Kiss of the Highlander (9 page)

At the rental agency, Gwen leased the last, dilapidated little car and arranged to collect it in an hour, which would give them ample time to purchase clothing, food, and coffee before leaving for Alborath. Guiding him past the curious stares of the onlookers, and occasionally tugging on his arm when he stopped to stare, she finally got him into Barrett’s, a sporting-goods store that had the obligatory tourist’s miscellany of other items.

In no time he would be presentable. People would stop gawking at him as he passed before turning their scrutiny to her, as if trying to figure out what a perfectly normal-looking, albeit a bit grubby, American was doing strolling about with such a barbarian. They would stop drawing attention to themselves—a thing Gwen despised—and they would take a nice drive to Alborath. Perhaps have lunch with his family while she explained how she’d found him. She’d entrust him to his familial bosom and then catch up with her tour group in the next village.

Do you really want to leave him? Return to the seniors?

After last night she was no longer certain she would be able to leave him. Perhaps she’d linger for a time near his home and see how he fared before moving on. It wasn’t as if there was anything in the States she was in a hurry to get back to. Not her job, not the exquisite, sprawling house on Canyon Road in Santa Fe she’d avoided since her parents’ death. Too many memories, still fresh and painful.

Perhaps she would check into a bed-and-breakfast near Drustan’s home for a while; it would be the compassionate thing to do.

“Where are you going?” she hissed when he swept past her, trailing his hand over a rack of purple running suits. He brushed his hand over a lavender sweatshirt, then stared at a lilac sweatband, ignoring her. She shook her head but, after a moment’s vacillation, decided he should be harmless enough wandering the store while she selected something for him to wear.

She turned her attention to choosing clothing for a man who had the overly developed body of a professional athlete. Although Barrett’s carried a variety of clothing, few men had his height and muscle. She tucked some jeans beneath an arm, eyed a denim button-down, and glanced at his wide shoulders. It’d never fit. A V-neck T-shirt might do, in stretchy cotton, but definitely not white. It would contrast entirely too nicely with his silky dark hair and deep golden skin. The sight of a white tee stretched across his muscular chest might persuade her to catapult her cherry at him.

She
felt
him return to her. The hair on the back of her neck tingled the moment he stepped beside her, but she refused to glance at him. At the same moment, a feminine purr from the other side of her asked, “May I help you?”

Gwen glanced up from the pile of T-shirts to find a tall, leggy, thirtyish saleslady, librarian glasses perched on her nose above a lushly pursed mouth, looking past her, eyeing the MacKeltar with fascination. “Wearing the old dress, are you now?” she spoke with a lilting burr, ignoring Gwen entirely. “Such a lovely weave. I’ve no’ seen the pattern before.”

Drustan folded his arms across his chest, his body rippling beneath the leather bands. “And you won’t,” he said. “ ‘Tis the Keltar’s alone.”

There went the lionlike toss of his head, which on a woman would have looked coy but on him was an irresistible come-hither-if-you-think-you-can-handle-me. Gwen didn’t wait for the saleslady to start drooling. Or go hither. She thrust a pile of jeans and shirts into Drustan’s arms, forcing him to unfold his arms and drop the he-man pose.

“Allow me to show you to a fitting room,” the saleslady purred. “I’m quite confident we’ll find something to satisfy your…desires…at Barrett’s.”

Oh, choke me on innuendo,
Gwen thought, not caring one bit for the interest in the woman’s eyes. He might be crazy, but he was
her
deluded hunk.
She’d
found him.

Blocking the aisle to prevent—she glanced at the woman’s name tag—Miriam from latching on to him, she nudged Drustan toward the dressing room. Miriam sniffed and tried to step around her, but Gwen engaged her in a determined, irritated little dance in the narrow aisle until she heard Drustan close the dressing-room door behind her. Plunking her fists on her waist, Gwen looked down her nose up at leggy Miriam and said, “We lost our luggage. His costume was all he had in his carry-on. We don’t need any help.”

Miriam glanced at the fitting room, where Drustan’s muscular calves were visible beneath the short white slatted door, then contemptuously examined Gwen, from her not-very-recently shaped eyebrows to the muddy toes of her hiking boots. “Found yourself a Scotsman, did you now, wee
nyaff
? You Americans are given to samplin’ our men with the same thirst you turn to our whisky, and you canna handle our whisky either.”

“I can most certainly handle my
husband
from here,” Gwen snapped, louder than she would have liked.

Miriam directed a pointed look at her ringless hand and arched a meticulously shaped brow that made Gwen feel she had small, unruly bushes growing above her eyes, but she refused to be humbled and returned the stare in icy silence. When Gwen made no effort to explain why she sported no wedding band and displayed no inclination to quit blocking the aisle, Miriam moved off in a snit to fluff and tidy the sweaters Gwen had messed up on the display table.

Swallowing a catlike growl, Gwen moved to stand guard outside the fitting room, tapping her foot impatiently. A
swoosh
of fabric alerted her that he’d removed his plaid, and Gwen tried hard not to think about him standing behind the flimsy door, nude. It was harder than trying not to think about a cigarette, and her disobedient thoughts handled it as badly: The more she tried to
not
think it—the more she thought it.

“Gwen?”

Dragging herself from a fantasy in which she was about to drip chocolate syrup on him, she said, “Um?”

“These trews…
och! By Amergin!
”

Gwen snorted. The MacKeltar was pretending to discover zippers, and if he was wearing the plaid true to the sixteenth century (according to what their tour guide had told them), he had no underwear on. She heard a few more muttered curses, then a
zzzzzp!
Yet another curse. He sounded
so
convincing.

“Come out and let me see you,” she said, struggling to keep a straight face.

His voice sounded strangled when he replied, “You’ll have to come in.”

Sneaking a furtive glance at Miriam, who had conveniently been accosted by a pimple-faced teenage boy, Gwen entered the dressing room. He was regarding himself in the mirror and his back was to her, and, heavens, but she would have been much better off if she’d
never
seen his tight muscled ass in a pair of tight faded jeans. His long black hair rippled over his shoulders and down his back, inviting her to plunge her fingers in it and trail them down the splendid ridges of muscle—

“Turn around,” she said, her mouth suddenly dry.

He did so, with a scowl.

She eyed his bare chest and, with effort, forced herself to remember she was supposed to be looking at the jeans. Her gaze skimmed downward over his rippled abdomen and lean hips and—

“
What
have you stuffed in your pants, MacKeltar?” she demanded.

“Nothing that wasn’t God-given,” he replied stiffly.

Gwen stared. “There’s no way that’s part of you. You must have gotten a sock or…something…stuck. Oh, my.” She pried her gaze from his groin. A muscle worked in his jaw, and he was clearly in discomfort.

“I doona believe you
intended
to torture me—nay, I saw other men on the street in such clothing—so I will not take putative measures. However, I think the problem is much the same as my feet,” he informed her.

“Your feet?” she repeated dumbly, her gaze dropping. They
were
large.

“Aye.” He gestured toward hers. “In your time you bind your feet in constrictive boots, whereas we wear soft, supple leather.”

“Your point?” she managed.

“They have more room to grow,” he said, as if she were simpleminded.

Gwen blushed. Of all things to play a joke on her about. Stuffing socks in his pants, indeed! “MacKeltar, I do not believe for one minute that
that
”—she gestured at the bulge in his jeans—“is you. I may be gullible, but I do know what men look like, and that is
not
what men look like.”

He flattened her up against the door of the dressing room, and his sensual mouth, much too close for safety, curved in a cocksure smile. “Then you will simply have to see for yourself. Touch me, lass. Feel my…sock.” His silver gaze sizzled with challenge, as he unzipped his zipper.

“Uh-uh.” She shook her head for added emphasis.

“Then find me a pair of trews that doona threaten to sever my manparts.”

“Uh-huh,” she agreed, trying not to think about that unzipped zipper.

“Doona let this frighten you, lass. We will fit together well when I make love to you,” he purred.

Weel
was how it came out, and his lovely brogue, coupled with his “sock,” were nearly all the persuasion she needed to set to removing his jeans with her teeth. She closed her eyes. “Back up, bud, or I’ll
help
you fit in those trews,” she threatened. “With your sword, if necessary.”

“Look at me, Gwendolyn,” he said softly.

“Gwen,” she snapped.

“Gwen,” he acquiesced. Right before he kissed her.

         
7
         
 

Heat lightning,
Gwen thought.
His touch is electrifying.
Attraction sizzled between them, and she knew he felt it too, because he drew back and looked at her strangely. Then, nudging her lips apart with his thumb, he opened her mouth and brushed his firm lips back and forth over hers, creating a light and irresistible friction.

Yes,
she thought.
This is what I’ve needed. I feel…ooh!
He tilted her head at the perfect angle—just like Lancelot did Guinevere in that single kiss between them in the movie
First Knight
—and sealed his mouth over hers. She shivered when his tongue plunged between her lips, hot and silky and raw man.

Take that, Miriam.

Dizzied by a rush of desire, her head plopped limply back against the dressing-room door. She slid her hands up the rippling muscles of his arms, over his shoulders, then locked them firmly behind his neck. She hadn’t gone to Scotland, fallen in a hole, and met a madman. She’d died and gone to heaven, and he was her reward for putting up with her parents for so many years. He closed his hands on her waist, then slid them intimately upward as he deepened the kiss, lingering over each curve. When he flattened his palms roughly over her breasts, her thighs popped open so smoothly that she wondered why she didn’t just have a placard taped across them that said
SQUEEZE HERE FOR SEX
. She arched her back, rubbing her hard nipples against his callused palms. The sock she’d accused him of having was the hardest sock she’d ever felt and dangerously close to being smack-dab between her thighs.

And she wanted him there, by God.

She wanted to feel him silky and hot inside her, naked, with nothing between them.

He brushed her nipples with his thumbs as his tongue glided deeper, slick and hungry, so deep it coaxed soft little mewling noises from her throat. With a subtle turn of their bodies, he shifted his erection into the vee of her thighs and thrust his hips with the same ruthless, insistent rhythm as he thrust his tongue into her mouth. When he cupped her bottom and lifted her against him, she vaulted happily onto him, wrapped her legs around his waist, and kissed him frantically.

She arched against him, trying to get as close as possible, with so much irritating, restrictive clothing between them. She threaded her fingers into his silky hair, she suckled his tongue, desperate for more of him. He made a kind of laughing, satisfied male sound deep in his throat, clamped her head between his hands, and kissed her so hard he drew her breath into his body. His tongue glided into her mouth, withdrew, and returned. She felt her skin rippling with kinetic energy where he touched her; she was soaking it up and growing hotter at the core. This man knew her natural frequency and was making her resonate to perfect pitch. And as fine crystal, if vibrated continuously at its natural frequency, would shatter, she hovered mere caresses away from a similar explosion.

“Might I find you a different size or style?” chirped Miriam beyond the dressing-room door, inspiring the only benevolent feeling Gwen would ever entertain about her, for rescuing her before she shucked her virginity on a fitting-room floor to a madman. With a door that ended a foot above the floor.

Drustan groaned, then deepened the kiss.

How embarrassing!
Gwen’s sanity returned in degrees.
The man kisses me and I just hop right on him like he’s the hottest new ride at Disneyland. Have I lost my mind?
She dug her fingernails into his shoulders and bit his tongue.

“
Ouch.
I doona think that was necessary,” he whispered, passion blazing in his eyes, coupled with irritation that someone had dared interrupt them. He was clearly not a man who liked to stop anything he’d begun. He looked downright dangerously aroused.

“Ma’am?” Miriam said in a pinched tone.

Gwen was mortified to realize she was making soft panting noises. She took a deep breath, forced herself to unwrap her legs, and slid down his body. His hands tightened on her hips, until she threatened his shoulders with her nails again. Reluctantly, he lowered her to the floor, then promptly tried to kiss her again. “Stop it,” she whispered furiously.

After drawing another shaky breath she called to Miriam, “Yeah. Um. Clothes, right. How about…uh, a pair of those khakis. The loose-fit brand in a thirty-two—wait a minute.” She shook her head, trying to clear it. To accommodate his muscular thighs, they would have to be loose on his waist. “Bring a thirty-four, thirty-six-, and thirty-eight-inch waist,” she corrected. “And a belt.” She closed her eyes and drew several more deep breaths. Her heart was thundering like a battering ram against the wall of her chest.

“Ma’am?” Miriam cooed so sweetly that only another woman would have heard the bitchiness.

“Yes?”

“I realize Americans are…
different
…and perhaps your feet were no longer on the floor because you were perched on the chair admirin’ the state-of-the-art video-cams we recently installed, but there are children in the store, and in Scotland we take the upbringin’ of them seriously. These dressing rooms are not coed.”

Her face flamed. “Get off me, you oaf,” she hissed, pushing at his chest. He gave her a look that promised they would continue where they’d left off—and soon—before stepping back.

“As you wish.
Wife,
” he purred, then opened the door with a flourish and a courtly bow.

Gwen blushed. So much for hoping he hadn’t heard her snap at Miriam earlier. She stepped out, and there stood the infernal Miriam, staring past her at Drustan MacKeltar clad in tight unzipped jeans and no shirt. “Oh, my.” Miriam wet her lips. “I’ll just get those khakis.”

But Miriam didn’t move an inch, and Gwen wanted to kick her. Better yet, smack her eyeballs back into her head.

“You were going to get those pants,” Gwen reminded stiffly.

“Oh, yes,” Miriam said, flustered. “If the khakis don’t cover…er, fit…perhaps he could try running pants. They’re quite…roomy.” She flashed a brilliant smile at Drustan, her gaze darting from the barely covered bulge at his groin to his ringless hand.

“Fine. Bring some of those too.” Gwen glared at Drustan, then pulled the door tightly shut. She leaned back against it and sighed, trying to collect herself.

“I want purple trews, lass,” Drustan called over the door.

“No,” she said irritably.

“And a purple shirt.”

Absolutely not,
she thought. His black hair and dark skin would look incredible offset by such a vibrant color. Maybe black would make him look drab. One could always hope. When, after a few moments and unintelligible curses later, she heard his jeans hit the floor, she imagined him nude and wondered if someone might have slipped her an aphrodisiac in the past twenty-four hours.

Find a man you want to talk with into the wee hours, a man you can argue with when necessary, and a man who makes you
sizzle
when he touches you,
Beatrice had said. Well, the sizzle was there, and they certainly could argue….

She shook her head, refusing to entertain the notion that a madman might be her potential soul mate.

Might he have a point about his feet? Did things truly grow larger if unconfined? It certainly hadn’t felt like a sock. More like that can of tennis balls on the shelf behind the cash register. She glanced down at her breasts. Should she stop wearing a bra and start wearing snugger panties?

How was she going to look at him now?

The running pants were tolerable, Drustan decided, relieved. The blue trews had clearly been a torture device and would have strangled a man’s seed. Mayhap men were fashioned differently in her time. He hadn’t seen one other bulge out there on the street; mayhap they all had wee carrots in their trews. Mayhap there were hundreds of unsatisfied women in this century. Although at the moment, only one woman’s satisfaction was of paramount interest to him, and he was rapidly becoming obsessed with her.

Gwen Cassidy did something unnatural to him. Made him feel weak-kneed and powerful at the same time. Made him feel the potency and virility of his Druid blood hammering in his veins. When he touched her, everything in the world made perfect sense, as if constructed of elegant mathematical equations. He should fear her because, when holding her, he forgot everything he should be worrying about.

Druids maintained that the larger an object, the more impact that object had upon the space in which it existed, and the greater the pull it exerted on other objects. Drustan had always considered himself walking proof of such a postulation; but Gwen, tiny Gwen, had very little mass, yet a monumental impact on his world. She defied the laws of nature.

Sighing, he forced his thoughts away from her firm little body and studied himself in the mirror. The black trews (named Adidas) were fitted yet baggy, with remarkable, stretchy stuff at the waist and ankles. They were by far the most suitable selection. He admired the black fabric, densely woven; he suspected it might repel water. Purple would have been better, but black was acceptable. Not royal—still, not serf colors.

The blue trews had been painful, and a terrible dye job to boot, as if the color hadn’t set in. No weaver in his clan would have owned up to such terrible craft. And those bland “khaki” trews, although a reasonable fit, would have branded him a crofter, which the Keltar wasn’t. His own plaid of royal purple and black, shot with costly silver threads, he rolled neatly around three of his leather bands and stuffed under his arm. Her people clearly did not adhere to
brehon
law. There’d been racks of purple attire, for simply anyone to purchase, arrayed throughout the store. The Keltar, centuries past and with much pomp and ceremony, had been gifted the full use of the seven colors by a Gael king. The MacKeltar lairds were entitled to wear purple so long as a Keltar lived.

And by God, he did—live, that is. Mayhap none other of his clan did, but he was alive, and once he got to his stones he would find out what had gone wrong. He was apprehensive about this world of hers, this wagon of hers, but to arrive at Castle Keltar today he would have ridden a fire-breathing dragon.