CHAPTER SEVEN #2
Macleod was standing, calmly wrapping his plaid around his waist, in no rush. He looked smug and pleased.
What had she done?
“Tabby?”
Randall had let himself in. Clearly he was in her living area. Tabby came alive. She jumped to her feet, hopping into the track pants, setting a world record. “Do not come out of the bathroom,” she whispered furiously.
“I willna hide from yer husband.”
Tabby straightened in disbelief. Had he just snarled at her? He was cool, calm and poker-faced, but his eyes glittered dangerously. She inhaled. No good could come of Macleod and Randall meeting! “Just wait in here!” she snapped.
“Why?” he asked. “Because ye dinna wish fer yer husband to see ye with a mostly naked man?” His eyes were dark. “I thought ye a widow, Tabitha. I dinna realize yer husband remained alive.”
Tabby became even more alarmed. “In my time, women can leave and divorce their husbands—and vice versa. I have to go and I am asking you to wait here.”
His smile was sudden and mocking. “Did ye love him, Tabitha?” he asked softly. “Ye never had sex without love—until now. Ye must have loved him, otherwise, ye’d have avoided his bed.”
Did he know everything about her? She was stunned and incredulous.
“Do ye love him still?”
Macleod was not keeping his voice down. “Be quiet,” she muttered.
“Why? What do ye care if he sees ye with a lover?”
She trembled, angry and distraught now. “Stay put, damn it! I am asking you to stay put!”
“Tabby?” She heard Randall walking toward the bathroom.
Tabby raced out of it, slamming the door closed as he turned the corner from the living area. He halted the moment he saw her, his eyes widening.
Tabby felt her color increase. She’d been having sex on the bathroom floor. Did she look like a woman who’d just had a huge, almost endless orgasm? Impossibly, she felt herself flush even more—and not with guilt.
“Are you okay? I just saw the evening news!” Randall hurried toward her.
Tabby was acutely aware of Macleod in the bathroom and what she had just done. “It’s surprising that you care,” she began. Now, the fact that he’d let himself in with her keys—for the second time—hit her.
Randall strode to her and crushed her in his arms. She tried to press away from him. “You look like hell,” he said. “And of course I care.” But the words weren’t even out of his mouth when he stiffened—at the exact moment Tabby heard the bathroom door open.
She tensed impossibly as Randall released her, his face turning pale with shock. “What the hell?”
“Hallo, a Rhandaill.”
Tabby whirled and groaned. Macleod stood there smiling, clad only in the plaid, which was wrapped around his waist. He looked smug and satisfied.
Randall’s eyes popped. “Oh, my God,” he said. “I don’t believe this!”
She didn’t owe him any explanations, but Tabby flushed with shame. “It’s not exactly what you think,” she tried. But it was exactly what he was thinking. What had happened to old-fashioned, morally conservative Tabby Rose?
Randall looked at Tabby, incredulous. “This is what you’re doing? Shacking up with a steroidal illiterate jock?”
Tabby covered her face with her hands. She did not have any reasonable explanation.
“My personal life is not your business. We were done almost two years ago. I can sleep with whomever I want.” His eyes widened impossibly.
Tabby trembled, amazed that she would be so harsh with him.
“You can’t barge in here, Randall. And you can’t call Macleod names.
” Oddly, that last dig really bothered her.
“What did he just call me?” Macleod asked her very softly, but his stare never wavered from her ex.
Randall whirled and took in his mostly naked body. “I called you a steroidal illiterate jock.”
Tabby cried out. “Macleod, ignore him!”
But Macleod had seized Randall and was spinning him roughly across the room. “Ye ken I kill men fer such insults.”
“Macleod!” Tabby cried, aghast.
Randall fell and Macleod towered over him. “Yer little wife has no more use fer ye. Ye can give me the keys.”
Randall scrambled to his feet.
“Can ye understand my English?” Macleod asked softly.
He flushed, thrusting Tabby’s extra keys at him. Then he began backing away. “I don’t believe this.” He looked at Tabby. “I want to marry you again, and you’re playing around with that moron?” He looked at Macleod. “I’m slapping you with assault charges, bud!”
Macleod’s mouth curved and he seized Randall by the shoulder. “Tabitha isna foolish enough to marry ye a second time. She wants ye gone. I want ye gone. Leave afore I cut yer throat an’ give yer carcass to the dogs.”
Tabby cried out. “Randall, you had better go.”
“Holy shit,” Randall cried. “He’s a psycho! He means it!”
Tabby nodded desperately. “I think he does mean it.”
“Then you’re crazy, too!” Randall cried. “A crazy, lying whore!”
Macleod reddened. It took Tabby one moment to realize he was furious, and by then, lightbulbs were popping, pots and pans were rattling and her curtains were flying around the windows.
Macleod pushed Randall toward the door so violently that he fell to the floor again, face-first. Tabby cried out. “Macleod, stop!”
“I can manage insults from such a womanly man,” Macleod spit. “I dinna think ye deserve his insults, Tabitha.”
“They don’t bother me,” Tabby cried, lying.
“He’s insane,” Randall cried, getting up, his face pale. Blood trickled from his nose as he ran to the front door. “He’s got damned ’roid rage!”
“What is ’roid rage?” Macleod demanded.
This was going to escalate, Tabby thought, panicked. She seized Macleod’s arm with both hands and held on for Randall’s life. “It doesn’t matter! He is leaving, Macleod. Just let him go.”
“It means that shit you take to make all that brawn is melting down your brain,” Randall spit. “Tabby might like going to bed with you, but intelligence is what really turns her on. I mean, can you even read?”
“Please don’t,” Tabby cried.
Macleod pulled away from her and started to cross the room, slowly, like a big cat lazily and confidently stalking its prey. “Only Latin,” he said. “An’, Randall? With me, she dinna fake it.”
It took Randall a moment. “What?” he said, turning to look at her, disbelieving.
Tabby felt her cheeks flame and she didn’t respond.
Randall choked, realizing she hadn’t been all that honest with him while in his bed.
Macleod was almost at the door. Randall seized it, flung it open and rushed out. He didn’t even go to the elevator, where he’d have to wait for it to arrive at the eleventh floor. He ran desperately for the stairs and vanished into the stairwell.
Macleod actually laughed. “What a puny man! What a coward!”
Tabby backed away, sinking down on a chair by the couch. She covered her face with her hands. She actually felt sorry for Randall. But he had called her a lying whore.
She heard her front door close. She felt Macleod approach, although she didn’t hear him—he was too skilled and his steps were soundless.
Through her hands, she saw him holding out her keys.
“Go away,” she whispered. Her mind was blank now, and she wanted it to stay that way.
She was pretty certain that in a moment, she was going to think about every damned minute that had transpired in the past quarter of an hour or so.
He didn’t move. “Ye wanted him to leave.”
Her head ached terribly now. Don’t think, she begged herself. Just go to sleep and deal with this—with him—tomorrow!
“Ye despise him. He treated ye horribly when ye were his wife. Ye wanted him gone,” Macleod said flatly.
Tabby looked up. “Okay. I wanted him gone. But not that way.”
“Then what way?”
“I was going to ask him to leave politely!” Tabby screamed at him.
Macleod’s eyes widened.
Tabby covered her mouth with her hands. What had happened in that bathroom?
He had touched her and she had gone insane. One touch, the feel of him beneath her hands, and she’d been frantic and desperate and sexually crazed. She’d had a violent orgasm, right off the bat.
It always took her hours to climax, usually during gentle, thoughtful sex, with a good and very private fantasy thrown in.
What was she going to do?
He said, “He doesna respect ye and he wouldna leave if ye asked nicely.”
Tabby stood up and her knees buckled. Macleod reached out and steadied her. She struck his hand away, so hard it hurt her own wrist. His eyes were wide, wary, and he kept his hands to himself. “You treated him terribly! Rudely—violently. You acted like a…a thug!”
He was silent, but his eyes flashed with displeasure. Then he said, “I dinna like him verra much. He called ye a whore.”
She was close to tears. Now, images from their very brief encounter in her bathroom were replaying wildly in her mind. She’d tried to climb up his body! She’d clawed his shoulders—literally! His skin had to be under her fingernails. And had she begged him to do it? What was wrong with her?
“It doesn’t matter what he called me. You are violent, savage…bestial!”
He crossed his arms, his face hard and tight. “But ye liked it a moment ago.”
Tabby struck him across the face as hard as she could.
He didn’t flinch, when her blow would have made another man reel. His eyes widened—and then narrowed.
Tabby could barely believe she’d hit him. She’d never hit anyone or anything in her life. She did not retreat, however. “Violence is the way you live. I get it. But here, in my time, in my home, we don’t abuse guests!”
He made a harsh, disparaging sound. “So ye wish to treat him as a guest when he insults ye?”
“That’s right!” she screamed again. Her stomach was churning.
Why didn’t he get it? He had rescued her, but they could never be friends, much less lovers.
Their values were too different. He lived by the sword, when she used magic to help others.
But she had just had raw frantic sex with him on her bathroom floor.
And now, damn it, she could not forget it. She would never forget it!
But it wasn’t shame or guilt that was foremost on her mind. It was shock.