Dani picked up the brooch, heavy and as big as her palm. The central round amethyst stone had been worn smooth. Four thistle flowers, made of faceted amethysts, surrounded it.
She held it beneath the reading lamp. "What are these glowing yellow stones?"
"Citrines. The jeweler said the gold foil backing reflects the light, giving them a gleaming shine."
"The thistle leaves are so intricate. It's beautiful. I'll treasure this always."
Now, if only she could make good her getaway without those two clingy men seeing her.
∞∞∞
A couple of weeks later, Dani tried to pry her eyes open and pay attention to the college faculty meeting going on around her. She was a professor, dammit, not a slacker student daydreaming her life away.
But the sexy Highland warrior wouldn't release her. He dragged her back down under his spell. Darkness and shadows reigned in her dream, but in the candlelight, a man's gorgeous face came into focus. Seduction gleamed in his devilish blue eyes. A long straight scar ran down the left side of his face from forehead to square jaw, giving him a dangerous appeal. He didn't offer a smile with his sensual lips; instead, he kissed her cheek.
With hot breath, he murmured foreign words in her ear.Gaelic.The unusual sounds rolled off his tongue just before he flicked it against her neck. Warm, wet, tingling. Now,thiswas her kind of man.
Fighting down the sensuality, she blinked herself back into reality. Distinguished Professor Langley paced at the front of the cafeteria, expounding on his insurance gripes as he had been for the past hour.
Dani's eyes slid closed again. The delicious stranger dragged her back into fantasies so real she smelled the clean, masculine scent of his skin. The warmth of his bare muscular body burned into her.
He kissed her all over, sending excitement and shivers over her skin. She moaned.
The monotonous droning voice shut off, and quietness surrounded her. Dani catapulted back into reality. Her eyes popping open, she found several quizzical gazes locked on her—judgmental, patronizing. Amused? One or two bit back smiles.
Oh no. Did I just moan in the middle of a faculty meeting?
She cleared her throat. "Sorry. Toothache." She rubbed her jaw. She'd never had a toothache, but it was the only lie she could think of on the fly.
She'd been Assistant Professor of English for less than a year and had not yet been accepted into their tight, tenured ranks.
Matriarchal Dr. Munoz scrutinized her over the red-framed reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose. "You should have a dentist examine it. You might need a filling."
"Do you have dental insurance?" Langley asked.
"Yes." Dani arose. "If you'll excuse me, I think I'll go see if my dentist can fit me in," she mumbled and fled the room.
Outside, the late afternoon heat and humidity hit her in the face.
"How embarrassing. What's wrong with me?" Her face still burning, she dropped into the blazing hot driver's seat of her car. After turning the AC on high and pulling out of the parking lot, she sped across Asheville to her apartment, thankful rush hour was almost over.
Once she locked the door of her small studio, she dropped onto the bed, and her heavy eyelids slid closed. She drifted, not to sleep, but back into a fantasy that had started two weeks ago, right after her sister's engagement party.
Uninvited,hehad shown up with his belted plaid and broadsword—the warrior with flame blue eyes, gorgeous beyond belief, even with the facial scar. At the moment, he traced insistent, roughened fingertips over her bare, sensitized skin. What should she name her imaginary lover?
Oh, who cared if he had a name?
She had been abstinent too long. And now she'd become obsessed with a figment of her own imagination—a sizzling hot, hungry, hypnotizing figment.
In her fantasy, she lay stretched out before him in the glow of the flickering firelight. His wicked gaze stared into hers for a long moment, then drifted down her body. He followed with tingling kisses that scorched her skin. His muscles rippled and flexed, battle scars marring his skin in a few places. She stroked her fingers over their roughness, wondering how he had been injured… wanting to ask but unable to muster enough energy to talk.
The jagged scars felt so real.
He felt real.
She didn't have to ask him to do anything. He read her mind and unleashed his sensuality on her. She had never imagined such intense pleasure was possible.
Her phone's ringtone sounded, and she startled awake, alone in the twilight-filled room. Had she been asleep? Was that a dream or reality? She could almost smell him—musky male blended with sandalwood and cedar.
