human again,” Blodswell reminded him. “Nice to have you back in the land of the living, MacQuarrie.”
Everything was happening so quickly. “Wait,” Sorcha begged. “Ye’re human?” She’d given up that hope so long ago. Was it truly possible?
Alec’s once-again brown eyes twinkled at her, and she knew it was true.
“It would appear so, love,” Alec said with a smile as he brought her hand to his mouth and placed a lingering kiss in her knuckles. Then he held his other hand out to her. “Take off the ring and let’s see.”
Sorcha didn’t waste a moment tugging the signet ring from his finger.
The sun shone brightly through the window, and a beam of light skittered across his face when she moved to look more closely at him. “Aye, human,” he grunted. He didn’t go up in flames. He didn’t burn. He just lay there with the sun on his face.
But it didn’t make any sense. “I doona understand.” She must sound like a ninny. Her gaze shifted to the two former vampyres and then back to Alec. “Ye doona love me,” she reminded him quietly.
“That’s obviously not the case,” Kettering teased.
Alec’s glare speared the intruders. “I think you both have worn out your welcome.”
Kettering and Blodswell looked at one another with mock surprise on their faces. “I don’t remember being invited into his bedchamber, much less being welcomed.”
“Go find your wives and gloat,” Alec ordered. “And take those Lycans with you,” he added. But his eyes were on Sorcha as he reached up and brushed a lock of hair from her face. He wrapped his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her gently down until his lips could meet hers.
Then he addressed his former mentors, who still hadn’t moved. “You might want to leave now, because my wife is going to be naked in about three seconds,” he said aloud.
Sorcha gasped and batted at his grasping hands as they moved to the straps of her chemise. Her heart skittered a frantic beat within her chest as he took control and started to tug the soft fabric from her body.
“I believe that’s our cue to exit, my friend,” Blodswell said to Kettering.
“But just so you know, Alec, neither of us fainted like a lass when we received our humanity. You, on the other hand…” They both chuckled.
“Out!” Alec ordered. They were out the door in a flash, closing it solidly behind them. “They’ll never let me live that down,” he said quietly to Sorcha. “I swooned. Good God, what’s the world coming to?”
Sorcha could hear an argument going on outside the door, but Alec was taking all of her attention as he tossed her chemise across the room and flipped the counterpane over them both. He drew her body flush against his, her breasts pushed against his naked chest.
“Are ye really alive?” she whispered, still not quite believing it.
“It would appear so,” he replied as he ran his hand down her side and tugged one leg over his hip. He was hot and hard and pressed at her insistently. But he didn’t seem to want anything more than to be close to her.
“But how can that be?” she asked, sorry to hear the quiver in her own voice. Tears were pricking at the backs of her eyelids, and she had no control at all.
“I never thought I’d be able to fall in love,” he tried to explain.
“So, all it took was tumblin’ ye in the bedchamber ta make ye fall in love with me?” She shoved at his chest. If she’d known that, she would have seduced him at Castle Hythe.
“I’ve been tumbled, as you so indelicately put it, many times in the past, love,” he said quietly.
“Doona remind me,” she sulked.
“And that leads me to believe that it wasn’t the fact that I bedded you that changed me.”
Then what was it? “I dinna do anythin’ else.” She hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary, aside from marrying and making love to her husband.
“I was living in a fog until you, Sorch,” he said quietly. “I was existing from day to day but not living. Not for a moment of it. Then you walked back into my life. And it changed. I became more than I was. It’s all because of you.”
He touched his lips to hers. “You were willing to give up your coven for me. They’re more than family to you. And you would have given them up, along with your powers, for an eternity with me.”
“I