Page 22 of Proven By The Highlander (Highlander Forever #15)
CHAPTER 22
N ot a single dream interrupted her sleep… the next thing she knew, she was coming drowsily awake. The cave was much darker now, the fire having burned down to barely more than embers, and there was something about the coldness in the air that told her that dawn couldn’t be far off. For a moment, she was disoriented… but the smell of Caelan’s cloak wrapped tightly around her naked body brought the memories of the previous evening back to her in a rush. She felt herself blushing a little at what had happened, a little embarrassed – now that the peak of her passion had faded – by how quickly she’d thrown herself into his arms. In her defense, though, he’d been just as enthusiastic about their union…
But where was he? She realized with a jolt that she couldn’t feel the warmth of his arms around her, and the surprise was enough to dispel her sleepiness enough that she sat up, still wrapped in the cloak. She didn’t have to look far to find him. He was on the other side of the cave, standing just in front of the entrance where the bushes obscured the view to the cove. In the gloom, she could just make out the curve of his shoulders… he was only half-dressed, his chest bare above the belt of his pants. But he was armed, she realized, a cold chill settling into her stomach. He had his iron dirk clutched in one fist, and the lines of his body told her that he intended to use it.
“Caelan?”
He jumped as though he’d been shocked, spinning around at the sound of her voice, and lifting the blade in his hand for a moment before he relaxed enough to lower it. Looking frustrated, he hushed her with a finger to his lips, then turned back to the entrance of the cave. Worried now, she rose to her feet and padded across the cave, still wrapped in his cloak. He shushed her again, and she frowned, rising on tiptoe to try to see what he was looking at through the entrance to the cave. Through the thick branches, she could barely make out anything… the occasional glint of moonlight on the water, the distant sound of splashing. But Caelan’s jaw was tight, and she had a feeling she knew what he was seeing when she looked up at his face…
“It’s there,” he whispered, his eyes dark. “It’s right there. I could—” His fingers twitched, and she looked down at the blade in his hand. Her heart sank into her toes and she felt cold fear clutch at her heart.
“Caelan, no.”
“It’s iron,” he whispered. “All it would take would be one good blow… if I jumped onto its back, I could deliver a fatal blow before it could…”
“What, while she dragged you to the bottom of the Loch?” Leanne demanded, furious and afraid in equal measures at what he was suggesting. “Are you joking?”
“Far from it,” he snapped, eyes burning. “Didn’t you offer to help, Leanne? Didn’t you offer to help me search?—”
“I offered to help you search for your brother,” she snapped. “Helping you with a suicidal attack on the Monster wasn’t part of the deal. I can’t stop you from wanting to kill her, but I can insist that you don’t kill yourself in the process.” She didn’t bother keeping her voice down this time, and Caelan uttered a soft curse, his eyes narrowing as the distant sound of splashing met her ears.
“Great. Now it’s gone.”
Good, Leanne thought faintly, feeling a rush of relief. She willed the Monster to steer clear of this cove, at least for a little while… surely there was less dangerous fish to search for somewhere else? “I’m sorry,” she said now, not meaning int but not wanting to antagonize him any further.
But he just sighed. “No, you’re not. And you shouldn’t be. You were right, it was a damned fool idea.” He sighed, sheathing the dirk before looking back at her. “No sense killing the beast if I die in the process, too.”
“Imagine how your brother would feel,” she pointed out.
He nodded, his expression tight. Then he pulled her into an embrace, his arms warm and solid around her… and without necessarily meaning for it to happen, she reached up to claim his lips in a kiss. Strange, how natural that felt, how easy… and then she felt his arms tighten around her and she giggled against his lips as he hoisted her off her feet and carried her back across the cave to the bedroll. It was still a little warm, but she shivered theatrically regardless when he laid her down, and it wasn’t long before he was holding her close again, their desire rising as rapidly as it had earlier.
This time, her climax felt less like being struck by lightning and more like a great wave that rolled through her again and again, banishing all the tension that had built in her over the last few weeks. Sated again, she flopped against his side, breathing hard as she ran a hand through her sweat-damp hair. Caelan pressed a gentle kiss to her temple, and she sighed with contentment, wondering if this was going to be a reliable strategy for distracting him from his mission of vengeance against the Loch Ness Monster.
Maybe not, she reflected as she drifted back into that dreamy, contented sleep. But she’d certainly give it her best shot.
This time, though, her sleep was less than dreamless. It started that way, of course, Caelan’s warm arms lulling her to sleep, but the darkness was soon interrupted by a restlessness that found her walking down the shore of the Loch again, this time surrounded by a thick, dense mist that made it nearly impossible to see more than a few feet in front of her. On top of that, her clothing kept changing… every time she looked down, she saw something different, from Clan Grant’s tartan, to her old clothes from the twenty-first century, to the medieval garb that Caelan had removed so effortlessly from her body to make love to her earlier. This was a dream, she realized faintly. She was having a dream.
But that didn’t seem to be enough to wake her up. She kept walking, confused that she wasn’t coming out of the dream, worried by what that might mean. She kept peering through the fog in search of the slender, glowing figures of the Sidhe, the most notable feature of her most recent dream… but of course, that hadn’t been a dream, had it? It had only felt that way because of the improbability of it. Supernatural brain surgeons, repairing the damage that had almost killed her… then dumping her in the Loch. She looked out across the water, saw a glimpse of herself floundering in the shallows, then caught her breath as she saw the Monster swimming up to rescue her. But something was wrong. The creature in the water wasn’t the gentle giant she remembered… no, this was undeniably the face of a vicious predator, long, savage teeth jutting out of a maw that was far more sharklike than she remembered it being. She watched it, holding her breath… then looked down, realizing that she was holding a dirk and a crossbow.
Her perspective shifted again, and suddenly she was splashing in the water… and there, on the coast, was Caelan, his dirk raised and his expression set with determination. She was sitting on the monster’s back, gripping its sides with her legs like it was some kind of aquatic horse, but no matter how hard she tried to scream a warning to Caelan, she couldn’t get her voice working…. The Monster was swimming closer and closer to him, its neck growing longer and longer, those sharp, wicked teeth jutting out of its mouth… wake up, she told herself, almost wild with terror at what she was about to witness. This is all just a dream, this isn’t real, wake up, wake up before —
And then Caelan’s knife was raised, and she watched in horror as the two foes fell upon each other, blood flying in every direction as they tore one another apart…
“Leanne! Leanne, wake up!”
She could hear herself sobbing and wailing, felt her body shaking as she came out of the dream to find Caelan kneeling beside her, still wrapped in the blanket they’d been sharing and shaking her by the shoulders. She sat bolt upright, fiercely relieved to find herself in the cave, not on the shore of the Loch… and to see Caelan, safe and sound despite the look of acute worry on his face. She took deep, steadying breaths, trying to calm her racing heart, murmuring reassurances to Caelan that she was okay, that it was just a bad dream.
“What were you dreaming about?”
She hesitated, not wanting to tell him what she’d dreamed in case he took it as a sign that he was right to hunt down the Monster… but he seemed to read it in her face regardless, and he sighed as he gathered her close in a tight embrace that did a lot to dispel the lingering adrenaline.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” she murmured against his chest.
He pulled away, smiling softly down at her with an odd look in his gray eyes.
“What?”
“Do you have any idea how frightened I was when I stepped out of the cave last night to see you so close to that beast?” he asked her softly.
She looked back at him, taken aback by the intensity of his voice. “I just thought you were angry because I’d found where you were hiding,” she murmured.
Caelan uttered a soft huff of laughter, but his eyes were solemn. “No, lass. No, I was frightened for you. I thought for certain that the beast was about to harm you… and that made me realize how much I cared for you. How much I care for you,” he corrected himself, holding her gaze. “That was foolish of me, last night, wanting to go out there unarmored with nothing but my blade. I won’t do something that foolish again, you understand? I promise.”
“Good,” she said softly, resting her forehead against his broad chest for a moment and feeling fiercely grateful that it had all been a horrible dream.
“And what’s more,” he added softly, pulling back to catch her eyes again, “I’ve decided to take you up on your offer.”
“My offer?”
“Your offer to help me search,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “If it still stands, that is?”
She nodded, eyes widening in surprise and delight. She’d expected him to turn her away, to send her back to the Keep… this was a welcome surprise. “Of course it does. I’m so glad, Caelan. We’ll cover twice as much ground together, I promise.”
He nodded, but there was a lingering unease in his eyes. “That being said, lass… if we don’t find him, you know what I’ll have to do.”
She hesitated for a long moment before she nodded slow agreement. As much as she hated the idea of him going after the Monster again, she knew that this was the best deal she was going to get… an agreement to suspend his hunt for a little while at least. She only hoped that she could come through with the big promises she’d been making… that with her help, the two of them might just find some trace of Bram and resolve the mystery in a way that didn’t involve any further bloodshed.
And to think she’d thought that her arrival here might be less eventful than her friends’ had been.