And the most heart-wrenching.
He scattered breathless kisses along her shoulder and into the hollow of her throat as if to thank her. “Ye’re glorious in yer passion,” he murmured into her hair. “Mo Dhia, if I’d known, I would have lit a dozen candles each time we made love to see it on yer face. The sight of ye finding yer release…I was overcome.”
With a smile, he rolled over on his side and gathered her close into his powerful embrace. Aila melted against him, cheek against his chest, listening as his heaving breaths calmed and his racing heartbeat slowed. Her boneless posture shrouded the fact that her body was still reeling.
Her thoughts, churning.
He relaxed with a sleepy sigh, a whisper against her temple. “Tha mi ag aoradh dhut gu h-obann, bana-bhuidseach bheag.”
Chapter 21
It would not do. Not at all.
It took hours, well into the wee hours of the morning for Finn to loosen his hold on her. All the while her mind refused to let go of that paralyzing moment. With a murmured grumble, he rolled over. Aila slipped from the bed as if this were the worst coyote ugly moment anyone had ever conceived.
Except it wasn’t regret that compelled her.
And it wasn’t a walk of shame she was about to make.
It was a flight of self-preservation.
Rab lifted his head as she tiptoed across the room. Heart knocking against her ribs from the fear of waking Finn, she pulled her clothes from their hooks. Yanking on her blouse and skirt, she threw her wool plaid around her shoulders. The hinges on her trunk screeched like alarm bells to her ears when she knelt to ease the lid open. She froze and glanced back at the bed. Thankfully, he slept on.
And continued to sleep when her purse upended and spilled it contents while she spilled a curse or two. Or three. One for the noise she made, another for the lack of light as she swept her hand around the interior of the trunk, grabbed every solid object she touched and stuffed it back inside the bag.
One last oath for the lump sum of her idiocy. There were so many layers to it, she didn’t have time to define them. How had she let it go so far?
“Tha mi ag aoradh dhut gu h-obann, bana-bhuidseach bheag.”
Aila knew a handful of Gaelic. Enough to figure out about two words of what he’d said. One waswitch.
The other wasadore.
That alone sent her heartbeat into a tailspin. Still, in a million years it couldn’t equal to the panic that raged inside of her. The panic that compelled her to flee.
Gah, she hadn’t signed up for this. This intimacy. This exposure. She hadn’t anticipated Finn and the depth of feeling he could wring from her.
Or worse, the emotion she might rouse in him.
This wasn’t why she’d come here. Somewhere along the way, she’d forgotten her purpose. Had she left the moment Boyce gave her the necklace — mission accomplished — it would never have come to this.
Aila stood with the time travel device in one hand and flung her purse over her shoulder as she crept to the door and opened it. Backstepping, she opened the table drawer and found a candle tall enough to light from the embers in the fireplace and substituted it for the stubby one in her chamberstick. Finn groaned and she held her breath. When he stilled once more, she looped a finger through the handle of the candlestick and dashed to the door. She shot Rab a pointed look, and the dog followed with visible reluctance. Well, she wasn’t exactly thrilled either!
Her eyes strayed back to the bed, her chest tight and aching. Her heart warred, begging her to stay but lighting the fire under her to make a hasty retreat. The latter provided the greater call to action. Tears blurred her vision as she closed the door.
She made her way down the hall to the obsidian well of the spiraling stairs, the candle sconces extinguished this late at night. The circle of light cast by her candle hardly stretched a few feet around her, forcing each step to be a cautious one. How she hated this nightmarish passageway.
A warm presence brushed alongside her leg and Aila croaked out a broken yelp of terror before she realized it was Rab. He took position next to her. She curled her fingers into his scruff and let him guide her through the carnival of horrors. As they turned into the hallway to the kitchen, she was tempted to close her eyes and use him as a seeing eye dog. The ghoulish statuary was bad enough in the daylight, even in the evenings when Finn or Ian was with her.
Alone in the dark….
The faces passed by, shrunken to skulls in the dim light. Rab slowed, a growl of warning deep in his throat. Another face flashed in the light —
Aila screamed. She couldn’t help herself. No place on earth was there a statue more frightening than the face of Mr. Derne.
As she jumped back, she lost hold on the time travel device. It bounced off Rab, then her foot before it clattered to the stone floor.
“What are you doing down here this time of night?” his foul drawl slithered down her spine. “And what was that?”
