Cherry picker extraordinaire. The thought caught her off guard. Mortified, she berated herself, because he was injured and there she was, sitting on him, thinking lascivious thoughts. She pondered the possibility that she’d developed some kind of hormone imbalance, perhaps a surfeit of perky little eggs.
She eyed the designs on the man’s chest more closely, wondering if one of them concealed a wound. The strange symbols, unlike any tattoos she’d ever seen, were smeared with blood from the abrasions on her palms.
Gwen leaned back a few inches so a ray of sunshine spilled across his chest. As she studied him, a curious thing happened: the brightly colored designs blurred before her eyes, growing indistinct, as if they were fading, leaving only streaks of her blood to mar his muscled chest. But that wasn’t possible…
Gwen blinked as, undeniably, several symbols disappeared entirely. In a matter of moments all of them were gone, vanished as if they’d never existed.
Perplexed, she glanced up at his face and sucked in an astonished breath.
His eyes were open and he was watching her. He had remarkable eyes that glittered like shards of silver and ice, sleepy eyes that banked a touch of amusement and unmistakable masculine interest. He stretched his body beneath hers with the self-indulgent grace of a cat prolonging the pleasure of awakening, and she suspected that although he was rousing physically, his mental acuity was not fully engaged. His pupils were large and dark, as if he’d recently had his eyes dilated for an exam or taken some drug.
Oh, God, he’s conscious and I’m straddling him! She could imagine what he was thinking and could hardly blame him for it. She was as intimately positioned as a woman astride her lover, knees on either side of his hips, her palms flat against his rock-hard stomach.
She tensed and tried to scramble off him, but his hands clamped around her thighs and pinned her there. He didn’t speak, merely secured and regarded her, his eyes dropping to linger appreciatively on her breasts. When he slid his hands up her bare thighs, she seriously regretted having put on her short-shorts this morning. A slip of a lilac thong was all that was beneath them, and his fingers were toying with the hem of her shorts, perilously close to slipping inside.
His heavy-lidded gaze reflected a languor that had nothing to do with having just awakened, and there was no doubt what was on his mind. But this is no safe cherry picker, Gwen thought, growing more concerned by the moment. This man looks like a cherry tree chopper-downer.
“Look, I was just about to get off you,” she babbled. “I didn’t plan to sit on you. I fell through the hole and landed on you. I was hiking and accidentally knocked my backpack down a crevice, and when I went to rescue it the ground gave way beneath me and here I am. On that note, why didn’t my falling on you wake you?” More important, she thought, how long had he been awake? Long enough to know that she’d copped a few perverted feels?
Confusion flickered in his mesmerizing eyes, but he said nothing.
“I’m usually groggy when I first wake up too.” She tried for a reassuring tone.
He shifted his hips, subtly reminding her that she didn’t wake up quite like him. There was something happening beneath her and, like the rest of him, it was in-your-face male.
When he smiled at her, revealing even, white teeth and a slight cleft in his chin, the part of her brain that made intelligent decisions melted like chocolate taffy left by the pool on a hot summer day. Her heart raced, her palms felt clammy, and her lips were suddenly parched. For a moment, she was too stupefied to feel anything but relief. So this was mindless sexual attraction. It did exist! Just like in the movies!
Her relief was doused by anxiety when he dragged her forward against his chest, cupped her bottom with both hands, and ground her pelvis against his. He buried his face in her hair and thrust upward, rubbing against her like a sleek and powerful animal. A hiss of breath escaped her, an involuntary reaction to a surge of desire that was far too intense to be sane. She was drowning in sensations: the possessive crush of his arms, the testosterone-laden scent of man, the sensual scrape of his shadow beard against her cheek when he caught the lobe of her ear with his teeth, and oh—that wildly erotic rhythm of his hips….
He squeezed her bottom, kneading and caressing, then one hand slid upward, lingering deliciously over the hollow where her spine met her hips, inching ever upward until he palmed the back of her head and guided her lips nearer his.
“Good morrow, English,” he said, a breath from her lips. The words were delivered in a thick brogue that sounded roughened by too much whisky and peat smoke.
“Let me go,” she managed, angling her face away from his. He’d fitted his erection snugly between her thighs, and a firm hand splayed across her bottom kept her locked precisely where he wanted her. He was rock-hard and hot through the lightweight fabric of her shorts. Expertly, he thrust against the most perfect spot nature had bestowed upon a woman, and Gwen coughed to camouflage a moan. If he treated her to a few more of those cocky strokes, she might have her first real orgasm without even sacrificing her cherry.
“Kiss me,” he murmured into her ear. His lips braised her neck; his tongue tasted her skin with lazy sensuality.
“I am not kissing you. I can understand how you might have gotten the wrong impression, waking up to find me sprawled on top of you, but I told you that I didn’t mean to land on you. It was an accident.” Aw, kiss him, Gwen, clamored a hundred perky eggs. Shut up, she rebuked. We don’t even know him, and until moments ago we thought he was dead. That’s no way to start a relationship.
Who’s asking for a relationship? Kisskisskiss! her babies-in-waiting insisted.
“Lovely lass, kiss me.” He planted a hungry, openmouthed kiss in the sensitive area between her collarbone and the base of her throat. His teeth closed gently on her skin, his tongue lingered, sending chills up her spine. “On my mouth.”
She shuddered as the velvety stroke made her nipples pearl against his chest. “Uh-uh,” she said, not trusting herself to say too much.
“Nay?” He sounded surprised. And undeterred. He nibbled the underside of her chin while splaying his hand intimately between the cleft of her behind.
“No. No way. Nay. Understand? And get your hand off my butt,” she added with a squeal, when he squeezed again. “Oooh. Stop that!”
Lazily, he slid his hand up from her hips to her head, availing himself of the opportunity to thoroughly caress every inch in between. Burying both hands in her hair, he gripped her near the scalp and tugged her head gently back so he could search her eyes.
“I mean it.”
He arched a dubious brow but, to her surprise, he proved to be a gentleman and slowly relinquished his grip. She scrambled off him. Unaware that they’d been lying on a slab of stone that was several feet above the floor of the cavern, she stumbled to her knees on the floor.
He sat up on the slab gingerly, as if every muscle in his body was stiff.
He swept his gaze about the cavern, shook his head with the vigor of a drenched dog casting off rain, then gave the interior of the cave a second, thorough glance. He flipped his long dark hair over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes. Gwen witnessed the precise moment the confusion of deep slumber quit his mind. The seductive gleam in his gaze faded, and he folded his muscular arms across his chest. He glanced at her with an expression both startled and angry. “I doona recall coming here,” he said accusingly. “What have you done? Did you bring me here? Is this witchery, lass?”
Witchery? “No,” she said hastily. “I told you, I fell in through that hole”—she jerked her thumb up in the direction of the shaft of sunlight—“and you were already in here. I landed on you. I have no idea how you got here.”
His cool gaze roamed over the jagged opening, the loose stones and dirt scattered around the slab, the blood on her hands, her disheveled condition. After a moment’s hesitation, he appeared to deem it a plausible story. “If you did not come seeking my personal attentions, why are you so shamelessly attired
?” he said flatly.
“Perhaps because it’s hot out?” she shot back, tugging defensively at the hem of her khakis. Her shorts weren’t that short. “It’s not like you have much on yourself.”
“ ‘Tis natural for a man. ’Tis not natural for a woman to cut off her chemise at the waist and doff her gown. Any man would make the assumption I did. You are wantonly clad, and you were draped most intimately across my loins. When a man first awakens, it sometimes takes several moments before he starts thinking clearly.”
“And here I thought it took several years, perhaps a lifetime for the average man’s intellect to kick in,” she said snidely. Chemise? Doff?
He snorted, shaking his head again, vigorously enough that it was giving her a headache. “Where am I?” he demanded.
“In a cave,” she muttered, feeling less than charitable toward him. First, he’d tried to have sex with her, then he’d insulted her clothing, and now he was behaving as if she’d done something wrong to him. “And you should apologize to me.”
His brows arched with surprise. “For waking up to find a half-clad woman lying on top of me and thinking she wished me to pleasure her? I doona think so. And I am not simple,” he chided. “ ‘Tis clear I’m in a cave. In what part of Scotland does this cave reside?”
“Near Loch Ness. Near Inverness,” she said. She backed away from him a few steps.
He blew out a relieved breath. “By Amergin, ’tis not too much of a fankle. I am but a few days and not many leagues from home.”
Amergin? Fankle? Who’d taught the man English? His brogue was so thick that she had to listen intently to decipher what he was saying, and even then not all of it made sense. Could the glorious man have grown up in some obscure Highland village where time stood still, cars were twenty years out of date, and the old ways and manner of speech were still revered?
When he was silent for several minutes, she wondered if perhaps he really was hurt in some way and had been resting in the cave. Maybe he’d struck his head; she hadn’t explored that part of him. Damn near the only part you didn’t, she thought. Gwen scowled, feeling vulnerable in the cavern with the dark, sexual man who occupied too much space and was using more than his fair share of oxygen. His confusion was only adding to her unease.
“Why don’t you show me the way out, and we can talk outside,” she encouraged. Perhaps he’d be less attractive in broad daylight. Perhaps it was merely the dim, confined atmosphere of the cave that made him seem so large and dizzyingly masculine.
“You vow you had nothing to do with how I came to be here?”
She raised her hands in a gesture that said, Why don’t you just take a good hard look at little ole’ me, and then look at you?
“There is that,” he agreed with her wordless rebuke. “You doona amount to much.”
She refused to dignify his comment with a response. When he rose from the slab she realized that, contrary to her initial impression, he wasn’t wearing unfashionably long plaid shorts, like some of her elderly tour-mates had worn, but was clad in a length of patterned fabric fastened about his waist. It brushed above his knees, and his feet and calves were encased in soft boots. She tipped her head back to look up at him and, disconcerted by how he towered over her, blurted, “How tall are you?” She could have kicked herself when it came out sounding awed. Standing beside him, few people would amount to much. Although she’d never get involved with a man like him, it was impossible to remain unaffected by his incredible height and powerfully developed body.
He shrugged. “Taller than the hearth.”
“The…hearth?”
He stopped his intent perusal of the cave and glanced at her. “How am I to think with you chattering away? The hearth in the Greathall, the one Dageus and I vied to outgrow.” An expression of deep sadness crossed his face at the mention of Dageus. He fell silent a moment, then shook his head. “He never did. Missed by so much.” He demonstrated the space of an inch with his finger and thumb. “I’m taller than my father, and taller than two of the stones at Ban Drochaid.”
“I meant in feet,” she clarified. Speaking of the mundane gave her a measure of calm.
He eyed his boots a moment and appeared to be doing some rapid calculations.
“Forget it. I get the picture.” Six and a half feet, perhaps taller. And to a woman five foot three inches on her best day, daunting. She stooped and grabbed her backpack, sliding a strap over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”
“Hold. I am yet unprepared for travel, lass.” He moved to a pile by the wall, which Gwen had thought was a jumble of rocks. She watched nervously as he retrieved his belongings. He did something she didn’t quite follow with the blanket thingie he was wearing, where part of it ended up over one shoulder. After fastening a pouch about his waist, he draped wide bands of leather over each shoulder so that they crossed in an X over his chest. These he secured at his waist with another wide band of leather that belted them snugly in place, then he donned a fourth band that encircled his pecs.
Was he dressing in some old costume? Gwen wondered. She’d seen something similar to his attire in a castle her group had toured yesterday, on one of the medieval sketches in the armory. Their guide had explained that the bands fashioned a sort of armor, adorned in critical places—such as above the heart and over the abdomen—with ornate metal discs.
As she watched, he fastened similar leather bands that stretched from wrist to elbow around his powerful forearms. She stared in silence when he began tucking dozens of knives away—knives that looked alarmingly real. Two went into each wristband, handle down toward his palm, ten on each crossband. When he bent to the dwindling pile and hefted a massive double-bladed ax, she flinched. Cherry tree chopper-downer, indeed. Definitely not a man a woman could take any chances with. He raised an arm and lowered it behind his right shoulder, sliding the handle into the bands across his back. Last, he sheathed a sword at his waist.
By the time he was done she was aghast. “Are those real?”
He turned a cool silver gaze on her. “Aye. You can scarce kill a man otherwise.”
“Kill a man?” she repeated faintly.
He shrugged and eyed the hole above them and said nothing for a long while. Just when she was beginning to think he’d forgotten her entirely, he said, “I could toss you that high.”
Oh, yes, he probably could. With one arm. “No, thank you,” she said frostily. Small she might be, a basketball she was not.
He grinned at her tone. “But I fear that doing so might cause more rocks to collapse upon us. Come, we will find the way out.”
She swallowed. “You really don’t remember where you came in?”
“Nay, lass, I’m afraid I doona.” He measured her for a moment. “Nor do I recall why,” he added reluctantly.
His response troubled her. How could he not know how or why he’d entered the cave, when he had obviously come in, removed his weapons, and piled them neatly before lying down? Did he have amnesia?
“Come. We must make haste. I care naught for this place. You must put your clothes back on.”
Her hackles rose and she barely resisted the urge to hiss like a cat. “My clothes are on.”
He raised a brow, then shrugged. “As you will. If you are comfortable strolling about in such a fashion, far be it from me to complain.” Crossing the chamber, he took her wrist and began dragging her along.
Gwen allowed him to tug her behind him for a short distance, but once they’d left the cavern, all light disappeared. He was guiding them by feeling his way along the wall of the tunnel, his other hand latched about her wrist, and she began to fear they might plunge into another crevice, hidden by the darkness. “Do you know these caves?” she asked. The blackness was so absolute that it was crowding her in, suffocating her. She needed light and she needed it now.
“Nay, and if you are telling me the truth and you fell through the hole, then you doona either,” he reminded. “Have you a better idea?”
“Yes.” Sh
e tugged on his hand. “If you’ll just stop a moment, I can help.”
“Have you fire to light our way, wee English? For ’tis what we sorely need.”
His voice was amused, and it irritated her. He’d taken her measure, deemed her helpless, and that pissed her off. And why did he keep calling her English? Was it the Scottish version of American, and perhaps they called people from England British? She knew she had a trace of an English accent because her mother had been raised and schooled in England, but it wasn’t that pronounced. “Yes, I do,” she snapped.
He stopped so suddenly that she ran into the back of him, striking her cheekbone on the handle of his ax. Although she couldn’t see him, she felt him turn, smelled the spicy male scent of his skin, then his hands were on her shoulders.
“Where have you fire? Here?” He sifted his fingers through her long hair. “Nay, perhaps here.” His hand brushed her lips in the dark, and if she hadn’t clamped them shut he would have slipped the tip of his finger between them. The man was positively outrageous, hell-bent on seduction with a single-mindedness that made her fear for her resolve. “Ah, here,” he purred, sliding his hand over her derriere, then yanking her against him. He was still erect. Unbelievable, she thought dazedly. He laughed, a husky, confident sound. “I doona doubt you have fire, but ’tis naught that might help us escape this cave, though it would undoubtedly make it vastly more amenable.”
Oh, definitely mocking now. She twisted away from his liberty-taking hands. “You are so arrogant. Have all those steroids eaten away your brain cells?”
He was silent a moment, and his lack of response unnerved her. She couldn’t see him and wondered what he was thinking. Was he preparing to pounce on her again? Finally he said slowly, “I doona understand your question, lass.”
“Forget it. Just let go of me so I can get something out of my pack,” she said stiffly. She slipped it off her shoulder and thrust it at him. “Hold this a minute.” While she’d been willing to discard her cigarettes, throwing away a perfectly good lighter had seemed wasteful. Besides, she’d quit before, and then when she started again, she had to buy a new lighter every time. Rummaging in one of the external pockets, she sighed with relief when her fingers closed on the silver Bic. When she pressed the little button, he roared and leaped back. His heavy-lidded eyes, glittering with banked sensuality, widened in amazement.