Highlander in Her Dreams

by Allie Mackay

  To her dismay, his arched brow and the heated look he pinned on her indicated she just might.

  “So, will you say the words? Tell me true what you remember of our dreams?” He smoothed her hair back from her face, his touch sending a cascade of pleasure through her.

  Pleasure so sweet, each shivery wave of tingles put a major dent in her jitters.

  She clamped her lips together, not quite ready to admit it.

  He angled his head. “Come, lass, I already know you to be a bold-hearted maid.”

  Kira glanced aside. If she looked at him, she’d be a goner. He was that intoxicating.

  “Well?” He lifted a handful of her hair, letting the strands glide over his fingers.

  Unnerved, she jerked her head back around. “There are no wells about it. No wondering, either. You know what I remember. Every bit of it, I’m sure!”

  To her annoyance, he smiled.

  Another of those conquering alpha-male hero smiles.

  “O-o-oh, I believe I know well enough,” he admitted, his smooth, whisky-rich burr making it all the more difficult not to throw her arms around his neck and cling to him.

  He was, after all, a very clingable man.

  So curl-her-toes-clingable that she slipped out of his arms before she made a spectacle of herself. Much better to give herself a little space and do some pacing.

  Besides, it wasn’t every day she got to walk on medieval floor rushes. Not knowing how long she would remain in his time, she dug one toe into the thick layer of fragrant meadowsweet or whatever such herb-strewn rushes were called, then took care to step beyond his reach.

  “You canna deny it, lass. Wearing a track in my floor willna change anything.” He folded his arms, watching her. His voice poured over and into her, the beauty of it making the impossible so incredibly real.

  “I know that,” she said, pacing anyway. “But moving around helps.”

  And she definitely needed help. Never would she have believed such a thing could happen.

  A single fleeting glimpse…oh yes.

  But never this.

  She slid another glance at him, half expecting him to be gone, but he hadn’t budged. He was still there. Bold as day and looking more fiercely handsome than the hottest hero she’d ever seen on the cover of a historical romance novel. Above all, he seemed so amazingly real, and she just couldn’t wrap her mind around that.

  Her Aidan. His Castle Wrath no longer a confused tumble of stones and broken walls, but a thriving, living place where he reigned supreme and had just tossed her over his shoulder and carried her up winding castle steps and into his bedchamber. An act that made the centuries between them as meaningless as a dust mote.

  Her throat began to thicken and she swallowed. Never had she felt so overwhelmed.

  She stopped her pacing to look at him. “You looked angry in the hall. As if you weren’t pleased that I—”

  “Angry?” His dark brows arced upward. “Precious lass, I was furious, but no’ at you. I was wroth with my men and their foolery. What might have happened had Tavish not crossed the bailey when he did.”

  He stepped close to caress her face. “Ach, sweetness, you thought wrong.” He smoothed his thumb over her lips. “Seeing you appear was like having the sun and the stars burst into my hall. I’ve burned for you, searching nightly. Waiting, always waiting, and ne’er giving up hope.”

  Kira’s breath caught, something inside her stirring as never before.

  Making her bold.

  “Hoping what? That I would appear?” She looked up at him, his touch melting her. Heating her. Even the room’s chill seemed less biting. In fact, it was almost beginning to feel stuffy. Sure of it, she slipped out of her heavy waxed jacket and let it drop onto the discarded plaid.

  He looked at the jacket, then at her. “O-o-oh, lass.” His eyes darkened. “You ought not ask what I hoped for—not if hearing the answer will frighten you.”

  “I’m not frightened.” She flipped back her hair and assumed her most unfrightened expression. “I…only need time to adjust.”

  His expression told her he wasn’t buying her denial.

  Would a kiss put you at ease?

  Kira blinked, not sure she’d heard the softly spoken words.

  “A kiss?” She spoke quickly before her courage fizzled.

  He nodded.

  “I don’t think a kiss is a good idea just now.”

  In fact, she knew it wasn’t. Just his thumb sliding back and forth across her lips had her hormones on fire. Each word he spoke in that deep, smooth-as-sin burr took her breath and made her fear she might even drown in its richness. A kiss would be the end of her.

  “No kisses,” she emphasized, shaking her head.

  “Ach, lass, dinna think it willna cost me, too,” he purred, pure male possessiveness rolling off him. “If I kissed you but once, I’d burn to kiss you for hours. Even days. But know this”—he paused to glide his knuckles down the side of her face—“I mean to court you properly, as is fitting. For the now, I’ll only kiss you. Naught else until you’re ready.”

  Kira almost choked.

  She glanced aside, not wanting him to see how very ready she was.

  He captured her chin, forcing her to look at him. “I also mean to chase the worry from your eyes. You ought to know I would ne’er let anyone harm you.”

  Kira’s heart skittered. “It isn’t a person I’m worried about.”

  “Then what?”

  “Something far more impossible than our dreams.”

  He frowned. “It canna be as impossible as you being here.”

  “It has everything to do with me being here.”

  She looked down, searching for words, and ending up plucking at her clothes. The fine weave of her top and the stretch wool of her pants at such odds with his rough Highland garb. Her wristwatch, a gleaming incongruity in his world of rush-strewn floors and smoking torchlights, his massive timber-framed bed and the erotic tapestries covering his walls.

  Tapestries she’d only ever seen on her one long-ago visit to Scotland. Or, more often, in the glossy colored pages of coffee-table books on castles.

  Ancient castles that belonged to a world as distant from hers as the moon.

  She nudged the floor rushes a second time, remembering with a pang the times he’d loved her so fiercely that the power of their joinings ripped away her apartment walls, letting her see through her dreams and into the time and place he called his own.

  This place, where she’d never thought to stand.

  She bit her lip. Any moment she could be whisked away, swept right out of his arms and back to her time. The place she did belong, but that would feel so empty now—now that she had finally felt his arms around her for real.

  However briefly.

  She swallowed and broke away from him, not wanting him to see her concern. But he must have, because he moved with lightning speed, his strong fingers clamping around her arm and yanking her back against him.

  “You needn’t look so troubled, Kee-rah.” His embrace almost crushed her. “Whate’er it is that fashes you has yet to face a MacDonald.”

  She shook her head, about to tell him that all of Clan Donald’s medieval might couldn’t conquer the hands of time, but before she could, his mouth crashed down over hers in a searing, demanding kiss.

  A deep, soul-slaking kiss full of hot breath, sighs, and tangling tongues. A beautiful melding to cross time and space and ignite a man and a woman in a pleasure so exquisite that she would have melted into a puddle on his rushy floor if he hadn’t been squeezing her to him in such a fearsome hold.

  Clutching him just as fiercely, she opened her mouth wider, welcoming the deep thrustings of his tongue. The hot glide of his hands roving up and down her back, exploring all her curves and hollows, the way his skilled fingers sought and held her hips.

  “Och, lass. I knew you were near.” He breathed the words against her lips. “I’ve felt you close for days, looked for you.”
>
  “Yesss…” She moaned, tangling her fingers in his hair, pressing her breasts against him.

  Time stopped, no longer of importance. He tightened his arms around her, his kiss making her forget everything except her hunger. The raging need to be one with him and have him touch and taste her, to forget all caution and just lose herself in the madness of his raw, sensual heat.

  Heat she knew so well and wanted again.

  This time for real.

  She sighed, the heavy silk of his hair spilling through her fingers as he kept kissing her, each delicious swirl of his tongue against hers making her burn.

  Sweet, hot tingles raced across the softness between her thighs, igniting a fire that made her wild. She leaned into him, the feel of his thick, rigid arousal electrifying her. The sexy Gaelic love words he whispered against her throat driving her beyond reason.

  Until one of his roaming hands slid across her wristwatch, his seeking fingers hooking around the elastic metal watchband. His frown returning, he peered at the timepiece, lifting her arm to the light of a softly hissing oil lamp.

  “It’s a watch,” Kira breathed, his scowl making her stomach clench.

  Clench, and growl.

  Loudly.

  After all, she hadn’t eaten since leaving Ravenscraig’s One Cairn Village. Substantial as her full Scottish breakfast had been, she was now so ravenous, she’d gladly devour every crumb of Lindsay’s crushed and crumbling organic chocolate chip cookies.

  Instead, more pressing matters plagued her.

  Namely, Aidan’s furrowed brow as he eyed her bargain-basement imitation of a Swiss masterpiece.

  “Where did you get this?” He fingered the smooth glass of the watch face. “You didn’t wear it in our dreams.”

  “It’s my watch.” Kira glanced at it. “I take it off before I sleep. That’s why you’ve never seen it. It tells the time.”

  He scoffed. “I’m no fool, lass,” he countered, his sexy burr still making her burn, no matter how fiercely he glowered at her watch. “I know it’s a timepiece. My grandfather had one no’ unlike yours. A second-century bronze Roman sundial, small enough to fit in the scrip he wore from his belt.”

  “Scrip?” This time Kira blinked.

  He slanted his mouth over hers in another swift, bruising kiss. “Yon is my scrip.” He broke the kiss to jerk his head toward an iron-studded strongbox at the foot of his bed.

  A rough-leathered sporran rested atop the chest’s domed cover, the sight of it only reminding Kira how far back in time she’d spiraled.

  And of the fine MacDonald sporran she’d hoped to make into a purse.

  Something that would have made a fine gift for Aidan, had it not gone missing when she’d been swept back in time.

  She stared at the scrip for a long moment, then looked down at her watch, not wanting to think about the centuries dividing them.

  Apparently feeling the same, he unlatched the watch with surprising ease and tossed it onto her jacket. “It willna do if my men see you wearing suchlike.” His voice came low and husky, a deep purr that made a little thing like an imitation Swiss watch seem ever so insignificant. “While I might no’ have trouble accepting the Fae can fashion such a timepiece, my men might disagree. To be sure, they’d see it as proof you’re a witch.”

  Kira swallowed, the significance of her watch returning like a fist to the gut.

  “I told you,” she said, amazed by the steadiness of her voice, “I am neither a fairy nor a witch. I’m Kira Bedwell of Aldan, Pennsylvania. I’m a far-seer. A paranormal investigator. And I come from the future. The early twenty-first century, to be exact.”

  He arched one raven brow, clearly not believing her. “Sweetness, I already ken you aren’t of these parts and I’ll personally take down the first man who calls you a witch. But there’s no wrong in being of the Fae. I doubt there’s a Highlander walking who’d deny them, and many are they who’ve even wed with them. We all ken the tales.”

  He pressed two fingers to her lips when she tried to protest. “Be that as it may, I’d warn you not to say aught about them to anyone but me. Above all, dinna mention any tall tales about para-whate’er or the future. If my men heard you speak the like, even I might have difficulty controlling them.”

  “But it’s the truth.” She puffed her bangs off her forehead, the last of her tingles flying out the window. “If you believe in witches and fairies, why can’t you accept someone who can look into the past? Or see ghosts?”

  “I’ve no problem with bogles.” He waved a dismissive hand. “These hills are full of haints. ’Tis this far-seeing and Penn-seal business I’m concerned about.”

  Kira sighed, a hot, tight knot forming at the base of her neck, just between her shoulder blades. “Far-seeing is a gift I have—as do many others. It runs in my family, on my mother’s side, though I’m the first to have it in generations. I only learned I’d inherited it when I saw you years ago, that very first time. Now, I use it to look into haunted sites and legends. Supernatural phenomena. Destiny Magazine employs me and I—”

  “You’re wearing those wretched raiments again.” He stepped back and folded his arms, the medieval laird in him blocking his ears to everything she’d said. “All I care about is how it is I saw you at the top of my stair all those years ago only to have you vanish out of my arms. Then”—his gaze held hers, dark with smoldering passion—“you appear in my dreams, night after night, making me burn for you and no other. And now you’re here.”

  Kira moistened her lips, certain she would moan out loud if he kept that smoldering stare on her.

  “I’ve been trying to tell you. My gift let us see each other on the stair.” She tried not to squirm. “How can I explain it to you? I’m able to see things…to look into the distant past. I don’t know how the dreams worked. Or why I’m here now. I never really believed in time travel until—”

  “Time travel?”

  She nodded.

  His lips curved into a slow, sensual smile. No, an indulgent smile. The kind that would have been insulting were he not, well, medieval.

  “I think you should sleep,” he announced suddenly, clearly tired of their conversation. “Aye, a good long sleep will serve you well.”

  Definitely meaning it, he scooped her into his arms and carried her across the room, lowering her onto the soft fur coverings of his bed. “A good sleep without those raiments. Ne’er have I cared for the like, and you canna wear them here.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be around long enough for them to bother anyone.”

  He cocked a brow. “Och, lass, you’ll no’ be going anywhere,” he said, looking sure of it. “I’ll no’ allow it.”

  Kira frowned at him. “I don’t think that would matter much. Not against Father Time.”

  “As for your raiments,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken, “they bother me enough to twist my head in knots. I’ll no’ have my men going gog-eyed o’er them.”

  He reached to finger the button above her zipper, his brows snapping together when the thing popped off and arced through the air.

  “By the Rood!” He jerked his hand back, staring first at the suicidal button, resting so innocently on the floor rushes, then at the metal teeth of her zipper.

  Kira cringed. She could well imagine what it must look like to him.

  “It’s just a zipper,” she said, the strange word making his head throb even more.

  She clasped her hand over it and scooted away from him across the bed. Almost as if she feared he’d harm the thing. Aidan almost snorted, and would have, had the wee disk flying off her hose not rattled him to the core. Ne’er had he seen the like. He frowned and rammed a hand through his hair. Och, nay, by a thousand red-tailed devils, he wasn’t about to touch the zip-her.

  Nor would it do to let her see how much her outlandish garb unsettled him.

  He was, after all, a man with a reputation to uphold. A brave-hearted chieftain who’d faced death on the battlefield more times than he
could count. And he’d defy the flames of Hades and all its winged demons to keep this woman safe, flying disks and zip-hers or nay. So he attempted his most worldly pose, standing as tall as only a MacDonald could, his hands clasped loosely behind his back.

  “Have done with these garments and sleep,” he ordered, the commanding tone a wee nod to his fierce Highland pride. “I’ll keep my back turned the while, then take my own rest in yon chair.” He indicated his resting chair, a great oaken monstrosity beside the hearth fire.

  Not that he meant to sleep this night.

  O-o-oh, no.

  This night, at least, he’d keep a sharp eye on her. Anything else struck him as extremely unwise. Perhaps he’d even shove his strongbox in front of the door later. Every female he knew could unbolt a drawbar without difficulty, but he knew nary a one who would be able to budge his heavy iron-banded coffer.

  Feeling better already, he stretched his hands to the fire, warming them. Behind him, he could hear her scrambling out of her clothes, then settling beneath his covers. O-o-oh, how he ached to join her there—but such pleasures would come soon enough.

  Perhaps even sooner than was wise if the twitchings in his tender parts were any indication.

  Trying his best to ignore them, he stood unmoving, waiting until he was sure she slept before he moved to his chair. A chair that suddenly struck him as uncomfortable as the stirring at his loins. Why he’d e’er deemed it his resting chair he didn’t know.

  How he expected to sleep in it was well beyond him.

  Scowling once more, he leaned his head back against the hard, cold wood and threw a spare plaid over his knees. Only then, safely hidden from possibly prying glances, did he ease one hand beneath the plaid and squeeze a certain part of himself until his eyes watered and all desire left him.

  A drastic measure he suspected he might have to employ more than once before the night was over.

  Sleep was certainly out of the question.

  Especially since the fool night wind was picking up, its wretched blasts rattling the window shutters. A persistent, ongoing racket, the likes of which would’ve kept a deaf man from a good night’s slumber.