Page 74 of A Hellion for the Highland Hawk
It was a question that she hadn’t had much time to think about, between checking maps, making lists, and discreetly making inquiries about the people on those lists, as well as taking care of Freya.
“I’m… not exactly sure how it works,” she admitted, touching the pendant.
“If ye did, would ye use it?”
She licked her suddenly dry lips, her breath catching as his gaze flitted to her mouth. “I don’t think we should marry tomorrow,” she said haltingly. “Ican’tdecide one way or the other until I know how this ends, but… I will be there tomorrow.”
“What does that mean?” He moved closer, searching her face.
“A trap,” she murmured as his hand turned, sliding slowly down her throat. Not a threat, but the soft grip of possession.
She bit her lip, confused as to how something so simple could rouse such hot desire within her. It probably shouldhave alarmed her, but it didn’t. In fact, she almost wanted to feel him squeeze a little harder, just to see what it felt like.
“Tomorrow, we set the trap for whoever is trying to kill you,” she explained, her throat bobbing against his palm. “If you survive, we’ll… talk about how we want things to go. If you die, I won’t want to stay in this place. I won’t be able to stand it. If you die, I might have to take Freya with me. Raise her in the future, or… something, where a bee sting won’t kill her, the way it killed my mom.”
She expected him to blow up, telling her that she wouldn’t be taking his daughter anywhere. Instead, a soft smile curved his lips and brightened his eyes, his expression the closest thing to awe that she’d ever seen.
“Ye’d do that?” he asked.
Nancy nodded. “I would. I know she has family here who adore her, but I don’t think I’d be able to leave her behind.”
Releasing her throat, he reached down and grasped two handfuls of her skirts where they bunched at her hips, and pulled her to her feet. She stood without hesitation, her breath quickening as he tugged her toward him, one arm sliding around her waist.
“Then it’s lucky ye daenae have to bear that responsibility,” he told her. “Ye cannae worry about tomorrow, lass. I’d trust ye to take care of me daughter, but I need ye to trust me to be who I am.”
Nancy lifted her hands to his face, cradling it. “How can Inotworry about tomorrow?”
“Because I’m tellin’ ye nae to,” he replied silkily. “And ye must obey.”
“I don’t think I can, this time,” she sighed. “My mind won’t let me.”
He pulled her into his chest. Even sitting on the edge of the table, his towering height made them level with one another, face to face. His other hand left a tingling trail up her spine before it came to rest on the nape of her neck, where he tilted her head up, his brow touching hers.
“Then we’ll have to do somethin’ about that mind of yers,” he murmured, his mouth so close that she barely resisted the urge to kiss him, and kiss him hard, as if tomorrow wasthe last day they would ever have together. “Ye see, lass, I’ve had an epiphany of me own.”
“You have?” she breathed, needing him more than she had ever needed anything.
He smiled. “I daenae think ye were sent here to find out about yer parents. Aye, maybe that was part of it, but I think ye came here to change what ye saw on that tapestry. I think ye kent it was ye, somewhere deep down.”
Those last two words were spoken slowly, his hand sliding over the swell of her backside, some light pressure on her neck bringing her lips closer to his until there was barely a gap between them.
Ithadcrossed her mind more than once that the time travel energy had hoped to kill two birds with one stone when it sent her back here: revealing the truth about her parentsandchanging the course of the Hawk’s history. If Hunter thought it too, then maybe there really was some truth to it, and it wasn’t just the tenderest, most fragile hope in her heart alone.
After all, at any point over the last eighteen years without her mom, that magic could have found a way to transport her to the past. Itcouldhave transported her while her mom was still alive, but it hadn’t. It had waited, biding its time until circumstance took her to that museum. And she didn’t believe in coincidence.
“Tomorrow, we’ll lay the trap, just as ye said,” Hunter continued. She hung on every word, her stomach tightening with the desire to feel his kiss one more time. “Tonight, however, ye’ll be a good wee bride and let me worship ye as ye deserve. Ye’ll let me silence yer worries while ye scream me name. And ye’ll come to me wearin’ yer weddin’ gown, so that if there’s the slightest chance that Idodie tomorrow, I die with a smile on me face.”
Breathing hard, her pendant softly vibrating, she wished he hadn’t said that last part. In the tapestry, he haddied with a smile on his face. Yet, as he almostbrushed her lips with a teasing kiss, she knew that even that wouldn’t be enough to stop her from going to him tonight.
“Come to me at a quarter to midnight,” he said, pulling away, denying her, such that she thought she might explode with overwhelming need. “That way, I can claim ye on our weddin’day, and remember how ye moan and move and claw at me when I’m fightin’ to the last for us both.”
He got up off the edge of the table and, with a pleased grin that frustrated her as much as it tempted her, he sauntered out of the library. And as she stood staring at the open doorway, her heart racing and her breathing ragged, her skin flushed as if she had a fever, she found herself even more determined to save him.
You bastard.She smiled, fanning herself.How am I supposed to lose you now?
CHAPTER 31
Hunter stoodby the nursery window, his daughter sleeping soundly in his arms, as he watched the sun go down.
