Page 24 of Shaw

Shaw reached to touch her arm, shocked to find her skin chilled to the touch and yet somehow radiating heat as if feverish. “You’re ill. I shall take you see Duncan.”

“Wait. Give me a sec, okay?” She closed her eyes, breathing in and out a few times before she regarded him, her eyes tearful. “That beach looked a lot like the park where I work.” She sniffed and pressed the heel of her hand to one eye. “Those men might have belonged to a tribe of early people that lived a little further inland.”

“You recognized them, then,” he said, unsure as to why that would upset her so greatly.

“I’ve only watched some history shows on TV.” Julianne made an odd sound before she added, “Shaw, I think we did go to California, but in this time. Your time. The twelfth century.” She shook her head. “Why didn’t I realize that before? I’m such a ditz.”

That was when Shaw knew she had been not only disturbed but wounded by the experience. He imagined it the same as returning home after a long absence to find the stronghold emptied and abandoned by one’s clan.

My brothers, they waited for me. They longed for me. Didnae kin of this poor beauty do the same in her time?

“’Tis no matter,” he told her. “We shall ask the laird consult the druids for their aid in controlling your boon. Surely you need only guidance so you may use your power and cross time as well as distance.”

“I don’t know if I should go back to the future now.” She climbed off the rock and walked toward the Stone Forest, stopping to reach out and touch the branch of a willow. Her fingers trembled when she pressed them against the reddish-brown hardened bark. “What if someone finds out what I can do? How do I explain that a ring from a magic Scottish clan turned me into like this thing from a space show? Won’t they instantly Area 51 me? Not only that, but why do I suddenly understand a totally old tribal language? I mean, I barely get English right half the time, you know?”

Julianne drew her hand back, a dark red stone leaf in her fingers. Long and narrow, with a graceful curve to it, its stem ended in a tiny curl. She smoothed her thumb over the textured surface and tucked it in her pocket.

“It’s not fair,” she told the stone willow. “I can’t handle all this. What the heck did I ever do anyway? I never cheated on Mitch. I never lied to anyone. Okay, I didn’t say stuff when I should have, but everyone does that. If I ever told Eva that after all those dye jobs her hair looked like an old scouring pad, and that red lipstick she loved kept getting on her front teeth, that just would have made her cry.”

Shaw followed but kept his distance as she continued muttering under her breath. He ached with the need to comfort her, but knew no words that would offer her any solace. Julianne had left her life behind in the future, one that included a husband and a home. Everything familiar to her would not come into existence for another nine centuries. He would never know Eva or dye jobs or lipstick. He had nothing to give her but more sadness and perhaps terror.

“This is what it’s like for you, too, isn’t it?” She stopped and regarded him. “Being here, but not being a part of all this because of your ink. Always having to stay back from your family so they don’t freak. I don’t have a family anymore, but it’s the same for me. Having no one and nothing you can count on but yourself is tragic and lonely.”

He could see the glistening tracks of tears winding down her cheeks. He wanted to wipe them away, in truth kiss them away, but some part of him knew that was not what she needed. She spoke to him from the heart; he needed to do the same.

“Your family, they’ve all died, then?” When she nodded he held out his hand. “You’re no’ alone, my lady. You may depend on me until such time as you no longer need or wish such aid.” As she started to shake her head he stepped closer. “’Tis only fair, for you saved me in your time. Now ’tis my turn, aye?”

“You’ve got enough on your plate. I mean, you don’t need more trouble,” she told him. “Besides, I can’t stay.”

“I wish share in your trouble,” he told her softly, holding out his hand. “’Tis of no consequence if you choose go or remain. Rely on me, my merrow lass.”

Uncertainty filled her eyes. “If you totally don’t mind…until I figure out how to control the transducer thing, if you would stick by me, and maybe talk through stuff with me, that would help.”

As she joined hands with him, he ignored the clenching in his gut and the judders of sensation from the physical contact. She had asked of him what he would have done regardless. She trusted him with the enormity of this boon she had been gifted as well. Julianne might weep and tremble, but even in the depths of terror she had spine and sense.

Aye, and I’m half in love with her already. He could not have her, of course; the beast made anything more than a night of facking impossible for him.

“I’ll do the same for you,” she said, trailing her fingertips over his marked skin, leaving a swath of fine, fiery heat in their wake. “If your dark thing likes me that much, maybe it’ll listen to me.”

“’Tisnae what the beast desires.” Even as he said that Shaw winced. “Dinnae offer the facking thing any part of yourself, my lady. ’Tis like a crazed animal.”

She stepped closer, curling her arm against his to keep hold of his hand. That pressed his forearm into the sweet valley between her chebs, which seemed to swell on either side.

“What does it want, Chief?” she asked, her lips curving as she kept stroking his skinwork.

In that moment the frigid black inside him melted into a pooling, drenching weight so heavy and hot Shaw would not have been surprised if his body had sprouted flames. His cock, which ever rose to any occasion he wished use its broad girth, hardened so fast it seemed determined to tear through his trews so it might thrust into her lovely quim. He released her hand, and took a step back to break all contact with her.

“Dinnae provoke the evil in me, lass,” he said, his voice so hoarse now the words seemed to sift out of him on a wave of sand. “For I reckon it wants you as much as I do.”

Instead of cowering or running away Julianne walked up to him and put her arms around his neck.

“Good,” she said, astounding him. “We can use that, maybe, to get through to it. Doesn’t it have a name?”

Shaw knew his hands were pulling her closer. It seemed his will had crumbled, and all he could think of in the moment was how sweetly she fit against him, her long body nothing as he’d expected. She had the firmness of muscle instead of the soft flesh of most female mortals on the island. She also looked directly at him as she uttered such ridiculous schemes, and he suspected the beast could not only hear but understand her meaning as well. Yet instead of lusting for the taste of her flesh and blood, the darkness only hummed with a strange pleasure, like some pampered pet.

The facking thing likes her.

“Why should you name the beast, Mistress Scott?” Shaw asked her, longing for what he did not know.