Spell of the Highlander

Page 41

Hours later, Jessi awakened so hungry that her stomach was cramping.
Rolling over on the miserably lumpy hotel bed, she glanced at the clock. No wonder she was hungry—she hadn’t eaten in over twenty-four hours!
The room service she’d ordered earlier hadn’t come, for whatever reason: Either they’d tried to deliver it while she’d been stretched beneath Cian MacKeltar’s rock-hard body, deaf, dumb, and blind to all but his erotic assault on her senses; or they’d lost her order; or it had arrived so late that she’d been sleeping. Since she rarely got a full night’s sleep, she tended to drop off the moment her head touched the pillow, and slept like the proverbial dead, sprawled flat on her back, arms outflung.
After the near-sex-on-the-floor debacle, Jessi had gone in the bathroom and stayed in there awhile, cooling down and trying to think things through. But mostly cooling down—the man threw off serious sexual heat—because by then she’d simply been too exhausted to make much sense of anything.
When she’d finally come out, she’d stiffly informed the mirror to go away and let me sleep and don’t you dare wake me unless my life is in danger. And I do not want to talk about what just happened. Not now. Maybe never.
He’d laughed softly. As you wish, Jessica, he’d replied.
Her stomach sounded a long, growling, painful protest.
Fumbling for the light switch on the wall sconce above the bed table, she turned it on, picked up the phone, and pressed the button for room service. As she was placing her order for a double cheeseburger, fries, and a large Coke, the mirror rumbled:
“Quadruple all of that. And if there’s naught sweet, add something.”
Shrugging, she did so, assuming he’d eat it whenever he was able to come out of the mirror again.
Until the mirror had reclaimed him, it hadn’t occurred to her to wonder why he’d gone back in once she’d let him out that first night he’d killed the assassin. In her own defense, she’d had a lot of other things on her mind. Now she knew the answer. Apparently, he had no choice. Though he could be released from the mirror by the chanting of a spell, he couldn’t stay out long.
That was a problem. Exactly how did he plan to protect her from behind a pane of silvered glass?
Replacing the phone in the cradle, she scowled at him. God, the man was beautiful. Every time she looked at him, he took her breath away. Made her forget all the important things she should be thinking about. She shook her head, striving for levelheadedness. It was time for more answers. “How often and for how long can you be released from that glass?”
He leaned back against something in the mirror that she couldn’t see, folded his arms over his chest, and crossed his booted feet at the ankles. She narrowed her eyes. “Wait a minute, how did you get your clothes back in there?”
“I’ve had centuries to test the glass. Though the elements comprising it are beyond my fathoming, I’ve learned to exploit it after a fashion. ’Twas designed to hold humans, not inanimate objects, and I’ve learned to summon in inert items that reside in my field of vision.”
She blinked, glancing around. Kilt—gone. Boots—gone. Even his thigh sheath and knife were gone. Apparently he’d drawn those items back in while she’d slept. Oh, she had a million questions about the nature of that artifact! But first things first: her continued survival. “So?” she prodded. “How often?”
He shrugged. “Try again now.”
Jessi drew a deep breath. She really didn’t want him out of the mirror at the moment. She wasn’t prepared to deal with him in the flesh—all that rippling, sexy, horny male flesh, at that—just yet. Still, she needed to understand the parameters of their situation. She recited the chant to release him.
Nothing happened.
He inclined his head. “I didn’t think so. I cannot answer your question precisely. I can tell you only what has occurred in the past. On occasion, when Lucan wished something of me, he afforded me a temporary freedom. Once, several centuries ago, he released me on four consecutive days. Each day I was allotted a different interval by the glass. One day I had but a few hours, another five or six, the fourth day I had the entirety of a day and a night. There is no predicting it.”
“So, you can come out every day, for at least a while,” she clarified.
“Aye.”
“Which means you probably can’t come out again until tomorrow morning?”
Another shrug. “I doona ken. You should continue trying at frequent intervals.”
“How do you intend to protect me if you can’t stay out of that glass?” she said peevishly.