The Charm Stone (31 page)

Three hours and much consternation later, Connal shouted, “Your king is mine!”

Josie barely managed to refrain from sweeping her arm across the board. Or flinging her king at his oh-so-smug face. “Fine then. You were lucky. This time.”

His eyes lit up. “You care to go again?” She groaned, certain he would gladly sit another three hours. And not too sure he wouldn't trounce her again. “There is a downside to your immortality.” She glared across the board at him. “You'll always outlast me.”

“You need a respite then?” He was already around the table and pulling her from her seat. “Another bath perhaps? Or maybe you could show me how that other contraption works.”

“The shower?”

“Shower. Tis like bathing in the rain, then?”

She'd never thought of it that way. “I suppose it is.”

He took her hand. “Come then.” He looked at her meaningfully. “It will be fun.”

“I've created a monster,” she muttered, but she quickly forgot how much she hated to lose when he pulled her up the stairs and began stripping off what little clothes he wore.

As it turned out, there was something incredibly sexy about having a man wash her hair. His fingers were so strong, she moaned in appreciation as he massaged her scalp. “You could make a fortune doing that.”

He didn't respond. Instead he turned her around and tipped her head back into the spray. When she lifted her hands to rinse her hair, he used his own to spread the foamy white suds all over her body. Her knees went decidedly weak as he knelt and made sure all the soap was gone.

When he leaned in closer, she braced her hands on his shoulders, then massaged his scalp, mostly to make sure his head didn't move from the exact spot it was in.

She'd never come in the shower before. But she did now. Twice. And if she had her way, she would again. In fact, she thought this could easily be worked into her daily routine.

Limp and wishing there was a wall she could lean on, she leaned on him instead. “I-you-should be…your turn.”

But he turned off the water instead and pulled the
curtain back. Then, without a word, he lifted her from the tub, wrapped her in a towel, and carried her to bed.

He moved to lie beside her, but she needed to feel him on top of her, she wanted his weight pressing her down, to feel him move between her legs. He resisted her tugging. “Connal, please,” she whispered.

“But—”

“I want to feel you inside me.”

His jaw clenched and she saw the same need warring in his eyes.

“You can… you can stop, just before. I know it's not fair, but—”

He didn't need further urging. He pulled her hungrily beneath him and drove into her with a loud growl of pleasure. She came again instantly, shockingly. She locked her legs around his hips and let the pleasure rush through her. Nothing had ever felt so complete to her. “I don't want you ever to leave,” she whispered. She'd meant leave her body… but when she said the words, she knew she meant something else entirely.

He pushed more deeply, then held himself rigidly still, as if his entire body was clenched against the need to roar into her. She wanted badly to urge him to do just that.

He thrust again, then pressed his lips to the side of her neck and held himself there, fully inside her. “I never want ye to go,” he said, then thrust again before pulling out.

She held him between her legs, if not inside her and they both moved, hips thrusting, until the air was filled again with the groans of release. This time his as well as hers.

He collapsed onto her and she held him there.
I love you.
The words were there, so clear she thought she'd spoken them.

She shifted him aside, gently, then silently went to the bathroom to clean up and hopefully gather her wits. But it didn't help. She walked back into the bedroom and looked at him, sprawled in her white sheets, his chest rising and falling evenly as he dozed, and the words still shouted in her mind, over and over. She loved him.

She slipped back into bed and he moved toward her, tucking her body into his, even as he slept. Her eyes filled and she pressed her lips to his warm skin and gave in to the need. “I do love you, Connal.” She closed her eyes. “The gods help us both.”

J
osie stretched languorously before finally forcing her eyes open. She knew instantly that Connal was no longer beside her, but didn't worry. Instead she stretched again, smiling even as her muscles protested a bit. She listened for sounds of the bath or shower, but there were none. In fact, there was no sounds of water at all, inside or out. Despite the pale gloom of light coming in the window, the rain seemed to have stopped.

“Well, pooh,” she said, thinking that with the end of the rain, her classes would resume. Would Connal stay? Would he finally consent to appear before others? And how in the hell would she explain his presence on an island where everyone knew everyone else?

She decided she didn't want to think about that at the moment. It was late afternoon, judging by the light, so she had the rest of today and all of tonight before she had to worry about what came next.

She sat up and pushed her hair back, then smiled as she got out of bed. Knowing Connal, he was downstairs trying his hand at cooking again. She didn't smell anything burning, so that was a good start, she thought, pulling on his white shirt. It dropped just past her hips, so she pulled on a pair of panties, then went downstairs.

The kitchen was empty. As was the rest of the croft.

She frowned, but refused to get worried. After what they'd shared, she knew,
knew,
he would not leave her. Maybe he'd simply gone back to the tower for something. Her lips curved. If he had, he'd done so naked, as the rest of his clothes were still on the floor upstairs. “Must be nice to be able to pop in and out of places.”

So, with her confidence firmly in check, she fixed them both an early dinner. She was famished and figured he would be, too.

But the shadows grew longer, and longer still, and he didn't return. Anger finally crept in as she ate her dinner and a good portion of his, then rinsed the dishes and put the leftover food away. Did he expect her to come to the tower then? And what if he did? Would she go? She really didn't think he would play this sort of game with her, not now. But maybe what happened between them hadn't invoked the same powerful feelings for him as it had her. Yet, even as she thought that, she knew it wasn't true.

He hadn't said he loved her, and maybe he didn't, not fully, not yet. But his feelings for her were most definitely powerful. The most powerful she'd ever felt.

“So, dammit, where did you go?”

She pulled on sweats and shoes and went outside. The air was warm and humid, the sky dusky, and the ground a vast sea of muck. Still, she made it across the road and looked through the gloom to the beach. The tide was roaring and it was in. There would be no going to the tower. Despite her exit with Bagan, she had no idea where the exact location of the opening was in the rocks. There was no light in the tower portals either.

She turned back to the croft, fear finally begin-
ning to crawl past the anger. “Where did you go?” she whispered, but the only response she got was the howl of the wind.

By four in the morning, she was calling for Bagan to appear. No luck there either. By morning she was torn between self-pity and wanting to commit homicide. She'd known, hadn't she, that this was going to have a bad end? But she'd never imagined he would simply abandon her this way.

She climbed the tower the instant the tide was low enough, searched his rooms, all vacant. No Connal. No Bagan. She even looked for the damn stone, but all she found was the trunk. Open and empty.

She was hiking back up the beach to the croft, feeling hollow and emotionally ravaged, when Roddy pulled up in his tiny little car, packed with Dougal and her father. He got out and waved, grinning broadly before shouting, “I hope we're still on for this morning. The lassies will be along a bit later.”

Josie wanted to yell at them to get the hell away from her, that she was too busy feeling bewildered, lost, hurt, abandoned… and scared. She was never going to see him again. She felt it. Knew it. She thought she might throw up, her stomach was twisted in so many knots.

Then her dad climbed out of the car and looked down at her and she wanted more than anything to race to him, fling herself into his arms, and sob her heart out.

In the end, she neither screamed nor sobbed. No point in bewildering her father and Dougal as well. Besides, she had no idea where to begin… much less explain how it had ended. It took every last ounce of energy she had to paste a smile on her face
and wave back. “We're still on,” she called out above the roar of the surf. It was probably for the best, she thought. It would keep her busy, so she wouldn't feel compelled to fling herself out of the tower window. Which, the way she felt at the moment, she'd have only done after flinging every last thing he owned out the window first.

Classes lasted well into the afternoon. The men had finished with learning about currents and wave formation several lessons ago, so she'd showed them the pop-up stance and they practiced it in the “soup,” the shallow waves that broke near shore. It was obvious they'd been practicing their stances at home as well. If she hadn't been so miserable, she'd have smiled for real.

Gavin was doing very well, and even Clud had surprised her by being more agile than she'd given him credit for. Dougal, on the other hand, was getting extremely frustrated, so her father had stepped in and taught him an alternative way that seemed to be working. Roddy was struggling, too, but was bull-headed enough to wave her and Griff off as he tried again and again to pull his feet under him and remain crouched on the board without falling over sideways.

Maeve and the girls had arrived while the men were still practicing and Bidda had complained bitterly about not being allowed to learn this part herself. Josie explained they had to learn more about how the ocean was going to move beneath them, how to read the water, the waves and the currents, before actually learning the mechanics. Privately, she had no idea how a woman of Bidda's age and bulk was going to perfect the pop-up technique. She could
only pray her father had an answer for that one when the time came.

She was emotionally and physically wrung out when they finally piled back into Bidda's car, Griff along with them as he'd stayed behind to help her out. He'd looked at her questioningly a few times, as if he realized something was off. The one time he'd managed to get a priyate word with her, she shrugged off his concern and muttered something about the storm keeping her from sleeping well. She wasn't sure he bought it, since she'd never had that trouble before, but he'd accepted it and left her alone. Probably relieved to be off the hook, she thought, but without any rancor. At the moment she just wanted to crawl into a hole and sleep for a very long time. Three hundred years ought to do it.

But once everyone was gone and she was faced with the prospect of going back into the empty croft, she thought about chasing after them and begging to go along. Instead she forced herself inside, though she carefully didn't look at the bed, or his clothes that still lay scattered about. She wasn't up to dealing with that yet. As it was she'd spent the previous night on the couch. “Well, that's going to have to end at some point, just like this pity party,” she told herself firmly, and marched to the bathroom. “And it might as well be now.”