Into the Dreaming (10 page)

“Aedan!” Jane gasped, staring up at him. His expression was so fierce that her sleep-fogged brain cleared instantly.

He stood at the foot of the bed, his dark gaze sweeping every inch of her nude body. He’d braided his hair. His face was dark with the stubble of a black beard, shadowing his jaw. In the past few weeks, he’d lost weight, and although he was still powerfully muscular, there was a leanness to him, a dangerously hungry look, like a wolf too long alone and unfed in the wild.

He didn’t say a word, just stripped off his shirt and kicked off his boots, then moved toward her.

She never would have believed it of herself, but he radiated such barely harnessed fury that she scuttled back against the headboard and crossed her arms over her breasts protectively.

“Och, nay, lass,” he said with silky menace. “Not after all the times you’ve tried to get me to touch you. You willna naysay me now.”

Jane’s eyes grew huge. “I-I—”

“Touch me.” He unknotted his plaid and let it fall to the floor.

Jane’s jaw dropped. “I-I—” she tried again, and failed, again.

“Is something wrong with me?” he demanded.

“N-No,” she managed. “Uh-uh. No way.” She swallowed hard.

“And this?” He palmed his formidable erection. “This is as it should be?”

“Oh,” Jane breathed reverently. “Absolutely.”

He eyed her suspiciously. “You’re not just saying that, are you?”

Jane shook her head, her eyes wide.

“Then give me those kisses of yours, lass, and be quick about it.” He paused a moment, then added in a low, tense voice, “I’m cold, lass. I’m so cold.”

Jane’s breath hitched in her throat and her eyes misted. His vulnerability melted her fears. She rose to her knees on the bed and extended her hands to him.

Never breaking eye contact, staring into her eyes as if the invitation in them was all that was sustaining him, he placed his hands slowly in hers and let her pull him onto the bed, where he knelt facing her.

She glanced down at their entwined hands, and his gaze followed. Her hands were small and white, nearly swallowed by his work-roughened and tan fingers. She flexed her fingers against his, savoring the first
real
feel of holding Aedan’s hand. Until that moment, she’d only touched him in her dreams. She closed her eyes, savoring every bit of it, drinking the experience dry.

She opened them to find him regarding her with expectancy and fascination.

“Sometimes I think I know you, lass.”

“You do,” she said, with a little catch in her voice. “I’m Jane.”
Your
Jane, she longed to cry.

He hesitated a long moment. Then, “I’m Aedan. Aedan MacKinnon.”

Jane stared at him wonderingly. “You’ve remembered?” she exclaimed. “Oh, Aedan—”

He cut her words off with a gentle finger against her lips. “Does it matter? The villagers think I am. You think I am. Why should I not be?”

Jane’s heart sank again. He still didn’t recall.

But … he was here, and he was willing to let her touch him. She would take what she could get.

“Jane,” he said urgently, “am I truly as a man should be?”

“
Everything
a man should be,” she assured him.

“Then teach me what a man does with a woman such as you.”

Aw
, her heart purred. The look in his eyes was so innocent and hopeful, nearly masking the ever-present despair in his gaze.

“First,” she said softly, raising his hand to her lips, “he
kisses her, like so.” She planted a sweet kiss in his palm and closed his fingers over it. He did the same with both her hands, lingering over the sensitive skin of her palm.

“Then,” she breathed, “he lets her touch him
all
over. Like this.” She slid her hands up his muscular arms and into his hair. Removing his leather thong, she combed her fingers through the plait until it fell dark and silky around his face. She laid her palms against his face, staring into his eyes. He was still beneath her touch, his eyes unfocused.

“More,” he urged, a stray tomcat, starved for touch.

“And she touches him here,” she said, skimming his shoulders, the muscles of his back, down over his lean hips, and back up his magnificent abs and muscled chest. Unable to resist, she dropped her head forward against his chest and licked him, tasting the salt of his skin.

A rough groan escaped him, and the heat of his arousal throbbed insistently against her thigh.

Jane whimpered at the contact and pressed against him. She tasted his neck, his jaw, his lips and buried her hands in his hair. “Then, he brushes his lips—”

“I know this part,” he said, sounding pleased with himself.

Fitting his mouth to hers, he kissed her; a deep, starving-soul kiss, and dragged her hard against his body.

The feel of her naked body against his bare skin made his head swim. Made him burn. Made him tremble with wonder. He’d never known … he’d never suspected what pleasure was to be found in touch. The feel of her wee hands on his body made him hotter than any fire could and brought him crashing to his knees inside himself.

She’d said that he was fashioned as a man should be, and she touched him as if she desperately craved his body. He liked that. It made him feel … och, just feel and feel and
feel
.

He nibbled and suckled at her lips, then plunged his tongue deeply, thrusting. His body moved to a rhythm, innate and primal. She went supple in his arms, dropping back onto the bed, and he followed, stretching his body atop her lush softness. “Christ, lass, I’ve ne’er felt aught such as you!” Intoxicated, he kissed her deeply, his silky hot tongue tangling with hers. When she shifted her legs beneath him, the swollen part of him was suddenly flush between her thighs, and he thrust against her instinctively. She raised her hips, pressing back, and he thought he would die from such sensation. He cupped her bottom and pulled her more firmly against him. Digging his fingers into the softness of her bare bottom filled him with a wild and fierce sensation—an urge to possess, to hold her beneath him until she wept with pleasure. Until he shuddered atop her. Images came to him then:

Of a man and a woman rolling naked across a bed. Of the firm pistoning motion of a man’s hips, of slender ankles and calves raised near a woman’s breasts, of the musky scent of skin and bodies, the sweat and rawness and heat of—

“You have no clan. You have no home,” the dark king said
.

“Nay, I do! I have clan all o’er the Highlands
. My
Highlands
. My
home.” ’Twas the thought of his clan that sustained him. Along with yet a more exquisite thought—but the king had tried to steal that other, most important thought from him, so he’d built a tower of ice around it to keep it safe
.

“Everyone in your clan died a hundred years ago, you fool. Forget!”

“Nay! My people are not dead.” But he knew they were. Naught but dust returned to the Highland soil
.

“Everyone for whom you cared is dead. The world goes on without you. You are my Vengeance, the beast who serves my bidding.”

And then the darker images, as the pain, the unending pain began … and went on and on until there was nothing left but a single frozen tear and ice where once had beat a heart that held the hallowed blood of Scottish kings
.

He pushed her away, roaring.

Stunned, Jane fell back on the bed. Bewildered by his abrupt leave-taking, she stammered, “Wh-What—” She shook her head, trying to clear it, to understand what was happening. One minute he’d been about to make wildly passionate love to her, the next he was five feet away, looking horrified. “Why did you stop?”

“I can’t do this!” he shouted. “It hurts too much!”

“Aedan—it’s just—”

“Nay! I canna, lass!” Eyes wild, trembling visibly, he turned and stormed from the bedchamber.

But not before she saw the remembering in his dark gaze.

Not before she saw the first faint hint of awareness of who and what he really was.

“Oh, you know,” she breathed to the empty room. “You
know
.” Chills shivered down her spine.

And he did. She’d seen it in his gaze. In the pain etched in his face, in the stiffness of his body. He’d left her, moving like a man who’d gone ten rounds in the ring, whose ribs were bruised, whose body was contused from head to toe.

She had the sudden terrifying feeling that he might leave
her, that he might simply go back to his king so that he wouldn’t have to face what he would now have to face.

“Aedan!” she cried, leaping up from the bed and chasing after him.

But the castle was empty. Aedan was gone.

J
ANE TROD DISPIRITEDLY INTO THE CASTLE, SHOULDERS
slumped. It had been a week since Aedan had left, and she had only two more days before … before … whatever was going to happen would happen. She had no idea exactly what would come to pass, but she was pretty certain he would be gone from her, forever.

No longer in this castle. No longer even in her dreams.

Leaving her to a life of what? Only memories of dreams that
nothing
could ever compare to.

Reluctant to go in search of him, in case he returned only to find
her
gone, she’d been crying off and on for a week. She’d barely been able to converse with the villagers when they came to labor every day. The castle was progressing, but to what avail? Both the “laird and lady” would likely be gone in a matter of forty-eight hours, no more. How she would miss this place! The wild rugged land, the honest, hardworking
people who knew how to find joy in the smallest of things.

Sniffing back tears, she mewed for Sexpot who, for a change, didn’t come scampering across the stone floor, tail swishing flirtatiously.

Glancing around with tear-blurred eyes, she drew up short.

Aedan was sitting before the hearth, feet resting on a stool, with Sexpot curled on his lap.

As if him being there, petting the “wee useless beastie” wasn’t astonishing enough, he’d propped the painting Elias had unearthed weeks ago against the table facing him and was staring at it.

She must have made some small sound, because without looking up, hand moving gently over the kitten’s silvery fur, he said, “I walked about the Highlands a bit. One of the villagers was kind enough to ferry me to the mainland.”

Jane opened her mouth, then closed it again. Such intense relief flooded her that she nearly crumpled to her knees. She still had two more days to try.
Thank you, God
, she whispered silently.

“Much has changed,” he said slowly. “Little was familiar to me. I lost my bearings a time or two.”

“Oh, Aedan,” she said gently.

“I needed to know this place again. And … I suppose … I needed time.”

“You don’t have to explain,” she hastened to assure him. The mere fact that he’d returned was enough. She’d nearly given up hope.

“But I do,” he said, staring fixedly at the portrait. “There
is much I need to explain to you. You have a right to know. That is,” he added carefully, “if you still wish to share these quarters with me.”

“I still wish to share these quarters, Aedan,” she said instantly. Some of the tension seemed to leave his body. How could she make him understand that she wished not only to share “quarters” but her body and her heart? She longed to share
everything
with him. But there was something she had to know, words she needed to hear him say. “Do you know who you are yet?” She held her breath, waiting.

He looked at her levelly, a bittersweet smile playing faintly upon his lips. “Och, aye, lass. I am Aedan MacKinnon. Son of Findanus and Mary MacKinnon, from Dun Haakon on the Isle of Skye. Born in eight hundred ninety-eight. Twice-removed grandson of Kenneth McAlpin. And I am the last of my people.” He turned his gaze back to the portrait.

His words, delivered so regally, yet with such sorrow, sent a chill up her spine. “Beyond that, you need only tell me what you wish,” she said softly.

“Then I bid you listen well, for I doona ken when I may have the will to speak it again.” That said, he grew pensively silent and gazed into the fire, as if searching for the right words.

Finally, he stirred and said, “When I was a score and ten a … man of sorts … came to this castle. At first, I thought that he’d come to challenge me, for I was heralded the most powerful warrior in all the isles, descended from the mighty McAlpin himself. Mayhap I was a bit pleased with myself.” He grimaced self-deprecatingly.

“But this man …” He trailed off shaking his head. “This man—he terrified even me. He looked like a man, but he was dead inside. Ice. Cold. Not human, but human. I know that doesn’t make sense, but ’twas as if all the life had been sucked from him somehow, yet still he breathed. I feared he would harm my people and mock me while doing so. He was great and tall and wide, and he had powers beyond mortal.”

When he paused, lost in his memories, Jane whispered, “Please go on.”

He took a deep breath. “Ma and Da were away at sea with all my siblings but the youngest. I was here with my wee sister.” He gestured to the portrait. “Rose.” He closed his eyes and rubbed them. “Although I may have suffered my share of arrogance, lass, all I’d e’er wished for was a family, children of my own, to watch my sisters and brothers grow and raise their children. To live a simple life. To be a man of honor. A man that when he was laid into the earth, others said, ‘He was a good man.’ Yet on that day, I knew that such things would ne’er come to pass, for the man who’d come for me threatened to destroy my entire world.
And I knew he could do it
.”

Eyes misting, Jane hurried to him, sank onto the footstool, and placed a gentle, encouraging hand on his thigh.

He covered it with his own, staring at the portrait.

After a few moments, he turned his head and looked at her, and she gasped softly at the anguish in his eyes. She wanted to press kisses to his eyelids as if to somehow kiss all the pain away, to make sure nothing ever hurt him again.

“I made a deal with the creature that if he left my clan in
peace I would go with him to his king. His king offered a bargain and I accepted, thinking five years would be a hellish price to pay, wondering how I could withstand five years in his icy, dark kingdom. But it was ne’er five years, lass—’twas five hundred. Five hundred years and I forgot. I
forgot
.” He slammed a fist down on the arm of the chair. Thrusting the kitten at her, he leaped to his feet and began pacing. Sexpot, alarmed by the sudden commotion, scampered off for the calm of the bedchamber.