“Oomph!” Jessi grunted, as his shoulder made contact with her stomach.
Her feet left the ground, her world tilted precariously, and the next thing she knew, she was hanging upside down over his shoulder.
One of his muscle-bound arms banded her waist, pinning her to his shoulder. The other hand splayed firmly on her bottom.
She parted her lips and was just about to let loose a screech that would do a banshee proud, when his hand moved.
Possessively. Intimately. Dipping right between her legs.
He pressed strong fingers against the opening of her vulva through her jeans, his thumb expertly finding her clitoris at the same time.
Fire exploded red-hot inside her. Her mouth, open on an intended shriek of rage, released a soft, stunned exhalation of air instead.
His big warm hand rested there a moment, applying a firm but gentle, relentless pressure. Enough to bring every nerve ending brutally to life and awaken an aching hunger deep within her womb.
He said nothing. She said nothing, either, mostly because, at the moment, all she could think of to say was: Excuse me, but your hand seems to have slipped between my legs and if you’ll move it just the tiniest bit, I bet I could come.
His hand was gone.
It returned, lower, banding her to him by the backs of her knees.
Reason returned also, accompanied by fury. The sad part was that what he’d just done had made her so instantly, incredibly horny that she wasn’t sure if she was more furious at him for doing it in the first place, or for stopping when he had.
And that made her even more furious still.
“Put me down,” she managed to hiss. So maybe it came out a bit more breathy than sibilant, but it was the best she could do upside down with her boobs in her face.
“Haud yer wheesht, woman.”
“Hold my what?”
“It means ‘hush,’ Jessica. Just hush. Would it kill you to hush?”
“Probably,” she snapped. “Put me down. I can walk.”
“Nay. I’ve no desire for you to be master of your destiny in any manner, however small. You are too unpredictable.”
“I’m unpredictable?”
“Aye.”
She was speechless a moment. Then she pinched his butt, hard.
“Ow!” He smacked her bottom.
“Ow!” she yelped.
“Behave,” he growled. “Tit for tat, lass. Remember that.” The arm banding her waist relaxed, he repositioned her on his shoulder, then tightened his grip again, making her realize she probably couldn’t get off his shoulder if her life depended on it. That single muscle-bound arm was as unyielding as reinforced steel.
The abruptness with which he shifted her jostled her backpack, still looped over her shoulders. Crammed with purse, laptop, assorted notepads, pens, pencils, and a four-inch-thick Ancient Civilizations textbook, it yielded to gravity, slid down, and thumped her in the back of the head.
Hard.
“Ow!” she yelled again. “Shit! Put me down this instant, you brute!”
“Unbelievable,” she thought she heard him mutter.
“Oh—you think so?” she snarled. “I’m the one flung over a primate’s shoulder. You’re the primate. I’m the one entitled to be saying ‘unbelievable.’ Not you.”
“Unbelievable,” he muttered again. He spun about so quickly that she nearly puked the five extra cups of coffee she hadn’t really wanted but had drunk anyway in the café earlier, all over that magnificent butt she’d just pinched, and yes, like his arm, the man had buns of steel.
Plucking up the massive mirror, he tucked it beneath the arm he’d freed by shifting her, and turned for the door. Woman on one side, artifact on the other. Not even straining.
And she knew how heavy that mirror was. The two deliverymen had wrestled with its weight.
Stalking out into the corridor, he demanded, “Which way?”
She raised her head for as much clearance as she could gain with thirty-eight pounds of backpack—she’d weighed it once so she could factor the toting about of it into her daily caloric intake; it had earned her two Krispy Kremes every other morning—resting against her skull. “Why should I tell you?” she said snottily.
He bit her hip.
“Left,” she gritted.
He turned left and took off at a trot.
The strain on her neck was too much. She put her head back down. Her breasts were in her face and, as she bounced against his back with each step he took, her backpack thunked her steadily in the back of the head. At least her face was cushioned against the repeated blows. She wasn’t getting her nose hammered rat-a-tat-tat into his spine. Thank God for small blessings. Or two large ones, as the case may be.
“Where are you taking me?” she mumbled against her sweater.
“I am taking you to whatever manner of transportation you have. You are then taking us to procure suitable lodgings.”
“I am?”
“If you wish to live.”
She wished. She mumbled directions to the lot in which her car was parked.
“You’re mumbling, lass.”
She mumbled again.
“What was that?”
She mumbled again.
“Did you just say something about your breasts?” he said warily. A pause, then a reverent “Och, Christ, they’re in your face!” He stopped so abruptly her backpack thumped the back of her head in double time: a soft whump followed by a solid thwack, dazing her.
When she felt his chest shaking, it took her a few moments to identify the motion. He was laughing. The rat-bastard was laughing.
“I so hate you,” she told her breasts. Meaning not them, of course, but him.
As he continued to laugh, the fight went out of her, up in a puff of smoke. She was tired, she was freaked out, and she really just wanted to walk on her own two feet. “Would you please put me down?” she said plaintively.
She suspected he must have felt the diminishing of tension in her muscles, read her body language, and knew, mentally, she’d capitulated.
His laughter subsided. He bent and gently deposited her on her feet. His scotch-gold gaze glittered with amusement and sexual heat he made no effort to disguise. “Better?” He cupped her chin with one big hand, thumb brushing her lower lip.
She twisted her face away. “Better. Come on. Let’s get out of here before someone sees us with the professor’s—”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Jess?” Mark Troudeau barked sharply behind her.
Jessi turned disbelievingly. What—had the mere thought been a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Mark’s office was a few hundred feet down the hall from Professor Keene’s. When she’d passed it earlier, there’d been no lights on. Didn’t he have a life? What was he doing here so late?
Was nothing going to go right anymore?
Great, just great. This was just what she needed: Mark running off to tattle to anyone who would listen that not only had she crossed police lines and gone into the professor’s office, but she’d made off with a priceless, mysterious artifact. If the police did the least bit of checking into things, they would discover that what she’d taken was what the (murdered) deliverymen had delivered to the (murdered) professor.
And she would be oh-so-incriminatingly on the lam, nowhere to be found, last seen in the company of a tall, dark, kilt-clad stranger, “stealing” the fabulously expensive black-market relic that three people had already died over.
Without getting the slightest chance to tell her side of the story and point out that somebody’d tried to murder her too.
As if anyone would believe her anyway.
Shit, shit, shit. When all this was over, she really wanted to be able to finish her degree at the university where she’d begun it, not via correspondence courses from jail. That kind of stuff just didn’t look good on a resumé.
“Oh, for crying out loud, Mark, it’s two in the morning! What are you doing here?”
“I believe I just asked you that.” Close-set brown eyes behind rimless glasses darted from her to the half-naked, towering man toting the mirror, and back to her again.
What could she say? Dredging her mind, she drew an empty net. Try though she might, she couldn’t think of a single excuse for her current circumstances—convincing or otherwise. She would have been grateful even for an absurd one, but apparently her brain was done for the day.
As she stood there, staring at him like the biggest idiot, Cian MacKeltar took care of the problem.
“You will go back in that room from whence you came, and remain in there, silent, until well after we’ve gone. Now.”
Mark turned and cantered dutifully back down the hall toward his office without so much as a neigh of protest.
Wow. Jessi blinked up at Cian MacKeltar.
“Hmm,” he murmured softly, staring after the retreating grad student. “Mayhap ’tis only her.”
“ ‘Her’? Do you mean me? What me?” Jessi said expectantly.
“Puny little man,” he scoffed, as Mark obediently closed the door.
Was that it? Was that why Mark had slunk off—because he was puny and Cian MacKeltar was so big and forbidding?
She tipped her head back, eyeing him. At six and a half feet, and a good two-hundred-plus pounds of pure muscle, he dwarfed people. With those wild dark braids tangling halfway down his back and those wicked red-and-black tattoos licking across his chest, up to the edge of that whisker-shadowed jaw, he looked downright primeval: an ancient, deadly warrior stalking the halls of the university. She supposed his mere appearance might have been enough to make Mark decide he clearly wouldn’t be winning any arguments with this man, so there was little point in beginning any.
How nice it must be to have such an impact on the world! If reincarnation was the way of things, she wanted to come back as Cian MacKeltar. She’d like to be the asshole man, for a change, rather than subject to asshole men’s dictates. And if she were going to be the asshole man, she’d like to do it up right and be the biggest and baddest.
“That was amazing,” she said fervently. “He is such a pain in the butt. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished I could get him to just go away like that. Like he had no choice but to obey me, or something.”
“Come, Jessica.” Cian MacKeltar closed a hand around her upper arm. “We must away ourselves.”
They awayed.
* * *
>
8
An hour later they pulled under the canopy of the Sheraton in downtown Chicago.
Jessi had wanted to go home and get a few things, but Cian MacKeltar had immediately, vehemently vetoed that.
The next assassin could already be awaiting you there, woman, he’d said, and she’d shivered. How creepy to think someone might even now be lurking in her dark apartment, waiting to kill her. How odd to think she couldn’t go home. Maybe not for a long, long time.
Maybe never again.
This was it, she’d realized while driving. She’d gone too far to turn back now. She was officially on the run. Her situation wouldn’t have been so dire if Mark hadn’t caught her leaving with the artifact.
But he had. That milk was spilt, and there was no point crying over it.
She glanced over at Cian, barely able to see him over the top of the huge mirror that was wedged sideways between the bucket seats of her car. A good quarter of the mirror was hanging out the open hatchback, which was bungeed carefully around it, with various bits of her clothing—jackets and sweaters and T-shirts that tended to accumulate in her car as the seasons changed—wedged protectively between metal and glass.
Head flush to the ceiling, he looked miserably uncomfortable. It had been as difficult to cram him into the tiny car as it had been to finesse in the mirror.
They’d argued over the top of the looking glass the entire way downtown. He took backseat driving to a whole new level.
Cease ceasing movement so abruptly! Christ, woman, must you catapult forward after each cessation? Are you certain you’ve strapped the mirror securely? We should stop and check it. By Danu, wench, try nudging this beast gently, not kicking it with both heels! A silence, a slew of choked curses, then: Horses! What the bloody hell is wrong with horses? Have they all been slain in battle?
When she’d finally cranked up her favorite Godsmack CD in an effort to tune him out, he’d let out a roar that had rattled the windows in her car: By all that’s holy, woman, what is that hideous noise? Cease and desist! A battlefield at full charge could be no more cacophonous!
Huh. She loved Godsmack. The man clearly had no taste in music.
Scowling, she’d stuffed in Mozart’s Requiem—which she reserved for only her broodiest days, usually during finals week—and in moments, he’d been whistling cheerfully along. Cheerfully. Go figure.
“You’re going to have to stay here,” she informed him. “I’ll get the room and come back for you.”
“I doona think so,” he growled.
“You don’t look like the rest of us.”
“Nay,” he agreed. “I am bigger. Stronger. Better.”
The look she gave him said she had something nasty on her tongue and couldn’t scrape it off. “That’s not what I meant. There’s no way we’ll be able to keep a low profile with you walking around dressed like that.”
“Leave it to me, woman.”
Before she could utter another word, he grappled with the handle, opened the door, and stepped out. Or rather uncramped and unfolded himself onto the pavement, closing the door behind him.
For a man from the ninth century, he sure seemed to know a lot about modern-day things, she mused, though it seemed to be from having observed them, not from having interacted with them. When he’d first gotten in, he’d examined everything, twisting knobs and pushing buttons. He’d even eyed the steering wheel consideringly. Fortunately, he’d seemed to think better of it. Unfortunately, she didn’t think his restraint would last long. He liked to be the one in charge.
“You will not look at me,” she heard him say to the valets. “You will see only her.” A silence. Then, “And you will not look at her breasts.”
Jessi blinked and burst out laughing. The man was such a Neanderthal! Like her breasts were his or something! What did he think—that the valets would just dutifully obey him as Mark had?
She had news for him: He wasn’t that impressive.
“You’re not that impressive,” she said, stepping from the car and casting a dry look across the roof.
Five valets stood around the car, looking at her, and only at her, and only at her face.
“May we take your luggage, ma’am?” one of them said, looking her dead in the eye.
Men rarely did that. At least not at first. She smoothed her pink sweater down and took a slow, luxuriatingly deep breath. That always worked.
Five gazes remained fixed on her face.
She glanced down; they were still there, round and perky and obvious as ever. Mystified, she said, “No luggage,” and removed her car key from the key ring.
Cian moved to the rear of the car and began unstrapping the mirror.
“We can’t take that in with us!” Belatedly, she realized it would have been much smarter to go to some seedy No-Tell Motel way out on the outskirts. But the Sheraton down on the lake was the only hotel she’d ever stayed in (during an archaeology seminar last summer), and when they’d left campus, she’d headed for it, driving on a sort of bemused autopilot, far too busy defending her driving skills to be thinking clearly. Getting him into a room without causing a memorable stir was going to be difficult enough. They needed to be inconspicuous. Taking the mirror in with them just wasn’t possible. Then again, she thought, frowning, they could hardly leave it in the car, either.
Again, he merely said, “Leave it to me, woman.”
It was then that she realized, with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, that it was only a matter of time before the police came an
d arrested her.
As if a grim portent, a few blocks down the street a police siren began to sound.
She shivered.
Oh yeah. Only a matter of time.
He still had it. Bloody hell, he still had it!
There was nothing wrong with him. There was something wrong with her.
Mirror beneath one arm, the other wrapped around his woman, he steered her into the brilliantly lit, polished, and gleaming lodgings.
Christ, it felt good to walk free! And to walk free with such a beautiful woman on his arm? ’Twas heaven to be alive.
Even hunted. Even knowing what lay ahead. ’Twas far more than he’d thought he’d get at such a late hour in the game.
Her city seemed much like what he’d seen of London, with insignificant differences. Both enormous, both massively populated, frenetic with cars and people rushing to and fro, but her city had taller buildings than aught he’d glimpsed from Lucan’s study.
He continued tossing out commands in Voice as they strode into the lodgings she’d selected. Doona look at us. Move out of my way. Do not notice the mirror. We are not here.
Memory spells were extremely complicated and could cause terrible, irreversible damage if done wrong. ’Twas easier to turn eyes away than attempt to make people forget.
Still, nonspecific commands such as “we are not here” weren’t truly effective. They served mostly to gloss things over a bit, make events seem dimmer. For Voice to be truly compelling, the commands needed to be concise, precise. Commands too vague or complicated could get messy. Orders strongly counter to a person’s fundamental beliefs could cause intense pain.
“Why don’t you just stand here and I’ll go get a room?” She tipped her head back and looked up at him. “And you don’t have to hold on to me,” she added peevishly. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
He smiled. He liked that. “Where?”
“ ‘Where’ what?”
“Where does one ‘get a room’?”
“Oh. Over there.” She pointed. “Wait here.”
“You will cease attempting to give me orders, wench.” He tried Voice on her again, thinking perchance something in their earlier environment had conflicted with his use of magyck.
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