Highland Protector (MacCoinnich Time Travels #5)(18)
Author: Catherine Bybee

He gave a swift nod and closed the door behind him.

Alone with Amber, he stared at her porcelain features and felt a smile on his lips. “You look better in person,” he whispered. Even close to death.

He moved slowly, arranging her hand on his leg while he attempted to pull his fingers from hers. It didn’t work. He lifted one booted foot to their joined hands and tugged it off, kicking it to the floor before reaching for the other. Once he managed to take off his boots, he stood while holding her hand and removed the weapon on his hip, set it on the nightstand.

Having a beautiful woman beside him in bed was never a hardship, but an unconscious one he couldn’t let go of proved more awkward than any encounter he’d ever had.

As he moved around the bed, he felt her anxiety rise. It was as if she worried he would leave and the full force of the pain would return. Kincaid maneuvered himself with his back against the headboard. The bed wasn’t large enough for him to lay there and not touch more than her hand. Their clasped hands had two choices. They could lay on his thigh or her chest.

He rested them against her first, felt the swell of her breast, and groaned.

Not a good choice.

He rested their hands on his thigh. That was marginally better.

“Well, Amber MacCoinnich…when you wake up try not to freak out too hard.” He looked down at her innocent face. “Something tells me you’ve never had a man in your bed.”

The thought made him smile and inch closer. He would reflect on why the thought empowered him later, for now he’d just try to thicken the barrier around them and sift through the jumbled pain inside her head and rid her of it.

After an hour inside her head, he felt the emotions of those closest to them swimming on a thin surface, but those from outside the walls of the house were gone. The blue barrier around them was so thick he doubted a bolt of lightning could penetrate it.

At some point, Helen slipped into the room and set a tray of food by the bed. Kincaid felt her concern and he did his best to shield the emotions from the sleeping woman on his side. Before Helen could say a thing, he brought a finger to his lips. “Shh.”

Helen blinked a few times and quietly left the room.

He clicked off the light and slid down in the bed. He rolled to his side and switched hands. He rested his arm over Amber’s waist, realizing again how thin she was. Too thin.

Kincaid closed his eyes on the pillow beside her and felt her push against him to get closer.

He continued to sift through her thoughts until his brain reached its own limit and needed to rest.

Somewhere in the night, he woke long enough to realize Amber shifted in her sleep. She had his arm grasped to her side and had rolled over, offering him her backside.

Without a doubt, when she woke and realized she was spooning with a stranger, she’d freak. But right now, Kincaid didn’t care. He ignored his rising hormones, calling himself all kinds of names for being turned on by a woman who was near-death, and he forced himself to go back to sleep.

****

If Amber knew death would be this warm, this welcoming, she would have let herself go long before now.

The cloud she floated on surrounded her, blocked out all the pain, and left her strangely hungry. Even that was a welcome relief. She’d not felt the need to eat in so long she’d forgotten the feeling. Sleep overshadowed everything, however. The ability to rest without interruption was heaven. Maybe that’s what her reward was for such a burdened life. Sleep and hunger, the things she couldn’t enjoy in her failing body.

Her last thought before leaving her body was that she died before returning home. Without the crushing pain clouding her thoughts, she was thankful her time came before plaguing her family with her death. This way they might think she lived a good long life.

She snuggled into her cloud and drifted off to sleep again.

Then her stomach rumbled, loud and unrelenting.

The cloud moved behind her and grasped her hip.

That can’t be right.

Amber forced her eyes open, fearful the pain would return. Her room was before her just as it had been when she was alive. The sun reached its morning rays into her room and asked her to wake.

The unfamiliar feeling of being alone made her close her eyes again. The pain in her head wasn’t there. The voices of others…gone. A deep voice, one she’d never heard before, chanted one word. Sleep.

Her head started to follow the soft chant and then the bed dipped behind her.

Amber’s eyes sprung open, and she slowly turned her head.

Behind her…no, pressed up against her with his arm draped over her clasping her tightly was a dark stranger.

Oh, God. Panic, always close to the surface, bubbled inside her.

The stranger opened his eyes, his piercing gaze met hers, and Amber screamed.

She scrambled to the other side of the bed only to find herself trapped by the large man’s iron-grip.

“Calm down.”

She kicked, yelled, and pushed against him as he pinned her to the bed, his body unwilling to let her go. Amber pulled in the energy of the room and added heat to her hands as she shoved.

The man cursed and clasped her hands to prevent her from burning more of his skin. “Dammit, Amber hold still.”

The door to the room flew open. Amber twisted on the bed, saw Simon, and yelled for him to help her.

“What’s going on?” Simon asked but made no effort to remove the man who crushed her to the bed.

“She woke up.”

Amber attempted more kicks, found her legs pinned beneath her captor. “Get him off me,” she pleaded with Simon. Why was he not helping her? Her foot connected with the man’s shin.

He rolled on top of her, full on now and pinned her hands above her head. “Enough!” he yelled at her.

Stunned, she stopped moving. No one…and she meant no one, ever yelled at her.

Her chest rose and fell with his. They both panted and stared into each other’s eyes. He was angry, that she knew by the fierce look on his face and perhaps the small steam that seemed to be bouncing off him. Blue steam that rolled off him like an aura.

“Talk to her, Simon. Tell her what’s going on.”

“Amber, listen to me, lass.”

“Get him off of me, Simon.”

Simon knelt down by the bed but still didn’t push the stranger away.

She struggled again only to feel the man’s knee slip between hers. Panic crawled up her throat and she squeezed her eyes shut.

“He’s here to help, Amber. He’s holding the emotions of others away. Can’t you feel it?”