Midnight's Temptation

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Aisley held her gloves in her hand as she walked to the lobby. She wasn’t shocked to find Phelan talking with two other women who were hanging on his every word.

One of the females, a buxom blonde showing enough cleavage that Aisley could make out the red of her bra, placed a hand on Phelan’s arm.

Phelan kept talking, but he angled himself so that he moved away from the blonde’s touch. It was obvious, and it was done in such a way that if Aisley hadn’t been watching him, she wouldn’t have known what he did.

His gaze slid to her. The smile he gave slammed into her, nearly knocking her on her ass. He might be charming those other women, but his look told her he only wanted her.

Aisley fisted her hand as she recalled the way his thick, defined muscles moved beneath her hand, how warm his skin was. How wonderful his weight felt atop her as he filled her body with his arousal.

Her breath hitched and her body flushed with need. Phelan wasn’t just sex appeal and rugged masculinity, he was magnetic, hypnotic.

Irresistible.

And for the moment, he was hers.

As if he knew what she was thinking, his blue-gray eyes darkened. His desire was as palpable as her own. The invisible bonds between them strengthened, grew. They tugged at her, drawing her down the last two remaining steps.

Aisley couldn’t stop her feet from moving her toward Phelan. He was a force unto himself, and like gravity, she was powerless to resist his call.

She ignored the nasty looks from the two women as she came to stand in front of Phelan. He wore a black long-sleeve thermal shirt that molded to his bulging muscles. Instead of the same waterproof pants she wore, he had on jeans.

“Ready?” he asked.

She thought about the need pulsing within her. “No.”

“Doona tempt me, beauty,” he said in a low, seductive tone that made her heart race.

“Consider this tempting.”

He stared at her for the longest time before he shook his head. “I can no’ believe I’m no’ throwing you over my shoulder and taking you back to the room.”

“You’re not?” she asked incredulously.

“This is a first for me. Just as leaving you sleeping last night was.”

“Then you shouldn’t have let me sleep.”

His smile made her roll her eyes. “You needed your rest for today.”

Aisley decided then and there that the next chance she got, she was going to tease Phelan mercilessly. Let him writhe in need as she was then.

He handed her a backpack before he slung his own over his shoulder. “Ready?”

“Not really,” she said and followed him out of the hotel.

They were halfway to the Cuillins before she asked, “What about our stuff in the hotel?”

“I’ve paid a week in advance. Our things will be fine,” he answered from in front of her.

Aisley hooked her thumbs in the straps of the backpack and kept pace with Phelan. The sky was clear. For now. How long it would stay that way was anyone’s guess.

“They’re near,” Phelan said when he reached back to help her up over a large boulder.

“Great.”

“We’re no’ the only hikers. They willna approach us for a while.”

“I’d rather they didn’t approach at all.”

“Why do you fear them?”

Aisley glanced at him and shrugged. “Unknown Druids, remember?”

“They are no’ droughs, beauty. There’s nothing to fear.”

“Have mies always been so welcoming when they meet a Warrior then?”

He grinned, a wickedly teasing gleam in his eyes. “Nay.”

“Oh, so nothing to be concerned about,” she said sarcastically. “I feel so much better.”

His laughter only made her grit her teeth. She didn’t want to see these Druids. They could know what she was. Then they would tell Phelan and everything would be ruined.

Aisley looked up at the Cuillin mountains as they started walking again. The mountains rose up to jagged, imposing peaks, some with snow.

“Those are the red hills,” Phelan pointed out as he slowed for her to get even with him. “They can be differentiated because of their soft rounded contours to their steep sides. The black hills are another matter entirely.”

“How?” she asked, intrigued. She might joke that Phelan was a walking encyclopedia, but she loved the information he stored in his mind.

“The peaks of the black hills are connected by a continuous ridge that twists and plunges its way from north to south. Mountaineers from all over the world have come to climb the Black Cuillin.”

“It’s a good thing we aren’t going there.” When Phelan didn’t comment, she inwardly groaned. “We’re going there, aren’t we?”

“Aye.”

“Just a simple ‘aye’?” She tried to hold back the frustration to no avail. When he looked at her over his shoulder with a grin he was trying to suppress she found herself smiling. “You’re laughing at me.”

“Never, beauty. Just remembering how you told me you were a Druid, and that I shouldna worry over you.”

“Well, I’m giving you permission to worry. I’m not exactly an experienced climber.”

“Good thing I am.”

She adjusted the backpack. “Of course you are. Is there anything you aren’t good at?”

“Relationships?”

Aisley liked how he could admit something so personal. “You phrased it as a question.”

“It is. I’m asking you.”

She elbowed him. “I think you’re doing pretty good for a guy who claims he’s not had a relationship before.”

“I’ve a good teacher.”

That made her grin falter. “Phelan, you shouldn’t take my word for everything. My relationships were disasters. I don’t even know if I understand what constitutes a real relationship.”

“You know,” he said as if his declaring it were true.

They walked in silence for several minutes, taking in the scenery. The closer to the mountains they got, the more dramatic the landscape. It was no wonder people flocked to Skye, she mused.

Aisley couldn’t help but wonder what her life would have been like had she grown up here.

“You have family somewhere on this isle,” Phelan said.

“How do you always know what I’m thinking?”

He winked and sidestepped a rock. “I know you.”

“And yes, I know I’ve family here.”

“Do you want to find them?”

“No. I remember when I was about five that I met an aunt and uncle who lived here, but I don’t remember their names.”

His hand reached out and quickly steadied her when her feet slipped on the damp grass. “I thought mortals kept in touch with their families.”

“Some do. Some don’t. My mother was an only child and didn’t know her relatives. My father was the second out of five. All his siblings but one moved away from Skye. I suppose everyone lost touch.”

Phelan stopped when they reached the crest of a small foothill to the mountains. “You know you have family. I doona think you should pass up getting to see them again, beauty.”

He didn’t try to hide the longing in his voice. Aisley reached for his hand. “If I could, I’d take you back in time and let you see your family.”

He gently squeezed her hand.

They started walking again, this time hand in hand. Aisley surreptitiously glanced at their hands. It seemed so natural and felt so right, that for a second she’d forgotten that the only other time she had held a guy’s hand was when she was still in school.

It was a simple gesture, but one that meant so much to her. Phelan had no idea that with every word, every move she was falling deeper and deeper in love with him.

When she was with him he gave her the courage to think what life could be if she sided with the MacLeods and stood against Jason.

Then she would recall she was a drough. The death she wanted was being pushed further and further away. Phelan was doing that to her. His kisses, his smiles.

But it was temporary, however much she might want it to be permanent. She needed to remember that. It was becoming more and more difficult though. Phelan had changed everything without even meaning to.

Never far from her thoughts was Jason. He would come for her. She knew it as she knew the sun would rise in the east. Jason killed with merely a thought.

What he had in store for her would be a hundred times worse. Not just because she had left him, but she was blood. He’d been suspicious of her long before the last battle.

How many times had he told her she was expendable? He had no qualms about killing her, regardless that she was family. How she hated him. That deep, true hatred that burned in her gut.

The weather suddenly shifted as the wind began to howl around them. Aisley was glad she had ahold of Phelan. He kept her anchored in more ways than one.

After an hour of walking against the wind, it halted as quickly as it had begun. None of it fazed Phelan. He kept walking, moving them closer and closer to the Cuillins.

Fifteen minutes later he stopped and reached into his pack for a bottle of water that he handed to her. Aisley eagerly accepted it while she sat on a boulder and he leaned against another.

The weather was cool, but she was sweating from her exertion. The layers of clothes Phelan had bought were definitely coming in handy. Nothing she’d had in her duffle would have sufficed.

“Each mountain in the black hills has a name,” Phelan said as his gaze fastened on them.

“What are they?”

“Am Bastier, which means ‘the Executioner.’”

“Oh, that makes me feel safe.”

He chuckled and took a drink of his water. “There’s Sgurr a Ghreadaich.”

“And that one translates to?”

“The Peak of Torment.”

Aisley’s brows lifted. “Wow. They keep getting better and better. Is that all?”

“Then there’s Ah Garbh-choire.”

She held up her hand when he started to talk. “Let me guess. It means ‘Doorway to Hell.’”

Phelan tossed back his head and laughed. “Nice try, beauty. It translates to ‘the Wild Cauldron.’”

“That’s so tame compared to the others.”

“Names can be deceiving,” he warned.

Aisley looked at the mountains. “You think we’ll find answers there to the selmyr. What if we find more?”

“That’s what I’m hoping for.”

“More isn’t always good.”

Phelan’s blue-gray eyes scanned the surrounding area. “Throughout my long years, I’ve learned there is verra little that ever turns out to be good.”

Aisley inwardly cringed. She was going to turn out to be one of those things. And that saddened her as nothing else had since losing her daughter.

* * *

It was almost time. He had taken form. It had been but for a moment, but it had happened.

Aisley.

She drew him. He’d felt her presence. It was his hatred that guided him to her time and again. It’s what would lead him to her once more.

He stretched out his mind, searching for her through time and space. There was someone else he wanted to look for, but her name kept slipping from his mind. When he found Aisley, she’d tell him all he wanted to know.

Where he was, time didn’t exist. He simply … was. With no form, he wasn’t sure how his magic stayed with him. Instead of questioning it, he gathered his magic close.

The words of a spell he’d learned … he wasn’t sure when he’d learned it. The words were just there. They fell through his mind like raindrops on a loch. His magic rippled through time until he found Aisley.