His big hand came to rest behind her neck. His other arm slid down to guide the instinctive rocking of her hips, letting her create her own natural rhythm. When she moved herself down his shaft, electric fizzing sparks cascaded over her. They twinkled in her eyes and down her cheeks. She hardly felt him kissing her.
Oh, if only it could always be so! Why did this ever have to end?
Her small noises rose in pitch to whining cries. He tried to silence her with his mouth, but she couldn’t get her lips to obey. In the end, he clamped his hand over her mouth the way he had last time, and that sent her reeling into blissful orgasm.
His commanding touch freed her every inhibition. She could scream and cry and release all her sorrow and fear in his embrace. He had her. He possessed her. He protected her from herself. Anything she did with him could only be good.
He drilled up into her from below while they held each other in ecstatic delight. He pushed her mouth against his neck, and his own rising snarls and broken cries pierced her brain.
She peaked higher still, into a zone of space where screaming couldn’t express her rapture. She stared in astonishment at a world she never knew existed, and he stared back at her.
Pain and torment wrenched his face from one side to the other before she realized he was in the midst of an epic climax himself. Seething and panting, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. His body throbbed its vital mixture into her until they lay spent in each other’s arms.
Chapter 18
Louis combed his fingers through Ellen’s hair. The first streaks of gentle dawn danced on the water outside the windows, but he didn’t want to move. Her silken body breathed against him under the quilt. He wouldn’t trade this moment for another day of life.
She gave an involuntary spasm and started out of his arms, then spun back to stare at him. Stark horror marred her features. He never saw that look in her eyes before, and it scared him.
“It’s all right, lass.” He raised his hand to drape a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s all right. Ye’re safe here.”
She smacked his hand away hard enough to startle him. “Don’t touch me!”
His eyes flew open. He saw her face change in an instant when she realized what she’d done.
She blurted out, “God, I’m so sorry.”
The next instant, she rocketed out of bed and snatched her dress off the floor. She kept her back to him and talked a mile a minute. “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I gotta get out of here.”
He lay back on the pillow and watched her shoulders move while she pulled on her stockings. Whatever was bothering her, trying to get it out of her now would only make the problem worse. He could have been looking at a female version of himself. Nothing could be worse for both of them, no matter how much they wanted each other. Whatever it was, she better go now. They both knew it, so why fight it?
She got her stockings tied and her shift over her head and put on her corset before she cast a sidelong glance his way. “Would you please…would you mind lacing me up?”
She sat with her back to him while he tightened the laces, but he still didn’t say anything. What could he say? One more night, and now it was over. Now they both had to bite the bullet and do what they knew was best. She would go home, and he would stay here to fantasize about her for the next three hundred years—maybe longer.
When he finished, she pulled her dress over her head and tied the laces. Only then did she turn around to face him. “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I…I just had a dream, and when I woke up, I didn’t know where I was. Can you forgive me?”
He cocked his head to one side and combed his hair out of his face. “Do ye have a man back home, lass?”
Her head whipped around, and her black hair flew across her cheeks. “What?”
“Do ye have a man back home? Ye keep saying nothing could happen between us. I just wondered.”
She looked away. “No. I don’t have a man back home.”
“But ye’ve had men before, I reckon,” he went on. “Ye couldnae do what ye do in bed if ye didnae have some experience.”
She spun around again, and this time, he didn’t like the expression on her face one bit. She snarled at him in pure murderous hatred. “What are you saying? Are you saying I’m some kind of tramp? Is that it?”
“Of course not,” he returned. “I thought ye might be married. If ye are, he’s a lucky man.”
Her lips shivered back from her teeth. Her body went stiff and taut. “Don’t you dare!” she hissed. “I swear to God, you better take that back.”
He threw up his hands and turned his eyes to the ceiling. “Fine. Ye’re no’ married. Forget I asked.”
She sat frozen on the edge of the bed. All at once, she wilted. “No, I’m not married, but I almost was.”
His eyes snapped to her face. “What happened?”
“He died. We were secretly engaged. We were going to run off together. None of our families knew. We were going to come home married and… God, it sounds stupid. We were going to live happily ever after. I guess that’s what happens when two dumb kids make plans for the future. Anyway, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s ancient history now. He’s been dead for years. I don’t know why I even brought it up. I guess…well, that’s what I just dreamed about. That’s why I overreacted.”
He gazed at her profile as she stared out the window at the wake glistening and tumbling behind the ship. He could say the words to call her back from that far-off land of torture and agony. Should he do it, or should he leave her there in her private wasteland?
“I was married too once,” he murmured.
As he expected, she whipped around to stare at him. “Is that…?”
“Aye. She had yer same long, lean build and yer long black hair.” He dared to touch her now. He stroked down her temple to put her hair behind her ear. “Even yer faces look the same. She was a fighter, just like ye are. When I first saw ye in Aberdeen, I didnae realize how similar ye were in yer personality. I thought it a grand coincidence, but after I got to ken ye better, it scared me to see. I couldnae keep ye separate in me mind, but as I said, that was afore.”
“Did you love her a lot?” She clamped her eyes shut. “Christ, that sounded awful! Of course you must have loved her a lot.”
“I loved her more than life itself. When she died, I wanted to die too. I didnae want to go on.”
“What kept you going?” she asked.
He waved his hand to one side. “All the others were going through the same thing. They all lost in that war.”
She frowned. “War? I thought the Falisa poisoned the women.”
“It’s the same thing,” he replied. “All the men left alive wanted to die then and there. Some lost more than I did. They lost their children along with their wives. We all had to keep going.”
“Did it get better over time?”
He looked away. “No. It never got better.”
She stared down at her hands in her lap. “It never got better for me, either, especially since no one knew about it. I had to live with it alone.”
He couldn’t stop touching her, now that he knew she understood. After all the conflict and misunderstanding between them, he finally knew the truth. She understood a lot more about him than he’d thought would ever be possible from anyone but his Angui brothers. She lost the person closest to her, the same way he had.
“I’ll tell ye something,” he went on. “I’ll tell ye when it started to get better. It was that first night we spent together. That’s when it was better—and last night. It’s always better when I’m with ye. Then, when ye get up and put yer clothes on and say ye’re going to go, it comes back and I dinnae think I can stand to live with it.”
Her eyes drifted up to his face. Her mouth screwed up trying to hold back her sobs. Her cheeks jerked upward, and he couldn’t keep his hands off her a second longer. He pulled her down on top of his chest and threw his arms around her.
Her shoulders shook. Before he could fight them down, his own tears burst their dam. He clenched his eyes shut and let them pour out into her. In seven thousand years, he’d never shed tears for what he’d lost. He’d never wanted to until now for fear of letting her go.
She buried her face in his bare chest, and her sweet sobs encouraged him until his bottomless well of grief emptied along with hers. He crushed her in his arms. He could never let her go after this. He had to have her against all odds, now that she sheltered his heart in hers.
After the bittersweet tears came to their natural end, they lay still while the ship rocked them to and fro. He could never argue with her after this. If she really wanted to go back to her own time, who was he to stop her? He could accept anything she did or chose, now that he understood her deepest heart.
At long last, she sat up and ran her fingers across her cheek. “Well, that was a long time coming.”
He smiled up at her and sniffed. He had never felt happier or more content. “Thank ye for telling me.”
She shrugged. “I’m sure it was a lot worse for you, losing all your people like that. It must have been horrendous.”
“And yer parents?” he returned. “They never kenned about yer man?”
“My parents died when I was about to turn eighteen,” she replied. “We had a swimming pool in our backyard. They used to go for a dip in the mornings, just to wake up, you know. I was standing in our living room, looking out the window at the pool. I saw my parents come out of their bedroom.” She shuddered. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“Ye dinnae have to tell me if ye don’t want to. It’s enough ye told me about yer man.”
“My mom and dad came out of their bedroom, onto the patio,” she went on. “They kissed each other, both stark naked, which was strange to me because they never showed themselves to us kids. They never knew I was watching them, though. Then they both dove into the pool at the same time.”
He gazed up at her. Her eyes no longer registered him lying right in front of her. She stared at something beyond sight. He waited, but she didn’t say anything more. “So what happened?”
She shook herself out of her reverie. “They came up at the same time, bobbed to the surface, and floated there with their heads down. They were stone dead. There was a live electric wire hanging out of one of the underwater lights that filled the whole pool with an electric current strong enough to electrocute them both. A freak accident. It killed them instantly.”
Louis froze, unable to get his mind to believe what she just said.
She babbled on, unaware of his presence. “I watched them for maybe fifteen minutes before I realized what happened. By then, my little brother and sister had started to wake up. I had to get them ready for school without letting on. I made their breakfast and got them dressed. We went out to the curb and caught our ride with a neighbor who had kids at our school. It was her day to carpool. I immediately ran back to the house and called the police.”
Louis’s soul ached all over again listening to this. He got up on an elbow and ran a comforting hand down her back.
All of a sudden, she turned a brilliant smile on him. “So that’s what happened.”
He frowned. “So what did ye do about yer brothers and sisters?”
“Social Services got involved. As I was just shy of eighteen, my siblings and I had to stay under the supervision of an adult. The lady I told you about who used to drive us to school—that was Ree’s mother. She took us in until I turned eighteen and we all moved back to our parents’ house where I took care of them until the youngest left home. That was four years ago.”
“And yer man?” he asked.
Ellen smiled ruefully. “He died a few months after that.”
Louis grimaced. “Och, I’m sorry for all yer losses, lass.”
Ellen took a long breath. “Thank you. I guess that period of my life is what drove me to build something from the ashes. I couldn’t have done it without Ree and the others. I don’t know what would have happened without their support.” She gave him a solemn nod.
Louis longed more than anything to shut his eyes against the whole story. How could a young woman live with this? How could this brave, beautiful woman keep smiling and fighting and working to make herself successful while she took care of a younger brother and sister all alone?
The tragedy of the situation paled in comparison to the sheer audacious strength of the woman sitting in front of him.
He couldn’t bear to look at her, but at the same time, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He’d never met anyone as strong and resilient and vulnerable as her. What in the name of God had he been doing, moping around all these centuries, when someone like this existed in the world?
What did he have to complain about, really? He’d lost his wife. So what? She’d lost her parents and her whole miserable childhood and then her fiancé and any chance at a normal adult life. How could he waste all those years in rotten depression while she kept smiling and getting up in the morning and making breakfast?
She must have done an incredible job caring for her siblings. She must have read them bedtime stories and sung them songs and nursed their scraped knees. She must have read their school reports and scolded them for getting into fights.
His hand snuck across the bed. He had to touch her. He had to make contact with her. Maybe, if he got lucky, some of her strength and beautiful soul would rub off on him. He could only hope.
Chapter 19
Ellen smiled down at Louis lying on the bed. Their fingers twined together. She poured out the whole story to him, gauging his reaction by his features. She’d seen it before, and she had learned to ignore it.
Everyone seemed to take her story as some heartbreaking tragedy when it was anything but. It was just her life. Everybody had some obstacle to overcome, and this was hers. She had taken care of her family for so long, it just never seemed unusual to her. She just did it. From the very first day when her parents died, she did her small job in her own persistent way. She cooked the meals and made the beds. She got her brothers and sisters to help her clean the house, and she did the grocery shopping.
Luckily, her parents had life insurance, which helped see them all through until her siblings got through high school. By then, Ellen and Ree and their friends had already started Primary Industries, which she could then devote herself entirely to. Ellen transferred her loyalties and her care to the company. End of story.
Louis’s eyes misted over like he was going to cry again.
Ellen jumped up from the bed and slapped his leg with a laugh. “Come on, mister. Roust out of there and get dressed. There’s a beautiful day waiting for us. Let’s get on deck and see what Ben can tell us about where we’re going.”
She danced away and then grabbed his kilt off the floor and flung it in his face before he had a chance to sit up. He cursed under his breath, and when he got his head untangled from the folds, she raced away before he could get up.
“So what’s the plan?” she asked as she busied herself getting her hair ready. “Where are we headed? Somewhere safe I hope.”
Louis lowered his gaze. “I havenae had a chance to talk to anyone about it yet, but I’ve an idea where we’re going.”
Ellen spun around and cocked her head as she asked, “Where?”
Perched bare-chested on the edge of the bed, his eyes flashed. “Back to Aberdeen.”
She gasped, wide-eyed. “Are you insane?”
“It’s no me idea. It’s Gilias—Ben, I mean. I heard one of the lads speaking about it, and then…well, then I got mixed up with ye again. I’ll go talk to him about it.”
She charged at him. “We can’t go back to Aberdeen. You understand that, I hope. Neither of us can go back there.”
He caught her by the shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “Think a moment, lass. Obasi’s dead and the wizard may be also. There’s n
o one to recognize ye from me office. If there’s a chance to slip back into the city unnoticed, we’ll take it.”
“Forget it!” she bellowed, stomping one foot. “I’m not going back to Aberdeen. If you won’t get Ben to change course, you can let me out on the nearest beach. Anything would be better than going back there.”
“Pipe down,” he told her. “I plan to get him to change course if ye’ll only—”
The ship lurched sideways and a sickening shudder vibrated through the vessel, knocking Ellen out of his grasp. She staggered two steps to her right and would have fallen over if she hadn’t collided with the table. She caught the edge and held herself upright as another powerful impact rocked the ship to her keel.
Ellen looked all around. “What was that?”
Louis cocked his head and listened a moment, then jumped off the bed. He grabbed his shirt and tugged it over his head. “I dinnae ken, but I mean to find out. Come.” He picked up his saber and sporran and buckled them around his waist on his way out the door.
Ellen raced after him with her heart in her throat. They exited into blazing sunshine that blinded her for a moment. When her vision had cleared, she beheld barefoot soldiers rushing all over the place. Ben Harris stood on the poop deck bellowing orders at everyone in a strange version of English that Ellen couldn’t make out.
Louis raced up to join him, but Ben leveled a menacing finger at him. “Get to the helm. Relieve Duncan. Get below, Duncan, and muster the second guns to return fire.”
“Aye,” called back a young boy behind the steering wheel.
Duncan disappeared down the stairs, and Louis took his place. He grabbed the wheel, his flinty gaze skimming the horizon.
Ben rounded on Ellen. “Get to yer cabin and stay there until I order ye out. Ye’ll be safer there.”
“Isn’t there something I can do up here?” she asked. “I don’t even know what’s going on, but there must be something more useful I can do than sitting in the cabin, puking into the ice bucket.”
Spellbound by the Angui (Cipher's Kiss Book 2): A Scottish Highlander Time Travel Romance Page 13
