“Aye, that Kris fellow.” Jace gestured toward the door.
“Kris?” Mikah repeated dumbly. “You think Kris … that Kris and I …?”
“Aren’t you?”
Mikah burst out in laughter, earning a dark scowl from Jace. “I had that very same reaction from Kris before he left. Clearly, Smith was mistaken. Yet you two seem quite intimate.”
“He’s my best friend and I love him.”
His heart sank with her admission, yet Jace raised a skeptical brow. “In my experience a man and woman cannot maintain a purely platonic friendship.”
“Oh!” Mikah giggled, her face lighting with humor as she laid a hand on his arm. It was an expression that Jace hadn’t seen from her yet this evening, yet it was so reminiscent of Hero that he felt his heart lift, a smile form in response.
“Tell me.”
“Oh, Ian … uh, Jace! I can’t believe that you didn’t realize it, but Kris would have a much harder time maintaining a platonic relationship with you than he does with me.”
Jace’s mind blanked for a moment before her implication sank in. “What? You’re jesting.”
Mikah shook her head, laughing again. “I hope you’re not homophobic. He truly is my dearest friend. He has been since grade school.”
“No, not at all.” Jace shook his head in amusement. “I guess it’s a good thing that I decided not to let that stop me from seeing you. Is it a good thing, Mikah? We have been permitted a second chance that few ever have opportunity for. Can you take a leap of faith with me that this is how it was all meant to be?”
Mikah could have drowned in the intensity of Jace’s dark eyes. There was no pleading there, none of the desperation she so often felt about all of this. There was just that eternal calm, that unflappable self-assurance that was so much a part of the Ian she remembered. He would leave if she said no, Mikah realized. Well, perhaps not right away. He would fight for what he wanted because that’s how he was, but he wouldn’t force her.
He would let the choice be hers.
“When I got back, I worked very hard to convince myself that that was all it was,” Mikah told him slowly. “That what I had felt was just an echo of her life, her emotions. That it was her life I remembered, not my own.”
“And did ye succeed in that?” He was tensed like a panther ready to pounce. Balanced on a limb, waiting and watchful.
Mikah looked into his dark eyes and saw the power of that timeless love there and felt it in herself. This wasn’t Hero’s, it was hers. And it was no use trying to deny it any longer. “No.”
Fire flamed in his eyes as he strode back to her. His fingers dove into her hair and he forced her head back until he was towering over her. “What we carry inside of us isn’t theirs or ours. It’s always been in our souls and it always will be, do you understand?”
Mikah nodded.
“Will ye ever try to deny it again?”
“No. Never.”
Jace’s lips took hers ardently, as if he meant to devour her. His hands fisted in her hair, pulling her head back farther until she was bent back, clinging to him for support, but Mikah didn’t care. Already that familiar passion was racing through her veins and she was melting against him. She opened her mouth to him, inviting him deeper with a moan of delight, and felt a growl of satisfaction rumble through his chest.
Strong arms drifted down her back until they tightened around her, lifting off her feet as he moved. Mikah felt the island counter at her back, then he lifted her to the edge. Head spinning deliciously, Mikah wrapped her legs around his waist. She ran her hands over his chest and upward, pushing his jacket off his shoulders until he shrugged it away. Jace’s hands returned, running over her hips and down her thighs before they slid upward once more, raising her hem up along the way. The feel of those hands, his hands, against her bare flesh drew a low, keening moan from deep within her.
He was so real. So very alive. So very present.
Her head fell back in surrender, and Jace seized the invitation, dragging his lips down her neck, sucking, nipping, licking. Mikah ran her hands down his muscular chest once more, learning the sharper planes before embracing him, urging him closer until Jace pressed his hips between her thighs. They moaned in unison at the contact.
Dizzily, Mikah clung to him once more, lost to desire. “Yes,” she whispered throatily. Her fingers fisted in his hair as Jace nudged her dress from her shoulder, his lips trailing downward even as his hands crept up. One caught her behind the knee, lifting her against him. The other tugged down her dress until her breast was bared. He curved his palm under it and lifted to his lips.
Mikah gasped as his lips closed over her nipple, suckling gently. “Oh God,” she moaned. “Please, please.”
“Aye, my love,” he murmured against her breast. Wrapping his arms around her once more, he lifted her.
“Your leg!” she protested.
“Wouldna dare to give out on me now,” he murmured and carried her through the nearest door and was rewarded with the site of a bed. He lowered them down while Mikah worked the buttons of his shirt, spreading her palms across his bare chest with a hum of appreciation.
Jace shuddered at the contact, and Mikah knew that his need matched hers. He wanted more. Wanted her naked and writhing beneath him as badly as she wanted him over her. Rising, he shed his shirt and began to undo his trousers while Mikah pushed her dress down and squirmed out of it. His eyes were black with desire, burning into hers as he stripped. Finally Jace was as naked as she. Her eyes devoured him, taking in the bulging muscles of his arms and shoulders. Skimming across his chest and down to his rippling abdomen. Mikah held her arms open to him.
Slowly, Jace climbed over her and lowered himself on top of her. Heart pounding furiously, she closed her eyes, savoring the moment when flesh met flesh. With each touch of her soft curves meeting his hard planes, her passion rose, and she knew he matched that passion when his arms began to shake. Still he brushed his taut body against hers, resisting when Mikah urged him soundlessly to bury himself within her welcoming depths. Their lips met and Mikah lifted her body, wrapping her limbs around him, pulling him down. Her nails scored lightly down his back and over his buttocks, but still Jace would not give in.
He bent his head, taking her swollen nipple between his lips once again and suckling until she cried out. “Please,” she whispered as her calf crept up to the small of his back. “I want you.”
Lifting his head, he looked down at her. His beautiful face was taut with desire as Jace lowered himself down onto one elbow, sweeping his free hand down her body from shoulder to breast to belly and to hip. Down her thigh and back up between them, until he reached her core. She was so ready for him, desperate for him. Her hips lifted, begging him to continue, begging him for more. “Now. Don’t wait.”
“You are forever impatient.”
“And you are forever tormenting.”
With a chuckle, Jace shifted and her legs lifted higher. Unable to deny her any longer, he drove into her. His guttural groan of satisfaction was drowned out by her cry of delight. Fireworks burst before their eyes, exploding around them, and they froze as light, red and blue, spilled across them. Their heads turned toward the big windows as more fireworks exploded in the sky. “Happy New Year,” Mikah whispered, reaching up to caress his cheek.
“Happy New Year, my love,” he grinned as the fiery bursts continued. Retreating from her body, he plunged again, driving even deeper. Fervently, he drove into her again and again, using the movement of his entire body against hers to push her higher, take her to the edge of paradise.
Mikah cried out, her body pulsating around Jace, and her release gripped her as lights flashed and rockets burst, her body exploding as if they were all inside of her. Jace drove into her one last time, holding her tightly against him as he joined her ecstasy with a long moan. “Yes!” she cried out in rapture as his hips thrust. “Yes, Ian, yes!”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Jace lay pantin
g, his face buried in Mikah’s shoulder, stunned by the intensity of his release and by the joy they had found together. His heart was pounding furiously, and he felt hers doing the same, the rhythms becoming one. One.
Bloody hell.
He lifted his head. “Look at me,” he panted. “Mikah.”
She opened her eyes, “Ian.” Her fingers trailed lazily up his back.
“Nay, my love. Look at me.” He waited. “Say my name.”
“Ia …” She stopped before the word was complete and corrected herself. “Jace.”
With a grunt, Jace rolled off of her onto his back to stare at the ceiling with one arm behind his head.
“Jace?” Mikah said uncertainly, pushing up onto one elbow so that she could look down at him, her lovely eyes filled with worry. Her tousled blond hair tumbled around them and Jace couldn’t resist reaching up to twine a lock around his finger.
He smiled ruefully. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would matter. I know Hero is in your soul. I know she is there, just as Ian is in me. When you look at me, I know you see him. It’s what I wanted you to see because I was him and in many ways I still am.” He brushed his knuckles down her cheek, glorying in the soft texture he had once thought he would never feel again. “I realize that I have known about you longer than you have known about me. I’ve had a chance already to wrap my head around this, but I don’t want you looking at me and seeing another man.”
“Are you saying that you are jealous of yourself?” Mikah asked with a disbelieving grin. “Just moments ago you were trying to convince me that you are Ian.”
Jace raised a brow at that. She had him there. “Are you Mikah or are you Hero?”
“I am both. I’ve officially surrendered to the madness, and you have no one but yourself to blame,” Mikah said, running a palm up his chest, and Jace felt his arousal, so recently satisfied, stir once again. “As you said, the memories aren’t hers or mine. They are ours. Didn’t you say that?”
“Aye, but …”
“But you can’t stand hearing a woman say another man’s name?” she asked. “Even if it’s kind of your own as well?”
“Perhaps.”
Mikah couldn’t help but laugh. She leaned forward, her breasts brushing against his chest as she whispered in his ear, “Maybe you’ll just have to win me away from him.”
“That’s not amusing,” he growled, running a hand over her bare thigh. “I want you to look at me and think Jace, not Ian. I cannot believe it matters when I have already called you Hero several times tonight.”
“It’s your male ego talking.”
Jace snorted.
“We wouldn’t be here without Ian,” Mikah reminded him gently, reaching out to run her fingers down his cheek. “You said so yourself. It was becoming them that brought us together now. What you want will come in time, I’m sure, when we have new memories that are even better than those. Memories like this.”
“Mikah,” he groaned as she climbed over him until she was straddling his hips.
Mikah looked down at Jace, his handsome face so familiar yet new. He wasn’t exactly the same as Ian. Jace was older, and his face and body showed the evidence of a life spent much differently. There was a scar at his temple that Ian didn’t have, and his body was harder. The laugh lines were still evident, but perhaps Ian had smiled more easily. She traced a finger across his forehead and his thick brow.
“I could not love you without having loved him first, you know.”
“And do you love me?” he asked, his dark eyes intent. His fingers curled into her thighs.
The answer mattered as much to him as it did to her. Perhaps more. Jace had chased her across continents. Faith had always been his before, and she didn’t want him to lose that now. Not when hers was rising to meet his. Heart pounding, Mikah spoke the simple truth: “I always have.”
With a groan, Jace lifted his head and drew her down for a brief but passionate kiss. “I was lost without you. Miserable. I never want to feel that way again.”
“Neither do I.”
“Ooh, you’re the best friend that I ever had, I’ve been with you such a long time
You’re my sunshine and I …” Freddy Mercury’s voice crooned and Mikah leaned over the side of the bed to pull her phone out of her purse. She sat up again, sweeping her hair to the side as she answered chidingly, “Really? You’re calling now?”
She listened, her eyes locking with Jace’s and lighting with humor. He was toying with her hair impatiently. “Why yes, Kris, that’s exactly what I’m doing. If you knew that, why did you call?”
Jace grinned and ran his hands up Mikah’s thighs.
“Yes, it’s very nice … You’re killing me, really.”
His hand went high enough to make her gasp.
“What?” Mikah frowned suddenly, her hand slapping down over Jace’s, bringing him to a halt. “Are you kidding me? Why would you do that?”
Jace frowned as well.
“Well, thanks a lot, Kris!” she said sarcastically, climbing off Jace before she found a robe and shrugged it on.
“What is it?” he asked, concern written plainly on his face, but Mikah only rolled her eyes.
“You should have known better,” she went on, indignantly. “Yes, I know you talk to them every New Year, but did you have to tell them? Slipped out? You are the worst friend ever!”
Mikah shook her head, her vivid eyes locking with Jace’s. He could see something there beyond the irritation. Panic?
“How long do I have?” she asked and her eyes widened. “Ugh, I hate you!”
Jace could hear Kris’s protest even from a distance. “Fine! I love you but you owe me big … Yes, you better get over here and help save my ass! Fine. Bye.”
Mikah hung up the phone and gripped it tightly as she dropped down on the edge of the bed, staring at Jace. “I so hate to do this to you, Jace.”
“What is it?”
“My parents are coming.”
“Beg pardon?” he asked with a blink. While the idea was unexpected, it certainly wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
“Kris’s parents call him every New Year’s Eve at midnight … silly, I know. My parents do it, too.” Mikah paused and stared down at her phone with a frown. “They didn’t tonight, and I guess I know why. Kris told his parents about you and they were out with mine, so I suppose they told them and they’re not even bothering to call …”
“Mikah, you’re rambling.”
“Yes, I do that when I’m nervous, you know.” She ran a hand through her hair and stood, trying to tug the bedclothes back into order. “Get up and get dressed, please. Quickly. They were in town for the Harley party, so we have only about fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes tops.”
“Do you expect me to run?” he asked with a smile.
“I want to. Why wouldn’t you?” she asked, dropping her robe. Her slender nudity was his for only a moment longer before she yanked on a sweatshirt that she just as quickly discarded. Instead she pulled on the same dress she had been wearing.
“I’d love to meet them,” he said, but Mikah answered that with high keening. The sound was one of utter disbelief.
“Mikah, I am an earl. A captain in the Queen’s Army Air Corps,” he said with some hauteur, though he did rise and pull on his trousers. “I’m sure I can handle your mother and father.”
The half laugh, half whimper sounded again as she straightened her dress and hair and returned her frantic attention to the bed. “Are you kidding? You want to try explaining this to them? I haven’t had a boyfriend in years, a single date in months, and all of a sudden a man like you shows up and is in my bed in minutes? They’ll grill you up and down. They’ll want to know where we met, when we met, how much you make.”
Her parents had been wonderful over the past couple of months, but they worried as parents did. Her father, especially, knew that there was something deeper going on, though Mikah hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell him everything. Her qu
estion on the plane had related to him much of what had been left unsaid. He would want answers. Demand them. What could she say?
“I don’t even know your birthday.”
“March tenth. I will be thirty-four.” Jace buttoned his shirt slowly as he watched her fidget with the covers, torn between amusement and concern. “I always thought you were very calm in a crisis before.”
“Yea, well, this dad isn’t quite as easygoing as the last one,” she said flippantly, twitching at the covers once more. “And now I have four older brothers to boot.”
Ahh, that was it then. She was nervous about how he would be accepted by her parents.
“Mikah,” he said softly, his brogue a subtle purr. “Look at me.”
She did, her eyes a little wild, and Jace smiled, reaching for her hand and drawing her close. He stroked his knuckles down her cheek, and the tension escaped her with a single sigh. Mikah softened against him. Trusting. Jace swore then and determined never to let that faith be misplaced. “I will handle it, I promise.”
“How?” she asked, loving the feel of his strong hand diving into the hair at the base of her neck and gently massaging the muscles there. Of their own accord, her arms slipped around his waist, the urgency of her situation forgotten with just a touch.
“I will simply tell them the truth,” Jace said softly as he cradled her head in hands, his dark eyes holding hers with the emotion that shone so clearly. “I will tell them that I fell in love with their bonny daughter the moment I first laid eyes on her. That she holds my heart undeniably and I would conquer time itself to keep her.”
Emotion seized Mikah’s heart at his tender words. It was a powerful love, a meeting of souls that had always been. It could conquer anything, even a father’s fierce protection. “That might just work.”
Jace smiled at that, resting his forehead against hers. “Mikah, my fair Hero, fate has played us cruelly but we have another chance that I won’t let slip away. You are mine.”
Mikah smiled at that, offering with conviction, “Yes, I am.”
My Heart's in the Highlands Page 31
