Her eyes narrowed. “How would you know that? You couldn’t have possibly known her as a child.”
His lips twitched. “What makes you think that?”
“She lived to ninety-eight. You don’t look a day over thirty.”
He humphed.
“Whatever.” She nonchalantly took a step back, putting a little distance between them.
He noticed the movement and her intent. “When will your boat be back?”
She chewed on her lower lip, clearly toying with telling the truth or another lie. “Soon.”
“Lying worsens my temper.”
“I don’t care. Get in your boat and get off my island.”
“I don’t have a boat. I live here.”
She blinked. “You must get supplies from somewhere.” She eyed his plaid. “Maybe not clothes, but food.”
“I swim.”
He watched the fear surface in her eyes again and cursed himself for enjoying its flavor. “You’re crazy.”
“If that’s the case, lass, then you’d best be getting off my isle.”
She glanced at the darkening skies. As if she’d conjured it by will alone, a fat droplet fell, splattering on the sleeve of her coat. “It’s going to rain. Why don’t you go wherever it is you’re going and leave me alone?”
“Not before I see you off. Who’d you buy passage from?”
“What?”
At her blank stare, he sighed. “The boat,” he repeated. “Who is its captain?”
“Oh.” Her brows furrowed. “Murphy, Gregor. Maybe Andrew. There were a zillion kids running around. I don’t know which one drove. MacDonald is the last name.”
He rolled his eyes.
Another fat droplet struck her coat. “You’re going to get wet,” she pointed out. “Don’t let me stop you.”
Humans were so daft. If they didn’t breed like rats, he was certain they’d have died off long ago. He could leave her here, but he didn’t trust her to not get into trouble. A missing American woman would attract unwanted attention. Taking her with him was an option he’d rather not consider, but it appeared to be the only safe one. So what if she left the isle gibbering about castles and shape-shifting men? A raving American woman was preferred to a dead one, at least in the human world. He wasn’t so sure.
The sky’s outburst decided it for him. Striding forward, he reached for her elbow. “You’ll come with me.”
“Get away from me.” She tried to twist out of his reach, but he was quicker. Seizing her elbow, he dragged her in his wake. “Let me go!”
He cared even less for screaming women. He briefly considered knocking her in the head and tossing her over his shoulder like a sack of barley.
He forgot her knife. His mistake.
She plunged the sharp little blade into his side.
Fury and pain muddled rational thought. He reared back, and she wrenched herself free, stumbling to the ground.
His hands fumbled for the blade. Jerking it out, his form shifted and blurred. Damnations. Pain overrode common sense. The wound, large on a human body, shrank as his body grew. His arms split in two lengthwise, his bones realigning themselves to form long streamlined wings and short webbed forepaws. Skin gave way to iridescent scales, violet and midnight and black. His head elongated, jaws and teeth replacing human lips, pupils widening until they consumed the whites of his eyes, leaving behind whirling multifaceted orbs. A jagged line of spikes protected his spine, from the back of his head to the end of his tail, which now lashed in agitation. He sat on his haunches, tipped his head back and roared.
The woman squeaked once and fainted.
The urges to toss her to the now-frothing sea, or to protect the limp body being pelted with rain warred within him. Mercy won out. Picking her up in his short forepaws, he carried her over the hill and to his castle.
She’d seen a man turn into a dragon. Reason struggled against what she’d witnessed. Dragons were the stuff of legend. They had no place in the real world, unless she happened to be on some Hollywood set. And she knew that wasn’t the case. She’d taken a red-eye flight to Scotland. She’d paid good money to be ferried to a godforsaken chunk of dirt willed to her by a great-aunt she’d met only a handful of times. She was bound and determined to find something of worth on the lousy rock.
Looked as though she had. A dragon.
She opened her eyes.
She was lying on a bed, covered in a thick blanket. Wool, her fingers told her. A fire blazed in an open hearth at the foot of the bed. She turned her head. A man stood at the window, dressed in a kilt, the spare cloth thrown over his shoulder like a cape.
Not just any man, she noted as he turned his head. The dragon man. Solidly built, he stood with his legs slightly spread, like a man surveying all he owned. A shock of thick black hair did nothing to soften his granite profile. She might as well have been trying to bludgeon a gorilla with a toothpick for all the damage her pocketknife had done.
She must have made some sort of noise for he turned to her. Black brows, as unruly as his hair, knit together. “Don’t think fainting will soften me toward you.”
She sat up, realized she was nude and clutched the wool to her chest. He chuckled. The chuckle vanished when she fixed him with a glare. “Where are my clothes?”
He nodded toward the fire. “You were wet.”
“You undressed me?”
He regarded her with amusement. “There’s no one else here, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You changed into a dragon,” she blurted out. Ah, that wasn’t exactly the way she wanted to address the subject, but she couldn’t take the words back.
“Dragon, eh? You conked your head quite good. And ‘twas obviously hallucinating. There’s a knot on the back of it,” he added when she eyed him suspiciously.
She touched the spot gingerly. That’s all it was, a delusion? No. She shook her head. “I fell after you changed.” After she stabbed him.
“What kind of nonsense did they fill your head with on the mainland? Listening to too many Nessie stories, that’s what. I was trying to get you to safety and you balked.”
“You kidnapped me.”
He snorted. “Why would I do that?”
She glanced wildly around the room, looking for a weapon.
“You left your knife on the beach. The water’ll have claimed it by now.”
And all her gear, too.
