“Goodnight, lass. I’ll keep watch.”
Chapter Thirteen
In which there are bad dreams and even worse Scottish slang.
Ethan…
The firelight plays along the smooth slopes of Sloan’s face, her lips half-parted in sleep, and her lashes are a thick fan sweeping over her cheekbones. I chuckle silently. So poetic, I am.
I dinna allow flights of fancy. I keep my feet on the ground, my eyes open and my head clear. Too much depends on me and there’s never been room for starin’ at a lass’s eyelashes.
She’s beautiful. I’ve bedded many bonnie women, but Sloan’s… more. There’s a fierceness and fury in her that burns like a bonfire. Like the rage blazing in her eyes in that uncomfortable picture, wedged between her Ma and her stepfather. There’s more to that accident. There’s more to why she’s running, more to why that prick Masters wants her back in his clutches or dead.
Ya bought her, licked her to near unconsciousness, and abducted her, I think wryly,not exactly a sound foundation for trust.
But then, that was never needed before. I retrieved missing objects and people, returned them to their rightful owners, ormade them disappear. There was never a time for a need for trust.
I am, however, unwilling to let this go. To let her go.
She stirs, rolling to her side and moaning, low in her throat as her brow furrows. “Never…” she barely whispers, as if she knows not to speak aloud even in her sleep. “You won’t, you fuck… fuck you…” Ach, her hands are up, flailing at something, trying to ward off an attack and her beautiful face contorts, voice rising. “Don’t you- you’ll never get him you fuck!”
Why is watching this so painful? Rubbing the center of my chest, I lean over her. “Sloan… lass… Wake up. It’s just a nightmare. A bad dream. You’re here with me, you’re safe.”
She jolts awake in seconds, breath hissing in as she frantically looks around. I see the acute terror in her eyes, purple now in the moonlight before the fury returns.
“I’m fine.” She rubs her face shakily. “Just a dream. Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“Ya dinna,” I say gently, “I got up to stoke the fire. Can ya drink some water?”
She looks longingly at our sad wee collection of water bottles and shakes her head. “I- I shouldn’t. Not until we find more safe drinking water.”
Laughing into the night sky, I hop down from the battered remains of the cockpit and fetch two bottles. “Dinna worry lass, you’re in the wettest country on earth. I can find us more.”
“What do we do now?” she asks, staring at the stars. “Do we wait here? Your people, they’ll be looking for you, right? Will the black box thing bring them here?”
I shift in my seat so we’re knee to knee. “The flight recorder was disabled. The same feckers who tampered with my fuel gauges, I’m certain.”
She chews her lip thoughtfully and I want to kiss it, all swollen and red. “So, which of your many and varied enemies do you think it is? Didn’t you do a pre-flight check? That’s what the pilots do, right?”
“I did,” I growl, menacing enough, apparently for her to scoot back, her legs no longer touching mine. “I’d stored the jet with a family allied with ours. Someone’s feelin’ suicidal enough to tamper with it. They will live just long enough to regret it.”
“So…” she sucks in a deep breath, “so, no one knows where we are.”
“Not specifically,” I admit, “and the Cairngorms make for a massive and difficult search. But I got a message out to the clan before we went down, and I know where we are. We can hike out to an easy pick-up site.”
Her arm curves protectively over her broken ribs, I dinna think she notices. “Okay.” She nods firmly. “We’ll walk out. How hard can it be?”
I’m fightin’ a smile. “You’ve never done any serious hiking, have ya?”
“Not ever,” she agrees instantly.
“So those spectacular legs are from Pilates or some shite?”
Ah, now her lower lip’s thrust out. “I run six miles a day. Well, I used to. I’ll be fine.”
“I know,” I say soothingly.
“You’re being patronizing,” she snaps.
