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“Kiss!” a woman cried—Rogene, Bryanna realized.
“Kiss?” followed Angus’s booming voice.
“Yeah!” shouted David, Rogene’s younger brother, drunk and slurpy, his accent strong now. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he sounded like an American. “Kiss her, ye lucky sonuvabitch…”
“David!” came Catrìona’s outraged call.
Raghnall’s gaze fell on Bryanna’s lips, and a different sort of darkness filled his eyes. The chill in her bones was suddenly chased away by a scorching heat wave that rushed through her body.
“A kiss?” murmured Raghnall. “A husband kisses his wife, aye, lass?”
He took her hand, his warm, rough skin scraping against hers, and stood, pulling her up. A kiss…the thought of his lips on hers turned her legs into melted chocolate.
It’s a dream, she kept repeating inside her head. It’s a dream. You can kiss him. You can do anything you want with him.
And she wanted to do…everything.
He pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her, clasping her in his steely prison. God, he was hot…hot and hard-muscled underneath that dark crimson tunic.
But all awareness evaporated from her head when he leaned down and his lips met hers.
They were like falling into a cloud…a warm, soft, light cloud, where just those kisses existed. His scent was in her nostrils, something musky and earthy and mysterious. Like burning a fire in the middle of the night in the woods, under a sky of stardust spilled all over endless indigo.
She surrendered completely, forgetting everyone and everything around them, as the warmth of desire spread through her veins. As though he’d felt it, too, he deepened the kiss, pressing his lips into hers, urging his tongue inside her mouth. And she opened up, letting him in, drinking him like exquisite wine.
His tongue brushed against her, gliding, teasing, tickling. He set a fire somewhere deep within her; the apex of her thighs began tingling and burning. She wanted more of this—his hot, hard body, his tongue, gliding and teasing and playing—all over her skin. She wanted to dissolve around him, to become one, to lick and glide against him, to…
“What the fuck is this?”
The male voice came from somewhere nearby. She ignored it at first, brushing it off like an annoying fly, but Raghnall froze and pulled away. She clenched Raghnall’s sleeves to her, willing him to continue this heaven, never wanting it to stop, but he stared at something behind her. She looked back over her shoulder.
David held her bright-purple purse, glaring at it like he was trying to make it spontaneously combust.
“Are ye all right, lad?” asked Raghnall, letting her go.
David didn’t look all right. His eyes were glossy and bloodshot, his disheveled hair was strangely short, looking like a modern-day haircut that hadn’t been trimmed for a long time. He was standing but swaying a little at the same time.
He was clearly drunk and pointed at her purse with his finger. “That”—he stabbed the air—“does not look medieval.”
Raghnall frowned at Bryanna’s violet, faux-leather fringed purse. “Medieval? What the hell are ye talking about, lad?”
But David ignored him. “Rogene, is this your purse?” he yelled in perfect American English.
Bryanna frowned. Yes, things were often odd in her dreams: her speaking Gaelic, people switching to American English in the middle of a medieval feast.
But things that were odd were accumulating. It didn’t feel like a dream. It all looked too real, too logical, and everything around her had too much substance. And then that feeling she had gotten when Raghnall had looked at her like she’d burned him…
That coldness… That rejection…
She’d thought it was emotional. But actually, it was physical.
The dizziness returned. The weakness in her legs that she’d thought was from the shock of Raghnall’s cold reaction to her was still there. Things were swimming in front of her, and it wasn’t the light-headedness from a kiss anymore.
It was the light-headedness of a diabetic with too much glucose in her blood. All those custard pastries she ate, and the battered duck, and the ale she drank…
Rogene stood up and came to them, frowning. As though acutely attuned to Rogene and David, James came, too, followed by Catrìona and Angus. Everyone gathered around Bryanna, Raghnall, and the purse.
“Is this your purse?” David repeated in English, his consonants slurred.
