Highlander in Her Bed (10 page)

She'd been so sure hottie Scottie had used the MacDougall chamber of horrors as a hiding place. She shivered again, rubbed her arms against the cold. He was the one person she wouldn't mind seeing dangling from an iron wall bracket or, better yet, wasting away in the cave's pit dungeon.

A medieval oubliette.

A little thrill of excitement shot down her spine. She knew oubliettes. Sometimes called bottle dungeons because of their shape, they were impossible to escape.

Gooseflesh rose on her arms and her breath caught. She couldn't believe she was standing so close to such a thing. And without the lights and safeguarding ropes that marked such dungeons in touristy castles.

This was her castle.

Her clan's dungeon.

Maybe even one of the great Robert Bruce's men had perished down there. The possibility existed. Any student of Scottish history knew the MacDougalls had been among the Bruce's most embittered enemies.

She took a deep breath. "One of the Bruce's own men," she whispered, her imagination running wild, the notion electrifying her.

Spurring her into action.

Heart pounding, she inched closer. The evil-looking crevice stretched across the cavern floor, beckoned irresistibly. She peered over the edge but saw only blackness. Scrunching her eyes, she wished she'd brought a flashlight. But she rejected the idea at once. It was surely better not to see what the darkness kept hidden.

She
did
wish she'd worn other shoes.

The tide was coming in. Already, icy seawater swirled around her ankles and spumes of stinging spray blew against her face, each new dousing making her eyes burn. "Blast," she muttered, blinking furiously.

She began backing away from the oubliette, cringing at the sucking noise her feet made in the streaming sand.

She'd no doubt ruin her shoes, but she wasn't about to remove them. She frowned again and swiped a clump of damp hair off her face. Somehow she'd lost her hairclip. No way would she add to her misery by sloshing barefoot through mounds of stinking seaweed and who knew what.

Not that her soggy loafers offered much protection.

She glared at them just as a cold wave slapped the back of her knees. Her feet slid on something and she slipped. "Oooh," she cried, flailing her arms as the world tipped sideways and her bottom slammed into the slimy gunk.

The splash sent more saltwater into her eyes, and a second, more powerful wave crashed into her back, propelling her forward, straight toward the crack in the cave floor.

A gaping crevice that suddenly looked much wider than it had before.

"Oh, nooo!" She struggled against the racing tide, clawing the sand and clutching at slippery fronds of seaweed. "Somebody help me!
Please
!"

But no one came.

Only the tide with its frigid, pounding waves, each one sweeping her closer to the sea dungeon. "Oh, nooo," she wailed again, feeling the sand shifting beneath her, offering no hold at all.

Her heart stopped, horror making it impossible to breathe. The pit dungeon loomed right in front of her!

She closed her eyes, unable to bear watching the world disappear, but just before she could slide over the edge, someone grabbed her, hoisting her into the air. The brute force of her rescuer's grip caused her collar to cut into her throat, choking her even as relief made her giddy, setting stars spinning in her head.

She gasped, fighting for air, and the man loosened his hold. For one terrifying moment, she dangled over the sea pit, its yawning blackness staring up at her until her rescuer hurled her across his broad and well-muscled shoulder.

Sputtering, she hung upside down, her lungs burning and her breasts bouncing against the man's plaid-draped back as he strode out of the cave. At least that's what she hoped he was doing. Her eyes stung too badly to know for sure.

And the blood rushing into her head was making her dizzy.

She drew a shuddery breath. "Th-thank you. So much. But you can put me down now."

Ignoring her, the man only grunted. Then promptly tightened his hold on her. She tried to break free, but his grip was like iron. He even splayed a hand over her buttocks, that grip grinding a certain part of her against his shoulder.

Her face flamed. This was not the time or place for
that
kind of stimulation.

"Hey, watch the hand, mister!" she protested, trying to squirm free. "Better yet, put me down."

She might have been talking to a wall. Instead of releasing her, he merely shifted her in his arms and continued on his way. Out of the sea cave and along the base of the cliff, his every purposeful step causing his fingers to press more intimately into her private parts.

He practically had his hand between her legs!

Unintentional or not, his fingers kept sliding over her. An intimate rubbing that was beginning to bother her. Especially when one of his fingers probed a particularly sensitive spot. Mara jerked, riptides of tingles streaking across her most tender flesh.

"Put-me-down," she seethed, blocking the sensations caused by his poking and rubbing fingers. "
Now
."

But when he kept walking—and rubbing—she knew what she had to do.

She hadn't grown up on Philly's meanest streets for nothing.

"I'm sorry—I know you saved my life," she said, even meaning it.

But enough was enough.

So she opened her mouth as wide as she could and sank her teeth into the lout's back.

"Owwwwwwww!" He froze and she twisted free, kicking him in the shin for good measure.

She stumbled away from him, keeping her hands fisted and raised, ready for attack. Not that she expected one. Not now, with the bastard hopping on one foot and clutching his leg.

Feeling just a tad guilty, she squinted at him, trying to clear her eyes to get a decent look. Burning eyes or no, she didn't miss the jauntily draped plaid or the bejeweled dagger thrust beneath his wide leather belt.

It was
him
!

The hottie Scottie.

And looking as if he'd stepped out of one of her father's favorite books on Highland clans.

"You!" She glared at him. "How dare you follow me around!"

He glowered back. "Alas, it was my folly to think you in peril," he wheezed, holding tight to his shin.

"Your folly?" Mara planted her hands on her hips. "You do have a strange way of expressing yourself. I'll give you that. Who are you, anyway?"

"Sir Alexander Douglas," he stammered, his sea green stare piercing her. "Knight of the Scottish realm."

Mara blinked. This was worse than she'd thought. Not because he professed to be a knight. Everyone knew knights were dubbed all the time.

Especially famous singers and film stars.

No, it was the way he'd made the claim that gave her the willies. Or even his old-fashioned Highland garb.

He'd said it as if he meant he was a
real
knight.

A card-carrying medieval one of the shining armor, big sword, and war horse variety.

Mara gulped. "You're mad."

"Aye, that I am," he hissed, letting go of his leg. "In ways that can be very dangerous for you."

"Don't come any closer!" she warned when he began limping forward, his plaid flapping in the wind. "Leave me alone and no one will have to know I saw you." She inched toward the cliff steps. "Just go away."

"By the saints!" He stalked after her, his brow darkening. "Do you think I wish to be here?"

"I only know that you are—and that I don't like it!" she shot back, her pulse frantic.

Then, resorting to a trick she'd learned in Philly playgrounds, she scooped up a handful of sand and threw it in his face.

"Fires of Hades!" he roared, grinding his fists into his eyes. "Black-tailed she-bitch! Bloody MacDougall spawn!"

Mara didn't wait to hear more.

Spinning round, she raced up the steps as fast as her soggy-shoed feet would carry her. Never in her life would she have hung around and waited for him to calm himself.

Even so, once she gained the wall walk, she turned and peered over the edge of the parapet.

Her nemesis was nowhere to be seen.

He'd vanished again, most likely returning to the sea cave. Not that it mattered. She now knew how he'd gained entry into her room. If he tried such nonsense again, he'd be in for a surprise.

She'd bar the door to the battlements.

If only she could erase his image from her mind. The tingles he summoned with a single glance, a mere
rub
of a circling finger.

Crazed or not, he took her breath away.

And was the first man to ever make her… burn.

Too bad he didn't have all his marbles. Imagine a man thinking he was a knight.

The Sir Lancelot and King Arthur kind.

Mara blew out a breath. She'd never heard anything more ludicrous.

Delicious as the notion might be.

Chapter 5

The instant the flame-haired hellcat scrambled over the top of the cliff, Alex rematerialized on the sandy, rock-strewn shore. Seabirds screamed overhead, almost as if they were laughing at him. He rubbed his chin with the back of his hand. "So much for chivalry," he muttered, glaring at the wheeling birds.

He knew better than to look anywhere else.

Especially at the cliffside path leading up to the parapets.

If he did, he'd still see her. Her breasts bouncing and her shapely hips wig-wagging as she'd hurried up the perilous stone steps. Saints, even the tumbling spill of her bright, coppery hair remained emblazoned across his mind. How each curling strand had gleamed and shimmered in the morning sun, a silky cascade just begging for a man's touch.

"Hell's bells and damnation!" He willed away the image, stared out across the water to the jagged line of the Inner Hebrides, the great hills of Mull, serried and blue on the horizon.

You are mad
, she'd accused him.

And for certes he was.

But in ways she'd never begin to guess.

He breathed deeply, filled his lungs with the bracing sea air. "Split me, if she hasn't hexed me," he groused, squinting in the slanting sunlight. He raked a hand through his hair, set his jaw against his ill temper. Truth was, he knew exactly what ailed him. He'd been too long without a woman.

Centuries too long.

But he wasn't about to let a MacDougall female's ripe curves and swinging tresses goad him into foolishness.

His back hurt where she'd sunk her teeth into him, his shin throbbed, and his eyes burned like fire. Those were the things that mattered. Not how his tarse had filled and lengthened when he'd felt her full breasts pressing against him as he'd carried her from the sea cave.

Saints, he still couldn't believe the viciousness of her attack.

But his savaged body told the tale.

The vixen had done more damage to him than the boldest knight would dare.

Marveling at her cheek, he kept his gaze fixed on the isle-dotted sea, the rise of the sparkling swells. In another time, his heart would have leapt at such beauty. He'd even been known to compose verse about the glories of Scotland's magnificent Western Sea.

But this morn, he could think of naught but her.