She could no longer remember the Jessi who’d so tightly scheduled her entire life. The one who had a coffee cup stuffed way in the back of her cupboard that said: Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.
She’d finally stopped making other plans.
And this was Life.
Here and now.
She realized then, much to her astonishment, standing there beneath that wide-open Highland sky in the arms of her sexy Highlander, that she was no longer in such a hurry to finish her PhD. In fact, hanging out in Scotland and doing a bit of casual, unstructured digging around these mountains could probably keep her happy for a long time. Especially if Cian MacKeltar was around to carry her tools and keep her company.
And although she knew she would probably never be able to comprehend her mother’s lack of matrimonial staying power no matter how hard she tried, she suddenly completely understood Lilly’s desire for babies, and her unceasing, constant love for all her children: halves, steps, and wholes alike.
It was a complex emotion Jessi’d never felt before, because she’d never met a man whose children she’d wanted and whose last name she’d tried on for size:
Jessica MacKeltar.
For the first time in her life she wondered what kind of babies she would make with a man. What kind of children they could bring into the world together, she and this big, fierce, handful of a man. They would be something—that was for sure!
Jessi knew what was happening to her.
It terrified her even as it elated her. She suspected she was glowing every bit as luminescent as the moon above her.
Falling in love could do that to a woman.
22
“We’re coming in now,” the deep Scottish burr of one of the MacKeltar twins warned through the double doors of the library.
Jessi flashed Cian a cheeky grin. “Guess they got tired of waiting.”
“Aye, ’twould seem so, lass,” he replied, running a finger down the inside of the silvery glass. She mated the pad of her index to his.
She would be so glad when he was finally free of that damned glass!
It had reclaimed him directly from the shower. In the early hours of the morning, they’d finally ventured from the library and wandered down corridor after corridor, peeking into various chambers, looking for a bathroom.
They’d found one befitting castle and king, with a fabulous shower sporting multiple pulsing heads and a reclining bench. They’d made love yet again, soaping each other slippery, sliding and bumping and grinding beneath the steamy spray. Then the powerful, muscled dark Highlander had dropped to his knees, pressed her back against the wall with his hands on her thighs, and, at a time when she would have sworn herself incapable of more pleasure, had kissed and licked and nibbled her to another shuddering orgasm.
She’d learned over the long, sizzling night that the forbidding man Cian MacKeltar showed the world wasn’t the same one that took a woman to bed.
That man—the lover—dropped barriers, opened himself, gave in small ways she’d never have suspected. That man watched every flicker of her eyelash, learning what pleased her, what made her smile. That man teased with the playfulness of a man who’d had seven sisters he’d obviously adored.
That man had disappeared while she’d been kissing him, leaving her alone in the shower, bereft and kissing air.
She’d fisted her hands with a fierce, hurt scowl.
It had been a bad moment, eased only by the thought that in fifteen more days he would be free of the stupid glass forever.
She’d decided, as she’d finished rinsing off and stepped from the stall, that in retrospect, they were lucky Dageus had taken their SUV. Things couldn’t have worked out better.
They were now in the highly secure castle of Cian’s descendants, and she was pretty sure that—although his descendants seemed as bristly and testosterone-laden as he was—they would nonetheless do all in their power to keep him safe from Lucan until after the tithe was due. (And when it was all over, she was getting a sledgehammer and smashing that damned mirror into a thousand tiny silvery pieces. Who cared that it was a relic? It had held Cian captive for eleven centuries and she wanted it dead.)
Not once during her harrowing day yesterday had she imagined she might be starting this day—a gloriously sunny Highland morning, at that—having made hot, passionate love all night with the man of her dreams, in pretty much the safest place they could hope to be, with two other Druids present to stand additional guard between her and Cian, and any threat that might come to pass.
“Are you decent?” a woman’s voice called, pushing the door cautiously ajar.