Nine
What I needed was answers. I turned back to the door and turned the handle. The door was no longer locked and opened easily. I stormed up the stairs to Duncan’s room and didn’t bother knocking, just tore inside. Only he wasn’t there.
I turned and called Fiona. Just as I expected, she appeared behind me in a second. I had questions for her, they could wait.
“Take me to Duncan,” I demanded.
She nodded, but we didn’t head downstairs to the grand hall that housed that single long table Duncan sat and ate at. Instead, we headed up the winding stairs to the top of one of the turrets. There was a room beyond, and Fiona made no move to go inside. I marched forward.
“There you are,” I said in greeting.
His back was to me, gracing me with an incredible view of his perfect ass. And why was I a burning mess of hormones whenever I was near the man?
When he didn’t answer, I marched around to face him. “I know you heard me. What is this?” I held up my arm, baring my wrist, and went on. “It wasn’t here when I arrived. Then I go back in time, and we get married. Now here it is.”
He studied me like a science project. “What do ye mean, it wasn’t there?”
I reached for his right wrist, the one that had the other half of my butterfly and held it up as his sleeve slid away to reveal the image before letting go. “This. You locked me in a room. I somehow passed through the locked door and ended up in the mid-1600s ready to marry you. Then in some cultlike fashion, you bed me but not. There was no penetration on your part in a roomful of people. You stormed out and had a weird conversation with winged men. They say I’m a time traveler—”
“Time walker,” he corrected.
I pointed at him and closed the distance between us to stab said finger in his rock-hard chest. “See? You remember this, yet you hated me on sight in this life and the past. Why?”
He grabbed my hand to stop me. As he loomed over me, I could feel the disgust rolling off him in waves. “Ye want to know why I feel the way I do?” I nodded briskly, trying not to let him see how affected I was by his touch. “You.” This time, he actually used the proper word. “Ye leave me wanting ye for centuries. Any other woman I bed does nothing to soothe the ache of being between yer thighs. I hate wanting ye.” He let go of my hand like one would discard something in the trash. “Does that answer yer question?”
“No. Ye din-nae answer my question,” I mocked. “Why? What does this mean? Fated mates? We’re married—”
Though I’d heard the men’s explanation, I needed him to confirm. He hadn’t agreed or denied when speaking to them. But he’d protected me since my arrival whether he’d admit it or not. He kept Cin from killing me and the men from taking me. At least at first until they’d offered him something I couldn’t.
“We are not married.”
I narrowed my eyes and took a step back so I didn’t have to crane my neck so far back to see him. “We are married.” I reached up and touched the bluebell crown still upon my head. “The priest said it was so.”
“Prior,” he said.
I waved him off. “Your son gave me this. And we already had this argument back in 1645.”
“It’s 1646,” he stated, but his eyes traveled back to the floral crown on my head.
“See, that is what I’m talking about. I was in 1646. Why am I not more freaked out about that? Instead, I’m more worried about the fact we are somehow bound together, and you hate me for it. I want to know why.”
Our eyes locked again. “I answered that, lass.”
“It’s not ‘lass.’ It’s Elin. And you answered why you are pissed off now. But why did you hate me back then?”
Something shiny in a glass case caught my eye. I shifted to get a better look and reached for it.
He caught my arm. “Don’t.” He might have said more, but we were caught staring at our tattoos lighting up this time as our skin made contact with each other’s.
His eyes fastened on me. “This is why. The urge to toss ye down and bury my shaft so deep inside ye, ye feel it the next day is stronger than the vows I made. The vows that bind me to the crown I dinnae ask for. Being in a room with you since this”—he flashes his arm—“is unbearable. I want to ride you hard and bury my seed in ye womb until you are with a wee bairn growing inside ye.”