He made a low, grumbling sound and reached for her hand. She slipped out of his tentative hold, and just as she was feeling her sad victory, he astonished her. Her hand firmly in his grasp, something happened to the air all around her.
Everything in her cottage vanished. Damn, she thought, either her cottage had vanished, or somehow she had fainted. She wasn’t unconscious though, and she hadn’t lost time, or at least she didn’t think so, and Chad was still with her, but they were somewhere outside in the cold, open darkness—no landscape—no stars—just darkness.
She knew he was with her because he held her hand, but she couldn’t see him because a swirling fog enveloped them. Then suddenly the mist and fog cleared and she saw a flash of night sky. That sky was filled with stars…and she seemed to be a part of the galaxy. She reached out to touch one of the stars she was certain was right there at her fingertips, and
whoosh,
they were standing in the bedroom suite she had occupied just the other night at Darby Gray!
“What the hell
?” she whispered as much to herself as to him.
He released her hand and said quietly. “It is called
shifting.”
“Shifting
…” Shawna repeated as her mind clicked off the word and tried to prepare a reference. “Wait…I know about shifting. It’s in the ancient texts my grams showed me. The Fae use shifting to get around.” Her eyes opened wide with a sudden thought. “Are you Fae—
Tuatha Dé Danaan?”
He put up his hands. “Have I not told you what I am? Did you not listen, lass?” He lowered his voice. “Immortal here, not Fae.”
“So not connected to the Fae?”
“No connection.”
“But you have the power to shift—move through portals… Can you move through time?”
“Not one minute. If I could, there would have been a great many things I would have changed, and that might have been catastrophic.”
“Hmmm…I quite see that. However, Chad MacFare, you brought me here without permission. Now, take me back.”
“Lass, make up your mind to this. It is the safest place for you.”
“At least take me back so that I can get my stuff. I need my things,” she said with resignation.
“I know, and I will be right back with them.”
“You don’t know what I want—need.”
“Oh, I think I have an idea…” he returned and the glint was in his green eyes.
She eyed him speculatively. “Take me with you…
shifting
style, and I’ll pick out what I want.”
“I’ll just go and get some things for tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll travel in the normal fashion and bring back whatever else you need.”
He turned from her, and in that moment, desperation, emotion, confusion drove her to shout out, “
CHAD!”
He turned, a frown furrowing his brow. “What is it, lass?”
As an answer she dove into his arms and kissed him.
~ Seventeen ~
JUST BEFORE SHE kissed him, he had been thinking,
Her closeness is driving me batty! Och, but her scent has taken m’senses in her small, lovely hands. For days she is all I can think of…and the hard-on I’ve been carrying around is threatening to take over m’mind.
Shawna…her name makes me shake inside. Shawna…how can I protect you when all I can think about is taking you in m’arms and in m’bed?
He had every intention of taking her to his bed…but not just then, not when she was open and vulnerable, scared and in doubt and in need…
That woona be right
, he had told himself.
And then she was in his arms and kissing him as though her life depended on him, and it did. He shouldn’t take her—but her kiss had inflamed him beyond thought. He could not remember ever feeling quite that way. He could not recall ever wanting quite as much as he did now, and he knew, without a doubt, that he had never needed a woman the way he needed Shawna.
This was all new to him. He was used to being in control—of his mind, his emotions, and his actions regarding both. But when she was near—bloody hell, even when she wasn’t—she took over somewhere in his brain, translated a foreign language to his heart, and made him hers. He knew it, but had not wanted to admit it to himself, let alone to her.
Now, he was lost to her kiss, and his response was all encompassing. His tongue made love to her. Erotic desire was entwined with feelings he had never before had for a woman, and it was devastating to the man who had never before given his heart. He reacted to her kiss with the primal possession of a feral beast, taking what was his.
His hands caressed her body, and before he knew what he was doing, he was flinging off his leather jacket, lifting up her sweater, undoing her bra…
Och, her full, luscious breasts…nothing to their like,
he almost said out loud, and then did whisper in her ear, “Beauty, ah but, lass, you are a beauty I no can live without
.”
She was melting into him, giving herself freely, and he knew himself lost to her. He had her clothes off easily, deftly, and he stepped just as quickly out of his own.
His passion got the better of him and he almost lowered her to the floor. Some part of his brain still functioned though, and instead he gathered her up cradle-like in his arms and carried her to the bed. There he laid her against the quilt and pillows and stood, his huge dick dancing a tune that screamed her name.
Her eyes were molten silver, and she stared at him, whispering, “Chad…”
Her bent to her, came down beside her, and hushed whatever it was she was going to say with his kisses. She was like a beautiful wild thing just unleashed. Her responses to him drove him wild with blind desire as he parted from her luscious mouth and started a series of kisses down the length of her neck. He fondled her breast and then suckled at her delicious nipple as his hand traced a line of fire down to her inner thigh.
* * *
She felt herself succumb to his magic—and it was magic. He did things to her body she had never dreamt possible. His kisses drove off any logical thought, and she felt herself turn into the savage that had been caged, always caged inside of her. She discovered a sudden thirst…
She was, however, in control and did not give in to the blood lust. She watched his face as he suckled at her nipple, and she bucked against him, wanting, wanting…
His hand fulfilled her need as it found the tuft of hair between her thighs and used his fingers to vibrate her in a way she had never known possible. She arched into him and heard a stranger’s voice when she demanded, “More…Chad…”
“Och, lass, I want to take m’time…”
His kisses traveled down her belly, and when his tongue found that spot she joined with him in a rhythmic movement that sent her over the top. When she climaxed, she shuddered over and over, and then he was on her, whispering in her ear, “Now, lass…do ye want it now…”
She couldn’t speak, didn’t trust herself to tell him all the things she wanted him to do to her. She had meant to tell him at first that this was her first time that she had ever gone beyond the kissing, beyond the petting…
That didn’t seem important as he wielded his cock against the opening between her legs. She met him with a grinding, circular dance that encouraged him further, but even as he entered he groaned, “Shawna love…ye are so tight…”
He took her legs and bent them at the knees. She simply allowed him to do what he wanted, whatever he wanted—it all felt so right. He then had his hands under her butt, pulling her into position. He held her there with a firm grasp, while his free hand took his cock and maneuvered it, positioned it, and worked it into place.
She wanted him inside of her and she bucked against him. “Now…oh Chad, please now…”
Her words, her tone, her sweet movements drew a joyous sound from him. His face was drawn in desire, and his voice attended her with a primal underlining.
“This…Shawna sweet—is this what ye want, m’love?”
She couldn’t speak, so she showed him by bucking towards him, and he smiled softly as he drove himself home—and then, suddenly, stopped!
* * *
This canna be
was his first thought as he broke through the membrane of her virginity. It wasn’t possible that such a beauty in this day and age could be untouched! What had he done? He had never before taken a virgin—at least not since he had been one himself.
He was a man born two hundred years ago, and the basic traditions of his early days were still a great part of who he was in the present. He had always believed a man should not take a virgin unless he meant to keep her—love her. It was part of his code. He had been infatuated with a woman or two, but never in love…and now, he knew what he felt for the beauty in his arms, for he realized all at once that he meant to keep her and never let her go.
He had been startled into immobility and was surprised to find her wiggling and encouraging movement from him. He chuckled and bent to kiss her nose, feeling so many things he had never felt before. He stroked her hair, feeling his cock throb inside of her, felt her muscles cling to him, and a low snarl of desire infiltrated his throat. He touched her lips with his fingers and said on a hushed note, “Shawna love, why dinna ye tell me?”
“Och, lad, what difference should it make…now if ye please…” she teased him with a brogue all her own as her hips showed him what she wanted him to do. She had stolen his heart, he realized in one blinding ray of comprehension. She wasn’t just his; he had somehow become hers!
He spoke low and in Gaelic to her, and he felt her tremble. She nibbled at his lips, urging him to take her to where she wanted to go…
He couldn’t resist her. She had become the most important human being in his life. Consequences and the future be damned; he would deal with those things later.
Now, she was here, beneath him…
He rolled over onto his back and had her on top, encouraged her to take control as he held her hands to his chest. He watched as her breasts bobbed with her dance….and as he brought her to her climax. That satisfied him as it never had before, and he heard the ancient, feral sound of a man in possession escape his lips, but it was more—he knew it was so much more.
He rolled her over onto her back once again and rammed her hard, over and over until she was mewing with pleasure, until she climaxed again, and then he released himself inside her and took her to his heart and held her tightly, because he knew he would never let her go.
As she snuggled against him he heard his own voice, the voice of a stranger, speaking in hushed tones of awe Gaelic words he had never truly understood before.
Shawna traced her finger against his mouth. “What did you just say?”
“Och, lass…in Gaelic it means so much more. It bonds a woman to her man because she has touched him—and allowed him to see her spirit. Loosely, what I said was—I don’t know what ye have done to me with your fingers working themselves into my heart, and your lips kissing so much more than my body. You have kissed and captured my soul.”
She held him at bay and looked up into his eyes, and he watched as a tear rolled down her cheek.
He was immortal. He did not believe that she was because she was only half vampire. Being without her…doing without her at some future time…would lead to devastating pain. But it was too late now to think of that.
Now
, now she was his, and more to the point, he knew that he was hers.
* * *
How had all of this happened? Shawna asked herself as she awoke with the sun streaming in through the open curtains. The rays of bright light delivered a morning full with new realizations.
She stared at the beautiful man asleep beside her. She had arrived at a place in her heart that she never knew existed. A place in her heart—no, how trite it was to think of what she felt in such terminology. There was a world inside of her that made her heart beat—made her lungs work, made her brain function—and that world had a name: Chad MacFare!
Somehow he had taken all her good sense and presented her with an alternative that made better sense. It had taken her by surprise. Had this thing—this thing they shared—been there from the start, slowly sneaking up on her all along?
Their night had been filled with lovemaking and had opened her up to so much.
He had driven her into an erotic fantasy she had not known she was capable of feeling, sustaining, and giving back in like. He had whispered Gaelic words of praise and had translated them to her in the moonlight.
Had it all been real? She had purred like a satisfied wildcat at the time, and she remembered it now as she stroked his velvet skin. She peeled away the sheet and quilt, exposing his massive chest with the intricate set of tattooed runes and Celtic knots. She had traced their patterns in the moon’s glow. She had told him that he was exquisite, as a man, and as a lover…
He had chucked her under the chin. “’Tis good you think that way, lass of mine, because—as they say, what you see, love, is what you get…
no other
.”
She had laughed and nestled into his arms, but he had made a rumbling sound deep in his throat as his lips made their way from her nose, brushed against her lips, down to her chin, along the hollow in her neck before he caressed her breast and then suckled at her nipple…