The thought brought a sudden rush of reality and for just a second, despair gripped her. Breathing hard, she struggled to conceal her emotions, knowing that any sign of weakness would be a mistake in front of this savage man.
Struggling to her feet, she backed away from the deadly arc of his sword as he swung it around with a haunting howl of rage and despair that exactly echoed the pain in her heart.
Then he turned on her once more.
“Bugger it all,” he growled and wrapped his fingers around her neck, squeezing until her face began to heat and her head pulsed painfully. “Where is he? I kent ye did something wi’ him. Tell me true!”
Though she had no better response than before, she was spared the need to produce an answer when a shout drew his attention. Loosening his hold, he turned to another kilted man who was yelling from a rise not far away. She couldn’t understand him nor could she understand the response of her captor.
But another appeared. Then another. And more until a small army of kilted men on horseback was riding toward them.
“I must be away but I will hae an answer from ye yet, witch,” he ground out. “Ye’re mine ‘til then.”
“No, no please?” Ignoring her protest, he grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to where a massively terrifying horse was pawing the ground impatiently. “Y-you barbarian,” she yelled, trying to jerk her arm back before he freed it from its socket. Her face flushed, not with true anger but humiliation that ‘barbarian’ was the worst thing she thought to say.
She stared back at the spot where the wormhole had been with pleading eyes. Futile eyes. She knew well enough from dozens of failed attempts that it was gone and that it would never… could never reappear in that spot again.
Her fate in that regard was sealed. What remained of her future would be up to her and the wild man wrenching her arm from her body.
Frustrated, she tried to slap his hand away, swung wide and landed a blow close to his groin.
He hissed at the near-miss and glared down at her. “Hae a care, lass. If ye were tae land such a blow, I’ll for certs be showing ye how barbaric I can be.”
With the menacing threat ringing in her ears, the brute smacked her bottom hard then gripped her around the waist, lifting her off the ground. He threw her facedown across the saddle and mounted behind her, bringing another hand down with a stinging blow to her backside to defuse any attempts to struggle.
He kicked the horse into motion and the first compression of her stomach against the hard saddle brought a burning lump of acid to her throat.
Oh, God. She fought the nausea the veritable Heimlich maneuver the saddle was generating. This certainly wasn’t like it happened in romance novels.
Or at least she’d never read one where the heroine threw up all over the hero when she was in a position like this.
Struggling, Al tried to lift herself into a more manageable position but her captor just shoved her back down with a hard hand between her shoulder blades.
Hanging like that, black dots soon crowded her vision. Before long, she succumbed to horror and uncertainty, losing herself to the bliss of unconsciousness.
Chapter 4
The clink of metal against metal woke her. Lifting her head, Al tried to figure out where she was. Her hair, partially fallen from her now lop-sided bun during her inverted journey, obscured her vision.
The metal clanged again when she lifted a hand to brush the tangled mass aside, and she gaped in horror at the iron manacle around her wrist.
A metallic chill encircled her other wrist, and Al gave it the same appalled consideration as the first before turning her gaze to the huge man clamping her in irons.
“Are you… are you actually chaining me up?”
A swift glance took in the dark radius the circle of light cast by a single candle resting on a wooden bench nearby. Thick stone walls beneath her, behind her. The darkness beyond. Was she lying on the floor of a… a dungeon?
Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply, trying to calm the panic rising swiftly from her gut, but no comfort was found in the stale odors of urine and abandonment.
“Ye’re a bright one, aren’t ye?” her captor-cum-jailer drawled mockingly, lifting her from the floor and setting her on her feet.
Taking up the length of heavy chain connecting her hands, he attached it to a ring set into the stone wall. Her arms were lifted above her head. Not far. Not painfully. But for a woman who’d never been in a dungeon… or put in chains, it was traumatic nonetheless.
“Aye, I said I would hae answers from ye and so I shall ‘ere ye are freed from this place.”
Despair clawed at her and Al shivered with dread. A period of unconsciousness had done nothing to make answers any easier to produce. Swaying on her feet, she wondered if another would do the trick. His behavior in abducting her had marked him as a savage, as the barbarian she had accused him of being. There was no chance that any explanation she offered would make him happy. Just as there was no chance he would understand even if she dared to answer with the truth.
Drawing in another long breath, she rolled her shoulders under the burden of the heavy chains.
“Och, lass, dinnae be thinking that heaving a magnificent pair of tits or wiggling a ripe arse will sway me from my course,” he growled in a husky burr. “I’ll be ha’ing my answers one way or another.”
Puzzled, she followed his eyes downward, where her breasts were straining the buttons of her prim, green silk blouse beneath the parted lapels of her lab coat. Then she lifted her gaze back up to meet his fiery one. Her eyes widened at the appreciation she
