“It wasn’t…” I hesitate. “It wasn’t right. We were different here.” My thoughts get swirled in my muddy emotions, scattering before I can clarify. He was mine. In London, anyway. The memory is too important to open up to gossip and speculation. “Will you answer a question I’ve had for a while?”
“Aye. If I can.”
“Why are you here?” I ask. “You’re the first-born MacTavish. Shouldn’t you be working alongside your father, getting ready to take over the family business?”
“He dinna need me yet,” Cormac says, getting to pour a glass of Macallan. He holds it up, offering it to me and I shake my head.
“Your father doesn’t need his first-born’s help with the biggest mafia in Scotland?” I ask incredulously. “Some legendary people are teaching here, but this is where you come to impart your knowledge after living a full life of crime, when you smell like brimstone and the vaporized souls of your enemies. Not before.”
His steady jade gaze never leaves my face. “Dean Christie needed a weapons instructor, I’m just doing her a favor for the year.”
Such a poker face. Damn him.
Switching tactics, I ask, “Every guy on campus has a huge bro-crush on you. There are stories of your legendary prowess in battle.”
His brow wrinkles. “Bro-crush?”
Laughing at his expression, I say, “Everyone worships you. Honor and family loyalty are prized above all things here. To the people who matter, anyway.”
“Family is always first,” he says, and my stomach twists, remembering my father’s demands.
“So… so tell me about one of the stories, what’s real, what isn’t.”
He nods reluctantly. “It depends on what you want to know.”
“The hostages you rescued, they say single-handedly. You fought off eighteen guys, or a hundred or six thousand based on who’s telling the story.”
The light dims in his eyes like a shadow over the moon.
“There was a Triad who was angry because we wouldn’t allow them to ship human cargo through our ports. The fuckers thought taking hostages would improve their offer. They took my sister, who was out with my aunt and three little cousins. Justbairns.”
I held my breath, watching the sorrow and fury sweep across his face.
“I dinna do it alone, I had backup, but where those fuckers were holding them, there was only one point of entry. I took it. There were twenty-three men there. They were in pieces when I left.”
I can picture it, Cormac a vicious whirlwind of death, slaughtering his enemies with a lethal economy of motion, leaving a pile of bodies in his wake.
“Were…” I struggle to get a coherent question, “Were your people all right? They didn’t hurt them?”
“It depends on what ya think of as hurt,” he said, finishing his drink and setting the glass down carefully on the table. By the way his fists are clenched, I suspect he wants to throw it against the wall. “My little cousins still scream with nightmares. My sister won’t leave our family estate.”
Reaching out cautiously, I cover his fist with my hand, squeezing gently. “You can only control what you do after the emergency strikes, or the disaster, the attack. You saved your people. You brought them home.”
He looks up at me, his gaze flat and cold. “We dinna stop until that Triad was ash and bone.”
“Good,” I say fervently. I’m not by nature a vicious person, but I am happy that the people who caused him so much anguish are gone.
His gaze is different now, speculative as he looks at me, eyes narrowed. “Will your roommate be raising the alarm yet?”
“No,” I admit, “she knew what I wanted tonight, she just didn’t know with whom.” I’m an animal. I must be because even after that chilling story, the way he’s looking at me is setting my lower half on fire. “You’re going to try something on me, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he agrees, “most likely.”
“Do you- uh, should we clear the dishes first?” I yelp. The massive bastard lifts me up into his arms like I’m a child and carries me back into the bedroom.
Chapter Fourteen
In which happiness and tragedy go hand in hand at the Academy.
