On a sigh (even though Sonia was going nowhere), she started to build the boxes as Regan listened, mumbling, “Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Right.” Regan flipped her phone shut and announced, “We have less time than I expected. The boys will be here in an hour and a half. Let’s get cracking.”
Before Sonia could utter a word, Regan flew up the stairs.
Sonia stood amongst the boxes and decided, for Regan, she’d do as she was asked. She could easily unpack them later when she told Callum she wasn’t moving to Scotland.
An hour and a half later, Sonia stood staring out her window in shock as her six full suitcases, one full cosmetic case, Callum’s three suitcases and five boxes full of her family’s Christmas decorations, her stuffed wolf, her photo albums and a few odds and ends were whisked away by one of Callum’s men.
That’ll make unpacking tonight a bit more difficult, she thought as she bit her lip and worry began to nag her.
Any hope she had of staying put was dashed fifteen minutes later when Callum arrived.
The door opened and Sonia, sitting and enjoying a mug of herbal tea with Regan in the living room, got to her feet, turned to her mate and opened her mouth.
Then she froze and stared.
Callum’s body, hair and clothes were clean although his clothing was wrinkled.
However, the beard that had grown in the weeks she’d been with him was now immensely thick and untrimmed. Further, his hair seemed to have grown tremendously in that short time and it went from overlong to just plain long falling past the collar of his shirt.
Further, his face appeared so exhausted he looked almost haggard, something she would never have guessed as he always seemed alert and energized.
And his eyes were hungry and not in a good way. The lines beside them deeper, and they were positively seething, not with anger but with wrath. A rage so deep, so strong, it emanated from him and filled the room with its terrifying intensity instantly.
He looked wild, even savage and Sonia was frozen to the spot when Callum didn’t look at his mother who had risen at Sonia’s side. He came directly at Sonia and she had the desire to flee, to run away from him as fast as she could. However, her terror was so absolute it felt her feet had grown roots into the floor.
She didn’t move a muscle when he used one arm to hook her brutally at the waist and yank her body so that it crashed into his. Then he used his other hand to twist viciously in her hair causing so much pain it didn’t feel sensuously pleasant, it only felt like pain. Then his mouth slammed down on hers and he kissed her in a way he’d never kissed her before. In a way that Sonia didn’t even know you could kiss.
It was violent and merciless and seizing and even cruel.
Therefore, when his head came up and he glanced dismissively at his mother, Sonia didn’t say a word.
“We’ll see you at home,” he growled, his voice rough with all that was in his eyes, all that was carved in his features and every line of his enraged frame.
Then he took Sonia’s hand and dragged her out to his SUV.
Yes, dragged.
She even tripped twice trying to keep up with his ground-eating strides and he didn’t even glance at her.
She was buckled in and he was speeding casually through the streets before she realized he hadn’t muttered a word to her.
He hadn’t even said hello.
She was too terrified of him to suggest it or say it to him.
Definitely too terrified to tell him she wasn’t going to Scotland.
He took her to an airfield, tossed the keys of the SUV to a waiting Saint and dragged her up the steps into an aircraft.
When she got inside she saw to her shock it was a personal jet. There was a set of four, wide, comfortable seats upholstered in rich, tan leather facing each other over a gleaming wood topped table, four more seats in the back, two on each side of a door. There was a bar and refrigerator on the wall opposite the jet’s door, the bar also made of highly-shined wood where glasses and bottles were in snug, secured shelves. There was a television screen on the wall behind the cockpit. And there was a long, wide, deep-seated couch running the opposite side to the seating area and bar.
Callum turned to her and commanded tersely, “Strap in.”
Looking into his forbidding, hostile eyes, without a peep, Sonia did as she was told. She chose a seat at the back by the window and buckled in.
He stuck his head into the cockpit and said one word, “Go.”
Then he strapped himself in beside Sonia.