Page 21 of A Celtic Vow
That is until a huge whoosh of wind and something impossible to describe swept her up, and she landed with a hard thump on her butt back in the ruins. She blinked through the driving rain, only for lightning to flash and illuminate her worst nightmare towering over her.
She tried to think, speak, do anything at the sight of Aodh’s angry dragon. At the rage simmering in his golden eyes when he glared down at her.
“No,” she finally managed to gasp, caught in her nightmare. Only this time, she didn’t have the courage she’d found in her last dream. Instead, she felt overwhelming terror.
A desperation to flee.
A panicked scream finally erupted from her that she had no control over. Nor could she control her mindless scramble to get away from him as she stumbled to her feet and raced for the edge again.
She refused to be taken by him once more.
Stolen away.
“Stop,” Aodh roared, catching her around the waist before she leapt. “’Tis all right, lass. I won’t hurt ye.”
Still caught in her nightmare, she barely registered he was human now as he pulled her into his arms, pressed her cheek to his warm chest, and cupped her head when she kept screaming. Flailing. He held her close until wherever she had been faded away, and reality surfaced. Until his racing heart against her ear became a steady, soothing beat.
“You were...” she finally said hoarsely, unable to get his dragon’s image out of her mind. “Just like you were in my nightmare. Just as ferocious and furious at me.”
“Because ye nearly plummeted to yer death,” he rumbled, his voice not quite right either. “’Twas terrifying for my dragon.” She felt his strong body tremble. “Terrifying for me as well.” His hand drifted down from the back of her head until he cupped the back of her neck, not angrily but tenderly. “Had I not been standing at my chamber window and spotted ye, lass, ye would have been lost to us.”
“So you embraced the thing you hate most to get to me on time,” she murmured.
“Ta,” he said. “Yet I can say with certainty that had I not, my dragon would have taken the matter out of my hands. As I said, his fear was as great as mine.”
She sensed what he wasn’t saying. How grateful he truly was to his dragon.
“He seems to be making a habit of saving people lately,” she managed, finally stable enough to lift her head. To meet eyes that hadn’t turned human yet.
“There’s no helping them right now,” he said softly, his gaze as tender as his touch when it roamed her face. “My inner beast remains too concerned about ye.”
She knew by the flashes of red in her vision her inner beast was interested in that. Inhim. Not just the beast but the man.
“Thank you.” She struggled to catch her breath as their embrace became less soothing and more arousing. The hypnotic way he looked at her wasn’t making it any easier, either.
Nor, strangely enough, did his dragon eyes.
Where she had long thought they represented evil, the devil himself, now she saw something else. Possibilities. A flash of good within the darkness. A creature that didn’t repulse her nearly as much as it had before.
“Ye need not thank me,” he said gruffly, cupping her cheek with his free hand. His gaze dropped to her lips and lingered. His voice grew so soft she barely caught his words. “Just stay with me.”
She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Wondered if he even meant to say it as his head lowered. As his lips grew closer. So close she could feel the heat of his breath. Should she pull away? Slow this down? Because she feared if he kissed her, there would be no stopping their dragons.
That Ulrik’s magic would become null and void.
Could they handle it so soon? Would they be able to focus long enough to figure out their past? Because they had one. She was more and more certain.
Maybe giving in to whatever this pull was between them, at least for one kiss, would speed that up, she reasoned, not thinking quite clearly when her lips throbbed in anticipation. When she craved the dive off another type of cliff entirely.
Close, so close, wonderfully close, until she was jolted out of her reverie by Shannon.
“Constance?” Treacherous area be damned, her sister raced her way with Liam right behind her. She looked panicked as Constance and Aodh pulled away from each other, and she took in Constance’s sopping wet nightgown. “We heard you screaming.”
“She’s all right now,” Aodh assured. “She’s safe.”
Luckily, he manifested a cloak and wrapped it around her when he realized how revealing her nightgown was. But not before she caught his gaze flicker over her first. Before she saw how much he desired her.
“Safe, thanks to Aodh yet again,” Constance managed. Her vision returned to normal, and she took in their surroundings in the early dawn light. The rain had trickled down to a drizzle, and the storm was retreating.
