The Dark Highlander (21 page)

Several minutes and several additional complex passkeys later, he entered a passageway that sloped sharply downward, where it met a precipitous fall of worn stone stairs. When he reached the bottom, he turned and took the next flight, then a third, then hurried through a maze of dimly lit, damp tunnels.

He had to send someone to Inverness to discover if Trevor had been taken alive. And if so—to tidy up. It would require the most loyal and committed men he had. Men who would never let themselves be taken alive. Men who would die for him without hesitation. The best men he had.

His sons were where they could nearly always be found, in the electronic heart of their operation, monitoring innumerable facets of their business.

And they were, as always, eager to serve.

After breakfast, Dageus asked Nell to take Chloe to find a light cloak suitable for her to ride in. Chloe, her inquisitive gaze darting everywhere, allowed herself to be led from the great hall.

After the women departed, Silvan arched an inquiring brow. “Doona you wish to be starting with the texts, lad?”

Dageus shook his head. “I need this day. I need to show Chloe my world, Da. What it was like. What
I
was like. If only for a day.” That wasn’t exactly the truth. The truth was the night had been hellish and the morn wasn’t getting any better. He’d not been able to sleep, strung tight as a corded bow. He’d passed the time till dawn fantasizing about Chloe and all the ways he would seduce her. He’d scarce maintained his tight façade of calm through breakfast. And when Chloe had admitted what a battle she’d been fighting to keep her hands off him, it had been all he could do not to toss her over his shoulder and drag her off to his bed.

He’d studied himself in a small mirror this morn, while shaving with a hand that shook more than was safe when a man had an open blade at his own neck. He’d seen eyes a darker shade of brown. He’d been nigh a sennight without a woman. Too long. Far too long.

How long, he wondered almost idly, till his eyes would turn full black? Another day, mayhap two? And what would happen then? he mused, a part of him afraid, another part of him aware that he wasn’t as afraid as he ought to be.

The voices yestreen in the stones had caught him by surprise. ’Twas the first time he’d ever heard the beings inside him speak, the first time he’d ever perceived them as individual entities. And though feeling them so intensely had been horrifying, had made him feel as if he were choking on some dead thing in the back of his throat that he couldn’t scrape out, it had also been . . . intriguing.

Part of him was curious to know their language, to hear what they might say. He had thirteen ancient beings inside him! What might they tell him of ancient history? Of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, and what the world had been like four thousand years ago? Of what it was like to hold so much power. . . .

Inviting a dialogue with them would be your first step through the gates of hell,
his honor hissed.

Aye, he knew that.

You can’t trust a thing they might say!

Still . . .

No “still” about it,
his honor seethed.
I doona care who you fuck today, just do it.

That jarred him a bit.

It would be Chloe. If he went to another woman—even if only out of deference to her, to spare her his brutal need—and she found out, she would never have him. Things could get very bad, very fast, then. He was afraid that if he went to her and she denied him, he might force her. He didn’t want to do that to Chloe. He didn’t want to hurt Chloe.

The antithesis of his honor scoffed:
So what? If she doesn’t care for something you do, use the Voice of Power on her. Tell her to forget what she may not like. Tell her she adores you, worships you. You need but tell her she loves you to make it so. ’Tis so easy. The world can be anything you want it—

“Dageus!”
Silvan shouted, slamming his fists down on the table in front of him.

Dageus jerked and stared at his father.

“Where were you?” Silvan exclaimed, looking both frightened and furious.

“Right here,” Dageus said, shaking his head. A soft whisper, a rustle stirred inside him. Faint voices murmured.

“I shouted your name three times, and you dinna so much as blink a lash,” Silvan snapped. “What were you doing?”

“I . . . I was merely thinking.”

Silvan regarded him intensely for a strained moment. “You had the strangest look on your face, son,” he said finally.

Dageus didn’t want to know what kind of look. “I’m fine, Da,” he said, pushing himself from the table. “I doona know how late we’ll be. Doona wait a meal for us.”

Silvan’s piercing gaze followed him as he walked away.

Nell placed two mugs of cocoa (one specially supplemented with herbs for an absent-minded man who too oft forgot to eat) on a tray and went in search of her husband.

Her husband. The words never failed to bring a smile to her lips. When Silvan had found her lying on the road nearly fifteen years ago, on the brink of death, he’d brought her back to Castle Keltar and sat at her bedside, demanding she fight for her life at a time when she’d wanted naught more than to die.

Before Silvan had found her, she’d been mistress to a married laird whom she’d loved unwisely and deeply, incurring the wrath and jealousy of his barren wife. While he’d lived, he’d been there to protect her, but when he’d been killed in a hunting accident, his wife had stolen Nell’s babies, had her driven out, beaten and left for dead.

Upon recovering, for the next twelve years she’d been Silvan’s housekeeper, caring for him and mothering his young sons in lieu of her own. Despite her firm resolve to never again get involved with a laird—wed or no’—she’d fallen in love with the eccentric, gentle, brilliant man. Verily, the day she’d opened her mud- and blood-caked eyes to find him bending over her in the roadway, something inexplicable had quickened inside her. She’d contented herself with loving him from a distance, hiding it behind a caustic demeanor and sparring words. Then three and a half years ago, events with Gwen and Drustan had thrown them together, stirring a passion that she’d been elated to discover Silvan had been hiding as well, and life had been sweeter than aught she’d ever known. Though nothing could replace the babies she’d lost so long ago, fate had blessed her in her late years with a second chance, and their twins were currently sleeping in the nursery under careful watch of their nanny, Maeve.

She loved Silvan more than life itself, though she rarely let him know that. There was something stuck in her craw, a thing she’d never make peace with. Silvan hadn’t given his first wife the binding Druid vows of mating. That had heartened her when he’d asked her to wed him, but in three and a half long years, he’d not offered them to her either. And so long as that distance was betwixt them, she would never be able to make completely free with her heart. She would always wonder why, always wonder how come he didn’t love her enough. A woman hated knowing she loved her man more deeply than he loved her.

Silvan was, as she’d expected, in his tower library, one hundred and three steps above the castle proper.

He was also, as she’d expected, downright broody.

“I brought ye cocoa,” she announced, placing the tray on a small table.

He glanced up and smiled at her, though with an utterly distracted air. For a change, there was no book on his lap. Nor was he seated at his desk, scribing away. Nay, he was in a chair near the open window and had been staring sightlessly out it.

“’Tis Dageus, is it no?” Nell drew a chair close to his and sipped at her cocoa. Silvan had long had a fondness for the costly chocolate drink, and during her pregnancy she’d developed a taste for it herself. “Why dinna ye tell me all about it, Silvan,” she encouraged gently. She knew what he was thinking, for she was worrying the same things. Dageus had always been her favorite of the Keltar lads, with his wild passionate heart and private pains. As she’d watched him grow, watched the world harden him, she’d prayed a special lass might someday come along for him, as Gwen had for Drustan. (Gwen who’d gotten the blethering binding vows from
her
husband!)

Silvan’s brown eyes sobered and he raked a hand through his snowy mane. “Och, Nellie, what am I to do? What I felt in him six moons past, before he left, is naught compared to what I now sense.”

“And there’s naught in the tomes ye’ve been searching that tells how to reimprison them?”

Silvan shook his head and exhaled dismally. “Not a blethering thing.”

“Have ye checked all the tomes?” she pressed. Since the day Dageus had left, Silvan had been a man fair obsessed, laboring from dawn till dusk on his studies, determined to find something to pass on to Drustan, where they’d both suspected Dageus had gone.

Silvan replied that he’d thoroughly searched both his tower library and the study belowstairs.

“Did ye check the chamber library?” Nell asked, frowning.

“I told you I checked the study.”

“I dinna say the study. I said the chamber library.”

“What are you talking about, Nellie?”

“The one beneath the study.”

Silvan went very still. “What one beneath the study?”

“The one behind the hearth,” she said impatiently.

“
What
one behind the hearth?” Silvan snapped, surging to his feet.

Nell’s eyes flew wide. “Och, for heaven’s sake, Silvan, dinna ye know about it?”

Silvan grabbed her hand, his brown eyes flashing.
“Show me.”

19

Chloe clutched the stallion’s mane as they sped across
heather-covered fields toward a lush, overgrown forest.

When she and Dageus had ridden out from the castle half an hour ago, she’d seen more evidence that she was truly in the past. A towering wall that hadn’t been there yesterday, patrolled by guards, encircled the perimeter of the estate. Clad in authentic medieval garb and armor, the guards had been toting weapons that made her fingers curl. She’d barely resisted the temptation to pluck them from their hands and lock them up somewhere safe.

When they’d exited the gates she’d peered curiously down into the valley, not really expecting to see the city of Alborath. Still, seeing the vast vale, that twenty-four hours earlier had been filled with thousands of homes and shops, currently occupied by contentedly grazing, fat sheep, had left her feeling utterly discombobulated.

Face it, Zanders, however he did it—physics, Druidry, archeoastronomy—he took you back.

Which meant that the man behind her on the horse, who’d not spoken a word since they’d ridden out, guiding them at a dizzying speed across wide-open fields, was a man who possessed the knowledge to command time itself.

Wow
. Not exactly what she’d expected the day she’d stood in his penthouse fantasizing about what kind of man Dageus MacKeltar might be. Nope, not once had she thought “time-travelling Druid.” It was making her reevaluate her entire concept of history—how little historians really knew! She felt as if she’d been sucked into one of Joss Whedon’s scripts, into a world where nothing was what it seemed. Where girls discovered they were vampire-slayers and fell for men who didn’t have souls. A
Buffy
addict to the bone, she wondered who Dageus was more like, Spike or Angel?

The answer came with swift certainty: There was something about him that was far more Spike than Angel, a tortured duality, a driving, underlying darkness.

His grip was tight on her waist, almost painful, his body rigid behind hers. The sheer size of him was daunting, being clutched between his powerful thighs, held tightly to his broad chest, made her feel delicate and overwhelmed. He seemed different in his own century, and she wondered how he’d ever passed as a twenty-first century man. He was all warrior and imperious command. His was regal Celtic blood, hot and passionate. He was man enough to swing the massive claymores that decorated the walls in The Cloisters. Man enough to survive, even thrive in such a rugged, untamed land.

She’d hardly noticed his silence when they’d first rode out, too fascinated by the vista, but now it was a chill wind behind her making her skin prickle.

“Why are we stopping here?” she asked nervously when he slowed the horse to a trot near a copse of rowan trees.

His reply was a soft, biting laugh as he shifted in the saddle so the hard thickness of him rubbed briefly against her bottom. Despite how nervous he was making her, lust filled her to a dizzying degree. There were questions, zillions of questions she should ask, and suddenly she couldn’t recall a single one. Her mind had blanked alarmingly when he’d rubbed against her.

He reined in the stallion, dropped to the ground, and dragged her from its back. Off balance, she fell into his arms and he crushed her mouth with a hot, savage kiss.

Then he shoved her away, leaving her gasping for breath and clutching at air. She stood, watching with wide eyes as he grabbed a folded length of plaid from behind the saddle. Without a word he dropped it to the ground, spreading it with the toe of his boot. He slapped the stallion lightly on the rump, driving it away.

“I thought you told Silvan you were taking me to see a medieval village. What are you doing, Dageus?” she managed. She knew what he was doing. She could practically smell it on him—sex and lust and ruthless determination.

No matter that she was ready for him, she backed away a few steps. Couldn’t help it. Then a few more. Tiny breaths slammed into each other, clotting in her throat. That danger she’d sensed in him so many times before had escalated to an extreme pitch.

His gaze was mocking. A strange flash of temper and impatience whipped through his eyes. “You had your hand wrapped around my cock last eve, Chloe, and you want to know what I’m doing? What do you think I’m doing?” he purred with a baring of teeth that only a fool would term a smile.

Nostrils flaring, he stalked toward her and paced a slow circle around her. Stripping the thong from his hair, he raked his hands through the braid, freeing it. It spilled in waves of midnight around his body.
The beast is loose
, Chloe thought with a bone-melting surge of excitement. She pivoted slowly to keep pace with him. She was too nervous to allow him at her back.

He fisted a hand in his shirt behind his neck, yanked it over his head and flung it to the ground.

The air left her lungs in a great
whoosh
of breath. Dressed in nothing but black leather trews, hair falling about his savage face, he was forbiddingly beautiful. When he bent and stripped off his boots, the muscles in his powerful back and wide shoulders rippled, reminding her that he was twice her size, his arms were bands of steel, his body a meticulously honed machine.

Something about him is different. . . .

It took her a few moments to understand what it was. For the first time, she was seeing him without his eternal reserve and icy control. His gestures were no longer smoothly executed. Standing there, legs splayed, he was pure male aggression, insolent and unleashed.

She was startled to realize she was panting softly. That big, rock-hard aggressive man who was coming unraveled was going to make love to her.

He paced two more silent circles around her—
oh, yes, there was a reckless masculine swagger in his walk
—then closed in on her, his hand working at the laces of his trews. He was regarding her with mocking, possessive amusement as if he sensed she verged on fleeing, knew he could outrun her, and rather hoped she’d try.

As his big hand undid the laces, her gaze was drawn there, down his rippling stomach to the bulge in his pants that was . . . quite large. And soon to be inside her.

“M-maybe we should do this really slow,” she stammered. “Dageus, I think—”

“Hush,” he snapped, as he freed himself from his trews.

Chloe closed her mouth, staring. The sight of him in leather pants half-undone, legs spread, hard body glistening gold in the sunlight, with his thick erection pushing hungrily up would be engraved in her memory until the end of time. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t even swallow. She sure as hell wasn’t going to blink and miss a minute of it. Nearly six and a half feet of raw, pulsing man was standing there, his hot gaze raking her, as if he were contemplating which part of her to taste first. She simply stared, her heart hammering.

“You know I’m no’ a good man,” he said, his voice deceptively gentle, belying the steel beneath it. “I’ve made no excuses. I’ve given you no pretty lies. You came with me anyway. Doona pretend you doona know what I want and doona think to deny me. Twice now you’ve tried to go back.
There is no going back with me, Chloe-lass
.” He hissed the last words, his lips drawing away from his teeth. “You know what I want and you want it too. You want it just the way I’m about to give it to you.”

Chloe’s knees nearly buckled. Anticipation shivered through her. He was right. On all counts.

He stalked. “Hard, fast, deep. When I’m done, you’ll know you’re mine. And you’ll never think of naysaying me again.”

Another predatory step toward her.

She didn’t even think about it, she just yielded to the instinct: her feet spun her about and she broke into a run. As if she
could
outrun him. As if she could outrun what she’d been trying to outrun since she’d met him—the reckless, terrifying intensity of her desire for him. As if she even wanted to. She wanted him more than was wise, more than was rational, more than was controllable.

Still, she ran, a final symbolic resistance and—a part of her knew—she ran because she
wanted
him to chase her. Thrilled with the knowledge that Dageus MacKeltar was running after her and when he caught her he was going to teach her all those things his eyes had been promising. All those things she wanted so desperately to know. She sped through the tall, thick grass and he actually let her run for a time, as if he, too, were enjoying the chase. Then he was on her, taking her down to the ground on her stomach beneath him.
Laughing
as he took her down.

His laughter turned into a rough growl as he stretched his big hard body the full length of hers, his erection an iron bar prodding her behind through the fabric of her gown. She wriggled, panicked by the feel of how large he was, yet he gave no quarter, wrapping his arms tightly around her, pinning hers to her sides. He rubbed himself back and forth between the cleft of her bottom, growling in a language she couldn’t understand.

Banding her arms with one of his, he slid a hand between her body and the ground and cupped the vee of her thighs. She cried out at the shatteringly intimate touch. Every nerve in her body awakened brutally to a sharp, hungry emptiness. Muscles deep inside her bore down on nothing, aching to be filled and soothed. His strange temper, his roughness, fed a desire in her she’d not known she had. To be taken, consumed by the man. Hard and fast and without words. Every bit as animal as she’d known he was the day she’d met him.

She
liked
the danger in him, she realized then. It stirred a reckless part of her she’d long denied, been a little afraid of it. The part of her that sometimes dreamed she was in The Cloisters at night and the alarm systems had failed, leaving all those glorious artifacts unprotected.

His weight was so heavy atop her she could scarcely breathe. When his lips grazed the back of her neck, she whimpered. When his teeth closed on it in a little love-bite, she practically screamed. She was dizzyingly aroused, hot, achy, and needy. Then his big hand was on her face, a finger slipping between her lips and she sucked on it, willing to take and taste any part of him she could get. With his other hand he shoved the skirts of her gown up, his fingers ruthlessly probing her exposed soft folds, spreading the dampness, slipping and sliding. As the hard maleness of him prodded her bottom, he worked a finger inside her and thrust deeply.

Chloe cried out and pushed back against his hand.
Yes, oh, yes—that was what she needed!
Small broken sounds escaped her lips as he deftly slid a second finger in till he reached her virgin barrier. Gently, but relentlessly, he thrust through it, covering her bare neck and shoulders with searing, open-mouthed kisses interspersed with tiny bites. The pain was fleeting, a small tearing, swiftly surpassed by the pleasure of his fingers moving inside her, his mouth hot on her skin, his powerful body rippling against hers. He was her most private fantasy come to life. She’d dreamed of this, him taking her as if there were no force on earth that could prevent it.

None could, she thought dimly. Since the moment she’d seen him she’d known it would come to this. It had never been a question of “if,” it had always only been a question of where and when.

Then he was nudging, thick and hard as steel, against those soft, delicate folds and she made a small helpless sound of distress. She’d
seen
him. She knew what was coming, and didn’t think she could take it.

“Shh,” he crooned against her ear, thrusting forward.

“I can’t,” she half-sobbed, as he began to push inside her. The pressure of him trying to enter was too intense.

“Aye, you can.”

“No!”

“Easy lass,” he purred. He drew back out the small inch he’d gained, wrapped a hand around himself and tried again, slowly. Though she wanted desperately to have him inside her, her body resisted the intrusion. He was too big and she was simply too small. With a barely smothered oath he stopped again, then he was roughly bunching the thick folds of her gown into a wad beneath her pelvis, raising her bottom higher for him, at just such an angle.

Then his full weight was on her again. He curled one powerful arm around her shoulders, the other around her hips.

He rubbed himself back and forth between her legs until she was pushing wildly back against him. At this new angle she felt exposed and vulnerable, but knew it would make it easier for him to enter. When she was crying out incoherently, he pushed himself in slowly, easing inside, his breath hissing from between his teeth. She panted, struggling to accommodate the impaling thickness of him. Minutes inched by as he pushed deeper, taking every tiny bit her body yielded. Just when she was certain he’d seated himself to the hilt, that she had all of him, he pushed a final time with a rough sound, deeper still, and she made helpless mewling noises.

“I’m in you, lass,” his voice was a deep burr against her ear. “I’m part of you now.”

God, he’d been in her since the moment she’d seen him. A larcenous thief, he’d broken and entered
her
, claiming residence just beneath her skin. How had she lived without this? she wondered. Without this fierce, savage intimacy, without this big intense man inside her?

“I’m going to love you now, slow and sweet, but when you come, I’m going to fuck you the way I need to. The way I’ve been dreaming about since the moment I saw you.”

She whimpered in reply, burning inside, desperate for him to move, to do as he promised. She wanted both: tenderness and wildness, man and animal.

“When you bent back inside your friend’s car that day, Chloe, I wanted to be behind you, just like this. I wanted to slip your skirt up and fill you up with me. I wanted to carry you up to my penthouse and keep you in my bed and never let you go.” He groaned, a soft rough, purring sound. “And, och, when I saw your legs sticking out from beneath my bed—” He broke off, abruptly switching to a language she couldn’t understand, but the exotic dialect in his husky voice wove an erotic spell around her.

He withdrew slowly, filled her again, thrusting in long, slow strokes, nudging deep. The largeness of him stirred nerve endings in places she’d not known existed. She could feel her climax building with each sure thrust, yet the moment she was about to reach it, he withdrew, leaving her aching and nearly sobbing with frustrated desire.