The Highlander's Touch

With excruciating leisure, he kissed her so slowly that she could hear a dozen of her own heartbeats between each slight alteration in the caress of his lips. She dropped her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, lost in the butterfly-light friction of his lips brushing hers as if he had all the time in the world. The castle suddenly seemed unnaturally silent, her breath uncommonly loud. If it was five minutes or fifteen that he kissed her in such a fashion, she had no way of knowing. She would have held still forever.

He captured her wrists with one hand and, with the other, he traced the contour of her cheekbone. Her heart sank as she realized how close she was to being utterly seduced by his tantalizingly slow and delicious touches.

His fingers pressed at the corner of her mouth and her lips parted on a sigh of pleasure. He continued kissing her, but did not offer his tongue, and it was driving her mad. Slowly. Gently. With intimacy so prolonged that it made her aware of every nuance of what he was doing. He drew back, his gaze dark, and ran his finger across her lower lip. Instinctively, she touched his finger with her tongue.

With a husky groan, he cradled her head in his hands, closed his mouth over hers, and slipped a long velvety stroke of his tongue against hers. The moment she melted against him, he drew back sharply, spun on his heel, and stalked away.

Her lips tingled, and she touched the tips of her fingers to her mouth as he walked down the corridor. At the end of the hallway, he glanced back over his shoulder, and when he saw her standing there with her fingers pressed to her mouth, he flashed her a smile of masculine satisfaction. He knew the effect he had on her.

She stepped into her chamber and slammed the door shut.

* * *

Something had changed between them, she realized, during the ride from Dunnottar to Brodie. Or perhaps shortly after they’d arrived, when he’d left her side looking so angry and come back looking sad. He seemed more … human, less the ruthless savage. Or was she beginning to trust him, driven by the dawning realization that she had no one else to turn to?

Yawning and eager to stretch out on something besides the hard ground, she looked around the chamber. It was beautiful, the walls hung with palls of silk and tapestries that looked as if they’d been stolen from England. The thought amused her greatly, that Circenn decorated his castle with stolen English goods. Her bed, canopied with curtains of sheer ivory and covered with dozens of pillows, was so wide she could lie across it without her legs sticking off the edge. The headboard was a wonder of drawers and cubbyholes, and the maids had sprinkled the nooks and crannies with herbs and dried flowers.

Of course, they’d gone to such pains to make her chamber welcoming and bright because they thought she was going to be mistress of this castle, but she knew better. There was no way she would still be in the fourteenth century three months from now. It was simply not an option. Come tomorrow, she resolved sleepily, lulled by the wine she’d drunk and the gently burning fire, she would track down the flask and get back to her own time. She drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Lisa was running as fast as she could, chasing her mother through the halls of the hospital. She’d be able to catch up with her if the doctors would just quit pushing her bed so fast! Didn’t they understand that Catherine needed her?

But if they did, they didn’t care. They wound down one hallway and up the next, turned right and circled around, almost as if they were purposefully trying to elude her. The entire time she chased them, her mother was struggling to sit up, holding her hand out, reaching imploringly for her. Several times Lisa came within inches of grasping that fragile hand, only to lose it when the doctors picked up a sudden burst of speed.

Finally she closed in on them near the reception desk. The desk was situated in a corner, with an aisle all around it, but there was only one hallway open to the left. There was no way they could escape her. She would cut them off, by circling around to the left, and gather Catherine up—she weighed so little now!—and take her home, where she wanted to be.

But as she raced around and blocked the hallway, an elevator appeared in the previously solid wall, and the doctors rushed her mother in, glancing at Lisa reprovingly.

“Lisa!” Catherine cried, as the doors began to close.

Lisa pushed forward, straining against the suddenly thickened air that prevented her from moving. She watched in horror as the elevator door closed and her mother was lost to her forever.

ARMAND RODE SWIFTLY THROUGH THE FOREST AS DAWN broke over the high country, glancing frequently over his shoulder to ascertain that he wasn’t being followed. Renaud had been far too curious about his urge to go for a solitary ride beyond the walls, but Armand had told him he needed to meditate, that his faith was often renewed by the breaking day and he found his prayers more easily recited in God’s natural splendor.