‘Or else how would my descendant be here to observe your ugly passing?’
She turned to me, her emerald eyes full of triumph as blood began to pour from his mouth, his nose, his eyes and ears, limbs convulsing on the floor.
‘You’ve seen all you needed to see,’ she said, looking me right in the eye. ‘Go, while you still can.’
With her unblemished left hand, she gave me a short, sharp shove and I tumbled backwards through the open door. With a cry of surprise, the back of my head struck hard wood. Several diners turned to see what was happening as the past melted into the present and I stumbled sideways into a chair, almost skidding on the menu I’d dropped on the floor two hundred years ago.
‘I’m fine,’ I said loudly, raising both hands above my head to prove the point. ‘Just slipped. Very clumsy, enjoy your dinner.’
Stooping to collect the menu, I stopped halfway, eyes catching on the handle of the door. Tentatively, I grasped it lightly and twisted to the left. It opened without complaint, the locking mechanism clicking open as the previously warped wood gave way. I closed it again, dropped my menu on the nearest table, and sprinted out of the restaurant and all the way home.
Chapter Fifteen
The walk back to Bell House was a slow one. It took me a while to find my feet and I stuck to the side streets as I picked my way home, my mind struggling to play catch-up with my body. The fierce spark of vengeance burning in my ancestor’s eyes haunted me even now, when she was more than two centuries away.
What did she mean, I’d seen all I needed? The monstrous actions of the pirates, the threat of Laffitte, the ease with which she took a life. It all frightened me but accidentally stepping into the past was terrifying. I’d slipped back through time so easily, too easily. I had a hard enough time finding the tea in the pantry without having to navigate through unexpected time periods. All I wanted now was my bed, to close the curtains, shut out the world and rest until at least one thing made sense again.
But that was not going to be an option.
Sitting on the front steps of Bell House, idly toying with the shoelace of his brown leather boots, was Wyn. He looked up at me without saying a word, then jumped to his feet, the electric charge that ran through me jolting him into action. Myheart stuttered in my chest and my mouth went dry, and when I tried to open the gate, my hand missed the latch. Not once did I take my eyes off him.
He waited patiently as I fumbled with the gate, walked up the path and climbed the stairs. A few short feet that felt like a million miles. Neither of us were smiling, instead we stared at each other, dazed. Looking at him was like laying eyes on something otherworldly and I lost all capacity for speech. Finally, I was in front of him, face to face, inches away and I opened my mouth, hoping something smart or funny or meaningful would come out, but before I had the chance to utter a single word, Wyn’s lips were on mine. His hands cupped my face, his thumbs pressed against my cheekbones, fingertips in my hair. It was a ferocious kiss, full of need, that I met and matched at once. We stumbled, the pair of us, into one of the colonnades that supported the portico over the front door, the back of my head bouncing off plaster and stone. I didn’t feel it. I didn’t feel anything other than Wyn, his touch, his hard body, hot and wanting, in my cool and welcoming embrace, and so deliriously happy when I lost my footing, only to be lifted off the ground as he pulled me ever closer, making me his.
‘You’re here,’ I murmured against his mouth as I looped my arms around his neck. ‘You’re really here.’
‘Had to be.’
He pulled back from me, just far enough to stare at my face in happy astonishment.
‘You know what today is?’
‘Tuesday,’ I breathed, dazzled.
Wyn smiled.
‘Three months to the day since we met. I left home at dawn, didn’t stop once the whole way. Could not get to you soon enough, Emily James.’
‘You left home at dawn?’
My breath hitched when he kissed me again, his mouth drawn to mine like a magnet. How was that possible when I’d seen him in the square, hours before the sunrise?
‘We got home yesterday evening,’ he said, nuzzling into my neck and sending sweet shivers all through my body. ‘If I hadn’t been so exhausted, I would have got straight back in the truck and made it here before midnight, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open.’
‘I thought I saw you last night,’ I said, struggling to maintain my line of thought as his hands roamed up and down the sides of my body, as if to check I was exactly as he’d left me.
‘Only if you were dreaming. Same way I’ve been dreaming about you.’
Even though it physically hurt, I tore myself away, taking hold of his hands to keep them where I could see them. My eyes roamed his body, his hair, his indescribably beautiful face.
‘We should go inside. You must be starving.’
Wyn’s crooked smile lit him up, brightening dark circles under his eyes and the scruff of overnight stubble on his chin.
‘For food,’ I added, wondering if he had always looked quite so wolfish when he grinned at me that way.
‘I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse,’ he admitted. ‘Not literally, in case you were worried.’
‘Good because we’re fresh out.’
