While he’d only meant to ease her distress, the moment he touched her so tenderly, he knew he had crossed a line. Pressed his limits. How else to explain the roaring desire that blew through him? The sensation that letting her go in the end might very well break his spirit? Destroy his soul? He pulled his hand away quickly but not before he heard her breath catch. Saw the same jolt of awareness in her eyes. The same blazing desire.
“You should change,” he said to break the tense silence that fell. “’Tis best to look the part when we travel back.”
A little breathless but determined regardless, Madison nodded. “Okay.” She frowned. “Any idea how I do that?”
Granted his magic behaved, he could dress her with the flick of his wrist but figured that might not go over well just yet, so he pointed upstairs. “You’ll find a change of clothing in your room.”
Her eyes rounded. “Really?” Then they narrowed. “How did you know where my room was?”
“Iama wizard.” He gestured at the stairs. “Go change. Then we’ll leave.”
She considered him. “Why do I get the feeling you could have redressed me in a flash?”
“Because I could have.” He couldn’t help a small, much-needed smile. “But there’s always the chance I would have seen you nude, as magic is not always as fast as we might hope.” Not to mention faulty lately. He shrugged a shoulder and smiled a little wider. “Not just that, but a wizard’s eyes tend to catch what most cannot.”
“Ah,” she murmured.
His heart leapt when she met his smile, and their gazes, yet again, held.
“Then thank you for your discretion,” she said.
“I second that.” Riona chuckled and pulled Madison after her when it was clear the two of them were settling into another one of their gazing reveries. “Let’s go see what Cian thinks you’ll look good in, sis.”
Look good in? Everything and nothing.
Most especially, nothing he imagined.
After they headed upstairs, he raked a hand through his hair, braced his hands on the sink, and stared outside. Madison's raven sat on a branch, eyeing him with what felt like fatherly appraisal.
Was Cian good enough for her?
Would he measure up?
Take care of her?
“With everything in me,” he swore under his breath, trying not to picture her changing right above him. Trying not to envision what her porcelain skin looked like. Her gentle curves. Trying not to recall how soft she had felt against him in a dream. The sound of her groans when they moved against each other.
He had not taken her—was fairly certain he could not in a dream—but they had come close. So close. And it had felt incredibly real. As though she were right there. In his arms. Rubbing her moist center against his painfully hard arousal.
Minutes felt like hours before she and Riona came back downstairs. It was well worth the wait, though, to see how lovely she looked in the dark green linen dress and fur cloak he had provided. Though she wore aléinebeneath it, he sensed she had opted to keep her twenty-first-century undergarments on as well.
“This is lovely, Cian,” she said. “It really...”
She kept talking, but he could barely hear her when her dress morphed into a more delicate, flowing gown. She was running toward him. Trying to find him. Save him.
He blinked, and the vision was gone.
“Cian?” she prompted when he didn’t respond to whatever she had said. “Are you all right?”
All right? Likely never again. Not as long as he couldn't have her.
“Ta, an-mhaith,” he replied, instinctually speaking Gaelic. “Yes, very well.” His gaze slid over her. Lingered. “You lookan-álainn, mo ghrá.” He cursed how intimate that sounded and left off the last part in translation because she could never be his love. “Very beautiful.”
She did, too. Painfully so.
“That’s what I said.” Riona eyed her with approval and slid him a saucy grin that said more than words ever could. “I told her medieval Ireland looksgoodon her.”
No interpretation needed. Riona cared naught for prophecy. Only for her sister and what she already saw between Cian and Madison.
