Beyond the Highland Myst

by Highlander 01-08

  He told her how he'd grown light-headed and weary while racing toward the loch and that he now believed he'd somehow been drugged. He told her how he'd collapsed just outside the forest on the banks of the loch, how his limbs had locked, his eyes had closed as if weighted by heavy gold coins. He told her he'd felt his armor and weapons being removed, then symbols being painted on his chest, then felt nothing more until she'd wakened him.

  Then he told her of his family, of his brilliant and bristly father, of their beloved housekeeper and substitute mother, Nell. He told her of his young priest, whose nagging, fortune-telling mother was wont to chase him ceaselessly about the estate trying to get a look at his palm.

  He forgot his sorrow for a time and regaled her with tales of his childhood with Dageus. When he spoke of his family, her skeptical gaze had softened a bit, and she'd listened with marked fascination, laughing over the antics of Drustan and his brother, smiling gently over the ongoing sparring between Silvan and Nell. He deduced from her wistful expression that, even when her family had been alive, there'd not been much laughter and loving in her life.

  Have you no brothers and sisters, lass? he'd asked.

  She'd shaken her head. My mother had fertility problems and had me late in life. After she had me, the doctors said she couldn't have any more.

  Why have you not wed and had bairn of your own?

  She'd shifted and averted her gaze. I never found the right man.

  Nay, she'd not had much pleasure in her life, and he'd like the chance to change that. He'd like to make her eyes sparkle with happiness.

  He wanted Gwen Cassidy. He wanted to be her "right man." The mere scent of her as she walked by brought every inch of him to attention. He wanted her to become so familiar with his body and the pleasure he could give her with it that a simple glance would make her limp with desire. He wanted to pass a fortnight, uninterrupted, in his bedchamber, exploring her hidden passion, unleashing the eroticism that simmered just beneath her surface.

  But it might never come to pass, because once he performed the ritual and she discovered what he was, and what he'd done to her, she would have every reason to despise him.

  Still, he had no other choice.

  Casting a worried glance at the arc of the moon against the black sky, he inhaled deeply, greedily, of the sweet Highland night air. The time was nearly upon them.

  "Let it rest, Gwen," he called. He was moved that she refused to give up. Mad though she might think him, she was still digging about in the ruins. "Come join me in the stones," he beckoned. He wanted to spend what might be his last hour with her, close to the fire, holding her in his arms. His druthers were to strip off her clothes and bury himself inside her, brand himself into her memory with what time he had left, but that seemed as likely as the tablets suddenly manifesting themselves in his hands.

  "But we haven't found the tablets." She turned toward him, smudging dirt on her cheek when she pushed back her hair.

  "'Tis too late now, lass. The time is nearly upon us, and that tube of light"—he gestured at her flashlight—"won't help us see what isn't there to be found. 'Twas a vain and foolish hope that they might have survived intact on the estate. If we haven't found them yet, the next hour will accomplish naught. Come. Spend it with me." He held out his arms.

  She'd slept within them last night, and he'd awakened to the lovely sight of her face, trusting and innocent in repose. He'd kissed her full, lush lips, and when she'd awakened, sleep-flushed, with crease marks on her cheek from being pressed to his wrinkled T-shirt, he'd felt a rush of tenderness he'd not felt for a woman before. Lust, ever at a boil within him when she was near, had simmered into a more intense, complexly layered feeling, and he'd recognized that given time he could fall deeply in love with her. Not merely ache to keep her in bed without respite but develop a real and lasting emotion, equal parts passion, respect, and appreciation, the kind that bound a man and a woman together for life. She was everything he wanted in a woman.

  Gwen trudged into the circle, clearly reluctant to give up when there was even one stone unturned, another trait he admired in her.

  "Why won't you tell me what you plan to do?" All day she'd tried to coax it out of him, but he'd refused to tell her anything more than that they were looking for seven stone tablets inscribed with symbols.

  "I said I'd give you proof, and I will." A stunning, irrevocable amount of proof.

  The hours had dragged on as they searched, tossing rocks and rubble, and his hope had steadily faded with each broken chip of pottery, each timeworn memento of his dead clan.

  At one point futility had nearly overwhelmed him, and he'd sent her down to the village with a list of items to pick up so he would have time to think, undistracted. During her absence, he'd meditated upon the symbols, working through complex calculations, and derived his best guess at the last three—the guess that would be put to the test in less than one hour. He was aiming for two weeks after his brother's death, plus one day. He was almost certain they were correct and believed there was only a minute chance the worst would happen.

  And if the worst happened, he had prepared her well and need only remind her what to say and do to restore complete, merged memory to the past version of himself. 'Twas why he'd bid her memorize the spell.

  She'd picked up several jugs of water, along with flashlights, coffee, and food, and now sat beside him near the fire, cross-legged, cleaning her hands with dampened towels, emitting little sighs of pleasure as she scrubbed at her face with tiny pads from her pack.

  While she freshened up, he broke open the stones he'd collected during their hike. Inside each was a core of brilliant dust, which he scraped carefully into a tin and blended with water to form a thick paste.

  "Paint rocks," she said, intrigued enough to pause in her ablutions. She'd never seen one but knew the ancients had used them to paint with. They were small and craggy, and deep in the center a dust formed over time that made, brilliant colors when mixed with water.

  "Aye,'tis what we call them as well," he said, rising to his feet.

  Gwen watched as he moved to one of the megaliths and, after a moment's hesitation, began etching a complex design of formulas and symbols. She narrowed her eyes, studying it. Parts of it seemed somehow familiar yet alien, a perverted mathematical equation that danced just out of her reach, and there was little that did that to her.

  A beat of nervous apprehension thudded in her chest, and she watched intently as he moved to the next stone, then the third and the fourth. On each of the stones he etched a different series of numbers and symbols upon their inner faces, pausing occasionally to glance up at the stars.

  The autumnal equinox, she reflected, was the time when the sun crossed the planes of the earth's equator, making night and day of approximately equal length all over the earth. Researchers had long argued over the precise use of the standing stones. Was she about to find out their real purpose?

  She eyed the megaliths and pondered what she knew about archaeoastronomy. When he finished sketching upon the thirteenth and final stone, her breath caught in her throat. Although she recognized only parts of it, he'd dearly stroked the symbol for infinity:

  ∞

  beneath it. The lemniscate. The Mobius strip. Apeiron. What knowledge did he have of it? She scanned the thirteen stones and felt a peculiar itchy sensation in her mind, as if an epiphany was trying to burrow into her overcrowded brain.

  Watching him, she was struck by a stunning possibility. Was it possible that he was smarter than she was? Was that his madness?

  Gorgeous and smart? Be still, my beating heart…

  As he turned away from the last stone, she shivered. Physically, he was irresistible. He was wearing his original costume of plaid and armor again, having shed "such trews that doona let a man hang properly and an inar that canna conceal an oxter knife" as soon as he'd awakened that morning. Hang properly, indeed, she thought, gaze skipping over his kilt, mouth going dry as she imagined what was hangin
g beneath it. Was he in that seemingly permanent state of semi-arousal? She'd like to kiss him until there was nothing "semi" about it…

  With effort, she dragged her gaze to his face. His sleek hair was a wild fall about his shoulders. He was the most intense, exciting, and erotic man she'd ever met.

  When she was around Drustan MacKeltar, inexplicable things happened to her. When she looked at him, his powerful body, his chiseled jaw, the flashing eyes and sensual mouth, she heard Pan's distant pipes and suffered an irresistible compulsion to tithe to Dionysus, the ancient god of wine and orgy. The tune was seductive, urging her to cast aside restraint, don her crimson kitten thong, and dance barefoot for a dark forbidding man who claimed he was a sixteenth-century laird.

  He glanced back at her, and their gazes collided. She felt like a time bomb ready to explode, ticking, ticking.

  Her face must have betrayed her feelings, because he inhaled sharply. His nostrils flared, his eyes narrowed, and he went quiet, with the perfect stillness of a mountain lion before hurling itself at its prey.

  She swallowed. "What are you doing with those stones?" she forced herself to ask, flustered by the intensity of what she was feeling. "Don't you think it's time you tell me?"

  "I have told you all I can." His eyes were cool slate, the crystalline light that usually danced within them subdued.

  "You don't trust me. After all I've done to help, you still don't trust me." She didn't try to conceal that it hurt her feelings.

  "Och, lass, doona be thinking such. 'Tis merely that some things are… forbidden." Not really, he amended silently, but he simply couldn't risk revealing his plans yet, lest she abandon him.

  "Bullshit," she said, impatient with his evasions. "If you trust me, nothing is forbidden."

  "I do trust you, wee lass. I am trusting you far more than you know." With my life, possibly even with my clan's very existence…

  "How am I supposed to believe in you, when you won't confide in me?"

  "Ever the doubter, are you not, Gwen?" he chided. "Kiss me, before I sketch the final symbols. For bonny fortune," he urged. Shards of crystal glittered in his eyes, reminding her that although sometimes he banked his passionate nature, it was always simmering just beneath the surface.

  Gwen started to speak, but he laid a finger to her lips.

  "Please, lass, just kiss me. No more words. There have been enough of them between us." He paused before adding quietly, "If you have aught to say to me, let your heart speak now."

  She took a deep breath.

  There was no question what her heart was saying. Earlier that afternoon, when she'd gone down to the village, she'd dug her crimson thong out of her pack and, after washing up, had put it on. Then she'd peeled off her nicotine patch, preferring outright withdrawal to having to explain its presence on her body. She was not going to make love for the first time with a patch on. Besides, once she'd made the decision, a remarkable calm had settled over her.

  She knew what she was going to do.

  Truth be told, she'd probably known the moment he'd opened his eyes that she was going to give him her virginity. The past two days had been nothing more than her way of growing accustomed to the thought, so she would be less apprehensive when she finally did it.

  She wasn't simply attracted to him, she was drawn to him on every level—mentally, emotionally, and physically.

  She wanted him in a way that had no rhyme or reason. She felt things when he spoke to her and touched her that originated from a unique place inside her. It no longer mattered to her that he might be mentally unbalanced. During the passage of the day, digging beside him in the ruins of the castle while he talked of the various members of his clan, she'd realized that she was going to stick by him until he worked out whatever reality problem he was having. She liked him. She wanted to know more about him. She'd begun to respect him, despite his delusions. If she had to check him into a hospital, hold his hand, and sit by his side until he recovered, she was going to do it. If she had to walk around Scotland for months clutching a photograph of him until she found someone who could identify him and shed light upon his condition, she was going to do it.

  She tucked her bangs behind her ear and looked at him levelly. Her voice hardly shook when she said, "Make love to me, Drustan."

  Mad or not, she wanted him to be her first lover, here and now, on top of a mountain in the Highlands, beneath a million stars, encircled by ancient stones. Perhaps making love had some healing power. God knew, she probably needed some healing too.

  His eyes flared and he went perfectly still. "I did hear that, did I not?" he said carefully. "You did say what I think you said? Or have I truly gone as mad as you accuse me of being?"

  "Make love to me," she repeated quietly. There was no tremor in her voice the second time.

  His silver eyes glittered. "Lass, you honor me." When he opened his arms, she leaped at him, and he swung her effortlessly into his embrace, pulling her legs around his waist. They both gasped at the intensity of the contact. A current of desire sizzled between them, zapping them both to the core. With powerful strides, he backed her to the perimeter of the stones until her spine rested against one of the megaliths. He lowered his head and kissed her, grinding his hips against her, and when she cried out, he caught it on his tongue.

  "I've wanted you since the moment I saw you," he said roughly.

  "Me too," she confessed, with a breathless laugh.

  "Och, lass, why dinna you tell me?" he asked, kissing her jaw, her cheeks, her nose and lashes, cradling her face with his hands. "Why did you resist? Three days we could hae passed doin' this," he said, his burr thickened by desire.

  "Not if we wanted to get to your stones," she panted, wondering why he couldn't just shut up and kiss her hard on the mouth. "Shut up and kiss me," she said.

  He laughed and kissed her so hard that it unleashed ferocity in her tiny frame. She'd seen movies where people made love slowly, sinuously wrapping around each other, but theirs was a mating of wildness. Given their propensity to argue heatedly, she hadn't expected their sex to be anything less intense. She couldn't get enough of him, she wanted more tongue and more hands and more of his muscular ass. She wanted him naked against her body. Wanted to feel him pounding into her. She'd waited all her life for this, and she was ready. Just looking at him made her wet.

  He tugged her shirt from her shorts and fumbled with her fly, kissing her urgently all the while. "Your trews, lass, get them off," he said roughly.

  "I can't. My legs are wrapped around you," she mumbled. "And ow. Your knife is poking my breast."

  "Mmm, sorry." He nipped her lower lip and sucked it hard. "I must put you down, lass, to get you naked. And'tis needin' you naked I am."

  But he didn't make any move to lower her, hostage to her luscious mouth nibbling at him, her wee hands clawing at his back.

  "So put me down, MacKeltar," she panted a few minutes later against his mouth, desperate to feel his skin against hers. "I have too many clothes on!"

  "I'm trying," he said, trailing kisses down her neck and scraping his velvety tongue back up, only to arrive at her lips again, a position he could hardly fail to take full advantage of.

  "Don't put me down," she whimpered when he stopped kissing her. Her lips felt naked and cold without him, her body bereft.

  The minute her toes touched the ground, she reached impatiently for his clothing, but he dived for her shorts at the same moment, cursing when he bumped his jaw on her head and she got tangled up in his hair.

  She fumbled with his hair, then found her way to the leather bands across his chest but was unable to fathom how he'd fastened them. Brushing her hands aside, he tugged her shirt over her head, than stared at her bra. He touched the lacy fabric with fascination. "Lass, show me your breasts. Be quit of this thing, lest I tear it to shreds in my haste."

  She popped the front clasp swiftly and slipped it off. The cool air teased her nipples into puckered crests, and he drew a sharp inhalation of b
reath. For a moment, he didn't seem to be able to move, just stood and stared.

  "You have splendid breasts, lass," he purred, cupping the plump mounds. "Splendid," he repeated stupidly, and she almost laughed. Men loved breasts—any shape or form, they just loved them.

  And he was certainly loving hers. He palmed them, lifting and squeezing, and with a husky groan he buried his face in her breasts, rubbing back and forth before drawing a nipple deep into his mouth.

  Gwen panted softly when he scattered scorching kisses over her breasts. She twisted and turned in his arms, wanting his mouth there… and there… and there, telling him with her body just how and where she needed him. His fingers worked at her shorts, with little success, and grunting his frustration he tugged at her zipper but succeeded only in jamming it off the track. Encountering similar resistance with his costume, she moaned frantically. She wanted skin against skin; she needed it—every last inch, pressed slick and intimate.

  "Oh, just do your own and I'll do mine," she snapped, impeded desire making her downright testy. She needed him naked now.

  He looked as relieved as she felt by the efficient solution, and as she tugged and twisted at her zipper, then kicked off her shorts, he removed his plaid, tossing knives left and right, doffing his ax and sword and finally shucking his leather armor. He stood up straight, tossing his long dark hair over his shoulders, and looked at her.

  "Christ, MacKeltar," Gwen breathed, stunned. Six and a half feet of sculpted naked warrior stood before her, unselfconscious in his nudity. Proud, in fact, and well he should be. He was raw and male and powerful beyond compare, and it had certainly not been a sock or twenty in his jeans. He was breathtaking, and he had a remarkable amount of mass that she had not been factoring into her equation of why she was orbiting him, but she certainly would be in the future. It explained a great deal.