Falling in Time #2
He caught her, his big hand gripping her arm, before she’d gone two steps. “You’ll no’ be denying our passion?” His gaze went meaningfully to the bed and Lindy was horrified to see that it was no longer the narrow, plaid-covered twin bed she’d been sleeping on.
It was a huge richly carved four-poster, its sumptuously embroidered curtains pulled back to reveala welter of furred throws, tangled sheets and a sea of tasselled cushions piled near the massive headboard.
Lindy blinked.
Rogan MacGraith’s grip tightened on her elbow. “You are mine, sweetness. I’ll no’ be sharing you with any man. Especially no’a foolnamed Lore.”
“Lore doesn’t exist.” Lindy couldn’t take her gaze off the bed. It looked so real. “I made him up. He’s fiction. Just like that bed and—”
“And what?” Rogan arched a brow, pulling her to him again. “This perhaps?”
Without warning, he lowered his head and kissed her, taking her lips with all the intimacy of someone who’d kissed, no plundered her mouth, many, many times.
It was a hard, ravenous kiss, full of breath and tongue.
Rogan held her tighter and deepened the kiss.
Lindy’s pulse raced and her knees almost buckled.
The kiss was much better than any she’d ever written.
In fact, no real man had ever kissed her so masterfully either.
Whoever – or whatever – Rogan MacGraith was, he knew how to curla woman’s toes.
She wound her arms around his neck and leaned into him, not caring about anything but the delicious tingles whipping through her.
His shoulder-length hair felt thick and smooth beneath her fingers, almost cooland sleek like the pages of her map.
But she ignored that incongruity and concentrated on how wonderfully his tongue swirled and slid so hotly over and around hers.
Or so she tried, until running footsteps sounded on the landing outside her room.
Lindy woke at once and peered into darkness. Her heart was pounding and – dear God – she still felt all tingly and roused.
Rogan MacGraith was nowhere to be seen.
And the narrow bed she was lying in wasn’t anything as magnificent as the curtained, black-oak monstrosity she’d glimpsed over his shoulder.
It’d all been a dream.
Except, perhaps, the hurrying footsteps she’d heard outside her door.
“Miss Lovejoy!” The innkeeper appeared at her doorway, proving that much.
“Have you been disturbed? The storm blew out a window on the landing and—” he glanced over his shoulder, at the shadows behind him “—I’m checking for damage to the rooms. Looks like the gust threw open your door. I’m sorry if your sleep was—”
“I’m fine.” Lindy noticed that her Landranger 9 map was stillspread across the bedcovers. “I fell asleep studying my map and didn’t hear a thing.”
“Right, then.” The innkeeper looked relieved. “The missus and I will be up a while yet if you’ll be needing aught.” He gave her a nod, glanced quickly around her room, and was gone, disappearing as quickly as he’d come.
His footsteps faded into the distance, the night wind howled and shook the window glass, and Lindy fought the urge to laugh hysterically.
She’d lied when she’d said she was fine.
She doubted she’d ever be fine again.
Everyone knew characters talked to writers. The stories would be flat if they didn’t. Mere ink on the page and so boring that no one would want to read a single word.
It was also true that – sometimes – characters insisted on being named differently.
That, too, was pretty normal.
Stories only came to life once the names were right.
Kissing was something else entirely.
Yet she knew Lore – no, Rogan MacGraith – had kissed her. She could still feel his lips moving over hers, the silken glide of his tongue and the firm grip of his hands as he’d held her against him.
She’d even felt the rough weave of his plaid beneath her fingers. And – how could it be? – she’d breathed in his scent, finding the trace of the cold, brisk night that clung to him almost intoxicating.
But he couldn’t have been real.
Shaken, Lindy slipped from the bed and went over to the window.
The Talmine road lay dark and silent, a narrow band stretching away into empty, rolling moorland.
It still rained and curls of mist drifted across the shingled beach not far from the inn.
The pier was deserted. No kilted, sword-packing Highlander stood in the blackness of the moon shadows, peering up at her.
The tiny village slept.
She touched a hand to her lips and trembled.
Her mouth was bruised.
Two
Centuries away – the early fourteenth, to be exact – but much closer otherwise, Rogan MacGraith stood in the shadows of his bedchamber and glared at the shutter that had dared to blow open, its loud crack against the tower wall rudely snatching him from a wondrous dream.
“Hellfire and damnation!” He strode across the room and yanked the shutter into place, latching it with much more force than was necessary.
He shoved a hand through his hair, keenly aware of his nakedness.
Not that sleeping unclothed was anything out of the ordinary.
Truth be told, he doubted any man in all broad Scotland would demean himself by wearing nightclothes. Certainly no man at his clan’s proud and formidable Castle Daunt.
Highlanders left such softness for Sassenachs.
But this night . . .
Rogan glanced downwards, his scowl deepening. His nude body only revealed how much he burned for the curvaceous, flame-haired vixen he’d just been kissing and was about to sweep into his arms and carry to his bed before the damnable shutter bang had shattered his dream.
“Odin’s ball s!” He clenched his fists and willed his manly parts to stop aching. When they did, he snatched his plaid off a chair and threw it on, not wanting any remaining vestiges of lust to embarrass him when he stormed down the tower stairs and into his father’s hall .
It would cause a great enough stir just disturbing the men’s night rest. The saints knew they deserved their sleep. But one of them might have heard the name Lore MacLaren.
If so, he meant to rout the bastard.
A lifetime of searching hadn’t produced the temptress who haunted his dreams, but if he could locate the man whose name she cried in passion, he might just find her. Only then would he know peace.
He’d make her his, insisting she wed him.
And if she refused or – saints preserve him – for some reason wasn’t able, he’d finally bend to his father’s will and accept a suitable bride of his family’s choosing.
He just hoped she wouldn’t be Euphemia MacNairn, his clan’s current favourite.
She was such a wee slip o’ womanhood that a man could blink and miss her presence in a room.
But her tongue was sharper than the best-honed sword.
A fault she kept well hidden, though Rogan had no trouble seeing through her false praise and simpering airs.
Her eyes, when she thought no one saw her, held a chill colder than the blackest winter night.
And – Rogan shuddered – he’d rather guzzle brine than take her to wife, even if her sire was his father’s staunchest ally.
At least the thought of her banished the painfulth robbing at his loins.
Grateful, Rogan hastened from his bedchamber. But before he reached the stair tower, a dark shape stepped from the shadows, blocking his way.
“Ho, Rogan!” His cousin Gavin’s smile was crooked. “Such a scowl! Are you on your way below stairs to announce that the sun willna be rising on the morrow? Or—” he waggled his eyebrows “—have you been dreaming of her again?”
“Her?” Rogan pretended innocence.
Gavin laughed. “Unless you cease blethering about the vixen each time you sink into your cups, you cannae think I know naught of her!”
“I ne’er ‘sink into my cups’.” Rogan tried to push past his cousin, but the lout shot out a hand, seizing his elbow in a vicelike grip.
“Once was enough.” Gavin leaned close and winked, clearly amused. “Truth tell—” he flashed a glance over his shoulder and then lowered his voice “—if such a lush piece invaded my dreams, I’d stay abed all my days.”
“You’ll hold your tongue is what you’ll do.” Rogan shook free and glared at him. “Lest you wish me to silence it for you?”
He reached for the dirk that should have been tucked beneath his belt, but remembered too late that he’d tossed on his plaid and nothing else.
Gavin caught the gesture all the same.
Unfortunately, it only drew another laugh.
“I but speak the truth.” The lout had the gall to clamp a hand on Rogan’s shoulder.
“Why are you skulking about in the shadows?” Rogan changed the subject.
“I was . . . er, ah . . . visiting Maili.” Gavin released him and brushed at his plaid. “You might be of a better temper, too, if you’d partake of her services now and then.”
“I haven’t tumbled a laundress since I grew my first beard.” Rogan stepped away from the cold wind blowing through an arrow slit in the stair tower’s thick wall . The chill reminded him of the coldness of his empty bed.
He did his best to assume an air of importance. “I have no time for such frivol. Some of us have weightier matters to attend, see you.”
“In the middle o’ the night?” Gavin looked close to laughter again.
“Snorri’s gone missing,” Rogan improvised, seizing the first thought that came to his mind.
His dog was out and about somewhere.
And considering the beast’s age and bad hip, his disappearance from Rogan’s bedchamber was troubling. Snorrirarely left Rogan’s side. He even shunned his comfortable pallet by the hearth fire to sneak into Rogan’s bed, often sleeping sprawled across Rogan’s ankles.
It wasn’t like the dog to be missing at this late hour.
Though – Rogan was sure – the well-loved scamp had no doubt crept down to the kitchens where he was known to beg meaty bones and other tidbits from Cook and the kitchen laddies.
Even so, if Snorrihadn’t returned by morning, he’d launch a search.
“I was just heading out to look for Snorrinow.” Rogan started forwards again.
He wasn’t about to tell Gavin he was on his way to ask his father’s men about a man named Lore who, like as not, was as non-existent as his dream vixen.