CHAPTER FIVE #3
What was she doing? Why couldn’t she breathe? Why was he angry? She backed up. Putting more distance between them seemed to be a really good idea.
“Do ye fear me now?” He almost seemed amused. “Ye should fear me. I dinna take orders, not from anyone.”
She thought of Angel. “Got it. No more orders!” Then she choked. This was not the time to be incoherent. “I wasn’t summoning you. I thought you were hurt. I wanted to find you to help you.”
His face changed. His eyes blazed, but with interest, not anger. He strode rapidly forward. Tabby cried out, backed up and hit the couch. “What are you doing?” she gasped.
“I willna drag ye off by yer hair,” he said. When he halted, he had her trapped against the sofa.
He was telepathic. Great!
“I can’t breathe,” she said somehow. “Not with you standing over me like this.”
He suddenly tilted up her chin.
Tabby went still. Her heart thundered. Pulse points she’d never known she had began firing off all over her body, one by one, and a very definite throbbing began as desire suddenly reared up in her body.
For one moment, his blue gaze changed, searching hers, and Tabby had the definite feeling that he knew and was pleased. Then he said tersely, “Ye’ve haunted me fer a century. Why? Did my enemies send ye?”
Tabby gasped. “Now what are you talking about?”
“Ye heard. I first saw ye when I was a boy. Ye wanted to help me. Then ye bothered me in my dreams. Sometimes ye even bothered me after battle. An’ I saw ye yesterday, on the beach where I buried my family.”
Tabby began to tremble. As unnerving as his touch was, this was stunning information. “Please don’t touch me,” she said.
His eyes widened. He dropped his hand.
Tabby had no choice. To get away from him, she had to slip past his big body and the sofa.
It would be absurd to climb on the couch to avoid his body, even if that was what she wanted to do.
So she brushed past him, escaping into the rest of the living area.
As she did so, something she didn’t want to think about bumped her.
He was aroused. She felt her cheeks flame, felt that surprising throbbing again. Before facing him, she hugged herself. How was she going to handle that? But her mind had just shut down.
“Tell me why ye continued to haunt me.”
Slowly she pulled herself together and turned to face him, aware that she was still blushing. “I don’t know anything about a haunting. First of all, I thought one had to be a ghost to haunt someone. Clearly, I am not dead.”
He made a harsh sound but he was very still now, listening intently to her.
Tabby hugged herself harder. She decided not think about the two of them being alone in her loft, not now. “Are you sure it was me?”
He laughed without mirth. Even his laughter was frightening—no, disturbing. “Woman, t’was ye.”
He was certain. He believed he’d seen her over the years, from the time he was a small boy.
She’d felt that he was familiar the moment she’d seen him at the Met—and when she’d envisioned him as a boy, reading that plaque, she had felt that she’d known him, too.
“I can’t explain this. But I saw you yesterday, at a museum.
There was an exhibit there, related to Melvaig, Scotland.
And when I saw you, you seemed familiar and I wanted to help you. ”
His eyes were wide but hard. “Melvaig is the stronghold of my enemies.”
“I know.” Tabby knew better than to elaborate.
This man hadn’t been in a fire, which meant that An Tùir-Tara was in his future.
She didn’t need a Wisdom from the Book of Roses to tell her not to reveal his future to him.
That was strictly forbidden. “At the museum, they mention a massacre in 1201. Only a fourteen-year-old boy survived. Was that you?”
His face became so hard she was frightened and alarmed. His expression seemed ready to crack—or explode? It was a moment before he spoke. “Aye. They have written about my family in yer time? About me?”
Tabby nodded. That boy had been devastated by the loss of his family. She almost wanted to go up to him and touch his hand, which was absurd. He wasn’t that grieving boy now. Oh, no. He was the antithesis of that boy—he was the antithesis of just about everything good and proper with the world!
He cursed and suddenly her couch-side lamps shattered, a bowl and the vase of roses sliding off the coffee table.
Tabby froze. Clearly getting him angry was not a good idea.
“Why do they write about me?” he demanded.
“Historians write about history—anyone’s history,” she said helplessly.
He looked at her destroyed lamps. Only the shades were intact.
This wasn’t going to work, Tabby thought. He had a temper; he was angry with her. He had to go back to wherever it was that he came from—immediately! Clearly, she wasn’t the one to help him. She was simply not up to the task.
Carefully, she said, “What time, exactly, did you come from?”
“Ye dinna ken?” When she shook her head, he said, “Yer magic took me from Blayde in the middle of the night, on June the tenth, 1298.”
Tabby tried to keep her shock from showing. He had come from the late thirteenth century—which wasn’t even close to 1550! No wonder he was such a ruthless barbarian.
His gaze narrowed. “Tabitha, I dinna like being judged. I am the Macleod, an’ those who judge me rarely live to tell of it.”
Tabby trembled. Had he just threatened her?
“I saved ye. I willna harm ye. But heed my warnings.”
Tabby somehow nodded. “Do not get me wrong, because I’m grateful for what you did today, but I’m not sure why you’re here. The police want you dead. You really need to go back to Blayde in 1298.”
A funny, small smile changed his expression.
Tabby tensed. What did that look mean?
“But ye want to help me.”
She instantly knew they had entered extremely dangerous territory. “You clearly do not need my help right now.”
His voice dropped to a murmur. He said, “But ye’re grateful, aye?”
Tabby went still. “Wh-what?”
“Ye’re a grateful woman. Ye owe me now.”
Her mind went blank. Then, as comprehension came, her pulse exploded. He meant to seduce her! She was aghast—but her body was thrumming.
“Ye want me. I want ye. Ye owe me. I will gladly accept a night in yer bed.”
She choked.
He simply looked at her, staring, his eyes distinctly smoldering now.
Tabby whirled, starting for the kitchen, tripping as she did so. She was grateful, true, but he expected her to pay him back with her body! She would never do such a thing! And what was wrong with her damned body, anyway? Why was she breathless, too warm…aroused?
How was she going to get him to leave?
She paused at the kitchen counter, clinging to it. Then she felt him as he approached, coming up behind her. “Ye dinna need to fear me.”
She made an entirely incoherent sound. “You beheaded Angel while I was in his arms!” She twisted around to face him—a mistake.
She was almost in his embrace, and now, gods damn it, he was amused.
“I am a master with a sword.”
“You could have beheaded me,” she accused.
He lifted up a hank of her hair. “Never.”
She went still. Their gazes locked. His was dark blue smoke. “You need to go back to your time, Macleod. Immediately!”
He smiled. It was seductive and sexy, but most of all, it revealed how shockingly handsome he was. And it made him seem almost human. “Why do ye fear my bed so much?”
“We don’t know each other!”
“In my time,” he said softly, “when a woman is as hot as ye, she takes her pleasure an’ enjoys it.”
Tabby was speechless. She felt dazed, and her body was doing all kinds of crazy and inappropriate things.
She closed her eyes to avoid that smoldering gaze. He was coming onto her, and she couldn’t handle either him or her own reaction to him. Everything was wrong! “Just go,” she said hoarsely, opening her eyes. “Just go back to Blayde, back to your time, because this will never work!”
His stare became searching, intent. It was as if he was trying to figure her out. She knew he was reading her mind.
“I made a mistake,” she added desperately. “You were supposed to come from 1550, not 1298!”
“I canna return,” he finally said. “I dinna have the power to leap. Ye’ll have to send me back.” He smiled now, cool and confident. “When I am ready to leave.”