Page 76 of Highlander’s Protector

If she didn’t want to take that step, he would. He needed one last reminder of what they both would never have. Something to take with him and hold on to forever. Grasping her forearms, he took a large step forward, pinning her to the one piece of a crumbled wall that was still straight.

“A kiss goodbye, then,” he growled into her mouth and covered her lips with his.

He kissed her for the hundreds of years that would separate them. For the dozens of lifetimes that would pass before he would be born, never knowing that his love was back in time. He kissed her for the one lifetime that they would never share.

He kissed her so that she’d remember him as he would never forget her.

His blood boiled as it always did when her lips touched his, when her tongue lashed against his, when he felt her small, soft breasts against his chest and her curves against his hardness. She was gentle and soft where he was strong and hard. And her scent…a feminine mix of flowers and sunshine and sea. He needed to engrave it forever in his senses.

When he pulled back, she was breathing hard, her eyes dark and wet and shiny under her long eyelashes.

Without another word, she twisted out of his embrace and was gone. Emptiness seared at him as he watched her walk down the hill. With every step she took, a void spread in his soul, as bottomless as a black hole.

He thought about calling out to her. Begging her for another minute by his side. Dropping onto his knees and pleading for her to come to the future with him.

But he didn’t. He locked his knees and clenched his fists, restraining himself from making a single move. When she disappeared from his sight, he forced himself to turn to the rock.

The sudden scent of lavender and freshly cut grass brushed against his senses. He knew what it meant. Sìneag was here somewhere, and the tunnel through time was open.

The old David would have been angry at her for keeping him here. But he wasn’t that man anymore.

The carvings glowed, just like that fateful time when Rogene had gone through the stone and David had come along for the ride.

Sìneag appeared from thin air next to the rock. Like the previous time, she wore a green hooded cloak, her red hair spilling over her shoulders in waves. She gave him a bright smile. “Ye found the woman ye’re destined for. As I kent ye would.”

“Yeah,” he said sadly. “Like you knew I would. I should be angry at you. You trapped me here for so long. But I’m not. I’d do it all over again for her.”

Sìneag sighed deeply and bit her lower lip.

“Why are ye nae moving?” Sìneag asked. “Ye ken if ye touch the stone, ye will travel through time.”

The pull of the stone’s magic was strong. Finally, his way back home was within reach.

He inhaled sharply. “I know.”

Love isna everything, he remembered Anna’s words. She could have come with him, but, like him, she was choosing something other than love.

“Are ye unsure if ye want to leave?” Sìneag asked.

“Through that rock is everything I had thought was important to me most of my life. Playing football. Earning a degree. How proud I’d be at the graduation ceremony. Getting an important job, making lots of money. I’m just trying to decide if it’s all worth it.”

Sìneag nodded and sat down on the remnant of a wall. “Worth is an interesting thing… Time is worthless to me, a wee thing to play around with. But for ye humans, time is everything.”

David swallowed hard as he watched her porcelain features, eyes gleaming with something between mischief and empathy.

“Ye will get old,” Sìneag continued. “And, sorry to say, ye’ll die one day. And that day, how would ye look back at yer life? With yer bonnie house and yer shiny car… Would they fill yer soul, and would they be worth it, spending the most precious thing ye have…time?”

He could find someone else, he wanted to say. But even if he found a woman he might want to marry, he’d never love her as desperately and fully as he loved Anna.

Anna was not just a piece of his heart.

She was his very soul.

“Life here,” he said as he looked back down the hill where Anna had disappeared, “with Anna would be colorful and warm. There would be hardships, yes, but also happiness and joy and so much love.”

Sìneag sat quietly, watching him with a knowing look.

“All my life,” he continued thoughtfully, “I had this void in me. I felt I was not good enough because of my dyslexia…thought I was dumb. But all I needed to do was accept myself as I was.” Anna, with her heart of a lioness, had stood up for herself, having more courage than some armies.