CHAPTER EIGHT #2
Aidan breathed hard and reached out, straining. It took a long moment, but he finally felt the black evil filling the confines of his tent. “I’ll be seeing’ ye in hell very soon,” he snarled.
“You’ll see me tomorrow,” Moray murmured.
And the evil weight vanished. Aidan knew he was gone.
“Aidan? What’s going on? What’s happening?” Brianna cried.
She was terrified—and in his arms. And it was a soft, warm, caring woman he held.
He wanted to soothe her, but not the way he’d so often soothed Ian in his previous lifetime.
He wanted to soothe her by moving over her, by kissing her face, her breasts, her hair.
All he had to do was take her face in his hands and press her down onto the bed.
His body was already hot and inflamed. When his body was in hers, she would not be thinking of this nightmare, his deamhan father and the dream death.
But he made no such efforts.
Moray was hunting her now.
It had become terribly clear. Moray would use her against Aidan, just as he had begun to fear. He must not take her, touch her or soothe her, not in any way. He already cared to protect her, and that made her—and him—terribly vulnerable.
He must send Brianna to Iona immediately.
For one more moment, he held her in the circle of his arms, acutely aware of her warmth and caring, and even of her love. If he did not behave with extreme caution, she would suffer the same fate as Ian—or even a worse one.
“I’ll guard ye while ye sleep. I willna allow anyone to step into yer dreams.”
Her eyes widened. She glanced down between them, where he throbbed helplessly against the linen leine. “I can’t sleep now,” she whispered.
And he realized he hadn’t shielded his desire from her—or his anger and fear. Instantly he put a block between them, but that didn’t change what he really wanted to do. It didn’t ease his body, which clamored for her. He released her and stood up.
Very careful to sound indifferent, he said, “Yer a beautiful woman, Brianna. Ye ken a Highland man will always respond to beauty with virility.” He shrugged.
“I’m not beautiful,” she said, her green eyes unwavering on his. “Aidan, I just died.”
He went still and his heart lurched. Was this another new power? “Are ye certain?”
She nodded, looking lost and vulnerable, pulling her covers up to her chin. “No one dies in a dream. I died.”
He did not know what this could mean. She had died in Moray’s arms, from his own power. He shrugged, forcing indifference. “’Twas only a dream.”
“I felt the last moment of my life—I knew it was over. I felt my life leave,” she stressed, as pale as his son’s ghost. “I even saw the holies—I went to their light.”
He met her gaze and saw so much emotion shimmering there. He saw fear and helplessness, which enraged him, and he saw courage and determination, which he admired. But her strained gaze also beckoned him.
He understood the plea and lurked anyway.
She wanted him to slip into her bed and make love to her.
Of course, she thought about making love to him all the time.
He didn’t have to lurk to know it. Her eyes gave her away.
It was often annoying, sometimes infuriating and always provocative.
His body seemed to have a mind and will of its own, for it always responded to her.
Now she stared and it only furthered the tension coursing between them.
He swiftly poured her some wine and handed the glass to her. She smiled wanly at him, and he was suddenly sorry that he hadn’t taken her to bed previously. Now there would never be that chance.
“I really need Tabby and Sam. Claire said she’d contacted Allie. Maybe she’ll show up soon.”
He understood why she was so upset, and damn it, he wanted to distract her. “Lady Allie can persuade Royce to come to ye, if anyone can. Brianna…forget about the dream.”
“I can’t.” Then she added, “At least I lived to wake up.”
“Drink yer wine. It will comfort you,” he said. “A dream isna reality.”
She gave him a look. “Yes, it is. I’m a Rose, Aidan. I come from a long line of powerful women and we know all about the other worlds.”
He crossed his arms. He had wondered about her empathy for him. “Why do ye have more empathy fer me than others?”
“I don’t know, exactly, but it’s helped me understand you—and made me even more determined to help you.”
“I dinna care fer ye to feel so much of me,” he said. “I have to guard myself all the time to block ye.”
She slid from the bed, and his eyes widened at the sight of her legs and pink underwear. “You invade my privacy whenever you feel like it. I guess now you know what it feels like.”
He stared at her pale, lush thighs and the pink bikini. His pulse was roaring impossibly. Then he raised his eyes. “Ye need to get dressed.”
She didn’t move. “I felt your desire a moment ago, too, before you shielded it. It was different. It wasn’t about power, not at all. It was the same desire you had in our dream.”
He did not like her husky tone and sidelong look. “A Highlander needs sex like his daily bread, while a deamhan needs power. I am a Highlander and a deamhan,” he said harshly. “I have sex an’ take power every single day.”
“Demons destroy. You haven’t destroyed me. You don’t even want to use me. You want good, old-fashioned sex, so I guess that makes you more of a Highlander than half demon.”
“I liked ye better,” he said softly, “when ye feared me. ’Tis late. Go back to sleep.”
She trembled. “I don’t think so.”
Now she would refuse him?
“I’ll sleep when you stop staring at my legs.”
He realized he was looking at her pink undergarment again, and what he could see behind the material. He flushed. She was throbbing gently. If he did what he really wished to do, there would be nothing gentle in her body. “Ye want me to stare or ye wouldn’t stand naked in the freezin’ cold.”
“I’m haven’t noticed the cold, and I’m not naked.”
He went still. A reply escaped him now.
“And you can block whatever you choose, but what you’re feeling is really obvious.
” She glanced at the hem of his leine, which remained tented.
She added, her face flushed, “I don’t know whether I chose to dream of him or whether he decided to inflict himself on me in my dream, but as I said, I’m a Rose, and I know dreams are another reality.
” She stared into his eyes, her gaze intense—beseeching, even.
“I have never been so afraid, not in my entire life, and I have seen my share of evil. Even though I have woken up alive, I can’t go back to sleep. What if he comes back to kill me?”
He was an instant from putting his arm around her and giving her what they both wanted. “Ye need clothes,” he repeated. “An’ I will keep ye safe, as I promised ye I would do.”
She looked right into his eyes. “At first I thought I was mistaken,” she said huskily. “I thought you were oversexed, and the desire was because I’m female and anything in a skirt would do.”
He was not going to admit anything. He was having trouble speaking, in any case. “Get dressed. Now.”
She moved, but not to get dressed. Instead, she dared to touch his cheek.
“I think you want me, a lot. And even better, I think you care, at least a little. I think we’re becoming friends.
And I think that’s why you want me. I think you need to make love to me.
” Her eyes, trained upon his, were as wide as a doe’s.
He was aghast.
He picked her jeans up from the foot of the bed and threw them at her chest, where she hugged them. “We will never be friends and we will never be lovers, Brianna,” he warned.
“Why not?”
“Because Moray has come back, and not just in dreams,” he said harshly. “He was the giant I met on the battlefield.”
DEAMHANAIN DID NOT DESIRE, they lusted. They did not protect, they destroyed.
Aidan paced outside his tent, aware that Brianna was inside, tense with fear and wide awake.
Now she needed his protection, from his demonic father.
If he wasn’t careful, he would slip into Brianna’s bed to comfort her, enjoy her every caress and cry and, before he knew it, she would be healing him.
He would accept MacNeil’s offer and become allies with the Brotherhood, and after giving up his vengeance he would be walking with the gods again.
He shook with rage, looking up at a bright, full moon. “I’ll never walk in yer light again. Bastards,” he hissed.
But Moray was more powerful than ever, and he had to be destroyed, soon. MacNeil did not know how he could be vanquished. If anyone could defeat Moray, it was a mighty god.
But no god would show him compassion, not after all he had done. And he would not beg them for their aid, either, just as he wouldn’t beg MacNeil.
But the gods were selfish and greedy, like their children, the Highlanders. Gods liked power and wealth. He could bribe them. And why not? He needed the power and he would enjoy the blackmail.
“Ye hate me as I hate ye,” he said harshly, staring at the silent night. “Come face me now an’ admit it, so we can begin our bargain.”
The night remained blue-black, cool and silent. Only the wolves moved, panting as they lay a short distance from him.
“Let me defeat Moray,” Aidan said, thinking of Brianna, “an’ I will gladly give ye my life.”
The night changed. Stars winked at him; the moon smiled. The wind even sighed.
The wolves sat up.
These were hardly answers. “She has seen the future.” Green eyes came to his mind, at once frightened and determined. “I am to hang soon. No rope can hold me, but give me the power to defeat Moray an’ I will accept my fate.”
A gust of wind lifted the dead leaves at his feet.
“Cowards,” he hissed. “Show yerself an’ let us seal our bargain!”
The wind roared, whipping his leine. The wolves growled, hackles raised, and then, abruptly, the autumn night was still and vacant.
That was an answer if he had ever heard one.
AIDAN LAY UNSLEEPING on the bearskin beside her bed, and Brianna was acutely aware of him.