Dark Embrace. Brenda Joyce
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welcomed the pain of landing on the stone floor.
He had leapt time, against his own will, to protect her from evil. He had just served the gods.
His rage increased.
They had landed in the tower room, which remained in absolute darkness. She wept in his arms now, sobbing from the torment of the leap through so many centuries, her body atop his. He was acutely aware of her torment.
He did not want her in his arms. He did not want to feel her pain or be aware of her body. He hated her hair in his face. And he hated her for what she had done to him.
When he had forsaken the gods, he’d done so by spilling his own blood all over Iona’s holiest shrine, where the Brotherhood lived. His defiance was written in blood and death, and not just his own. He’d poured the blood from the Innocent at Elgin all over the shrine, too.
“Ye canna walk away from yer vows.”
Aidan knelt in the blood of his victims, breathing hard. “Get away,” he warned the greatest Master of them all—MacNeil, the Abbot of Iona.
MacNeil came closer. “Yer in grief. I’m sorry, Aidan, sorry fer what was done.”
“What was done?” He leapt to his feet, enraged. “Do ye speak of my son’s murder at my own father’s hands? Did ye see the murder in yer precious crystal? Did ye ken Moray would come an’ steal his life from me?”
Tall, muscular and golden, MacNeil looked at Aidan with compassion. “I canna see all, Aidan. Ye must let Ian go, lad.”
“I will never let him go!” he shouted.
“His death was written,” MacNeil began, clasping his shoulder grimly. “In time, ye’ll ken the truth.”
Aidan wrenched away from the man who had chosen him. “Written? Is that why the gods wouldna let me leap to save him? Did they block my powers so my boy would die?”
MacNeil did not answer. It was answer enough.
“Aidan?” Brianna breathed.
He jerked, shocked that such a painful memory would dare to claim him again. He had just served the damned gods, he thought, as if Ian hadn’t been taken from him.
“Aidan?”
He turned to stare into a pair of beautiful green eyes, framed with lush, dark lashes. He felt her heart now, beating against his, and he was so aware of her it was almost as if he’d never held a woman before. A vaguely familiar tension began as he stared at her, along with a flutter of anticipation. It had been so long that he could barely recognize the sensation, and he was confused.
Did he desire her sexually?
His hands were on her waist. Beneath the baggy garments, her waist was small, with no flesh to spare. Their gazes held, hers wide, and he moved his hands up her rib cage, beneath her clothes, until her heavy breasts bumped them.
She gasped.
His manhood surged between them, against her belly. His mouth felt dry. He was tempted to touch her breasts.
His blood coursed even faster now. What was he doing? Although he had been shot three times and the leap was weakening, he had the ability to heal unnaturally and quickly. In a short time, his wounds would be gone. But her power could restore him instantly. Holding her, he could almost taste her power. He could take her now; she deserved such abuse for daring to interfere in his life.
He was indifferent to sexual pleasure, indifferent to a woman’s face, her hair, her eyes. He desired no one. He lived with lust; it was entirely different. Power served him so well.
He didn’t want to be aware of the feeling of her body against his.
He should never have taken her with him.
If he took her power now, she wouldn’t look at him with any faith or hope at all. In fact, she’d be incapable of doing very much of anything for days afterward, until her body had recovered from his rampage. That knowledge served him well, because he hated hearing her thoughts; he hated her wondering about what had happened; he hated her compassion and pity—just as he hated her.
He reached for the snap on her jeans and bent her mind to his.
She moaned, long and low, eyes closing.
The sound was familiar. All women instantly succumbed. Suddenly he was even more furious—with her, with himself, with the gods, the deamhanain—with everyone. He pulled her down angrily and moved over her, and she looked up at him, her eyes glazed with the desire he had deliberately instilled in her.
Now she would not pity him or believe in him, or anything else. She would be his sexual slave until he released her from the enchantment.
Moments ago, at her home in the future, she had desired him—and he hadn’t enchanted her. But she had loved him for a long time….
He didn’t want her love, either!
For one moment he stared at her face.
She was everything he was not, everything he had once been.
He cried out, cursing, and leapt to his feet. He breathed hard. “Return to yer senses.” He whirled and strode from the tower, slamming the door so hard behind him that the wood splintered, the panels shearing apart.
His mind spun incoherently as he rushed down the corridor. When he opened his chamber door, Anna Marie sat up in the bed, clad only in a silk chemise.
“Get out,” he roared at her.
Her eyes widened in shock.
He decided he would murder her on the spot if she didn’t leave immediately. She understood and paled, slipping from the bed. Circling him, she fled.
He slammed the chamber door closed and the stone walls reverberated.
Then he leaned against the wall, and for the first time in decades, he succumbed to a moment of utter confusion.
What had just happened to him?
Why hadn’t he taken her, using her for the power he needed and craved, as he did them all?
Deep inside his body, something flickered, and he feared it was his soul.
His answer to the unfamiliar, unwanted feeling was instantaneous. He took a crooked chair and threw it at the wall, breaking it in pieces. A memory came swiftly, one long forgotten. Once, before his son’s murder, his home had been filled with beautiful furnishings and treasures collected from all over the world, from many different times. His brother Malcolm had broken a Louis XIV chair in a fit of rage over the woman who was now his wife, Claire.
Aidan clutched his temples. He did not want to remember having once had a home filled with beauty. After Awe had been burned to the ground in 1458, he had never considered refurbishing it with any luxury.
Very deliberately, he shut his mind down. The past was finished. He would never enjoy such a home again, nor did he care to. As for the woman in the tower, he did not know what had just happened, but it did not matter. He’d lost his soul long ago and that was exactly what he wanted.
The woman, Brianna, had to go back to where she had come from as soon as she was strong enough to withstand another leap. She had brought forth memories he had no wish to entertain, and he did not like the fact that he had hesitated to satisfy his lust for power and life. He was a half deamhan. He decided that if she came close another time, he’d make certain she feared him as much as the rest of Alba. The next time, he would take her. Maybe he’d go so far as to take pleasure in her death.
The idea was disturbing.
BRIE SAT UP IN THE COLD DARKNESS, stunned.
Aidan had just slammed from the room. She couldn’t breathe, but not because every movement