“You didn’t have to.” She sloshed her way over to the steps, climbed out of the pool, and threw on the robe, then thumped her chest with her fist. “Not old, and not stupid. What Iamis fed up with this hallucination, nightmare, coma, or whatever this is, and I’m ready to wake up now and get on with my life. Leave me alone!”
He slogged across the pool, his pants materializing onto his body as he stepped out of the water. Baring his teeth like an angry beast, he stabbed the air with his finger. “Thisis life, lass. Ye are not asleep or addled or any of those other things ye said. The Weavers brought ye through the portal, because this is where ye belong.” Then he smacked his chest. “Ye are mine, Lyla, and always will be no matter what choice ye make.” He strode toward her, looming so close that the heat of his body and his mesmerizing scent of what could only be described as warm, delicious, toasted cinnamon wafted across her. How could this man, who enraged her so much, smell like her favorite bakery’s cinnamon rolls?
“No!” She pointed at him, daring him to defy her. “I do notbelongto anyone.”
“Like hell.” He caught her by the shoulders and kissed her so long and hard that she groaned. She couldn’t help it. He’d tapped into the storm of emotions building within her and set it free. Crushing her to his chest, he lifted his head and glared down at her. “Feel the beat of our hearts. They pound together as one because we are meant to be one.” Then he shoved her away, effortlessly tossing her to the couch, but he didn’t follow. Instead, he stood there, glaring at her, his chest heaving.
“Fourteen days. Fourteen nights,” he growled, “and neither dragons, magic, time travel, nor demonic druids will keep me from spending every moment of that time showing ye that ye are meant to be at my side. My lady. My queen. The other half of my soul and the keeper of my heart.” He jabbed the air again, pointing at her. “Ye will want me, woman. More than ye have ever wanted a man before.” He stabbed the air again, his finger shaking. “And ye will love me. I dinna care that we’ve only just met. Ye will love me as ye have loved me in every lifetime before this one.”
She raked the back of her hand across her mouth, fighting the utter lunacy of all that she felt. She wanted to sob. Scream. Rant. Rage. Throw something. But most of all, she wanted to climb this infuriating mountain of maleness and claim him, planting a proverbial flag that he’d never forget. And if she was honest with herself, and she hated being honest with herself, she already loved Magnus MacRaith, and that was freaking impossible because she’d known him less than a day. Who felt that way in such a short time?
“A crazy person,” she muttered. “That’s who does that. I have lost my ever-loving mind.”
“What?” With a scowl so fierce she wanted to kiss it off his face, he loomed over her. “Speak up, woman.”
“Don’t talk to me as if I’m an object.” She scrambled to sit properly on the couch, refusing to cower. “I am Lyla Ibrams.” She jutted her chin higher. “Your worst nightmare.”
“Aye, at the moment, ye’re bloody well right about that.” He threw up both hands and turned away, shaking his head. “I dinna ken how to feckin’ to do this.” He picked up a table and lobbed it at the wall, splintering it into kindling. He threw back his head and bellowed, “I dinna ken how to feckin’ do this!”
“How tofeckin’do what?” She rather liked that word,feckin’,and had a pretty good idea what it meant. It aptly applied to this situation.
He jerked around and faced her, looking ready to throw her against the wall too, but oddly enough, she wasn’t afraid. Deep in her soul, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would never harm her.
“I dinna ken how to make ye see,” he said, his voice as rough and ragged as hers. Hopelessness shouted from him. “I dinna ken how to convince ye to open yer heart and mind, to see all that this place could be, if ye’d but give it a chance.” He shook hishead and rapped on his chest with his fist. “I dinna ken how to show ye all that we could be.”
“All I’ve ever known is that magic is pretend, that dragons are a myth”—she held up a finger—“that there is one reality, and time travel is fiction. Something you read about in books or see in the movies.” Even with the unexplainable burning ache she felt for him, she needed to wrap her head around all thatstuff.“You have to admit, you’ve thrown a lot at me and expected me to accept it as easily as if you told me it rains every day at two o’clock.” The nauseating pounding in her right temple reminded her that her headache had persevered. They had talked this thing to death and were getting nowhere. “I need time, Magnus.” She leaned forward, holding her head. “And caffeine.”
He slowly lowered himself to the other end of the couch with the same weariness she felt. “What is caffeine?”
“Coffee. Tea. A fizzy drink that lists it on the label.” A drink with bubbles and ice would be so refreshing right now and decrease the likelihood of her puking from the ever-increasing migraine. She curled up in her corner of the sofa and rested her head on its padded arm. Closing her eyes, she remembered the dragon’s image rippling atop the water. “Does everyone here have a dragon brother or sister?”
“Most humans here have a dragon kindred, but not every dragon has a spiritual twin from humankind. It depends on what each dragon’s destiny dictates. This is the realm of the dragon kindred. Remember?”
“Of course. How silly of me to forget.” She wrinkled her nose, hating how she sounded. Bitchiness solved nothing. What was it her foster grandmother had always said?You catch more flies with honey.She wondered if that applied to dragons too. They had wings the same as flies. She draped her arm over her eyes and groaned. She had indeed gone off the deep end. “I’m sorry.”
“For what, lass?”
“Behaving…less.” She couldn’t explain it. It was a thing she’d always been taught about taking the high road, rising above whatever bad was happening, making the best of things, and doing it with style. “Do you have coffee or tea here?” The only history she’d excelled in was music history, and she doubted very much if that would tell her when coffee and tea were invented, but she was pretty certain they’d never heard of carbonated beverages even in an alternate reality of thirteenth century Scotland.
“As soon as Tern answers, I will share what she tells me.” He leaned forward, propped his elbows on his knees, and held his head in his hands.
Apparently, telepathy was a thing here, too? Oh joy. A new way to be left out of conversations. Rather than harp on that, she forced herself to move on. “Who is Tern?”
“Housekeeper of Kindred Fortress. Without her, the place would crumble to dust.”
“Is she apersonor a dragon?”
“She is a feydragon who trained in the court of Queen Mab before returning to the Thirteenth Realm to take her mother’s place as housekeeper when it was her mother’s time to cross over into the never-ending sleep.”
“Is that what dragons calldying?”
Still holding his head in his hands, Magnus barely shook it. “Nay, lass. Dragons never die. They merely cross over into the final existence of the never-ending sleep. A place of peace. Of rest. Of reward for all they survived in their many hectrooms after hatching.”
“What is a hectroom?” She wished she could write all this stuff down. She’d never remember it all.
“A hectroom is approximately three hundred years in yer plane of existence.” He lifted his head, but didn’t look at her. Instead, he aimed a sad smile down at the ground. “When theWeavers told me that was where ye were from, I studied yer world so I might better know how to ease ye from yer plane into mine.” A derisive snort escaped him. “It would appear I nay studied enough.”
“I think there are just so many differences, it’s going to take me a hot minute to absorb it all.” She covered her eyes again, feeling sorry for them both. They were both as lost as last year’s Easter eggs that the kids had missed on the hunt.
