t on your normal vacation itinerary. Emeralds from Colombia. Rubies from Myanmar. Lapis and nephrite from Afghanistan. Those are the most volatile governments around, Mac. Yet Kincade came and went at will. It seems he knew half the people in those governments on a personal basis.”
A Highlander for Christmas Page 28
