Her eyes widened further when she felt him stiffen inside her. “Again?”

“Are you too tender?” he asked gently.

She arched a brow. “I told you, I’m tougher than you think,” she said, running the tip of her pink tongue over her lower lip.

He groaned and caught it between his lips. “Then, aye, lass, and again and again,” he said, as he began to glide back and forth inside her. “We MacKeltars were bred for stamina.”

And since he knew she was the disbelieving type, a woman disinclined to accept anything but firm proof, he proceeded to give her hard evidence of his claim, telling her with his body all the words he so longed to say.

SEPTEMBER 21

Three Minutes to Midnight

10

Gwen stretched languorously, her hands skimming the muscles of Drustan’s back. She felt sleepily sated and sexy and tender and, oh…so much more complex than she had before. She felt brand new somehow.

Gwen Cassidy had finally been well and truly plucked.

An indefinable sense of peace and rightness nestled in her belly, her heart was full, her mind at ease.

But breathing beneath his weight was a challenge even the new and improved Gwen wasn’t up to, so with a gentle nudge she eased him off her. He rolled onto his back and she slipped astride him, straddling him the same way she had the day she’d found him but with one highly erotic and delightful difference: They were both nude. There was so much she wanted to do with him. She wanted to make love on top of him, beside him, with him behind her….

“Drustan,” she murmured, studying his face, so beautiful in the silvery light of the moon. His eyes opened, hot-metal silver, lazily seductive. “Thank you,” she said softly. He’d made her first time a beautiful, passionate, intense experience, and if for some unfathomable reason she never got to make love with him again, she knew he would be the standard by which she judged men for the rest of her life.

She was falling head over heels in love. And it felt incredible.

He caught her face in his hands and pulled her down for a hungry kiss. “Never thank me, lass. Only ask me for more. That’s the finest praise a man can hear from a woman. That and this”—he slipped a hand between her legs—“woman’s dew that tells a man how much she desires him.”

He smiled at her, and at precisely the same moment noticed the carriage of the moon in the sky. His smile faded abruptly and his body tensed beneath hers. The passion receded from his eyes, replaced by panic.

“Christ,” he swore, “ ‘tis nearly too late!” Rolling her off him, he leaped to his feet, grabbed his plaid, and raced to the stone slab. “Come,” he commanded.

Befuddled by her rapid dismount, still feeling sexy and sleepy and soft, she stared blankly at him.

“ ‘Tis nearly midnight,” he said urgently. “Come.”

She reached for her clothing, and he snapped, “No time to dress. But you must bring your pack, Gwen.”

Puzzled by his comment, and not completely comfortable with her nudity, she grabbed her backpack and hurried to join him at the slab nevertheless, the scientist within her intensely curious to discover how he planned to prove his claims true. Besides, she told herself, there would be time for more lovemaking afterward.

He worked swiftly, stealing intermittent glances at the sky as he dipped his fingers in the paint and sketched the final symbols on the slab.

“Take my hand.”

She slipped her hand into his. He studied the designs a moment, then shook his head and exhaled loudly.

“Pray Amergin, let them be right. Stand close to me, Gwen. Here.”

Gwen positioned herself where he indicated and tried to peer around him to see the last symbols, but he angled his body between them, blocking her view.

“What do you think is going to happen, Drustan?” she asked, glancing at her watch, surprised that anything had remained on her body in the frenzy of their lovemaking. She nearly laughed when she realized that it, and the strap of the pack over her shoulder, were all she now wore. The second hand moved with an audible tick-tick-tick.

“Gwen, I—” He broke off, and looked at her.

Her gaze flew to his. Had he felt it too when they’d made love? Being inexperienced in lovemaking, she was uncertain if the emotion she felt when she looked at him was a temporary side effect of physical intimacy. She suspected it was of more significant duration but wasn’t in any hurry to make a fool of herself. But if he was feeling it too, she might believe that what existed between them was every bit as real and valid as any mathematical equation. His gaze swept over her body, in such a way that he made her feel beautiful, not short and…all right, a little plump. She’d always felt inadequate in a world that plastered leggy, slim cover models on every magazine and in every movie.