Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
When Rowan heard that the Rembrandt had been “given” to the bank, I didn’t have to be spiritually connected with him, as I was, to know he was livid.
The whisky in his belly soured quickly when I filled him in, and he spent the rest of the day growling and skulking around the grounds, his cell phone to his ear.
We met back up in the cottage that evening.
The late-summer sunset was laced with a crisp breeze that ambled through the window reminding me that fall was approaching.
The researchers would be heading back to school, and the Fund would want a progress report.
Rowan was still processing the fact that his ancient uncle’s portrait was stolen to pause foreclosure proceedings.
“I’ve spent all bloody afternoon trying to get a meeting with the two of them.
Charmaine is simply telling me tha’ she’s indisposed and hanging up, and Murdoch is still refusing to answer my calls.
Something is off, I can feel it in my bones.
I’d expect him tae call and rub it in my face that he has it and give me the backhanded compliment of avoiding foreclosure of the loan. ”
“Maybe he gave Charmaine that speech. I imagine them toasting and high-fiving, not realizing you had other plans. Or, excuse me, not giving a rat’s patootie about your plans.”
“They need tae know what they’ve done.” Rowan wanted to watch their expressions when he told them what taking the Rembrandt meant to him and precisely what he would do to them as penance.
It sounded, on the surface, as just. He wanted to tell them they would no longer do business with the estate.
But I thought the subtext of his body language—“and if I get an opportunity to torpedo your career, I’ll take it”—made the in-person part critical.
I pulled my university tee over my head and slipped in under the covers as his phone chimed.
“Is that one of them? Is it Charmaine apologizing? Murdoch texting you that Charmaine was out of line and that he’d love a sit-down with you to apologize and work through what new direction the estate can take to avoid foreclosure? ”
When he laughed, I had my answer.
“No. An old friend is coming to visit.” His fingers texted back as I waited.
And when I couldn’t wait any longer, I asked, “Who?”
He put his phone down. “A verra good distraction and a research fellow who has heard from Clive that we’ve had another paranormal event.”
I grinned back at him. “Peabody!” I loved Peabody.
That is, I loved Peabody after I got over him pinching me at the gala when we met the year before to prove his point that Rowan’s and my energies were connected.
There was no one in my sphere who was more joyful and enthusiastic in his dedication to his pursuit than Peabody.
“Tha’s right.”
“When is he coming?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“Next month? Next year?”
Rowan shook his head as he toed off his shoes. “Something about grants being funded, and he will come once they did.”
“Ah, so this decade, then.”
“Aye.”
“Speaking of people visiting, have you seen TJ?”
Rowan paused in unbuttoning his cuffs, thinking. “No. Haven’t been threatened by him either. Odd, aye?”
I adjusted the covers, then plopped my arms on top, letting them slowly descend into the feather comforter. “Charmaine killed him.”
His cufflinks clinked into their holder on his highboy dresser. “Or he’s making passionate love tae her while she scratches his backside off.”
I made a retching sound. “Gross.”
“What?” he asked absently, his mind elsewhere, “ye don’t think she’d scratch him?”
“I dunno, you tell me. You’re the only one here who’s slept with her.”
He was working the buttons down his front when he stopped and gave me a long, dry, unamused look. “I know tha’ comment comes from a place of jealousy, but we both know I learned tha’ lovemaking could involve scratching when I met you.”
I smiled at having been called out; it was true. I smoothed down the covers and was back to: “Charmaine murdered him.”
“Likely.”
“Tomorrow, I’ll call the police and report him missing.
” I made a mental note to remind TJ that Charmaine was one nut he’d not be able to crack, certainly not in the few days he had left at Castle Laoch.
He had to return to service for Uncle Sam, so he should not dally with my mortal enemy.
Unless he was investigating her for a weakness I could exploit.
Rowan shucked his pants and slid into bed with me, buck naked.
He pulled me in against him, and I smiled against his lips. “You’re a Neanderthal.”
He kissed me down my neck. “And why’s that?”
“You left your pants wadded on the floor.”
“I’ll get it in the morning.”
“And your shirt?”
“Morning.”
“And what happens now?”
“I sleep long and deep knowing that in just forty-eight hours, I’ll likely spend the rest of my life in a box.”
I turned over and tucked my pillow under my cheek while I analyzed the contours of his cheeks in the low light in the room. “Is that a prison cell for murder?”
“Double homicide.”
“Two more cairns on the knoll and no one would be the wiser,” I hypothesized with him.
He lightly touched my lips with his. “And tha’ is why we’re better together.”
I grinned. “Some might call us homicidal maniacs.”
He murmured against my lips. “Just misunderstood.”
Rowan ran his hand down my thigh before gripping my knee and bringing my top leg over his. He pressed his pelvis in, whispering, “I missed ye all day. There’s so much I wanted tae share with ye, then the Rembrandt.” He sighed long and loud. “Now, though, all I want tae do is be with you.”
“Good.” I kissed his lips. “I’ll be here all night.”
He found the breast closest to him and, between the backs of two fingers, gently pinched to see if she was awake. Then bent to kiss her, as if apologizing for his rough behavior. After his soft, warm peck, he slipped her into his mouth and suckled.
I swallowed my deep-throated laugh and clutched him to my chest.
“Och, god, I love that laugh. Feels like I’m in deep trouble and also about tae find out how long I can last before coming.”
I captured his smile with my lips and fell into our connection.
He smelled of sea salt and the pine-scented soap from the shower he took earlier in the day.
His tongue danced with mine as he grabbed my ass and brought me in even closer.
And with a skim of the backs of his fingers down my stomach, he caressed until he dove into the auburn curls between my legs.
I gripped him to me as his fingers found my entrance and slipped a curious finger inside.
I groaned and slid my fingers into his hair and gripped tight. “Rowan…”
He slipped in another finger, then a third, before giving a slow slide in and out, warming up my body and creating a slip and slither for his hardening erection that lay between us.
I gripped him harder to me, and Rowan responded with a gentle strike of his palm to the front of my opening.
He made quick work waking up, stretching, and calling out my lust from outside in.
I arched my back, trying to get him to dive in, climb higher, go deeper.
There was one more erotic pleasure to be had deep inside, and it could only be touched by his thick erection.
Holding fast his hair, I bent his head toward mine, put my mouth onto his, and devoured.
I wanted him, his hands, his hard-on that lay between us, all of it, inside of me all at once.
I wanted to, like I had since the moment he tied my wrists to his a year ago, inhale him into my lungs and have his blood become mine.
He pressed me back into the pillows, matching my aggression with his own desperation.
It had been days since we’d connected, and his hand still within me thrust in again and again.
My body warmed, and I felt that sizzle in my veins that was both my own building orgasm and Rowan’s need; we were a matched set of bodies in desire.
His hard cock lying across my abdomen was too much of a tease: I needed him, wanted more.
Rowan’s voice was warm over the shell of my ear. “Come for me.”
Holding onto his wrist, I helped him ram his fingers harder and farther. The meat of his palm hit my clit once, then twice, and I felt the orgasm bloom.
Warmth starting between my legs moved out like molten honey into my veins; the call of him, his request, and I closed my eyes and rode his hand as I felt his breath catch and his pelvis begin to pump.
His thrusts seemed lonely, though, and as if we had one mind, he pulled his fingers out of me and turned onto his back with my leg still over his thigh; he pulled me over him and thrust himself inside.
Straddling him, I felt my breasts bounce as I rode him and our orgasm hard. Euphoria unraveled in my veins.
“Rowan…”
“Cole…” he groaned out as his grip on my hips dug in, and in rhythm with me, he arched his hips up while pressing my pelvis down. I braced a hand on the headboard as the bed shook, and our skin-to-skin contact clapped. My abs scrunched as the full-bodied orgasm shot through me.
Rowan’s eyes were half-mast, taking me in like a drugged man. His healed abdominals were cut like bricks as he put them to the test.
A voice that sounded a lot like mine filled the corners of the night-lit room as I, she, we cried out in release.
Rowan clutched me to his chest and, with a hand firm on my thigh, kept me still as he drove into me.
His thrusts hit hard before he clutched me to his chest and bit my shoulder.
Groaning, warmth filled me as he orgasmed.
Holding each other, we lay there, breathing heavily and letting the glow of our connection mellow around us in the puddled moonlight. Rowan sighed and pulled me in tighter against his chest. “Tha gaol agam ort, Cole.”
I recognized the roll of consonants that sounded nothing like they were spelled: ha g-eul ah-kum orsht.
“I love you too,” I whispered back before sealing it with a warm, gentle kiss.
The wind whipped about me. I was in the field again, looking for something, needing something.
Only I had no idea what it was, much less where it was hidden in the charred field.
The moonlight cast deep shadows on the burnt stones of the cairns.
Something tugged deep in my core, an ancient call sounding like the one Rowan used.
I saw Orabilia in her white ethereal linen, plucking her way across the site toward me.
Her lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear her words.
I tried to move toward her, to hear her better in the chaotic atmosphere, but my movements were sluggish, as if I were moving through a vat of molasses.
“It’s yours now” carried over the wind. “It is here that you will find what you’re searching for. It is here that you’ll finally be at peace.” I watched her gesture to the field, then turn back to me, a quiet smile on her lips. “Child of my love, the power rests in your hands.”
I looked down as my hands began to warm, then began taking on a golden inner glow—a glow like that of Ormr during our battle.
I swallowed the bile that came up from my churning stomach. I clenched my hands into fists. No, not again.
“Please,” I begged, “not again. Take him…take him to Valhalla and keep him there.”
She just smiled, then electrocuted me.
I shot awake, gasping for air. I sat clawing at the sheets before I realized I was still in bed.
Panting, I closed my eyes and willed my heart to slow down.
I noticed then that my skin was as wet as if I’d stood in the rain and that the room’s heat was suffocating.
Quietly I pushed the damp covers off to stand at the open window.
Cold evening air refreshed my burning skin and reminded me it had been just a dream.
But I felt Orabilia’s power in my heart and down into my gut; somehow, I had touched her within that dream.
My heart settled and I turned to slip back into bed. It was then that I got a look at my surroundings. Rowan’s arms were dropping back onto the bed as if he’d been hovering above it. And as he settled down, so did the moonlight glow that had lightly tinged his skin.
I smothered a groan and went to him. Quiet as a mouse, I listened to his breathing and watched the pulse in his neck. He was fine and in a deep sleep. Whatever had happened in my sleep was now gone.
I bit my fist, keeping my relief from escaping in a little cry. Slowly, I worked my way back to my side of the bed, keeping an eye on him.
I slipped back in. Next to him and with a hand under my pillow, staring at him, I told myself I was fine. He was fine. All was just fine.