5
The night before, the world had faded into silence—just her heartbeat, his breath, and the scent of smoke from the dying fire. When she’d finally drifted into sleep, she swore she still felt his warmth beside her. Which was why the smell of him, of their lovemaking in the morning, stole her breath.
Lainie moaned and rolled over, clutching the pillow beside her.
Then reality struck. Her eyes popped open, and she sat straight up in bed. Her bedroom did smell like sex! She lifted the covers from her body.
She was naked.
Her gaze darted about the room. Emptiness greeted her.
She sighed loudly and covered her erratically beating heart with her hand. It was all a dream. She must have really been into her fantasy. Lainie couldn’t remember a time she’d had such a vivid sex dream. She couldn’t recall her dreams ever being so real that she’d touched herself in her sleep, either. That was the only explanation for the heady odor. She lay back down on the pillow and smiled.
Ah, Donell. He was even better looking in person than in the painting. She wished more than anything that the man was real, or at least alive during her time. A shiver of remembered pleasure stirred low in her belly as she thought of the night before.
The door to her bedroom burst open, and a half-naked Donell stood there, his eyes wide, his mouth agape.
“Holy shit!” Lainie shrieked.
“‘Tis no dream,” he declared.
“Apparently not.” She didn’t know what else to say. It was no fantasy. She was definitely awake, and Donell stood right in front of her. Her head whirled, and her throat was suddenly parched. She clutched the sheet to her breasts. What the hell was going on?
“This is my land. The castle atop the hill is my castle, yet everything is so different,” he exclaimed, his voice rapid, his hands moving violently through the air. “In my time,” he said slowly, “the air smells of peat and battle smoke. The heather stretches to the horizon like a sea of purple fire, and the wind carries the songs of men who never learned to fear it. We bled for every hill we held.”
“What?” Her mind couldn’t grip reality. What was he trying to say?
She remembered a story she’d once read in a travel guide of the “MacDuff Keeper’s Curse,” a tale about a warrior trapped between centuries until his heart found its match. She’d laughed then. Now she wasn’t so sure.
“Lainie, where am I?”
“We’re on MacDuff land. This is the cottage I rented.” Did this guy need help or what? She must have drunk a lot not to notice a strange Highlander had broken into her cottage.
“This canna be! ‘Tis a nightmare I canna wake from. What magic is this?”
“Magic?” Lainie crinkled her nose.
“What have ye done?” He glared at her, his chest puffing out. He really looked angry, and a chill not as pleasurable as the ones from the night before spread through her.
Then it dawned on Lainie. The box!
Could it be she’d called him from the past when she opened the box?
She got out of bed and walked to Donell, wrapping the sheet snuggly around her body. She put her hand on his warm arm and looked into his eyes.
He gazed at her a moment, the anger in his expression dissipating and replaced with a devilish glint. The corners of his full lips lifted in a wicked grin, and he winked seductively. “I’ve already seen your naughty bits, quite a bit actually. No need to cover up.”
She rolled her eyes at his words, despite the hot flush flowing through her body. “Donell, this is serious.”
“I know, I’m sorry.” He didn’t look sorry as his gaze raked over her body. The familiar tingling started again, but she shoved it from her mind. They had to figure this out.
“What year is it?”
He looked at her, bewildered. “It is the year of our Lord, 1647, of course.”
He told her the truth, and the ground beneath her shifted. Four hundred years collapsed between them in an instant, and the room seemed suddenly too small to hold the impossible. She looked down briefly, biting her lip.
“No, Donell, it is 2011.”
