Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(37)

Lachlan settled his midnight-sky gaze upon her. A tingle spread through her at the look on his face.

He believes me.

“Cairenn,” he whispered, “tell me how this can be.”

Her chest swelling with hope, it took her a moment to find her voice. “My father told me that one of my ancestors was a Druid priestess in Ulster. This was a long, long time ago, before all memory, when the veils between the worlds were thin. This ancestor loved a man of the Otherworld—a man of Tír na nóg—and on one Samhain—”

“Stop.” He shook his head once. “No children’s tales.”

His command flummoxed her. Da had told her this story after she’d woken up in the wake of her collapse in Galway. He’d explained everything while making her choke down some foul-tasting tea. His explanation had seemed so logical then—after all, she’d felt the Sídh themselves, rising up between the cracks in the stones whilst she wandered the lonely places on high. But then again, that was Inishmaan, which was different from the rest of the world.

Now, here, sitting in this stone-walled room with this strange-smelling wood, she began to understand why Lachlan might think she was telling him a tale fit for the nursery rather than telling him the truth.

“Children’s tales are full of magic,” she confessed in a small voice, “but this is no tale for the young.”

“Cairenn—”

“Are you to close your ears to the only truth I know?”

His powerful chest expanded with a sigh. She saw a muscle flex in his cheek, then he tightened his jaw and nodded.

“This ancestor of mine,” she continued, “loved a man of the Otherworld. On one Samhain, when the veils between the worlds thinned, they went to the fires and…” Cairenn hesitated. She didn’t know if the Scots had the same traditions as the Irish, celebrating the four turns of the year—Beltane, Imbolc, Lughnasa, and Samhain—with fires and dancing and much more in the night, but she had no choice but to continue. “On that night, they created a link of flesh and spirit, fairy and human, which kept the worlds together even as they threatened to drift apart.”

She hazarded a glance at him, relieved that he was still listening.

“Fairy blood runs strong,” she said. “This is why everyone in my family has a gift. My sister Aileen has the gift of the healing hands, a gift in which my father took such pride. My gift,” she said, shrugging, “is the ability to know people’s minds.”

“You’re not one of the wee folk, Cairenn. Any more than I’m a selkie.”

Her heart dipped a little at the reminder of her foolishness.

“I can see you,” he said. “I have held you in these arms.”

With a frisson she remembered his hand cupping her breast, his fingers doing magic things between her legs. Then, as if he could read her thoughts, he crossed the three steps that separated them and stood over her, looking down at her with undeniable intent.

“You’re human,” he said, grasping her face in his hands as she surged out of her seat. “I feel your heart, I see your pulse beating in your throat.”

“Lachlan—”

“For weeks I watched you on Inishmaan. I’ve broken bread with your family. For all this talk of magic and witchery, everything in my heart tells me you are good.”

She ran her hands up his arms and felt the hard, flexing sinew under the warmth of his skin. Emotions filled her, making it hard for her to breathe, to speak, to think.

“I made a promise to your father,” he said, his brow furrowing, “that I would not dishonor you.”

She shook her head, for she’d followed him across a sea to get out from under that protection.

“Angus has made arrangements.” His grip tightened. “Take the berth on a ship that he will offer you. Leave me before I do something I shouldn’t.”

She pressed her hands against his chest. “I want you, Lachlan.”

He made a sound deep in his throat. He dragged his hands up through her hair. He was not gentle, not even when his lips fell upon hers.

He nudged her lips open and there was his tongue, probing inside her mouth in a way that made her knees weak. She tasted the ale he’d been drinking. He slung an arm around her back and lifted her against him. Her toes barely scraped the cold floor. Beneath her palms his heart pounded wildly.

She heard him kick something, heard a stool overturn, then the brush of his feet in the rushes. She knew they were moving but could not see where, didn’t care, as long as he didn’t let go.

When she felt the edge of the bed dig into the back of her knees, he sucked her lower lip into his mouth, then her upper lip, then rubbed his lips against her while she tasted them with a hunger she hadn’t had for the bread and the stew.

Dizzy, she pushed him a fraction away in search of the ties of his tunic. He was wearing too many clothes. She wanted to press her cheek against the naked hollow on his chest where his heart lay, slip her tongue across his skin, do all those things that men and women did when passion took hold, so that she could experience that closeness, that joining, and find her way into his mind.

She fumbled with the ties. He took a step back so she could tug at them, watching as she did. He reached between them and yanked off his belt. Impatiently she pushed the surcoat off him, let it puddle to the floor, and shoved his linen tunic off the swell of his muscled shoulder.