By the time they’d boarded, and dropped into emergency-exit seats (two cooing female flight attendants had much-too-sweetly for her taste volunteered to rearrange things so the six-and-a-half-foot sexy Scotsman could “stretch out his legs a bit,” Grrr . . .), Jessi’d had a pretty darn good idea why his “talents” didn’t work on her.
She’d actually felt it trying to work on her.
Each time he’d laid the compulsion on thick, her head had itched inside, just above the metal plate splicing her skull together, the same way it had when she’d first freed him and he’d been attempting to compel her.
It felt as if his commands were buzzing up against her metal plate, making it vibrate beneath her skin. She couldn’t begin to comprehend the mechanics of it, she just knew it somehow shielded her from his magic.
Thank heavens! For the first time in her life, she was grateful she’d taken that horrendous, skull-splitting fall.
All the way, woman, he’d said back in the rainy parking lot of Chick-fil-A. Meaning he would have used Voice on her to have sex with her.
It had perturbed her. Deeply.
Until she’d realized he was lying.
Maybe he believed he would have pushed her all the way, but she didn’t.
She judged people by their actions, not their words. And his actions just didn’t support his words. Big bark—little bite. Even his commands to get them on board the plane had been tempered. He’d wielded the least coercion necessary to accomplish their goals.
Bottom line was: Any man who would have used magic to have sex with her against her will would simply have changed tactics when magic had failed, and raped her with his brutally superior strength.
Especially after eleven centuries of enforced celibacy.
Cian was nearly six feet six inches of pure muscle. He’d had multiple opportunities to do anything he wanted to her.
And he’d not harmed her in any way.
Tucking her legs up, she snuggled deeper into the blanket. The lights were low, it had been yet another long day, and the steady hum of the engines was lulling her to sleep.
She closed her eyes, pondering the power he had—the Druid art of Voice, he’d called it—trying to imagine what it would be like to have the ability to make anyone do anything you wanted them to do, merely by telling them to do it.
She was blown away by the possibilities.
And by the awesome responsibility.
Druid-turned-dark-sorcerer? She wasn’t so sure she believed that. Oh, maybe a little bad, but the man wasn’t evil. In fact, he seemed a near paragon of restraint, in light of all he was probably capable of doing.
She yawned, wondering how young he’d been when he’d realized such a thing was within his means. “Voice” meant consummate power, consummate freedom. It meant being able to live with absolute impunity.
No excuses, no apologies necessary.
If it were her gift, she thought drowsily, she could hop on a plane anytime she wanted, fly to England, and make them let her pet Stonehenge. Or she could go to Ireland and visit the museums and touch things. Take things home with her, for heaven’s sake!
Or, she mused dreamily, she could go to a bank, make them give her millions of dollars, buy herself houses in ten different countries, and spend her life playing on pristine white beaches in the sun. Or, the heck with money, she could just go to those countries and make people give their houses to her. She wondered how many people Voice could control at any one time, and for how long. Surely there were limits.
Still, “What a ridiculous amount of power,” she murmured on a sleepy sigh. The world would, quite literally, be one’s playground.
Still, even with it, he’d somehow gotten trapped in a mirror for centuries on end.
Strong warrior’s body, yet gentle hands. Formidably endowed with magic, yet trapped.
What an enigma he was!
It occurred to her, as she drifted off to sleep, that it should probably worry her a lot that—even in the middle of the utter chaos her life had become—he was an enigma she was greatly looking forward to deciphering.
An áit a bhfuil do chroi is ann a thabharfas do chosa thú.
(Your feet will bring you to where your heart is.)
—OLD SCOTS SAYING
PART 2
SCOTLAND
14
THE GOD-AWFUL HOUR OF 3:00 A.M.
EDINBURGH AIRPORT
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 15
“No, I don’t have a claim ticket,” Jessi told the woman behind the desk, for the fifth time, beyond exasperated. “I keep telling you that. But I can describe it. Exactly. Every tiny little detail. Both crate and contents. Now how could I possibly know that such a crate even existed, not to mention what was inside it, unless it was mine?”