The Pleasure Master (8 page)

“You know, I wasn't much of a history buff in
school, but I would've remembered this Pleasure Master stuff.”

Puzzling. She spoke as though she truly did live in a future time. “We are a small clan, and few brave the Highlands to find us. We dinna have visitors other than the Mackays, and they only to raid our cattle.”
And the women who come to me. So many of them.
He could close his eyes and feel their warm bodies moving beneath him, inhale the scents of exotic oil and desire. Veiled women, who when the night ended returned to London or farther with a gift none other could give, a secret they dared never share.

“We are the only clan wi' a Pleasure Master.” How had
she
found them? She could not have survived such a harsh journey carrying only her strange “toys.” The Mackays?

He watched a line form between her eyes, confusion fill her gaze. “Funny, but I wouldn't expect a primitive isolated society to bother with something like a Pleasure Master.”

He didn't understand many of her words, but he could guess their meaning. “The clan has gained fame from the Pleasure Master, and those who come from afar enrich the villagers.” Ian found it amusing that a bit of gold and fame would make him a source of pride to the clan, when without those things he would probably be damned as an abomination.

He saw her need to ask more about the fame and enriching, but other questions pulled at her.

“How does your mother feel about this Pleasure
Master stuff? Doesn't she want you to fall in love, have a family of your own?”

He shrugged. “My mother is dead. I ne'er saw her again after my father took me.”

“Oh.”

He recognized the glint of sympathy in her gaze and wondered at it. “'Tis no matter. I didna need my mother.”
Any more than my mother needed me.

She offered him an uncertain smile. “Well, at least you had your father's love.”

Now he was truly puzzled. “My father hasna e'er loved me. Love isna important. He taught me what I need know to be the next Pleasure Master. ‘Twas his duty.”

Her expression turned frantic. “Your brothers. You're triplets, for heaven's sake. You have to be close to them.”

He grinned. “Ye dinna understand us, lass. We havena e'er agreed overmuch about anything. They wouldna grieve if I were gone.”

Her look of horror wiped the grin from his face. “Ye're too tender, Kathy of Hair. Accept that love has no part in my life. The clan must know that I canna love any that come to me, that I can only teach them what needs teaching, then return them wi' their hearts untouched, their secrets safe. 'Tis the only way the Pleasure Master can exist. He must be beyond love for any one woman.”

He gentled his voice. “But if ye desire to know joys of the body such as ye've ne'er known before, mayhap I can show ye the power of the Pleasure Master.”

She'd forgotten. He'd made that stupid bet with his brothers. He had to seduce her to be the Pleasure Master. So why this panic? He hadn't a prayer of lighting her fire. She should just let him try, get it out of his system.

No.
She couldn't. And she
wasn't
afraid. Fine, so he'd made her feel something earlier, but she'd been in shock then. People didn't act normally when they were in shock. “Forget it. No joys of the body tonight. Let's play a game.”

“Game?”

She could feel his confusion. Good. A confused Pleasure Master wouldn't have time to plan seduction.

“Play?” His voice turned warm, husky.

Okay, nothing to worry about. This was probably his sitting-with-woman-in-darkness voice. Automatic. He wasn't even thinking about touching her.

Touching her.
Imagine. His fingers sliding across her flesh, circling each nipple. Then his lips on her breasts, drawing each nipple into his mouth. Hot, demanding.

She dragged in a deep breath. It was steaming in here. Who'd turned up the thermostat? She'd just turn it down. . . . Problem. No thermostat.

She glanced up, met his silver gaze across the flickering candle flame, and
knew.

“Stop it.” She couldn't control the wobble in her voice. “Stop it right now.”

“Stop what, lass?” His lips tilted up in a smile that invited. Promised.

“Stop what you're trying to do to me.” She
wasn't so sure now. What
had
he been trying to do? Maybe nothing. Maybe shock was causing her to imagine things. “Oh, never mind. I'll get a game.”

She scrambled to her feet, putting distance between herself and any possible pleasure field that might surround him. Of course, the whole idea was nonsense.
What happened to you today should be nonsense, too.

Rooting around in the large plastic bag, she pulled out a checkers game. Safe. Easy for him to understand.

She wondered . . . She stuck her head into the bag. “Send me home. Someone in here send me home.”

“Ye begin to sound much like Mad Mary. She speaks to her hens. Ye speak to a sack.”

Before drawing her head from the bag, she grabbed a small yellow sunflower. She had no idea what it was supposed to do.

Closing the bag, she turned to glare at Ian. “If I can talk to someone who's been dead for more than four hundred years, I can talk to a bag.”

“Aye, but—”

“Besides, I wasn't talking to the bag. I was talking to the toys.”

He shook his head. “'Tis a great need to talk ye have. Mayhap I can speak wi' Mad Mary. She might gift ye wi' one of her hens and—”

“Not funny, Ross.” Holding the flower and the checkers box, she hurried over to Peter. “Okay, the game's up, Peter. Send me home.”

Malin growled his displeasure while Peter's amber lights flashed happily. “E.T. phone home.”

She sighed. “Right. Phone home.”

“'Tis sorcery.”

The sudden tension in Ian's voice startled her. Kathy turned to catch him staring intently at Peter. She indulged in some mental head-slapping. Ian hadn't been close enough before to hear Peter speak. “No. Definitely not sorcery. Just some wires, circuits, and a computer chip thrown in there somewhere. Someone programmed him with a bunch of movie quotes, and he spouts them at totally inappropriate moments.” She cast Peter a meaningful glare. Then she dared a glance at Ian. Nope, he hadn't understood a word she'd said.

Trudging back to her glorified cot, she sat down. “Where's H. G. Wells when you need him?”

“Who is H. G. Wells, and why would ye have need of him?”

She sighed. “He was a writer who wrote about a time machine and . . . Oh, never mind. Who sent me here, Ian?” She couldn't keep the despair from her voice.

“I dinna know, but I wouldna think one of yer toys could do so.” He pulled the checkerboard from the box and set it between them.

His voice sounded relaxed, but she still sensed his unease over Peter's speech.

“Well,
something
did.” Absently, she put the sunflower on the cushion next to her and studied it.

Huge blue eyes blinked open. Waving its leaves
madly and wiggling its stem to an imaginary beat, the small flower announced, “I loooove you,” in a high-pitched little-girl voice.

“Great. Just great,” Kathy muttered. Scrambling to her feet, she picked the flower up and transferred it to a ledge beside the hearth. “Don't want to mention the
L
word around here, honey.”

The flower's eyes closed, and it fell silent as Kathy returned to her seat across from Ian. “It must have motion sensors like Peter, but Peter's technology seems a lot more complex. I still can't figure out why he was so cheap. The price tag must've . . .”

Her words trickled into silence as she glanced at Ian.

He sat transfixed, his gaze riveted on the sunflower. His hands shook as he grasped the checkers box in a crushing grip.

Uh-oh. Major mistake. From the look on Ian's face he intended to stomp the hapless flower into tiny plastic pieces. Why hadn't she thought before she—

“I dinna ken how ye make things move and talk that havena life.”

“Not me. I don't make them do anything. They come that way from the toy factory. All I do is push the button. Anyone can push a button.
You
can push a button.” She wanted to make that perfectly clear. No way was she going to end up the featured attraction at a Highland wienie roast. Make that a witchie roast.

She smiled brightly. “Go right on over to the bag
and stick your hand in. Push a button, any button.” From the look on his face, he'd rather stick his hand into a bag of vipers. “I don't blame you for being afraid because—”

“I dinna fear ye or the things ye brought wi' ye.” His gaze turned hard, and for a moment she saw the stranger he really was.

Something niggled at her subconscious, a feeling that beneath his sensuality lurked the heart of a dark predator, moving silently through the frightening world that wasn't
her
world, stalking her.

She'd let him see her weakness today, but she wouldn't do that again, wouldn't turn her back on him again.

“Oh, come on, Ross. Give me a break. Your brothers were terrified, and you're trying to tell me—”

“'Tis why my brothers willna be Pleasure Master.”

He was as strange to her as any fabled creature rising from Loch Ness's depths, and she knew her expression revealed her thoughts.

“You don't love. You don't fear. What do you
feel,
Ian Ross?”

“
I
dinna feel, lass. I make
others
feel.” But he
did
feel with this woman—unease with her toys that seemed much too alive, frustration with his desire to know the meanings of all her strange words, and . . . uncertainty with her. Of all his feelings, uncertainty was the most unsettling.

He must put all emotions aside, though, if he intended to remain Pleasure Master. He had to join
with this woman, and he would use his power in any way necessary. Tonight would be the beginning.

Absently, he pushed the game aside and reached for her foot. She'd kept on all her clothes, removing only her footwear. Wise lass.

Grasping her ankle, he lifted her foot onto his lap. He felt her sudden tensing. “Ye're safe, lass.”
Ye'll ne'er be safe from me, Kathy of Hair.
“I mean only to warm ye. When the hearth fire burns low, a chill creeps in.”

She remained stiff, unyielding. But she didn't pull her foot away. He smiled. It mattered not. The vixen could run from the hunter, but in the end she'd find no hiding place, would want none.

Cupping her foot in his palms, he rubbed a rhythmic pattern. Slow, deep strokes. “'Tis wondrous, the feel of flesh against flesh. Close yer eyes and give yerself to the heat, the pleasure. Dinna think of today, the morrow. Think only of now, of the touching.” He purposely lowered his voice to a murmur.

He'd meant only to lull this time, but her unblinking, wide-eyed stare told him she felt the change even as he felt it. The tightening in his groin, the pressure of his growing erection.

Strange. He'd learned control of his own body even as he learned to control the bodies of others. He must work harder to guard his reactions with this woman.

Holding her gaze with his, he slid her foot tightly against his erection, gasped at the pleasure-pain of
the pressure, and wondered why she didn't seek to free herself. Knowing he would gain no release on this night, he still increased his torture by rubbing her foot over his flesh, until his groin's throbbing pulsed in every part of his body.

“No.”

Her one strangled word was enough. He released her, but she didn't jerk her foot away.

Instead, she clenched her foot, tightening the pressure until he couldn't suppress a groan of agony at his own need, at the anticipation of pleasure.

Then slowly, she slid her foot from his lap. “I . . . I think I'm warm now.”

He knew his smile was one of triumph even as he forced his breathing back to a normal rhythm. “Ye felt the power, Kathy of Hair.”

“Power?” She looked uncertain, but beneath the uncertainty he saw the beginnings of realization.

Aye, she would learn. “I freed ye, yet ye didna move away. Ye pressed yer foot more tightly against my flesh. Why?”

“I . . . I don't know.” She glanced away, but not before he saw her confusion.

“Ye do, lass.” He allowed his thoughts, his desire to move over her.

She turned back to him. “What're you getting at, Ian?”

“The joy to be had between a man and woman has many layers. Ye just experienced one. Ye held the power to do what ye would wi' my body, to give pain or pleasure. Didna ye feel the clenching in yer own body even as ye pressed against mine? Didna
this man ye left in New York allow ye power over him?”

“No.”

He didn't know which question she answered, but it didn't matter. She would think about what he'd said, and that was enough.

“Sleep, lass. I'll not touch ye again.”
Tonight.

“It wouldn't do you any good. I'm seduce-proof. Remember?”

“Aye.” He heard the defiance in her voice and smiled. Mayhap she'd prove a challenge, and he loved challenges. “But still, I wouldna wish to send ye running into the night like a deer from the wolf.”

“You're no wolf, Ross.” Her laugh sounded breathless. “A wolf mates for life.”

She lay down and turned her back to him, leaving him with the unsettling knowledge that she thought him less than a beast that ran on four legs.

But what she thought of him didn't matter. He must remember that. The only important thing was that he meet his brothers' challenge, that he seduce this one woman. And the pleasure he'd give her would be hers to remember when she returned to New York.

He strode to the hearth fire and stirred up the dying flame.

“I loooove you.”