With her hair still pinned atop her head, she exited the chamber and started toward the tower. She rounded a corner and found Broc blocking her path.
Ever since he had learned of her involvement with Phelan, he’d been angry. And rightly so. What she had done was wrong, and nothing she did would ever make up for it.
She paused several steps from him and waited. When he didn’t speak, she knew she had to. “I understand your anger.” “Nay, you doona,” he said over her. “I’m angry at you, aye, but I’m also angry at myself. I heard Phelan days before the attack. I knew it was a Warrior’s howl, knew Deirdre had someone chained down those stairs, but I didn’t go see for myself.” “You couldn’t have freed him had you gone. Deirdre had bound the chains with magic. The only way to unlock Phelan’s bonds was with a spell, a spell I memorized.” Broc turned his back to the wall and leaned against it, his chin to his chest. “There were many we could have helped through the years.” “Probably,” Isla agreed. “We almost certainly would have been caught, though. Deirdre doesn’t take kindly to betrayal. You would have been dead, and then who would have helped the MacLeods?” He turned his head and grinned. “She suspected me always. I walked a fine line.”
Isla could only imagine. There were many times she’d wanted to fight Deirdre, to try to save the many Druids she saw killed, but Lavena and Grania’s life had been at stake.
Maybe she should have forfeited her sister and niece’s lives years ago. She wondered if it would have changed anything.
“You won’t have an easy time tracking Phelan,” she told Broc. “He has a special power.”
Broc turned so that only one shoulder rested against the wall. “Tell me.”
“His god is Zelfor, the god of torment. Phelan is able to change the surroundings to suit whatever he wants.” “I doona understand.”
“When I was with him he made that awful dark, dank prison of his vanish and put us in the Highlands with the sun shining and heather blooming around us.” Broc whistled. “That is a potent power. Why would Deirdre want to use him, though?”
“There were many plans that Deirdre had. Most I know nothing about. What I do know is her ultimate goal.” “To rule the world.” Broc’s lips twisted in a sneer. “She made that known to everyone.”
“Find Phelan. I need to know that he is all right even if he doesn’t return with you.”
“I give you my oath that I will find him as soon as I’m able.”
It was all Isla could ask for. “When do you leave?”
“Soon.”
She nodded and moved past Broc and continued toward her tower. When she reached the top, she stepped into a dark chamber.
After she lit the candle, Isla looked around her tower. She kept her day filled so she wasn’t able to let her mind wander, but with nighttime, she couldn’t hold back her memories and thoughts.
Isla took off her shoes, stockings, and gown. She stood by the bed in her chemise and began to unpin her hair. It was the stir in the air that told her she wasn’t alone anymore.
Her heart jumped at the thought that it might be Hayden. Who else had visited her in the dead of night?
She set the last pin on the table and turned to face her visitor. Her stomach fluttered like the wings of a bird as she stared at the imposing — and impressive — Warrior before her.
His skin was the deepest, darkest red. Hayden’s eyes, usually as black as midnight, were the same crimson as his skin and claws. He didn’t try to seal his lips over his fangs. At the top of his head, just through his blond hair, she saw the small scarlet horns and smoke that curled from their tips.
There was no desire in his red eyes, no kindness as she had seen the previous night. There was no revulsion as when he had learned she was
She shouldn’t be surprised. She had asked him to end her life. “Have you come to kill me?”
Hayden shook his head, his blond locks brushing his shoulders.
Isla walked to him then. His saffron shirt was gone, leaving him bare-chested. She longed to touch him, to run her hands over the rippling muscles of his chest. It was his lack of desire that held her hand.
“Why are you here, then?”
He glanced away from her, almost as if he couldn’t bring himself to answer her. “Does it matter?”
“It does.”
He growled and took a step toward her, but Isla wasn’t cowed. She had seen more, experienced more than Hayden could think to show her.
His hands locked around her arms painfully. She didn’t cry out or show him how he hurt her. As she searched his eyes, his crimson Warrior eyes, she saw him warring with himself on whether to thrust her away or not.
Isla decided for him. She raised her arms and pushed at his chest, using just enough magic to propel him back several steps.
“You don’t want to be here, then don’t. I didn’t force you into this tower,” she said between clenched teeth. Her anger rose with each beat of her heart. She didn’t try to tamp it down.
Instead, she unleashed it and let it soar within her.
Hayden bared his teeth and growled again. “Doona lie to me,
“A man, nay. A Warrior? Most certainly.”
His red eyes narrowed on her. “I shouldn’t want you.”
“And I shouldn’t want you,” she admitted.
Her rage disappeared as quickly as it had come. She couldn’t deny the way her body responded to Hayden, and part of her didn’t want to try. She just wanted his touch, his kiss, his body.
“Leave or stay, Hayden, but make your decision now.”
TWENTY-ONE
Hayden knew he should leave. Hell, he should never have come to Isla’s tower, but he hadn’t been able to help himself. Thoughts of her, of their night together had given him no peace throughout the day.
He had thought to show her his Warrior form, to provoke her into rejecting him. Anything to break this hold she had over him.
She hadn’t been afraid of him, though. Had in fact shown him her own anger. It had shocked him, as had the force of her magic when she pushed him away.
He was in way over his head, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Hayden took a step toward her. He nearly rejoiced when Isla’s seductive lips turned up in a smile. How something so simple could move him, he didn’t know. And didn’t care.
She gave him a little shove. His knees hit the back of the bed and he sat heaving, impatient to touch her.
“Such a beautiful color,” she murmured as she caressed up his arms and over his shoulders. “Crimson. The shade of desire.”
Hayden could do nothing but sit while her hands stroked along his red skin. Her long nails teased his scalp as she sunk her fingers into his hair. And then those fingers wrapped around his horns.
His eyes flew open, lust filling him swiftly. Utterly. The force of it was powerful and addictive, the passion dizzying and beautiful. And the hunger … saints, the hunger clawed at him, demanded that he take her.
No one had ever touched his horns before. He was unprepared for his potent reaction or the longing that ripped through him sharp and true.
“This pleases you,” Isla whispered seductively. She leaned forward and licked his earlobe, her warm breath skating across his skin.
Hayden tried to swallow, tried to keep his breathing steady, but all he could think about were Isla’s hands on
