Beyond the Highland Mist (33 page)

Those flasks she’d seen. Lying in a leather pouch on the bed table last night.

Her jaw jutted as she stomped to the bed table. Not there.

Where had he put them? Her eyes flew to the clothes he’d dropped in the chair when he’d changed this afternoon. Rummaging through the pile, she found what she sought and dumped the little leather pouch. One empty, a full one left. Ha! That and the healing poultice he’d been using when he changed the bandage on his hand.

An empty flask. Hmmph! Well two could play that game, and he’d rue the day he left the other one just lying about. Wait until he saw just how cold she could be!

When the Hawk returned to the manor that night, he was unequivocally convinced he must have gone to the wrong house. His wife was waiting for him in the locked bedroom,
completely nude, with a wild look in her eyes that made him quite certain he was dreaming, or lost or mad.

“Hawk,” she purred as she glided to him.

“Adrienne?” he asked warily.

His wife was so damned beautiful. And for an instant he didn’t care why she was acting this way. He was sick of the waiting and tired of the wanting. So he swung her up into his arms and kissed her, his hot mouth moving over hers hungrily.

Then he saw the flask lying on the floor by the bed, looking as if it had been dropped shortly after consumption.

Hawk blew out a breath of frustration and allowed himself one more longing look at his wife’s flushed cheeks, her magnificent breasts, and curves that went on forever. One glance at her darkly dilated eyes and her pouty mouth, plum-ripe and begging to be kissed.

“Lass, did you take that potion?” he said wearily.

“Uh-hmm,” she drawled as she reached for his lips hungrily.

He dumped her on the bed with a thump. The aphrodisiac. He figured it should last about twelve hours before he could be certain she was back to her normal shrewish self.

It would serve her right for him to just take her right now, honor be damned, he thought darkly.

Unfortunately there were no circumstances under which honor could be damned. Not even when his throbbing shaft was making him wonder how the hell honor had anything to do with tupping his own wife.

Oh, she would surely want to kill him the next time she saw him.

He locked the door and stationed four guards outside it,
telling them he’d kill any one of them who went in that room for any reason during the next twelve hours.

Then the legendary Hawk sat down on the stairs to wait it out.

The next time he came to her, she was indeed furious. “What was in that flask?” she raged.

Hawk couldn’t help but smile. He tried to duck his head before she saw it, but failed.

“Oh! You think it’s funny, do you? I’ll have you know that you left me in here for a whole night thinking … oh my God! You have no idea how much I needed—”

“Not me, lass.” His eyes were dark. “It was not me you needed. You took a bit of an aphrodisiac the Rom brew. I had no intention of giving it to you or using it myself. I didn’t even ask them for it. And you snooped—”

“You took a potion to make yourself cold to me!” she shouted. “You hurt me!”

Hawk stared. “Hurt you? Never! I would not hurt you, lass.”

“Well, you did!” Her eyes were wide and luminous and her lip trembled.

He was at her side in an instant. “How did I hurt you? Only tell me, and I will make it up to you.”

“You were cold. You touched me and it was like you were a stranger.”

Hawk’s heart sang. Desire coursed through him in hot waves. She liked his touch.

“You like my touch?” he breathed before stealing a kiss from her pouty lips.

“Not when you do it like you did yesterday!” There was a furrow of consternation between her lovely brows and he
kissed it away. “Besides, being that you wanted to bed me, why didn’t you just take advantage of it when I was so willing?” she sighed as he traced soft kisses across her eyelids and her lashes fluttered closed. His lips were warm and infinitely tender as he kissed the tip of her nose, then not quite so tender when he claimed her mouth with his.

“When I love you, ’twill not be because some drug has intoxicated you, but because you are intoxicated with me, as surely as I am bewitched by you.”

“Oh,” she breathed as he unbound her hair and let it tumble free down her shoulders.

“Why did you bind it?” He combed his fingers through her heavy mane.

“That potion was terrible. Even my own hair rubbing against my skin was too much to bear.”

“ ’Tis too much for me to bear, this mane of yours,” Hawk said, playing it gently through his fingers. His eyes turned hooded, darkly heavy with sensual promise. “You have no idea how often I imagined the feel of this silvery-gold fire spread across my shaft, lass.”

Desire enveloped Adrienne as she pondered the image his words conjured.

He backed her slowly toward the bed, encouraged by the haze of desire in her wide eyes.

“The thought interests you, lass?” he purred smugly.

She swallowed hard.

“You have only to tell me, whisper to me what pleases you. I will give you it all.”

She gathered her courage. “Then kiss me, husband. Kiss me here … and here … oooh!” He obeyed so quickly. His lips were hot, silky and demanding. “And here …” She lost her voice completely when he slid her gown from her body and tumbled her to the bed beneath him.

“I want to pull the drapes around this bed and keep you in here for a year,” he mumbled against the smooth skin of her breast.

“ ’S’ all right, with me,” she mumbled in response.

“Aren’t you supposed to be fighting me, lass?” Hawk drew back and studied her intently.

“Um …”

“Yes, do go on,” he encouraged. He knew his eyes must be dancing with joy. He knew he must have an absolutely absurd expression on his face right now. Was it possible? The taming had begun and was working?

“Just touch me.” She wrinkled her brow. “Don’t ask me so many questions about it!”

He rumbled with soft laughter and promise of infinite passion. “Oh, I’ll touch you, lass.”

“Too deep. You’re in too far.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’ve given it thought, fool. We must end this. Queen Aoibheal is on to us. Even your time by her side has not allayed her suspicions. I, for one, do not wish to suffer the consequences of her wrath. The woman is simply going to have to return to her time.”

King Finnbheara waved his hand.

And the Hawk collapsed onto the bed. Stunned, he looked around the empty room.

Adrienne fell to the floor of her modern kitchen with a thud.

“Did you see what I saw?” King Finnbheara gasped.

Adam was stunned. “She was nude. He was panting. She was—oh shit!”

The King nodded emphatically as they both gestured.
“She stays.”

It was one of the golden rules. Some things could never be interrupted.

“You really are from the future, aren’t you?” Hawk whispered hoarsely, when Adrienne reappeared scant moments later, a few feet away from him on the bed. While Adrienne had been drinking in his study, Lydia had told him of the disappearance in the garden. The Hawk had tried to convince himself that Lydia was mistaken, but his guards had confirmed that they’d watched his wife disappear and reappear several times in quick succession.

So, she could still return to her own time, even without the chess piece.
The black queen is not what she seems.
The seer had spoken true.

Adrienne nodded, still dazed by her abrupt transfer through time. “And I can’t control it! I don’t know when it’s going to happen again!” Her fingers flexed convulsively on the woolen coverlet as if a tight grip might prevent her from being taken again.

“By the saints,” he breathed slowly. “The future. Another time. A time which hasn’t happened yet.”

They stared at each other, dumbstruck, for a prolonged moment. His raven eyes were deep with shadows, the beautiful golden flecks extinguished completely.

Suddenly Adrienne realized all too clearly that she
never
wanted to go back to the twentieth century. She didn’t want
to be without him for the rest of her life! Desperation curled cold fingers around her heart.