Page 45 of Highlander’s Curse (The Daughters of the Glen #8)

He had seen his friend’s pain and recognized the truth of the things Roderick had told him.

Losing forever the opportunity to share how he felt with Abby would stain even his afterlife with the unending sorrow of regret.

Roderick’s advice was sound. Once heeded, it had only been a matter of gathering his own courage to act on that advice.

Now that the words he’d struggled to find all day had finally passed his lips, Colin waited, his heart pounding in his chest. If Abby was going to reject him, it would be now.

She covered his fingers with hers, drawing them away from her face and clasping them tightly between her two hands.

“You don’t have to say things you don’t really mean to get me to sleep with you. You should know that by now. I haven’t made any secret of the fact that I’m attracted to you.”

Her voice shook even as her hands trembled against his. That she feared rejection as much as he did was clear to him now.

“What you feel is no a matter of attraction, wife. It’s the love shared by those souls meant to be together.”

As the only physical proof he could think to show her, he opened her hand, brushing his index finger over the healing wound that marred her soft palm.

“An accident with Jonathan’s knife,” she explained, her voice soft and breathless as he stroked his finger over the spot again.

“An accident I felt in my dreams because of our connection. One that called me to find you. To protect you.” He opened his hand next to hers to once again display the twin to her wound.

She caught up his hand, tracing her finger over the mark in his palm. “I’d forgotten this. You were going to tell me about it, but with everything that happened, I forgot. How can something like this be possible?”

Her beautiful eyes had rounded, whether in fear or amazement, he couldn’t be sure.

He knew only that he wanted to shield her, to hold her as she came to terms with the reality of what he told her.

He lifted his hand from her grasp to caress the back of her neck and draw her down to him.

Her lips were warm and eager against his.

“We are fated to be together. Together from the beginning of time until the end of time,” he whispered before losing himself in her kiss.

His mother had been right. This woman was his destiny. On some level he had known it from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her. His own foolish pride and arrogance had been the barrier that had kept him from recognizing it, from admitting it. Roderick’s pain had broken that barrier.

“Thank the Fates,” he murmured, trailing his lips down the soft skin of her throat.

She moaned as he slid his hands under the tunic.

Urging the fabric up and over her head, he pinned her arms in place, outstretched.

Her lightly tanned skin begged for his touch and he obliged, tracing his tongue down a pathway from her inner elbow to her shoulder and lower, to her firm, rounded breasts.

He molded his hands along her sides, down to her waist, tightening his grip to hold her close. Her heart pounded against his cheek, almost a match to his own.

“I still can’t commit to staying here with you, Colin.

” She sounded breathless, as if she fought for enough air to speak the words.

“I need you to understand. I think . . .” She gasped as he took her nipple into his mouth, pausing in her little speech.

“I can’t believe I’m going to say this out loud.

I don’t think. I know. I know I love you, too.

But I can’t stay here. I have to go home. I’m not meant to live in this time.”

He slid his hand over her abdomen, enjoying the twitch of her muscles responding to his touch, caressing the soft skin down to her inner thigh and over the heat between her legs.

“Just as I must do the things I am meant to do, love. But we have now, do we no?” As Roderick had counseled, this precious moment was not to be wasted.

Though her brow furrowed, she smiled her response, her hands skimming over his chest and lower, down to his waist. Her fingers trailed into the dark hair at his navel and tracked down.

When they closed around his manhood, his mind went momentarily blank, all thought erased by the ecstasy that existed in her touch, slowly undulating up and down his shaft.

“No,” he growled. He wouldn’t last long if she kept that up.

Pulling her hands away from his body, he lowered her to her back and fit himself into the warm cradle between her legs. She lifted her hips to meet his first thrust, locking her ankles behind his back.

“All the way this time, agreed?” Her soft fingers traced a path down his chest as she spoke, her eyes catching and holding his.

“Agreed.” By far the most pleasurable bargain he’d ever consented to.

He drove deep, over and over, his face buried in the crook of her neck. She gave as good as she got, urging him to continue, pressing her fingers into his skin as she arched her back and cried out in her pleasure.

Gritting his teeth, he refused to give in to his own release until he had brought her to the edge once again. Perspiration slicked their bodies when he thrust deeply inside her heat, her little gasps of pleasure lost in their combined groans as they met their climax together.

It was like nothing he’d experienced before. Golds and silvers shot through his mind, melding together in one great shining whole before shattering and splintering in a display that he’d swear shook the ground beneath them.

It was only afterward, as he held her trembling body in his arms and they drifted on the edge of sleep, that he realized the pounding in their chests beat in unison, as if they shared but a single heart.