Lachlan lifted his hand and brushed his thumb along her cheek. She realized then that a smear of damp earth marked her skin. His touch was light. Completely wrong for the moment. Completely impossible to resist.
She couldn’t move. Knew that she should get up off the ground right now. That crouching beside him, staring into his impossibly blue eyes was asking for trouble. But she felt paralyzed.
He started to lean closer. Still she didn’t move. Captivated, intoxicated. Wanting so very badly for him to do the thing she’d been dreaming of since he’d had a fever.
And when his mouth found hers, it was nothing like the fevered kiss before. There was no delirium to excuse it. No illness to soften it. This kiss was deliberate. Controlled for one breath, then not controlled at all.
Isabel should have pulled away. Instead, she kissed him back. Pressed her lips to his. Breathed in the earthen scent of him.
His hand slid to the back of her neck, fingers threading into the loosened hair beneath the hood of her cloak. Her palm pressed against his chest, perhaps to stop him, perhaps to steady herself, but beneath her hand his heart beat hard and fast and very much alive. The kiss lasted only seconds. But it could have been an eternity of pleasure.
Someone cleared their throat. Isabel gasped and yanked away. How could she have let herself forget where she was, who she was, and who she was with? God’s bones. Her face felt hot as a flame. She should have slit his throat for the impropriety of it, and yet, that was the last thing she wanted to do.
“The road is clear, my laird,” Angus said, not a trace of judgment on his face, as if he hadn’t just interrupted a kiss that should not have happened.
For a moment neither spoke. Isabel could still feel the shape of him on her mouth. She could still hear the English voices in the trees. The two sensations tangled together until she could not tell whether she was trembling from fear or desire.
Lachlan stood first, for once again she seemed unable to find her footing both literally and figuratively. His face had closed again, but not completely. Something remained in his eyes, something heated and grim and almost accusing, as though she had done this to him.
Perhaps she had. Perhaps they had done it to each other.
He helped her rise. His hand lingered only long enough to be improper, then fell away. Around them, the men emerged from cover, leading horses, checking straps, saying little. If any had seen the kiss, none were foolish enough to show it. But Isabel felt exposed all the same. Not because of what others might have witnessed. But because of what she now knew.
She wanted him. Never before had there been a man who held her interest longer than a fleeting moment. And Lachlan seemed to have ensnared every moment, holding her hostage.
And wanting Lachlan MacLeod was not a harmless fancy, not the sort of admiration a woman could fold away like a ribbon and pretend she had never worn. Wanting him, kissing him, was a blade that could cut them both.
They walked their horses to smoother, steadier ground and mounted again, but this time Isabel rode her own horse. Distance should have helped. However, with each of her horse’s steps, the fire inside her grew rather than dissipating. She felt him behind her even when he was several lengths back. The memory of his arm around her waist, his mouth against hers, the hard command of his body haunted her. How kissing him had filled her with a desire she didn’t understand, and then recalling where they were had filled her trepidation.
The fog began to lift as they climbed higher, revealing the long sweep of hills beyond the trees. Scotland unfolded in shades of green and gray, beautiful and brutal, all open sky and secret places. Somewhere ahead lay the Isle of Skye. Somewhere behind them rode Englishmen. Somewhere among the living, perhaps close enough to share their fire tonight, was a traitor.
Isabel looked toward the ridgeline and wondered how many dangers could follow one woman.
Behind Lady Isabel, Lachlan watched the mist loosen from her hair and felt the last of his certainty go with it. Protecting her had once been a straightforward order. A little annoying as he would have wished to be in the heart of battle, not on the outskirts protecting a prize. But it was simple enough. Keep her alive. Deliver her safely to his castle in Skye where she would remain until the Bruce summoned her.
Obeying the command should have been easy.
But Isabel was no longer merely a duty riding under his guard. She was a lass who asked questions that struck too close to truth, who saw weakness he had meant to hide, who kissed him as though she understood the danger and chose it anyway.
She was no longer only someone to protect. She was someone he could lose.
And that made every shadow on the road ahead more treacherous than the enemy behind them.
16
Lachlan kept his gaze fixed on the winding forest road ahead, though he was aware—keenly and constantly—of Isabel riding only a few paces before him. Several hours had passed since they’d hidden from the English, and the quiet between the two of them had stretched far longer than comfort allowed, settling into something strained and unspoken that neither of them seemed willing to break.
What had come over him? Kissing her like that out in the open, with all his men to see, to judge. Zounds. He had treated her like chattel, and he was lucky she’d not struck him. That her maid had not cut him down. For certain, he had taken advantage of her dewy lips.
Still, the memory of the kiss in the forest lingered, hovering between them like the fog that had yet to fully lift from the hills.
He had kissed her as though there was no war pressing in from all sides, no English riders searching the roads, no traitors lurking in the shadows. He had kissed her as though she were not the one woman in Scotland he had absolutely no right to want.
The realization weighed heavily on him now, settling deep in his chest with a stubborn, unwelcome permanence. Desire was not new to him. He understood it well enough to control it, to dismiss it when it interfered with duty. But whatever was happening between him and Isabel felt less manageable, slipping past the boundaries he had spent years building. Now he found himself watching her more often than he should, noticing details that shouldn’t matter. The way she held herself in the saddle despite fatigue. The impatient flick of her hand as the wind pulled strands of hair from her braid. The quiet determination that seemed to define every movement she made.
He’d seen Angus and James exchange a brief glance, subtle enough that most would not have seen it. Lachlan did. He saw the understanding in it, the recognition that he had crossed a line, even if no one dared to give voice to it. He had trained his men well. Warriors survived by noticing such things, by reading silence as easily as speech, and there was no hiding the change that had passed between Lachlan and the lass riding ahead of him. That, perhaps, troubled him most. Not that they had seen—but that they were right.
He forced his attention forward as the land began to change around them. The dense trees thinned gradually, giving way to open stretches of wind-swept grass that bent low beneath the growing strength of air coming off the loch not far from them now.
