Page 13 of Her Scot of Bygones
“Maybe it would or maybe it wouldn’t.” Not afraid of his threats because I knew he wouldn’t follow through with them, I shrugged and stood my ground despite his towering height and close proximity in the relatively tight tunnel. “Whowasthat boy? How do you know him?”
“I dinnae.”
“You do.”
“Nay.”
“Fine.” Sensing he didn’t know how to get back through the wall, I turned that way and threatened him. “I’ll head back to the Sutherland’s and find out myself.”
Where I thought he would finally tell me what I wanted to know when I reached for the wall, instead, he came up behind me startlingly fast, rested his hand over mine, and spoke so close to my ear, I felt his warm, tempting breath brush across my cheek.
“Ye go nowhere without me, lass,” he rumbled, the vibration of his deep voice against my back rolling through me in a wave of pure sensual fire. “Not as long as ye’re in my era under my watch.”
“Then tell me,” I whispered, my voice breathless and choppy from the way he made me feel without doing much of anything. Or at least he wasn’t until he inhaled deeply, as if savoring my scent, before I swore the tip of his tongue flicked feather soft over the sensitive flesh of my neck.
“Nay,” he said roughly, the corner of his mouth hovering near the corner of mine when I turned my cheek, trembling with a sense of awareness I had never felt before.
Or had I?
I couldn’t help but turn to him with a longing so familiar that tears sprang to my eyes, and I did something so out of character for me, I wondered if I was possessed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
–Lucas–
IWAS NEVER so caught off guard as I was when Hazel claimed the little girl at the hazel tree on Sutherland territory was her until I witnessed her pleasure at seeing the Sutherland boy and realizing who he was.
After all, Evan Sutherland had once been a close friend.
That is, until he became my greatest enemy.
Yet there he was, heading for a woman I cared a great deal about, without understanding why, other than to assume I wanted her because she was my fated mate. Or at least she better be because the longer I was around her, the more desperate I became for her in ways I’d never been for another. I couldn’t say why, outside the obvious, because her beauty and scent alone would drive a man to distraction.
Something painfully obvious when she found a way into a far too tight tunnel I didn’t know about, and I stopped her from going back to Sutherland land. I knew she was bluffing to try to get me to tell her who Evan was, and I meant only to place my hand over hers before she could trace the pattern that opened the hidden door, but I lost myself in her nearness instead.
How could I not when she softened against me and I caught the scent of her arousal when I flicked my tongue ever so gently over her sweet flesh? When she turned her cheek and seemed as desperate to draw me in as I was her? If all that weren’t tempting enough, causing a near crippling erection, when she turned, stood on her tiptoes, and slowly pulled my lips down to hers, I thought I would burst with need.
Our mouths hovered close as if we relished the anticipation and mingling of breath before I went to close the distance, only to freeze when I sensed Broderick nearby. Although tempted to ignore my cousin and chieftain and kiss her regardless, just to have her taste on my tongue, I felt his intensifying anger the closer he grew.
“We have to go,” I forced past my lips when her breath caught, and her eyes met mine. Beautiful green eyes, dewy with the same confusion and arousal I felt. “’Tis Broderick…he’s close.” I did my best to chant away my arousal, if for no other reason than being able to walk, and narrowed my eyes at our surroundings. “I just cannae place where he is.”
“This way,” Hazel whispered as if she couldn’t quite find her voice. She headed further into the narrow tunnel, navigating it like she had the larger one, as if she had traveled it many times before. If that were not baffling enough, where we ended up certainly was when we came to a dead end, and she traced her fingers along the same Y pattern as before, and the door wavered.
“Och,” I exclaimed as we stepped into my lair. “How is this possible?”
“I might ask the same,” Broderick groused, ducking into my lair at almost the same time as us, having finally somehow located it. His narrowed eyes swept over Hazel and landed on me in barely repressed anger. “What thebloodyhell did you do this time, cousin?”
Broderick’s gaze softened on Hazel, letting her know his anger was not directed at her, before shooting back to me. “Do you have any idea the risk you took bringing her here without MacLeod protection?” His dragon eyes flared at me, and a vein ticked in his temple. “How worried my mate is about her sister?” He spoke through clenched teeth, telling me his anger hadreached a new level this time. “How worried my verra pregnant mate is with the only bairns we will ever have?”
“What?” Hazel gasped, her eyes round. “What do you mean?” Her gaze narrowed on me with just as much damnation. “What does he mean, Lucas?”
“It means he once again acted without thinking,” Broderick ground out before his gaze fell to Hazel’s wrist, and his pupils flared. “Yet she bears the mark, so all will be discussed once we are safely within MacLeod walls.”
Dread spiked through me when I realized the same blasted tattoo had appeared on Hazel’s wrist that once appeared on Aspen before it was proven she wasn’t meant for a Sutherland, and it faded. The same sword and wings, with a gem at the center, only Hazel’s were shades of purple, much like the twilight awash in the woodland vortex that tried to steal her away from me.
If the same tattoo appeared on a Sutherland male and a purple gem appeared over her dragon’s heart the first time she shifted, it meant she was his fated mate. She was the witchy dragon who descended from the Sutherland sorcerer via her mother, meant to fulfill the pact and marry a Sutherland.
“Come, Hazel,” I said softly when she stared at the tattoo in confusion and fear, without a doubt wondering when it had appeared. “I cannae take you back to your era, but I can bring you to your sister.”
