The Dark Highlander

The legendary Tuatha Dé Danaan had come! And what did the grand Keltar laird do?

Fainted like a willy-nilly peahen.

A few minutes later, Chloe was sitting on the sofa with her head between her knees, trying desperately to breathe.

Dageus was at her feet, his hands wrapped around her calves. “Lass, let me get a paper bag, you’re hyperventilating.”

“Don’t you”—pant-pant—“DARE”—pant-pant—“leave me!” She clutched at his shoulders.

“I doona plan to leave you ever again, love,” he said soothingly, stroking her hair. “I’m but going to the kitchen for a bag. Try to relax, sweet.”

Chloe nearly screamed again out of sheer frustration. Relax. As if. She needed to hold him, to kiss him, to demand to be told what in the world was going on, but she couldn’t get a deep enough breath to manage anything.

Standing there at the door, when she’d heard his voice slicing through the darkness, she’d nearly fainted. The sword had clattered from her suddenly lifeless hands, her knees had turned to butter, and her lungs had simply stopped functioning properly. She’d thought hiccups were awful, but she’d take them over hyperventilating any day.

And she’d cut him! There was a thin line of blood on his neck. She tried to dab at it, but he caught both her hands in one of his, pressed them gently to her lap, then began moving toward the kitchen. She craned her head sideways and watched him go. How could this be? How was he alive? Oh, God, he was alive!

She couldn’t take her eyes off him, and twisted around, following his progress, not letting him out of her sight for a minute. He was here. He was really here. He was real. She’d touched him.

She knew, from how ashen his face was, that her inability to get a deep breath was scaring him. It was scaring her too, so she forced herself to concentrate on unknotting inside.

By the time he returned with the paper bag, although she was still trembling visibly, she was managing complete breaths. She stared up at him, tears of joy spilling down her cheeks.

“How? How is this possible?” she cried, flinging herself into his arms.

“Och, lass,” he purred, catching her in his embrace. He ducked his head and brushed his lips to hers. Once, twice, a dozen times. “I thought I’d lost you forever, Chloe,” he groaned.

“You? So did I!”

More frantic kisses, deep and hungry. She locked her hands behind his neck, savoring the solidity of him, the warm press of his body against hers—a thing she’d thought she would never get to feel again.

Finally, Dageus murmured against her lips, “How did you get here, lass? How did you get back from Scotland so quickly?”

“Quickly?” Chloe drew back and gaped at him. “Dageus, it’s been three and a half weeks since you disappeared.” Just thinking about those awful weeks was enough to make her start crying again.

He gazed down at her, stunned. “Three and a half—ah! So that’s what the queen meant,” he exclaimed.

“The queen? What queen? What happened? Where have you been? And why were you picking the lock? Why didn’t you just—oh!” She broke off and gazed deep into his exotic, sensual golden eyes.

Golden.

“Oh, Dageus,” she breathed. “They’re gone, aren’t they? You’re not just alive—you’re free, aren’t you?”

He flashed her a dazzling smile and laughed exultantly. “Aye, lass. They’re gone. Forever. And as for picking the lock, since they’re gone, I no longer know their spells. I’m afraid my thieving days are over, lass. Will you still be having me as little more than a man? A simple Keltar Druid, naught more?”

“Oh, I’ll have you, Dageus MacKeltar,” Chloe said fervently. “I’ll have you any way I can get you.”

It took dozens of kisses before she was finally calm enough—and convinced enough that he was real—that she let him pull her down onto his lap on the sofa and tell her what had happened.

When Silvan regained consciousness and stirred in his chair, the queen was sitting across from him, watching him intently.

“You’re real,” he managed to say.

She looked mildly amused. “It was recently drawn to my attention that perhaps we should not have left you so completely unguided. That perhaps you’d begun to think we weren’t real. I wasn’t convinced. I am now.”

“What are you, precisely?” Silvan asked, abjectly fascinated.

“That would be difficult to explain in your language. I could show you, but you didn’t fare so well with this form, so I think not.”