Spell of the Highlander

Page 71

The salesman performed a series of calculations and gave him a number, his hazel eyes glazed by the spell of compulsion, his gestures jerky, as if automated.
Cian had been using Voice since the moment he’d walked in the door. He wanted in and out fast. He had too much to accomplish today to permit the indulgence of the slightest of his personal desires, to waste even a moment of time. If he was lucky enough to have eight hours free of the glass today, he could accomplish all of his goals. He’d only had three hours and forty-two minutes free yesterday, so he felt it reasonable to expect a longer reprieve today—if aught about the Unseelie Hallow could be expected to function in accordance with even a loose definition of “reasonable.”
Jessica was feeling slighted, he knew. He hated that, but it had to be for now.
She seemed not to ken that he had an inferno of need for her raging inside him and that if he fed it the least bit of oxygen, the blaze would burn out of control and consume him, along with the entire day, leaving it in a waste of ashes around them.
Then nightfall would come and she would not be safe enough. And it would be his fault. He refused to bear such blame or take such risks with her life. By eventide she would be as safe as he could possibly make her. Until that time, he dare not begin touching her, or he’d not be able to stop. He’d watched her sleep all night, studying the planes and angles of her face in the changing light, from moonlit night through a rosy dawn and finally in the brilliant blaze of full sunrise, committing them to memory. Were he a sculptor, he could now carve her face in stone, even were he blind.
It had been agony to stand watching her, caressing with his gaze what his hands could not. It had been a joy. He’d learned centuries ago to suck from life what pleasure his hellish circumstances would permit.
When she’d awakened, she’d rolled over and stared up at him with sleepy-sexy eyes. She had three cowlicks, unruly thatches of hair that curled wildly. Now he possessed an image of her that only a lover might know—how she looked in the morning with her face sleep-flushed, her lips sleep-swollen, and her curls askew in a short, dark tangle. She woke up looking soft and warm, more than a little bemused, and utterly sensual. Made a man want to scoop her into his arms and devour her.
He’d briefly envisioned himself stepping from the mirror, yanking her jeans down, taking her hard and fast, then throwing her in the SUV.
But he’d known better than to delude himself with the notion that he could be “hard and fast” with Jessica. Hard? Aye. Fast. Not a holy chance in hell. If he got started, he’d not be able to stop, and her life, and his vengeance, was of far more import than his lust.
Today was for the procuring of sheltering goods, foodstuffs, dyes and needles and wardstones.
Tomorrow was for the claiming of his woman. And the next day and the next and the next. Once she was safe, he would devote every moment of his freedom from the glass to the thorough claiming of Jessica St. James.
“Shall I package these items up for you as well, sir?” the salesman asked.
Cian nodded, glancing over to where Jessica was standing. Last he’d looked, her arms had been crossed over her bountiful breasts, shoving them together and even higher, her lower lip had been sulkily and delectably pushed out, and she’d been tapping one foot impatiently.
She wasn’t there.
Where the bloody hell was she? He’d told her not to move. In English. And there was naught wrong with her hearing of which he was aware.
“Sir, did you wish the tent, as well?”
“Nay,” Cian growled, eyeing a man who now stood, with his back to him, at the same counter where moments ago his woman had been.
Was that why Jessica had moved away? Had the man behaved toward her in some unseemly fashion? He’d kill the son of a bitch.
Cian assessed the interloper. The man was tall and powerfully built, wearing black trousers, black boots, and a black leather jacket. His long black hair was braided and folded under, wrapped and bound by a leather thong.
It was a manner in which Highlanders had once worn their hair, before even Cian’s time. When they hadn’t been liming it for battle to make themselves look more terrifying to the effeminately tidy Romans.
The man thought much of himself; ’twas obvious in the way he stood, the way he held himself. He reeked of arrogance. Cian didn’t like him. Didn’t like him at all. If the bastard had breathed so much as a single improper word to Jessica, he was dead.
“Jessica!” he barked. “Where are you, lass? Answer me!”
There was no reply.
He scanned the store, seeking the top of her head, her glossy black curls. There was no sign of her. Where had she gone?