Page 88 of Dark Rival

He faced her. His gaze blazed. “Ye want to ken how I feel, what I want, how I care? I care about yer body an’ yer face. Nothing more!” he shouted. “An’ it will never be more. Stop pushin’ at me!”

“Where is the man who sat up with me all night while I slept? Where is the man who sat outside the chapel at Dunroch all night, while I prayed? Where is the man who asked me about the future—and listened to what I had to say?”

“He’s gone!” And with that, Royce strode away, leaving her standing there beneath a huge tree, alone.

How had such a terrible, heated argument arisen? Allie hugged herself. She had meant to provoke his jealousy—she had meant to play him—but it had backfired. She had set him off like a keg of dynamite.

She stared after him and saw him greeting MacNeil. Royce didn’t look her way, but the tawny-haired abbot did. Allie somehow raised her hand toward him in a greeting.

Royce had become a lit fuse, ready to combust at any moment. What did that mean?

She didn’t want to have doubts about them or their future. But suddenly it felt as though if she pushed any harder, she would lose him after all.

She just wished she knew what had changed since last night, to make him so volatile.

“CAN YE CALM YERSELF?” MacNeil asked.

He almost felt as if he couldn’t breathe. She was ogling all the Masters, and even though she meant to thoroughly irritate him and provoke him, her admiration was genuine. He had read her thoughts—she liked every hard body, every pretty face. She liked it far too much—the way she liked being in his bed, ridden by him, in the throes of rapture.

How long would she remain without a lover? he wondered. She was a woman with strong sexual needs.

And while she had succeeded in making him angry and jealous, he was acutely aware of Ailios, standing a distance away, trembling and hurt and, for the first time, filled with doubt about him.

Good, he thought savagely. Let her have doubts! She should have doubts! He was a Master and he would never be more, not to her and not to anyone.

And in the middle of the night you held me and smiled and we talked….

He could not imagine being in her bed and holding her and talking. It was absurd!

And he was as weak as he was a liar, because he wanted nothing as much as he wanted to do just that, not even the rapture they could give one another.

What was happening to him?

Should he leap again and remind himself how Brigdhe had suffered at Kael’s hands because of him?

Royce smiled grimly at MacNeil, who stared closely. “She’s an annoying, provocative woman. Disobedient,” he added quickly. He kept his mind closed so MacNeil would not lurk. “She’s nay easy to protect, defyin’ me at every turn.”

MacNeil gave him a mildly disbelieving look. “Dinna make the mistake ye made with yer wife.”

Royce stiffened, stunned. “Do ye dare to read my mind?”

“I dinna have to. Ye look at her like a boy starving for his first girl. Yer heart is written on yer face. Ye give her yer heart an’ yer doomed, an’ maybe she’s doomed, too.”

“I dinna have a heart,” Royce snarled. “It was cut from my chest long ago.” He was so shocked and angry he turned away, and by gods, he was trembling.

You came into the hall like a man coming home to his bride.

Well, if he had waited almost six hundred years for her, the way he waited now, of course he had come into his hall that way. But she would never be his bride, or his wife, or even his lover. Bedsport, yes, one day—in the future, in her time—if he could somehow wait that long. And that no longer seemed likely, either.

Not a moment went by that he didn’t feel the need to be with her, in her; not a moment went by that he did not have, in the back of his mind, a knowledge of the rapture that was so close—and so far.

“Well, that’s pleasing to hear, as she belongs to the Brotherhood, an’ she always will,” MacNeil said. “I want her safe an’ protected. If ye canna keep a distance from her, I will choose someone else.” There was disapproval in his tone.

Royce met his gaze. “Ye said yerself, any man would want her.”

“I would have never guessed ye’d turn into a randy boy over her. I willna have her death on yer head, Ruari,” MacNeil said sharply. There was nothing affable or charming about him now.

“I willna allow her to die,” Royce exclaimed, glad the conversation had been turned to firm, safe ground. “I saved her yesterday.”