“Really?” she said a tad hoarsely. She swallowed hard, the emotion in her luminous eyes unmistakable.
“Really,” I confirmed gently, ashamed of my behavior thus far. Doing what I should have done far earlier, I held out the crook of my elbow. “Might I escort you to dinner?”
Rather than take my arm, she kept staring at me, trying to understand and perhaps even distrusting the change in me.
“I wouldnae blame you if you would prefer I escort you back to your chamber.” I shook my head. “I have not been the best host, and for that, I apologize.”
“Why now?” Her brow furrowed. “What changed?”
“I wish I knew.” I shook my head slowly. “In the spirit of honesty, I feel…awakened, for lack of a better way to explain it. As if my eyes are only now opening after having been closed for far too long.”
“Because of Storm,” she assumed.
“I think mayhap, aye.” I recalled my more recent time with Storm. “Her magic was verra much tied to fire. The same sort of fire we just witnessed on me and the blade.”
“So what?” Aspen wondered, less wary now and more curious. “She was here without us seeing her?”
“I dinnae think ‘twas quite like that.” How to phrase it? “More like she touched me from afar…touchedusvia the blade.” Sensing something, my gaze fell to Aspen's wrist, and I held out my hand. “Might I see your tattoo?”
She hesitated a moment before giving me her hand and then pulled up her sleeve, confirming what I suspected.
It had changed.
“Oh,wow,” she whispered, once again awed and with good reason. Her tattoo no longer depicted just the Viking blade but dragon wings on either side of it, with a red gem in the center, framed by MacLeod colors. When I brushed the pad of my thumb over it, her eyes drifted shut, and she exhaled as if she’d been holding her breath for too long. Her eyes opened to mine, and she murmured, “Youarehim, aren’t you?”
Knowing she referred to what she’d said the first time we met, I could only respond based on how I felt right now. To put it better, I could only respond the way my inner beast demanded because it became clear in a matter of hours, if not minutes, that whether I was or wasn’t, I refused to see anyone else fill that role.
“I believe I am,” I said softly, the words coming easily, whatever they truly meant. All I knew was I wanted to start overwith her. Be close to her. Keep her right here in my castle until I exploredevery corner of her, inside and out. From her every memory and thought to how her lips felt beneath mine.
How her flesh felt against mine.
“Then I accept your offer to dine,” she said just as softly. “But I have a condition, and something tells me you might not like it.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
–Aspen–
FROM THE MOMENT Broderick saved me from plummeting to my death in the strange chamber with no wall, my heart had been hammering. If not from the near fall hundreds of feet into an angry, frothing ocean, then from how it felt being against his strong body when he wrapped me up in his arms. When he cupped my head tenderly, my shaking subsided swiftly, but not my overwhelming awareness of him, from his masculine scent to his warmth.
The longer I was against him, the more aware of him I became, and I struggled not to inhale deeply so I could pull in his scent even more. Especially when heat blew through me, and a sharp ache throbbed between my thighs. I was familiar enough with arousal, but this seemed so much more intense. Like I wanted to climb up his tall, muscular body and straddle him. The feeling was primaland tempting. Far different from anything I had experienced before.
When he stepped away from me sooner than I knew he wanted to, I got the feeling he was catching my scent in ways normal people could not. More than that, I sensed he was as close to acting on it as I had been. And something about that, combined with everything I already felt, made my vision haze red with my inner dragon again.
If all that wasn’t overwhelming enough, I felt him in a whole new way when I gazed at him through my dragon eyes. Like I looked beyond my imagination to who had been standing there all along. After that, flames curled over him, and the sword and my tattoo changed.
More so,hechanged.
Whatever happened, he had felt Storm’s presence for a moment, then claimed it was as if he’d woken from a long sleep. As if he could see clearly now.
And he was looking right at me.Seeingme.Desiringme.
Honestly, it was hard to trust because the change came on so suddenly, but eventually, I agreed to dine with him, but under one condition.
“If there are other areas like this, that’s where I’d like to dine,” I said, referring to the unusual chamber exposed to the elements in which we stood. “The highest point possible.”
“’Tis a bad idea,” he predictably said, given my near-leap to the ocean below, shaking his head. “Not after what you almost did, not to mention outside threats that might be drawn to a lass like you.”
“Nevertheless, that’s my condition.”
