My Heart's in the Highlands (37 page)

Taking a seat next to Mikah on the sofa,
Jace waited a heartbeat to see if she would shy away from him again.  When she didn’t, he reached out and took her hand in his.  Her flesh was cold and he warmed her hand between his.  “You weren’t badly injured?”

Mikah stiffened but didn’t pull away.  Just like Hero when they had first met, skittish, denying their attraction.  And she maintained that they were so very different!

“No, just my head but
…”

Jace
stilled.  “What?”

“Nothing, my dad told me afterward that the paramedics said
…”

“That you had died
?” he finished for her, latching on to the commonality.  “For how long? How long were you gone?”

“
Sixty-eight seconds.” 

Chapter Forty-Six

Sixty-eight seconds that changed my life.

“I was gone for more than three
minutes, they told me,” Jace said thoughtfully, then answered her unspoken question.  “I was in a crash. My helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan.  They said it took more than three minutes to revive me.”

“So we died and stepped into our past lives,” she concluded
though her heart had almost halted once again at his words, and Jace nodded to confirm that that was his deduction as well.  “The cane?” she asked with evident concern.  “Are you all right?”

“Some metal fragments were embedded in my thigh,” he said.
  “They were afraid that I might lose my leg.”

“You were a soldier?”

“We didn’t change much, did we?” Then he smiled that blasted lopsided smile that never failed to melt her heart.  Begrudging him such a powerful weapon to use against her, Mikah stood and walked back toward the windows.  In the reflection, she could see him follow, though this time he kept his distance.

Past lives.
  Souls lost.  Sometimes she didn’t care what dozens of world religions believed, to her it all still held a hint of madness.  That was part of the reason Mikah had been so determined to set Ian in the past, to move on.  To deny Jason MacAuliffe’s very existence.

“If you
grew up near Cuilean and were familiar with the history, did you know that Ian and Hero were going to die? The whole time?” she asked.

Jace frowned. “On some level perhaps. I … we felt a sense of unease
but I could not pinpoint it at the time.  I was quite apart from myself, you understand, after I stopped fighting my fate.  His life was my own.”

Mikah nodded. She did understand that.  Once she had completely given herself over to a life as Hero, Mikah’s life and voice had faded completely away leaving only Hero.  “Why did it even happen then?  A
ll the experts say, that if you go to a past life you can change a wrong and make it right again.  Why were we there to begin with if we weren’t there to change what had happened? What was the point of it all?”

Jace could hear the pain in her voice, felt it as his own.  For a long while, he had wondered the very same thing.
The guilt and sense of failure at not being able to stop the tragedy had followed him for months afterward until he finally felt an understanding for it all.  “I think we experienced what we did so that we might remember and recognize each other now, in this time when fate brought us together once more.  Were it not for that journey, we would never have met in this life.  It prompted you to go back to Cuilean, as I did.  You said long ago that you always knew you would find what you were waiting for at Cuilean.  Remember?”

Mikah no
dded.

“
It brought us together again. Smith helped me to realize who you were. I was torn between talking to you and leaving you alone.  Given that madness isn’t generally rewarded, I felt compelled to opt for the latter,” Jace said, flashing that lopsided grin again, and her pulse raced involuntarily.  “I was determined to let the entire incident ‘go,’ as you said.  I wasn’t about to chase the insanity.”

“So why did you?”

“Smith told me that you went to their tomb.  Did you not read the inscription?  ‘Until they meet again,’ it said,” he explained.  “Over the past couple of weeks, I came to the conclusion that those words were a command of sorts. I had to come.  I had to see if the woman I fell so desperately in love with was truly here as well. I never would have made this journey to find you without having seen that.  Still, given the circumstances, I almost didn’t.”

Mikah
blinked in surprise.  “What circumstances?  Why weren’t you going to come?”

“Something else Smith said,”
Jace shifted, putting space between them.  “If you were … are … happy with your young man, I didn’t want to ruin that for you.”

“My young man?”
she parroted.

“Aye, that Kris fellow.”
Jace gestured toward the door.

“Kris?” Mikah repeated dumbly.
  “You think Kris … that Kris and I …?”

“Aren’t you?”

Mikah burst out in laughter, earning a dark scowl from Jace.  “I had that very same reaction from Kris before he left.  Clearly, Smith was mistaken.  Yet you two seem quite intimate.”

“He’s my best friend and I love him.”

His heart sank with her admission, yet Jace raised a skeptical brow.  “In my experience a man and woman cannot maintain a purely platonic friendship.”

“Oh!” Mikah giggled, her face lighting with humor as she laid a hand on his arm.
  It was an expression that Jace hadn’t seen from her yet this evening, yet it was so reminiscent of Hero that he felt his heart lift, a smile form in response. 

“Tell me.”

“Oh, Ian … uh, Jace!  I can’t believe that you didn’t realize it, but Kris would have a much harder time maintaining a platonic relationship with you than he does with me.”

Jace’s
mind blanked for a moment before her implication sank in.  “What?  You’re jesting.”

Mikah shook her head, laughing again.
  “I hope you’re not homophobic.  He truly is my dearest friend.  He has been since grade school.”

“No, not at all.”
  Jace shook his head in amusement.  “I guess it’s a good thing that I decided not to let that stop me from seeing you.  Is it a good thing, Mikah? We have been permitted a second chance that few ever have opportunity for.  Can you take a leap of faith with me that this is how it was all meant to be?” 

Mikah could have drowned in the intensity of Jace’s dark eyes.  There was no pleading there, none of the desperation she so often felt about all of this.  There was just that eternal calm, that unflappable self-assurance that was so much a part of the Ian she remembered.  He would leave if she said no, Mikah realized.  Well, perhaps not right away.  He would fight for what he wanted because that’s how he was, but he wouldn’t force her.

He would let the choice be hers.

“When I got back, I worked very hard to convince myself that that was all it was,” Mikah told him slowly. “That what I had felt was just an echo of her life, her emotions.  That it was her life I remembered, not my own.”

“And did ye succeed in that?”
  He was tensed like a panther ready to pounce.  Balanced on a limb, waiting and watchful.

Mikah looked into his dark eyes and saw the
power of that timeless love there and felt it in herself.  This wasn’t Hero’s, it was hers.  And it was no use trying to deny it any longer.  “No.”

Fire flamed in his eyes as he strode back to her.
  His fingers dove into her hair and he forced her head back until he was towering over her.  “What we carry inside of us isn’t theirs or ours.  It’s always been in our souls and it always will be, do you understand?”

Mikah nodded.

“Will ye ever try to deny it again?”

“No.
  Never.”

Jace’s lips took hers ardently, as if he meant to devour her.  His hands fisted in her hair, pulling her head back farther until she was bent back, clinging to him for support, but Mikah didn’t care.   Already that familiar passion was racing through her veins and she was melting against him.  She opened her mouth to him, inviting him deeper with a moan of delight, and felt a growl of satisfaction rumble through his chest. 

Strong arms drifted down her back until they tightened around her, lifting off her feet as he moved.
  Mikah felt the island counter at her back, then he lifted her to the edge.  Head spinning deliciously, Mikah wrapped her legs around his waist.  She ran her hands over his chest and upward, pushing his jacket off his shoulders until he shrugged it away. Jace’s hands returned, running over her hips and down her thighs before they slid upward once more, raising her hem up along the way.  The feel of those hands, his hands, against her bare flesh drew a low, keening moan from deep within her.

He was so real. 
So very alive.  So very
present
.

Her head
fell back in surrender, and Jace seized the invitation, dragging his lips down her neck, sucking, nipping, licking.  Mikah ran her hands down his muscular chest once more, learning the sharper planes before embracing him, urging him closer until Jace pressed his hips between her thighs.  They moaned in unison at the contact.

Dizzily, Mikah clung to him once more, lost to desire.
  “Yes,” she whispered throatily.  Her fingers fisted in his hair as Jace nudged her dress from her shoulder, his lips trailing downward even as his hands crept up.  One caught her behind the knee, lifting her against him.  The other tugged down her dress until her breast was bared.  He curved his palm under it and lifted to his lips. 

Mikah gasp
ed as his lips closed over her nipple, suckling gently.  “Oh God,” she moaned.   “Please, please.” 

“Aye, my love,” he murmured against her breast.
  Wrapping his arms around her once more, he lifted her.

“Your leg!” she protested.

“Wouldna dare to give out on me now,” he murmured and carried her through the nearest door and was rewarded with the site of a bed.  He lowered them down while Mikah worked the buttons of his shirt, spreading her palms across his bare chest with a hum of appreciation.

Jace
shuddered at the contact, and Mikah knew that his need matched hers.  He wanted more.  Wanted her naked and writhing beneath him as badly as she wanted him over her.  Rising, he shed his shirt and began to undo his trousers while Mikah pushed her dress down and squirmed out of it.  His eyes were black with desire, burning into hers as he stripped.  Finally Jace was as naked as she.  Her eyes devoured him, taking in the bulging muscles of his arms and shoulders. Skimming across his chest and down to his rippling abdomen.  Mikah held her arms open to him.

Slowly
, Jace climbed over her and lowered himself on top of her.  Heart pounding furiously, she closed her eyes, savoring the moment when flesh met flesh.  With each touch of her soft curves meeting his hard planes, her passion rose, and she knew he matched that passion when his arms began to shake.  Still he brushed his taut body against hers, resisting when Mikah urged him soundlessly to bury himself within her welcoming depths.  Their lips met and Mikah lifted her body, wrapping her limbs around him, pulling him down.  Her nails scored lightly down his back and over his buttocks, but still Jace would not give in. 

He bent his head, taking her swollen nipple
between his lips once again and suckling until she cried out.  “Please,” she whispered as her calf crept up to the small of his back.  “I want you.”

Lifting his head, he looked down at her.
  His beautiful face was taut with desire as Jace lowered himself down onto one elbow, sweeping his free hand down her body from shoulder to breast to belly and to hip.  Down her thigh and back up between them, until he reached her core. She was so ready for him, desperate for him.  Her hips lifted, begging him to continue, begging him for more.  “Now.  Don’t wait.”

“You are forever impatient.”

“And you are forever tormenting.”

With a chuckle,
Jace shifted and her legs lifted higher.  Unable to deny her any longer, he drove into her.  His guttural groan of satisfaction was drowned out by her cry of delight.  Fireworks burst before their eyes, exploding around them, and they froze as light, red and blue, spilled across them.  Their heads turned toward the big windows as more fireworks exploded in the sky.  “Happy New Year,” Mikah whispered, reaching up to caress his cheek.