“If this is how you talked to my great-grandmother Cosmina, I can understand why she put a curse on you.”
Because Dougal was used to people quaking in fear in his presence, he was unsure how to respond to this slip of a woman who not only didn’t flee in horror, but had the nerve to return his ire with a sharp retort of her own.
Perhaps retreat was the best plan of action, after all, he thought, still somewhat taken aback by her behavior. With a huff, he turned for the stairs, intending to leave her here and find somewhere outside, deep in the woods, to hide until the wretched wench was gone. But just as his foot hit the first step, she reached out to grab his arm.
It wasn’t her attempt to stop him that did so, but the fact that she was touching him. No one had touched him in a hundred years. Not even those who had run him off from his own home with torches and pitchforks, screaming that he was demon spawn and cursing him back to the devil. And certainly no woman, of her own free will.
But this one…this one was touching him, not by accident, but on purpose.
A ripple of something he was afraid came too close to abject gratitude and relief shuddered through him and he locked his knees to keep from sinking to the ground. Turning slowly back to face her, he found her staring at him, full in the face, and her expression was not one of disgust or terror, but of awe.
“Don’t go,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
Perhaps not, but that didn’t make her words any less true, did it? Had he learned nothing in the hundred years since he’d been transformed into a monster?
“I don’t even know…” She paused, licked her lips, seemed to struggle to put voice to her thoughts. “I don’t even know if the stories I’ve heard are true. If what the legends say my family did to you are fact or fiction.”
“Fiction?” he snapped, anger once again pushing the boundaries of his self-control. Pulling back his hood, he threw his cloak to the ground. “Does this look to you like the work of an imaginary tale?”
He expected to see revulsion in her eyes, to hear the shrieks that had grown so familiar to his ears over the years. Instead, he saw a strange curiosity. Fascination, even.
Her gaze roamed over him, over every inch of exposed skin that even now flushed with the shame of his disfigurement. She looked her fill, taking in the reptilian slits of his eyes, the multi-colored patches marring his face, the rough scales that covered his hands and arms.
And then she reached out…reached out and touched him, flesh to flesh. He made a sound of protest and tried to shrug away, out of instinct and self-preservation. But she held fast, her grip tightening on his wrist, not the least aghast by the feel of his flawed skin.
He held himself rigid, still awaiting the moment when she would realize he was a fiend and she needed to run for her life, but as the seconds ticked by, eagerness began to pour through his blood like an elixir.
She was touching him, caressing him now, and she wasn’t afraid. How long had it been since he’d experienced such a gift? Too long. A century, at least, since his last clear memory of human contact.
He swallowed, every muscle of his body growing tense as her fingers continued their exploration. His mind spun back to the evening before, when he’d watched her writhing in pleasure and imagined her touching more than his arm, stroking him with lust more than mere inquisitiveness.
“It really was you,” she whispered, the words breathy and low as she lifted her head and met his gaze.
Her fingers continued to move in slow circles over the roughened flesh of his forearm, sending streaks of longing straight to his groin.
“Last night. Every night. It really was you in my dreams.”
Laura didn’t think she imagined that they both stopped breathing at the same time. The entire situation was incredible to her. He was incredible to her.
He was real. The man who had been plaguing her…and pleasuring her…in her dreams for so long was real, and solid, and standing right in front of her.
Despite his appearance and the cruel reaction he seemed to expect from her, he was beautiful. Not something to be hidden away or scorned, but to be admired and celebrated.
The same colorful tattoo of scales that marked his arms circled his neck and fell in patches over his face. And his eyes…his eyes were like nothing she’d ever seen before. A bright, glowing green with black, almost serpentine pupils at their centers.
A shiver ran down her spine, but not from fear, from delight.
It was him. The man she’d been dreaming of for what felt like forever. The man who had touched her, held her, done unspeakably satisfying things to her body night after night.
She’d nearly convinced herself that he was some strange, erotic figment of her untamed imagination, but even she hadn’t truly believed her subconscious could concoct someone with eyes and skin just like his.
He was even hot to the touch, the same as he’d been in the dream.
It was startling, amazing, and though he was standing directly in front of her, with her hands resting gently on his arms, she still had a hard time wrapping her mind around the fact that fantasy had just become reality, and she had finally found the man she’d been dreaming of, the one at the center of so many of the stories her family told and the legends passed down from generation to generation.
“You…dreamt about me?” he asked, no longer looking as though he was desperate to get away from her. His voice was low and deep, and tinged with the Scottish brogue she was just beginning to get used to.
“Last night,” she responded with a small nod. “So many nights. I thought I was going crazy, but then…I remembered the stories I was told as a little girl, of the man my great-grandmother cursed to live as a beast, and I started to wonder. I’ve been looking for you.”
Confiding that to anyone else would have made Laura feel like a fool. But with Dougal, she felt completely comfortable, as if she’d known him for years. And though they were only fantasies that came to her in the darkest hours of the night, she’d had him inside of her too many times to count. If that didn’t build a certain level of familiarity, she didn’t know what would.
His lips twisted into a snarl and the rough timbre of his voice grew even rougher. “Your grandmother did this to me?” he asked—the words part statement, part question, all accusation.
Beneath her fingers, his muscles tensed, growing rock hard and hot to the touch.
“I’m afraid so. Will you tell me why and how?”
She knew the stories, knew what her family said had happened, but she wanted to hear it from him, hear his opinion and his telling of the tale.
Momentarily releasing him, she moved to the small table in the center of the room and set down her camera and tote. Reaching into the bag, she pulled out a couple of energy bars and cans of soda.
“Here,” she said, holding one of each out to him like a peace offering. “We can sit and have a bite to eat while you tell me what happened, why my grandmother felt the need to do this to you.”
He made a sound low in his throat, but followed her when she moved to the far wall and sat amongst the blankets and rags that made up his sleeping pallet. Taking a spot beside her, close but not touching, he opened the bar she’d given him and began to chew, slowly and methodically.
The minutes ticked by while she did the same, throwing them into an eerie but relaxed silence. When she’d finished her bar and sipped half the soda, she shifted slightly in his direction, once again meeting his dark, intense gaze.
“Tell me,” she pressed when he showed no signs of speaking, once again letting the tips of her fingers slide over the scaled flesh of his forearm. “Please, I really do need to know.”