And then there was all that business about past lives and deeper connections. Surely she’d simply been half out of her mind with need. He’d had her aching to the point of insanity for want of release. She hadn’t been thinking clearly was all. All that talk beforehand, about their ancestors and the entwined threads of their clans’ histories. That’s all it had been. Fanciful notions planted in her mind, whimsy no doubt.
And yet…
“No,” she shook her head, then swore when conditioner flew into her eye. Swearing beneath her breath, she turned and rinsed her eyes. What in the bloody hell was she to do about this? About him? She turned her face to the spray, wincing as the piercing needles of water stung the tender skin of her cheeks.
Razor bu
rn
,
she thought, though she hadn’t felt it at the time. He’d been nothing but gentle with her; even when he’d been thrusting furiously inside of her, he’d taken great care with her.
Jesus and Mary, how could she want a man so badly? But she did. Only a handful of hours spent together, a scat
ter of time…
and yet she already couldn’t bear to think of him gone forever. It was stupid of her. And weak. She knew that, knew she’d already become the fool she’d worked so hard never to be. And yet it didn’t seem to matter. She could ignore that intangible bond they’d forged, deny all she wanted that such a thing,
one soul reconnecting throughout time with another, was possible, but it didn’t change what she knew in her heart to be true.
She was about to let him walk away. Today, tomorrow, a week or month from now. But walk away he would. And there was no doubt in her mind that it wouldn’t be the first time. Or, perhaps, the last.
But it was the only time she would be the one able to do something about it.
Chapter 17
T
ag let the stack of papers drop to his lap, and stared into the crackling fire. He’d heard the squeal of water run through the pipes some minutes ago. She was awake. And in the shower from all indications. He tried not to imagine her there, skin all slick, head tipped back, eyes closed. He tried not to. Failed miserably.
He shifted in the worn leather armchair as his body tightened in response. How was it he could want her again? So ferociously, as if he’d been waiting ages to have her, an eternity of excruciating foreplay between them. When he’d only crawled from her bed mere hours before? He’d thought that taking his time, having her as thoroughly and completely as his body had screamed for, would f
inally take the edge off this…
whatever the hell it was driving him to have her. He’d had her now, dammit.
And instead of dimming his need, it had only stoked it Like the fire he’d laid in the fireplace of her bedroom, and down here on the main floor of her tower, the more it burned, the more source material it needed to keep going. She was source material alright. Much in
the manner air was necessary for him to keep on breathing.
He slapped the file shut abruptl
y and slid it to the floor beside his feet. He stood, stretched. It was this place, the whole of the castle, that was provoking such
irrati
onal thoughts and feelings. Sitting here, in this tower that still stood, still functioned, centuries after the hands that had painstakingly c
onstructed it had passed away…
leaving its care to those who followed. Entrusting their hard work, dedication, and fortitude to their progeny, their progeny’s progeny. It was nothing short of a miracle that the chain hadn’t been broken.
Broken by someone like myself,
he thought, his mind heading once again down the disturbing path he could no longer seem to avoid. A son like himself, who, for his own reasons, no matter how valid, had turned his back on centuries of his forebears simply to thwart his immediate forebear: his own father. Short-changing himself? Yes. Perhaps. But he’d never thought past his father, never allowed himself to. Was he short-changing his ancestors? Most definitely. But it was only now that he was beginning to really see that. Or let himself see it.
Only now was he beginning to realize that by turning his back on his own heritage, focusing his intense curiosity most purposefully to another lineage, another heritage,
so far removed from his own…
that he was simply feeding directly into his father’s purpose, his goal. Which had been to wipe out the past, their past.
He’d abandoned studying his own ancestry when he’d thought he was doing it to prove something, to force his father to accept its importance. But he’d started, and stopped, for all the wrong reasons. He should have done it for his own sense of satisfaction, his own fulfillment, and to hell with the rest. It seemed so painfully clear now, but then hindsight usually was.
He’d been too emotional, too close to it, too affected by his father’s views to see it, or think clearly about what his heritage meant to him, and only to him.
He thought about how much more meaningful his life’s work could have been, if he’d married that innate interest to his natural desire to dig in the past. And wondered if perhaps that’s where the desire had sprung from all along. Not that his years of dedicated research and discoveries hadn’t fulfilled him in part. What he’d discovered and pieced together on the Mayan culture was now part of their known history, to be studied and examined and interpreted by those who came after him, those looking for answers to the “what-ifs” that had driven them to make their own discoveries. He was proud of that, proud of the mark he’d made, of his place in that history.
But what about his place in his own? What mark would he make on Morgan history? What mark
could
he be making?
He rubbed his eyes, blew out a long breath. “And why does it suddenly bloody matter so much?”
So his father’s death was affecting him in ways he’d never anticipated, making him question every important decision he’d ever made. But how any of that had anything to do with his growing obsession with one Maura Sinclair was beyond him.
Except he wasn’t the only Morgan who’d fallen under her sway.
He glanced down again, at the thick file filled with letters. Letters he’d given up ignoring some hours ago. Like his father, apparently Maura was also a pack rat when it came to clinging to their correspondence. He still didn’t know what to think, how to feel. The man in those letters, the man who’d written them, was not the man he’d grown up with. The man whose carefully penned words he’d just spent the past two hours
reading over was a total stranger to him. And always would be.
Certainly the foundation of his father was there, some of his ideals, his opinions. But in place of the rigid inability to accept anyone else’s point of view, much less question his own, was a man who, at some point had begun to question all of it. Had it been his diminishing health that had caused such a dire shift in his personal thinking? Had he suspected his own mortality long before the tests he’d mentioned in one of his letters, well into their pen-pal relationship? Was that why he’d given Maura the financial aid she’d requested?
Or had the change happened after meeting her? As it would seem to have from reading his letters. At least in part. Maybe it hadn’t been his health, but merely his advancing age, causing him to reflect. Not that his father had ever been the reflective type. For a man who’d had such strong convictions of right and wrong that he’d become a judge, making a life out of adjudicating the right and wrong of everyone who came before him, one would think he’d have long since learned to appreciate the vast gray area that inhabited the space between the two. The man he’d known, the man who had been judge and jury to his sons, presiding over
th
e seemingly never-ending trial that had been their childhood, had been intensely black and white.
Somehow that had changed. Tag didn’t know why. Would never know. Had Maura somehow managed to trigger in the father the same element of
th
eretofore untapped desire she’d triggered in the son?
Not the kind of desire t
h
at had had him taking her like a rutting beast mere hours after they met. The desire for knowledge, to become not just familiar with the Morgan past, but intimately connected to it. Was that how she’d pulled him—and his financial backing—into it? Which begged the question that had come to him at
some point during his foray into her files: why approach a Morgan at all when there were Sinclairs—certainly more direct descendants to Ballantrae—still living in Rogues Hollow?
Maybe she had tried them first, though he’d seen no documentation of it. Of course, Tag was forced to admit he didn’t know what was going on in the Sinclair branch of the Hollow these days. He kept up with his brothers, but not with anything or anyone else from his childhood. When he’d left, he’d needed to sever himself from all of it. And there hadn’t been anyone close enough to him that he’d felt the need to keep in touch with. He’d been a very guarded person with his emotions, and his heart, and he supposed that had definitely shaped a pattern to which he still adhered. At least until he’d met the woman presently showering overhead.
He was pacing, thoughts and questions echoing over and over in his mind, with very few answers forthcoming. The only thing he knew was that at the core of all this confusion, was one person. Maybe the only person who could help him make sense of any of it. He was staring up at the portraits one minute, and the next he was climbing the stairs, continuing through the bedroom and let himself without so much as a knock into the small bathroom that had been carved out of her bedchamber a generation or two earlier.
She was still in the shower. Standing in the clawfoot tub under a meager spray, a flowery circular curtain drawn around her. Steam filled the room, as did the heady scent of body soap and shampoo. None of which compared to the heady scent of her, which he’d be able to pinpoint, blindfolded, fifty years from now. On one whiff.
And if there was any doubt that while he’d been sitting down in her living room, reading through the papers, the letters, trying to make some kind of rational sense out of her effect on him, that it was some kind of postcoital glow that had him exaggerating just how swiftly and deeply her mere presence affected him, that entire argument was instan
tl
y dashed when just the shadow of her body behind that curtain sent blood surging through him.
His hunger for her was a leveling, humbling force, which should be just te
rrifying enough to send him directl
y back out of the room, down those tower stairs and out into the cold dark night. Maybe the bracing wind off the moors would clear this fucking irrational obsession out of his mind. Out of his body. Allow him to think straight, to put all of this together in a way that made some semblance of sense.
Surely then he’d be able to sort through it, handle it, and ultimately walk away from it. From her. Rational in mind, body, and spirit.
Should have.
Instead it was what drove him, like the rutting beast he’d compared himself to just moments ago, to rip open the curtain, making her give a short scream of star
tled surprise. “
Tag, Jesus! What’s wrong?”
She was perfect. Shiny wet and perfect. And he’d never wanted anyone so badly. “What in the hell am I doing here, Maura?” he demanded roughly.
She tried to smile through her obvious disconcertment. “Giving me a dead chill?”
Heedless of the water going everywhere, of the feet that he was still in sweats and a T-shirt, he stepped into the narrow tub, grabbing her arms when she wobbled backward in surprise.
“
Your clothes!” she sputtered. “What are you doing?”
“What I can’t seem to stop doing, ever since I laid eyes on you.” And he hauled her delicious, wet body up against his and took her mouth with his own. She clung
to him, though he wasn’t sure if it was for balance or because she needed him with the same unwavering intensity he seemed to need her. All he knew was that an instant into the kiss, she was returning it with all she had. And that was all that mattered.
Hot needles of water drilled the back of his head and neck as he continued to plunder her mouth. He slid his hands down the slippery curve of her spine and cupped her bottom with his palms, pulling her tight against him, groaning as she pressed into him. What he wouldn’t give for a nice, hard, tile wall at the moment.
“Are you okay?” she murmured against his cheek when he finally broke the kiss. Both of them were breathing hard, both still clinging to the other.
“I’ve long since given up trying to figure out what ‘okay’ is,” he said. He slid his hands up her arms, framed her face. “I thought I knew why I was coming here. I just wanted to finish things. Tie up the last loose end. Maybe get a few answers while I was at it. Only now
…
” He trailed off, not knowing how to finish.
She moved her hands over his shoulders, down the sodden T-shirt covering the front of his chest, until her palm was flat over his heart. “Only you have more questions than ye knew, right?” She trailed a damp finger along his lower lip. “It’s to be expected, don’t you think? You were parted from him for a long time.”
“What makes you think the questions were about my father?”
She simply arched a brow. “Were they no’?”
He dipped his chin, rested his forehead on hers. “I’m not even sure of that much.” He glanced up through wet, clumpy lashes. “I read his letters to you. They were written by a man I never knew.”
She didn’t frown, didn’t chastise him for invading her privacy. Instead she stroked his face. “Puir man,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
“For?”
“That the two of ye didna get the chance to make things right between ye.”
“I’
m not sure that was possible. Or, to be brutally honest, something I felt he deserved.”
She held his gaze steadily. “That might be a fair thing to say. As I said, I’ll make no excuses for him. I can only know what was said between us.” She slid her hands into his hair. “But that doesn’t make me less sorry. For the both of you.” She leaned in, kissed him so gen
tl
y it made his heart squeeze, painfully hard, inside his chest. “If it makes you feel any better,” she whispered, “you’ve gone a good way toward shaking me up, too.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this confused.”
“About?”
“Everything. You, this cas
tl
e, my father, my past.” His lips curved very sligh
tl
y. “You.”
She responded with a small smile of her own. “Aye, I ken that. I also think the water is finally running cold.” She maneuvered an arm around him and shifted enough to shut the water off. “Grab me that towel, will you?”
He lifted a folded towel from the stack of shelves built into the wall over the commode. “Let me,” he said, but she took it from him and, using him as leverage, stepped from the tub onto the mat.
“Peel out of those wet things,” she instructed, wrapping the towel around her shivering body. She snagged another one and wrapped it around her head. “Here,” she said, grabbing the last towel and handing it to him as he tossed his wet T-shirt and sweats into the sink.