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“I will try as many times as I need to put maximum distance from your dictatorial person!” She defied, fast losing the hold on her emotions.
“What if something happened to you?” His anger matched hers now.
“Then it would be your fault.” She threw. “You abducted me, I would be on the road because of you.” Her forefinger shoved at him.
He advanced on her and she continued keeping away from him. Though she could not keep away from herself and the pebbling of her breasts, their swelling. Or the breath that hitched at the sight of his giant frame looming over her with those solid muscles too much on show through his agape shirt and his tartan.
“You will not place yourself in danger.” Did he even learn how to talk without issuing orders?
He continued his prowl and she her retreat as her insides clamoured a complete reversal of her actions in the name of things she did not even understand fully. Her heart beat a timeless drum, her stomach flipped over and back while extreme heat fought with cold quivers in places she never paid attention to in her life.
Her back touched a tree “You are the danger!” She shouted, not caring this was saying too much, disclosing too much, baring to him these forbidden secrets she did not confess to herself, let alone to another. Let alone to him.
His eyes squeezed perilously as he halted before her. “Am I, Aileen?” A guttural growl that sowed goose-bumps over her feverish skin with her name alone on his disturbing lips.
The heat of his broad fame overtook hers, filled her vision with the darkness of his stubble, the darkness of her thoughts. And a hunger so incoherent, her mind simply shut down completely.
One hand beside her head braced him, and she lifted her head to meet his lupus expression. It devoured her face with an eagerness difficult to be indifferent to at this precise moment.
They stood so close she could see the cleft on his chin under the dark stubble. Their eyes clutched, their uneven breaths mingled. Their wills clashed.
In this position his shirt opened so wide her palms itched to amble the hot skin and feel the hairs grazing them, inch by sinful inch. The scent of him horse, clean sweat and earth entered her nostrils insufficient, which plunged her in a terrible need to lower her nose and go for more.
But then his gaze attacked her lips, they tingled, and he angled his coal head that much to reach them. The world stopped, froze, arrested in that moment, suspended and full of unwanted desires.
Just to clap into motion again and spin, round and round unceasingly. Faster at each turn. To the point of provoking a resounding implosion in every one of the reason she must resist, oppose, fight back this avalanche of downfall.
Her idiot mouth responded without her permission. And raised to his imperceptibly, but enough that she sensed the warmth of a mouth which should have been prohibited to exist on this planet. Or she should have been spared the torment of its shape by never having set eyes upon it.
The arm bracing him flexed diminishing the already insignificant distance between them as her heart somersaulted spreading heat everywhere. Something poked her belly with a slight touch foreign to her. Mahogany eyes darted down to see a tented tartan over his… his. Pure crimson erupted when she flashed her gaze back to his. Only to realise the dark centre swallowed the green and his expression turned to a famished-pack-in-winter.
The will to wrap that part of him so overwhelming her hands sought the tree bark behind her. Her nails clawed at it until they broke, her fingers became raw. And she yearned febrile that this wolf pounced on her, took her, devoured her in the same time that he sated this desperate… hollowness. A melted, honeyed hollowness.
The need to muster a herculean will-power interfered with her hazy sensations as her mind demanded she moved. Wrenching herself from the tree, she sprang in the direction of the brook, stiff back, mentally cursing the fact that highlanders never adopted the healthy English habit of underwear.
Taran raked a strained hand through his hair as Aileen disappeared down the bank, his lips pressed together. He must start wearing breeches, he mused. They would have compressed his unruly body into painful submission. The woman had the troubling power to disintegrate any vestige of self-control he possessed. With little left as of now.
He wrote it down to the tension and worry he went through during the urgent night ride. All kinds of tragic images passed through his head in those horrible hours. If anything had happened to her, he would never forgive himself.
Resilience proved to be one of her personal qualities. Not only did she succeed in escaping from right under his nose—a nose too keen on nuzzling her paradisiac skin—but also, she covered a considerable distance in so short a time. He never underestimated the stubborn woman which meant he would have to tighten his vigilance. The fact that she did not even blink at the need to walk to the manor surprised him as well.
Fiona had been very different. They married at too young an age, he concluded years later. It had been an arranged match between his father and the Laird McPherson, the alliance advantageous for both. Taran never wavered from his duty to his clan, but Fiona acquired other conceptions. She dreamed of experiencing life in the city, Aberdeen or Edinburgh, with the theatre, opera, balls, tea-parties and shopping. She had insisted for him to buy a house in one of these places and live in it part of the year. This was never his ambition. He loved the Highlands and possessed a strong sense of duty towards his clan.
After Sam’s birth, she became restless and moody. In the hopes to cheer her, he agreed to send her to Aberdeen for a couple of mon
ths, certain she would lose the fascination soon enough. She did not. More than that, she took a lover. Perhaps lovers.
In their third year of marriage, they had been living separate lives. Not that he loved her or had any feeling other than friendship. He did not care to be a cuckold though. It hurt his pride and his dignity. The notion she seemed not to love Sam the worst. In the forth year, she left a party too drunk to see a carriage speeding along the street and it fatally overrode her. No sense of loss ever befell Taran. But marriage got scratched from his life.
Sam did not know the details of his mother’s life in Aberdeen or her death. Taran strove to create a positive image of Fiona for his sake. Nannies and governesses provided proper feminine influence, and he did his best for his son’s happiness.
Eager to dispel these memories, he busied himself preparing the camp. Ten minutes later, Aileen came with arms full of dry wood for the fire. Her focused nature continued to amaze him.
Fire built, they ate in a silence stretched to extreme tightness. The prospect of the night put Taran in a state where his guts were tied and wired.
CHAPTER FIVE
In an attempt not to think about her glossy chestnut strands in a tight bun which bared the nape of her neck to indecent reveries; or her simple dress, simple to the point of giving away too much of her curvy slightness, he took her cloak to line the ground. He would wrap in his tartan and use the blanket to cover them, the fire big enough to last the night and drive off dangerous animals.
