Spell of the Highlander by Karen Marie Moning

unyielding as reinforced steel.
    The abruptness with which he shifted her jostled her backpack, still looped over her shoulders. Crammed with purse, laptop, assorted notepads, pens, pencils, and a four-inch-thick
Ancient Civilizations
textbook, it yielded to gravity, slid down, and
thump
ed her in the back of the head.
    Hard.
    “Ow!” she yelled again. “Shit! Put me down this instant, you brute!”
    “Unbelievable,” she thought she heard him mutter.
    “Oh—
you
think so?” she snarled. “I’m the one flung over a primate’s shoulder.
You’re
the primate. I’m the one entitled to be saying ‘unbelievable.’ Not you.”
    “Unbelievable,” he muttered again. He spun about so quickly that she nearly puked the five extra cups of coffee she hadn’t really wanted but had drunk anyway in the café earlier, all over that magnificent butt she’d just pinched, and yes, like his arm, the man had buns of steel.
    Plucking up the massive mirror, he tucked it beneath the arm he’d freed by shifting her, and turned for the door. Woman on one side, artifact on the other. Not even straining.
    And she knew how heavy that mirror was. The two deliverymen had wrestled with its weight.
    Stalking out into the corridor, he demanded, “Which way?”
    She raised her head for as much clearance as she could gain with thirty-eight pounds of backpack—she’d weighed it once so she could factor the toting about of it into her daily caloric intake; it had earned her two Krispy Kremes every other morning—resting against her skull. “Why should I tell you?” she said snottily.
    He bit her hip.
    “Left,” she gritted.
    He turned left and took off at a trot.
    The strain on her neck was too much. She put her head back down. Her breasts were in her face and, as she bounced against his back with each step he took, her backpack
thunk
ed her steadily in the back of the head. At least her face was cushioned against the repeated blows. She wasn’t getting her nose hammered
rat-a-tat-tat
into his spine. Thank God for small blessings. Or two large ones, as the case may be.
    “Where are you taking me?” she mumbled against her sweater.
    “I am taking you to whatever manner of transportation you have. You are then taking us to procure suitable lodgings.”
    “I am?”
    “If you wish to live.”
    She wished. She mumbled directions to the lot in which her car was parked.
    “You’re mumbling, lass.”
    She mumbled again.
    “What was that?”
    She mumbled again.
    “Did you just say something about your breasts?” he said warily. A pause, then a reverent “Och, Christ, they’re in your face!” He stopped so abruptly her backpack
thump
ed the back of her head in double time: a soft
whump
followed by a solid
thwack,
dazing her.
    When she felt his chest shaking, it took her a few moments to identify the motion. He was laughing. The rat-bastard was laughing.
    “I
so
hate you,” she told her breasts. Meaning not them, of course, but him.
    As he continued to laugh, the fight went out of her, up in a puff of smoke. She was tired, she was freaked out, and she really just wanted to walk on her own two feet. “Would you
please
put me down?” she said plaintively.
    She suspected he must have felt the diminishing of tension in her muscles, read her body language, and knew, mentally, she’d capitulated.
    His laughter subsided. He bent and gently deposited her on her feet. His scotch-gold gaze glittered with amusement and sexual heat he made no effort to disguise. “Better?” He cupped her chin with one big hand, thumb brushing her lower lip.
    She twisted her face away. “Better. Come on. Let’s get out of here before someone sees us with the professor’s—”
    “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Jess?” Mark Troudeau barked sharply behind her.
    Jessi turned disbelievingly. What—had the mere thought been a self-fulfilling prophecy?
    Mark’s office was a few hundred feet down the hall from Professor Keene’s. When she’d