“Cease speaking,” he roared. “You will not speak again unless I tell you to.”
Jessi drew back like a cobra, scratching her scalp again. He couldn’t be serious!
He certainly looked like he was.
After a moment’s stunned silence, in a voice sweet enough to cause cavities in porcelain caps, she said, “You can go fuck yourself, you great big domineering Neanderthal. Wake-up call: Guess what? We’re not in the Stone Age anymore.”
“As I pointed out earlier, a physical impossibility. And I ken full well what epoch it is. Come here, Jessica St. James. Now.”
Jessi blinked at him. A sudden thought occurred to her; one that would explain much about this man. “How long have you been inside that mirror?” she demanded.
A muscle worked in his jaw. “I told you to cease speaking.”
Despite his persistent asininity, her temper was decreasing as her suspicion that she was correct was increasing. “Well, duh, clearly I’m not going to, so you may as well answer my question.”
His eyes narrowed, that whisky gaze swept her from head to toe intently. “Eleven hundred and thirty-three years.”
Whuh. She sucked in an astounded breath. That would place him in—no! The ninth century? No way. A living, breathing, ninth-century man, right here in front of her, somehow trapped in an ancient relic and cast forward eleven centuries?
Chills rippled across every square inch of her skin. Even the hair on her head felt as if it were trying to rise. “Really?” She nearly squealed the word, she was so delighted. The remnants of her hot temper collapsed into a pile of ash.
Oh, the things he might be able to tell her! Had the legendary King Cináed mac Ailpin been his contemporary? Had he lived through those mighty battles? Had he seen the unification of the Scots and Picts? Were those incredible wrists cuffs genuine ninth-century work? What were those tattoos, anyway? And those runes on the mirror—was it possible they comprised a previously undiscovered language? Holy shit! For that matter, was it really from the Stone Age? How could that be? Where had it come from? Who’d made it? What was it made of? Now that she’d conceded the reality of his existence, she had a gazillion questions about it. They all collided in her mind, getting tangled up in one another, and she ended up gaping at him in stunned silence.
It took her several moments to realize that he was regarding her with exactly the same expression.
As if he couldn’t quite believe she existed.
There they stood, in Professor Keene’s office, ten feet separating them, each eyeing the other with blatant incredulity and suspicion. Now, that was just silly. What could he possibly find hard to believe about her?
“Say my name, wench,” he thundered.
She shook her head, stupefied by all her questions, befuddled by his request. “Cian MacKeltar. Why?”
He looked mildly appeased. Then suspicious again. “Scratch your nose, woman.”
“It doesn’t itch.”
“Stand on one foot.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “You stand on one foot.”
“Bloody hell,” he breathed, as if to himself, “it can’t be.” He gave her that intent scan from head to toe again, seemed to hold a brief but heated inner discourse with himself, then nodded toward the desk. “Go sit in that chair.”
“I don’t feel like it. I’m perfectly happy standing right where I am, thank you.”
“Moisten your lips?” His gaze fixed on her mouth.
It took considerable effort not to moisten them while he was looking at them like that. It made her fixate on his own incredibly kissable mouth, made her want to not only wet her lips but pucker up and hike her “sweet ass” right over there. Maybe even show him her breasts, after all. She was appalled at the indiscriminatory nature of hormones—how awful that it was possible to actively dislike a man, have nothing in common with him, including not even existing in the same world—and still want to tear his clothes off and have hot animal sex with him.
Stoically, she resisted. “What’s your deal?”
“Christ,” he whispered slowly, “I’ve been in there for so long, I’ve lost it.”
“‘Lost’ what? Oh, you mean your mind. Yeah, well, not going to argue with you there.”
He stared at her a long moment in silence, frowning. Then his brow eased and his eyes cleared. “Nay, my mind is still as extraordinarily superior as it has always been. No matter. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
God, he was arrogant. She marveled at the sheer, unmitigated cockiness of the man. Had all ninth-century men been that way?