CHAPTER SEVEN #3
She’d been uninhibited and passionate. She’d taken, instead of given. The more she kept recalling it, the more dismayed she was—and the more her body was quickening with the memory. It was so hard to breathe!
“If ye were a man, ye’d die fer that.”
Tabby hugged herself, just looking at him. “Then I’m lucky, aren’t I? Go away. I need to be by myself.”
“Ye dinna care fer Randall. Ye dinna even like him now.”
“Go away—far away!” she shouted.
“He has no respect fer ye. He thinks to use ye fer his own gain.”
He was right on that last point. “Like you respect me?” she cried. “Because I do believe that you were using me a few minutes ago!”
She heard him exhale harshly. He said, “We used each other. Ye wanted me, I wanted ye. ’Tis natural. And I gave ye pleasure.” He added, “I enjoyed yer pleasure.”
She so wanted to hit him again. But he was right—it had been mutual. She stared at him furiously and he stared back impassively. The memory of their brief encounter made it hard to think clearly.
But she did know one thing. “This will never work.”
His brows slashed upward. Then his expression changed, becoming cold and speculative, at once.
“It will never work!” she repeated, pointing at him. Did men die for that rather rude gesture, too? Of course they did!
His hands had fisted. “Ye said,” he said low and carefully, “that many women in yer time take their pleasure when they wish. Now ye’re like most others.”
“I am not like other women. I am a prude, and if you don’t know what I mean, look it up!”
A bewildered expression crossed his face and Tabby simply didn’t care.
She pointed at him again. “I am sorry I cast that spell to bring you here. It backfired. You were supposed to come from An Tùir-Tara, all bloody and burned and grief-stricken, so I could help you! Instead, I get this murdering warrior without a soul or a conscience!” She could not control her tone.
She was probably hysterical and she didn’t care.
“I don’t know why I had to be the one to see you at the museum, damn it!
I don’t know why you think you’ve seen me haunting you for a hundred years!
And I don’t care.” She stopped, panting.
“Ye care.”
“No, I do not! In fact, tomorrow I am sending you back to Blayde, and we can both say a little prayer and hope you wind up where you belong!”
He folded his arms and stared coldly at her. “Like hell.”
Tabby finally became silent. Their gazes locked.
“Someone has to protect ye.”
“Not you. My sister can do that.”
He scoffed at her. “A woman? I dinna think so.”
“Sam is a warrior. You cannot stay here. You do not belong here. That is really obvious.”
“I will stay until I vanquish the evil behind the boys.”
“Shit!” Tabby cried. He wasn’t going to budge. She didn’t even know if she could send him away. If he refused to go, she had a terrible suspicion that he might be able to resist any spell she might cast. “You haven’t taken vows, but now, suddenly, you’re a protector?”
“Ye’re the woman sharin’ my bed.”
She inhaled so sharply it hurt her ribs. She saw his strained face as he loomed over her, his hand in her hair, holding her still, so he could kiss her the way she’d never been kissed before.
He intended to continue this.
What was she going to do?
Image after image came, brutally and erotically now. His huge body, driving up into hers. Her back against the door, on the hard floor. And the incredible ecstasy…
Her blood was so hot she thought her skin might start smoking. She swallowed. “We’re from different worlds,” she said slowly. “Your world is violent and savage—too violent and savage for me. Being together makes no sense. Surely you can see that?”
“I live by my word…an’ my sword, Tabitha. If I dinna destroy my enemies, they will destroy me.” His gaze was hard, but it was also searching.
“I know. And that’s the bottom line—our worlds are too different.
” She turned abruptly, her back to him, and reached for her bedroom door, tears finally forming.
They burned her eyes. She didn’t know why she was upset.
She didn’t know why she wanted to curl up and cry.
She prayed he wouldn’t come after her. If he did, she was really afraid of what would happen next.
“Our worlds are nay as different as ye’d like to believe.”
His tone was bedroom soft. Tabby rushed into her bedroom and slammed the door closed, shaking. He was wrong; she was right! Then she covered her face with her hands, giving into utter despair and utter exhaustion, her head feeling explosive.
They did not share any Destiny. It was a mistake, or one big fat celestial joke; it had to be.
The sooner he went back to 1298, the better.
They had nothing in common except for the war on evil.
But what about the desire that raged between them?
Maybe, just maybe, it had been a shocking abnormality—one single instance in her life that would never be repeated, an event that had come out of the terrible trauma of that day.
Tabby felt her tears start to fall. She wanted to be that wildly passionate woman—just not with a medieval man who callously beheaded his enemies at whim!
She stumbled over to her bed and collapsed on top of the comforter there.
She was so tired she couldn’t move, not even to get under the covers. But she knew she’d never sleep.
Because now, instead of seeing him roughing Randall up or beheading Angel, she saw him in the bathroom, stripping down, naked, absolutely immodest and too physically perfect for words.
Tabby wanted to moan. Her attraction to him hadn’t changed, and she didn’t know what to do about it. She suddenly wondered if she simply thought about him and what he could do to her, she might find that rapture again. She blushed.
Her bedroom door opened abruptly.
He’d been listening to her. Tabby lay very still, her body suddenly inflamed. He was going to come onto her—and she was probably going to let him.
But he knelt beside her bed, and his large, strong hand covered her mouth.
Tabby tensed, alarmed.
“Dinna move,” Macleod whispered. “Evil,” he said.