Only he did.
He needed to get out of here by any road he could and forget about the woman.
Only he never would.
She’d saved his life, and that was enough.
A thousand days, ten thousand nights with her, would not be enough.
But she had cast him off already, kept away from him all the day long, not even caring how he fared.
The bar on the door rattled. He heard a voice outside—her voice, low and rich, like music. The door opened and she came in.
Everything within Leith stopped—his thoughts, his breath, possibly his heartbeat.
She came with her head bent, wearing a gray cloak and with the familiar basket over her arm. She paused just inside the door, raised her head, and looked at him.
For several moments they regarded one another as if they could not get their fill. Leith’s heart jerked back into motion with a painful lurch.
Ah, and she looked twice as beautiful as he’d remembered. How could that be?
He supposed he made an awful sight standing there with one blanket wrapped around his hips and the other cast over his shoulders. Like a beggar.
He’d be willing to beg for but a word from her lips.
But those lips pressed together in an almost painful line before she parted them and said, “Dhe!Ye should no’ be up and on your feet. Wha’ were ye thinking? Only look. That wound has torn open once again.”
He might have said any number of things in reply. That, as he’d told Farlan, he could not endure lying helpless. That he feared he’d go mad if he did not regain even some small control of his life.
But she set aside her basket and hurried to him, raised her blessed, gentle hands, and laid them on the blanket slung over his shoulders.
So strongly did her touch affect him, he spoke words he hadn’t intended. “I feared ye would no’ come. I thought ye were done wi’ me.”
She gazed up earnestly into his face. Into his eyes, deep. Intohim. She might have said a thousand things, that it was best if she kept away, that he’d soon be gone from MacBeith soil anyway. That she hated him, a dreaded MacLeod.
Instead she said, “Nay. I could no’ keep awa’.”
Which of them moved first then, leaned into the other? Leith never knew. She stretched up; he bent down. Their lips met.
In the past, Leith had kissed his share of women. He’d kissed other men’s shares of women besides. Not like this. Never like this.
This felt inevitable and primal, like the flooding of the tide. Like the rising of the moon. Like the coming of spring after the death of winter. It was like no other kiss because Rhian MacLeod was like no other woman.
He knew that then, standing there with his lips on her. Knew it to the bottom of his heart and the depths of his soul. It terrified him so, when the kiss ended, he could find no words to say.
He merely gazed into the bonny oval of her face, into her eyes that had gone wide with her emotions, the same emotions he felt.
Amazement. Wonder. A sense of claiming.
She remained on her tiptoes, still pressing her hands to his shoulders. His arm, the only one under his command, had crept around her and clasped her tight.
She whispered, “I should no’ ha’ done that.”
“Ye should. Och, lass, ye truly should.”
He kissed her again. This time it was wild and hungry, a kiss to scare a woman away, if anything could. She did not frighten, but parted her lips beneath his, as hungry as he. Their tongues met and tangled. The kiss turned tender, so tender it fair pulled Leith’s remaining strength from him.
When this one ended, she laid her cheek against his chest. He nuzzled her neck and the tendrils of dark red hair that spiraled there, having escaped the tight hold of the plait she wore.
