She frowned at him, eyes narrowed, trying to figure out what it was that Cian MacKeltar had that no other man had.
She was familiar with the theory that women were instinctively sexually attracted to men who were their most favorable genetic complement; men who possessed the DNA that would strengthen hers, and vice versa, thereby guaranteeing stronger children and ensuring the human race’s greatest odds of survival.
Was Cian MacKeltar biologically her most favorable match? Was she doomed to be hopelessly and helplessly attracted to him? Was Nature herself conspiring against her in some diabolical evolutionary plan to get her pregnant?
If so, a devilish little inner voice proposed, then we should probably just sleep with him and get it over with, huh? Don’t you think?
“Nice try,” Jessi muttered.
Though the anthropologist in her appreciated the logic of the theory, she greatly preferred to believe that love and sex were matters of level-headed choice and free will.
There wasn’t a single thing levelheaded or remotely free-willish about her response to Cian MacKeltar.
“I can’t imagine what she’s doing back there!” Stone-face was saying. “Can you? Did you hear that noise? She’s like a wild little animal. She didn’t just hit me. She brutally assaulted me. I hope she has an attorney, because she’s going to need one. I’m suing. My face might never be the same. I’m probably going to need plastic surgery.”
Oh puh-leeze. Jessi snorted.
Cian glanced at her, the raw sexual frustration in his dark amber gaze tempered by amusement.
You hit her? he mouthed.
I had to get to you somehow, she mouthed back, wrinkling her nose. Smoothing her sweater. Trying not to blush, remembering what they’d just done and, worse still, what they’d been about to do. Good grief, she thought crossly, maybe she should just throw her virginity at him the next time.
Oh, gee, wait a minute, she’d just tried to do that.
His shoulders shook with silent laughter. He stepped closer, ducked his head, and pressed his mouth to her ear. He kissed the dainty ridges, tasting it lightly with his tongue. “You’d do a Highland husband proud, lass,” he whispered.
She shivered from the hot eroticism of his tongue against her ear. “Thanks,” she whispered back. Coming from a ninth-century warrior-Druid, that was quite a compliment. “I knocked her out with a single blow too.” She couldn’t help but brag on herself a little bit.
His shoulders shook harder.
“So, Mr. Druid-turned-dark-sorcerer, we’re in a bit of a fix. Think you can get us out of here?”
He tossed back his head and laughed out loud. The deep sound rumbled from his chest, echoing in the warehouse.
“Did you hear that?” From a few aisles away, Stone-face sounded scandalized. “There’s a man in here with her! How in the world did that creature get a man in here with her?”
Cian flashed Jessi a cocky, sexy smile that couldn’t have been more full of himself. It was the smile of a man who knew his power and thoroughly enjoyed having it.
“Aye, I can. Just you sit back, woman, and relax. I’ll take care of everything.”
Jessi had no doubt that he could. And, damn, but she liked that in a man.
16
Scotland: bounded by the Atlantic, the North Sea, and England; approximately half the size of its neighbor; comprised primarily of moors, mountains, and seven hundred and eighty-seven major islands, including the Shetlands, Orkneys, and the Inner and Outer Hebrides.
Jessi’s sticky memory made her a lint brush for facts.
She knew that if one were to draw a straight line from the far south of the rugged country to the far north of it, it was a mere 275 miles, although its coastline covered a scenic 6,200 miles.
She also knew that the true collision of England and Scotland had predated the clash of politics and hot tempers by some 425 million years, when continental drift had caused Scotland—previously part of a landmass that had included North America—and England—previously part of Gondwana—to collide into each other, not far from the current political boundary.
A historical treasure trove, Scotland was close to the top of a lengthy list of places Jessi had long wanted to see, along with Ireland, Germany, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and all of what had once been part of ancient Gaul where the P-Celts had so passionately lived and loved and warred.
Still, she reflected, swerving to avoid a pothole in the meandering, single-lane dirt road, she’d never imagined she’d make it to Great Britain so soon.
And certainly not as a hunted fugitive, in the company of a ninth-century Highlander, driving a big black stolen SUV into the Highlands.