Spellbound by the Angui (Cipher's Kiss Book 2): A Scottish Highlander Time Travel Romance

by Heather Walker

  The realization crushed his spirit into the dirt. All the explosive joy and heavenly bliss of anticipating her arms, her silken caresses, died in the blink of an eye. He plunged into black despair at the thought of never holding his wife in his arms again. He cursed God and all the Fates for that.

  Most of all, he cursed Ellen for shoving his pain in his face like this. She ground his nose in the inescapable fact of his own misery. He’d survived thousands of years alone without thinking much about the past. Now he couldn’t bear to look at her without that other, without holding her and kissing her and losing himself in her.

  The joy died, but the throbbing, nagging need in his body didn’t fade at all. It pounded between his legs, tightening his balls worse than ever. She stood so near and so soft and so inviting. Her dark eyes widened when she gazed up into his face. Her lips parted, and faint pink flushed over her cheeks.

  Just for a second, they regarded each other in the dark corridor. Why couldn’t he take her and pretend—just for one night? Why shouldn’t he release his pent-up tension with this stranger—if she was willing, of course? What harm could it do?

  He could never feel for her what he’d felt for his wife. He wouldn’t betray her memory by putting Ellen in the same category. This meant nothing. It was a brief aside. Ellen would go back to her own time, and he would forget all about her.

  Was she thinking the same thing? Her eyes skittered around his face. Her body tensed under her white shift. He understood that body. He knew its every reaction and its secret mysteries. The more he thought about it, the more he hardened at the prospect of taking her—just once. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d indulged in a woman. He confined himself to faceless whores who couldn’t be more different from the wife he’d loved so much.

  His shaft tingled with desire, but he didn’t want a faceless trollop. He wanted someone just like his wife. He wanted to remember and feel her and smell her smell. He wanted all of it all over again—just this once.

  Then it became too much for him to bear. He couldn’t stop himself now if he tried. He had lived a waking Hell for thousands of years and could bear it no more. He took one measured step toward her and swept her up off the floor in his arms. He crushed her in his iron embrace, and his lips collapsed over hers.

  She didn’t resist. She surrendered without the slightest reserve. A tiny squeak escaped her throat when he squeezed her ribs, but that was all. She melted into creamy softness against his muscles. Her lips met him in all his mounting energy. Her head fell to one side, and her dark hair splashed across his face. Her fingers trailed through his hair.

  Oh, she smelled more divine than he ever remembered. He tasted the fruity wine on her tongue. He clenched one mighty hand behind her neck and guided her deeper into his kiss. His pulsing member jabbed at her nightdress, seeking her delicate tissues underneath. Her thighs parted when he slid one knee between them.

  He couldn’t live through this night without her. Everything about her fueled his volcanic hunger craving to crawl inside her and die. Only there could he find the peace and contentment he’d lost.

  He swam out of the depths of deranged insanity to think. Here he was, kissing a strange, half-dressed woman in the corridor of a public house somewhere in Highland Scotland. If anyone caught them, the results could be unpleasant, to say the least.

  He staggered a few steps to his bedroom door, but he couldn’t get it open. He shoved her shoulders against the frame, popped the latch, and threw the door open without letting her go.

  Her lips remained locked on his. Her big eyes stared into his deepest core where he couldn’t ignore them. Were they really going to do this?

  When he looked at her like this, he couldn’t fool himself that she was anyone else. She was Ellen Burke from 2018. She was no shade from his past. She was powerful in her own right. She was too sturdy to let anyone push her around. Christ only knew what she did to Obasi Jelan in that office. Louis didn’t want to think about it.

  He couldn’t take her this way, while pretending she was someone else. He had to take her on her own terms. He had to want her—no one else. Nothing else would do her justice. His manic need settled down to that simple fact, but he still wanted her. He wanted her more than ever.

  All these centuries, weak women had surrounded him, foolish women, vain women who let men push them around and tell them what to do. Every two hundred years or so, he met one with some natural spirit, but never one like this.

  Ellen confronted him on equal footing. She never shrank from getting in his face and telling him what was what. Great God, a woman like that made his blood boil. What else was she capable of?

  He carried her into his room and kicked the door shut, no longer caring about disturbing anyone. He and Ellen would be disturbing them a lot more in a few minutes.

  The longer he kissed her, the faster and more frenzied their kissing became. She bit his lips and mouthed down his jawline to his neck. He wrapped his hands around her rump to hold her up, then massaged and probed lower to the cleft of her ass.

  She sank her fangs into his neck right behind his ear. A wicked jet of flame scorched through his guts. He couldn’t wait a second longer. He dropped her onto his bed and sank to his knees in front of her.

  Chapter 11

  Ellen yearned for his lips to find hers again as he slipped his hands up her nightdress. He glided it over her knees and kissed her thighs, sending explosive sensations through her core. She ran her fingers through his hair as his unstoppable lips moved closer to her mouth, all the while scooting her dress around her hips to expose her delicate flesh.

  She couldn’t take her eyes off his monstrous form hovering over her as he kissed and fondled her all over. His warm hands closed around her bare ass and heaved her toward him so she had no choice but to spread her legs around his hips.

  His seething presence spun her head full of drunken desire. Her center throbbed with engorged blood until she couldn’t stand the heat. Was this what he had tried to tell her about in Ree’s bedroom?

  She’d never wanted a man this way before. All her hookups approached her instead of her approaching them, and she’d gone along with them with half a heart, hoping in her heart of hearts that she could find some small reprieve in the closeness and warmth of the experience. She could only let herself go here, away from everyone and everything she knew. Her friends and her family could never find out.

  Just looking at this man made her pulse quicken, and just thinking about getting close to him made her stomach flutter. Why hadn’t she noticed that in San Francisco?

  She raked her claws across his shoulders, tugging at his shirt, wanting to get at his skin, but she couldn’t think with his fingers exploring her below. He found the sodden crevice where her buried yearnings dwelled, and she groaned in sweet agony. His eyes bored down into her, but she couldn’t look away. He was taking her where he wanted to go, and she never wanted to stop him. He pushed a finger inside her, and she gasped.

  His breath rasped against her lips. They weren’t even kissing anymore. They were stuck together at the mouth in a silent howl of mutual ecstasy. His hand left her momentarily cold until his rigid shaft bulged against her soft vulva, grinding against her. Her body writhed against him, matching his rhythm.

  All at once, he jerked away. He lifted her nightdress over her head, and she sat naked and ripe before him. He threw the thin garment away and ripped his shirt off. His chest and shoulders strained as he yanked his belt free.

  Ellen never saw his kilt fall before he swooped in and attacked her mouth in all his ravenous fury. His hands closed on her body again, and she gave herself over in equal ferocity. She devoured his lips, excited beyond imagination.

  Louis raised one breast to his mouth, his teeth shooting sparks of joyous release into her soul. She yelped in his ear and wrapped her legs around his hips. Ankles locked behind his back, she rode the incessant waves of pressure from his shaft grinding against her. If only he would get there,
she could unleash this primal delirium against the granite wall of his being.

  The tip of his lance grazed her smoldering petals, and she sobbed in despair. Would he never stop torturing her? She peered into the black pits of his eyes. He scowled down on her, his face hardened in a grim mask. Did he really want her, or was he thinking this was all a colossal mistake?

  He pushed deeper but held back from penetrating her burning insides. His eyes shot myriad questions into her mind. What was he thinking right now? Why did he hold himself back? Was she not pretty enough for him? Did she do something to offend him or put him off?

  Ellen’s soul quailed at the sight of him. If he pulled away from her now, she couldn’t bear it. “Do you want this?” she whispered.

  The sound electrified him beyond anything she ever expected. He tensed, his bicep twitching against her breast. He tried to speak but had to swallow before he could groan, “Aye, lass. I want it sore.”

  He contracted his midsection to flex his hips forward and pushed his shaft fully into her, then stopped. Ellen dangled on the precipice. If he didn’t do it now, she would go insane.

  She clung to his shoulders in desperation and begged, “Don’t stop. Please. Don’t stop.”

  He eased halfway out and then slowly pressed deeper repeatedly, nudging her without crossing that line by slackening off each time her anticipation built almost to climax.

  Ellen couldn’t stand this any longer. She squeezed her legs tighter around him and arched her pelvis a fraction of an inch forward as his head fully entered her sizzling channel and her muscles clamped around his member in an eternal embrace.

  He gasped, and an agonized spasm contorted his face. His chest heaved against her breasts. Ellen held him tight against her while wave upon wave of intense quivering delight rippled through them both.

  He roared in anguish, but she refused to release him. She wouldn’t let him go. He was all hers. Before he finished convulsing, she pumped her sweet opening down on his lance one more time.

  He quaked all over. His head collapsed to one side, his forehead coming to rest on her shoulder. Tremors shook his massive frame. Her inner muscles stroked his length, and he moaned and spasmed with every beating caress.

  Now that she had him inside her, Ellen’s maddening desire took over. She maneuvered her hips back and forth to glide his ridged shaft in and out of her core, her slippery nectar coating him all over. She followed her own rhythm to fulfill her wild appetite, but once she got going, he sprang to life again. He raised his head, and she beheld the same animal insanity written on his features. His lips curled back, and he sucked air through his gritted teeth. He took hold of her and rolled her on top of him. He met her pumping thrusts with his own penetrating rhythm, and his thickness plunged into her deeper than ever. She whimpered in craven lust, clinging to him for dear life.

  She slammed down on his hips, and he knocked her higher with every stroke. He hugged one arm around her ribs and steered her pelvis with his free hand.

  They stared into each other’s eyes in the pregnant dark. Who was he and what was he? Ellen didn’t know anything about him, but at the same time, she knew all she needed to know. He was all male, and she was all female in that moment. They completed a cosmic circle that had brought them together.

  He rocked faster, and the power building up inside her threatened to break its banks. She matched his pace without really trying. She rode his hips in wild abandon, and every piercing stab of his lance quickened her to an explosive climax.

  Something in the depths of her soul needed more. The dark mask of his face haunted her. She had to connect with him somehow. She had to know for certain he really wanted this, that he wanted her. “Do you really want this? Do you?” she whispered.

  In answer, his arm clenched tighter around her and smashed the breath from her lungs. He growled between pants. “I want this. This is what I want. This.” Every time he said this, he stuffed his thick tool in hard until she screeched in ecstasy. “Do you want it, lass? Is this what you want? Is it?” he rasped, giving her another wicked pump when he said this.

  “Yes!” she shrieked. “I want it.” She got more than she bargained for asking that question.

  “Is it good, lassie?” he purred. “Is it good like this? Huh? Is it good?”

  “Yes!” She swayed in his arms. Her neck wouldn’t support her head any longer. Her whole body swayed with the impacts of his thrusts. She would have said anything in the frenzied confusion of drifting closer to the most catastrophic climax of her life.

  He said something else, but she couldn’t hear him. Surf crashed in her ears. She hung on to his shoulders against the blasting furnace of her own blistering sensations. A tidal wave of overpowering energy and emotion inundated her, sweeping her out to sea.

  She didn’t know she screamed out loud until his big hand clamped over her mouth. She couldn’t stop it now. She shrieked in mortal ecstasy. He wedged her head between his shoulder and his hand to silence her while the unstoppable torrent jerked her in every direction at once.

  Her body sagged in his arms even as the convulsions tore her apart in every joint. Burning pleasure shone out of every pore and orifice, but he wouldn’t stop filling her to the breaking point with one sweeping orgasm after another. Explosions jerked her right and left until she couldn’t keep track of what was happening to her. She ceased to be anything more than an idea in the vapors of Heaven. She’d lost all sense of place and humanity and even of him. She became one with the cosmos and him and everything else. She had no idea where it began or where it ended. For all she could tell, it never did.

  She’d never experienced anything like this in her life. Whenever she’d taken the time to get with a guy, she had one brief hiccup of pleasure before the energy died to nothing. Nothing could compare to this.

  When he let go of her, she slumped over on top of him. Her body ached in every sinew from soul-destroying climaxes. Her thighs gripped his hips, but she couldn’t tear herself off him. His flesh sealed with hers for all time. She didn’t feel anything but a never-ending tide of angelic bliss. He clasped her head in both hands and kissed her, but she couldn’t stop sighing in liquid rapture.

  Chapter 12

  Louis bent over and kissed Ellen on the forehead. “Time to get up, lass. The coach’ll be at the door in a moment. Ye must get dressed and get yer breakfast while ye can, or it’ll leave without us.”

  She sighed and rolled over on her back, her black hair scattering over the pillow. She blinked once, looked around the room, and threw her arm over her eyes. “Where are we going, anyway?”

  “We’re going to Inverness,” he replied. “I ken a ship there we can get on board at short notice. Now come along and stop wasting time.”

  “I can’t get dressed. My clothes are back in my room.”

  “Ye’ll need a better excuse than that to stay in bed,” he remarked. “I’ve been down to yer room and fetched yer clothes. They’re right here. I’ll slip downstairs and settle with the landlord. Dinnae take more than five minutes coming down, or we’ll miss the coach.”

  He let himself out of the room, unable to stand seeing her all soft and warm in bed with her hair in every direction and her milky shoulders showing above the coverlet. He needed a cool head this morning.

  He found the landlord and paid what remained of the charges for their lodgings. Heading outside, he found the other passengers already waiting to meet the coach. Fortunately, the process of loading their baggage took long enough that Ellen joined them before the vehicle departed. Louis cast one quick glance at her, just enough to see the faint blush of pleasure still coloring her cheeks. His guts twisted in knots at the sight, so he looked away.

  At last, only the two of them remained outside the coach. He offered her his hand and helped her up the step. When he got in after her, he found only one seat empty directly across from her. He couldn’t fail to notice the Englishman had worked himself into the seat next to Ellen. Now that preener sat tight against
Ellen’s side, prattling in her ear even before the coach departed.

  Louis wedged himself between a stout old lady and the wall, facing Ellen. For a few minutes after the coach started, she tried to keep up a polite conversation with her seatmate, but he dominated the conversation and she barely got a word in edgeways. After a few minutes, she gave up and stared straight in front of her, her gaze falling on Louis. For the first several miles, he did his best to look out the window. If he ever dared to look anywhere else, there was her face, shining with sex-crazed delight, right in front of him.

  After a while, he gave up the pretense. They were stuck with each other now, on a journey of many hours. He could no longer keep his thoughts corralled and sank into a mixture of confused emotions and overwhelming memories. Her body going limp and luminescent when she peaked in orgasm, her first gut-piercing scream before he covered her mouth with his hand, her delicious honey gushing around his shaft while she cascaded from one climax to the next. Her on top of him, straddling his shaft and grinding from one side to the next every time he thrust up into her. Her nails scratched his chest, and her inner muscles crushed him in a death grip until he thought he would die.

  If he’d ever suspected when he first kissed her in the corridor that it would be like this, he never would have gone near her. Then again, maybe he would have. She’d turned into something he never imagined possible. She blew his senses into outer space and kept him hard and coming back for more all night until she passed out in his bed from sheer exhaustion.

  Was she thinking the same thing right now, over there on the other seat? That moronic Englishman would never guess what she was really capable of. He would never know the wild animal unleashed from that magnificent exterior. He would never smell the flowered scent of her sex drifting into his nostrils. He would never gaze up at her enraptured face, drunk on heavenly bliss.