“Nay,” he said roughly. “Nae like this.”
“Ye…” Olivia’s face flamed. “Ye stopped.”
“Aye, I stopped.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Ye’ve had the worst night of yer life. Ye’re frightened and grateful, and ye arenae thinkin’ straight. If I take what ye are offerin’ me now, ye’ll hate both of us come mornin’, and ye’ll be right to.”
“Ragnall…”
His eyes burned into hers. “When ye come to me, lassie—and ye will—it’ll nae be in thanks for a thing any decent man would have done. It’ll be because ye want me.Me. The man, nae the rescue. I will have all of it, or I will have none of it. I am a greedy bastard that way.”
The tenderness of it was unbearable, and so was the shame, and the two of them together were more than she could carry.
She had kissed him with a dead man’s blood still on his cuff. She had known it and done it anyway, and he had put her aside as if she were a cup he had decided not to drink from.
So she did what she had always done with what she could not bear. She went for the jugular.
“Ye killed a man tonight,” she said. “At yer own weddin’. Ye opened him up like a fish, and ye didnae even flinch while ye did it. And ye stand there talkin’ to me of wantin’, of decency, with his blood nae yet dry on yer hand.” Her voice was shaking. “Killin’ comes awfully easy to ye, does it nae? It’s always the first answer ye reach for.”
His face hardened. “Is that what ye think of it?”
“It’s what I’ve seen.”
“Then hear what ye’ve nae seen.” He came back to the bed, not gently, and braced a hand on either side of her so that she was caged between his arms and the firelight, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from him.
“Killin’ the man who broke me sister was justice. Killin’ the man who put his hands on me wife, before me whole clan, on the one night when all of them were debatin’ whether ye’ll live or dieunder this roof, was a message. If I had to do it again, I’d do it slower.”
“I am nae sure this is true.”
“Olivia, listen to me.” His voice dropped low. “Ye come from a clan they’ve been taught from the cradle to hate. Do ye ken what becomes of ye in a hall full of drunk and grievin’ men if their Laird lets the first hand laid on ye go unpunished? Do ye?”
Olivia’s mouth had gone dry. “They’d… they’d think of me the way I think of ye,” she whispered.
“Worse,” he said. “Far worse. And ye’d nae have lived out the month.”
“I didnae think of that,” she admitted, her voice very small.
“Nay.” The hardness cracked, and a look almost like a smile, terrible and tired, tugged at the scarred side of his mouth. “Because ye only ever think on the one side of yer story, lassie. It’s yer worst habit. And yer dearest.”
They were too close. She became aware of it all at once, the cliff-edge nearness of him, the drop and the pull of it both.
He was braced over her, caging her in, and she could feel the whole long, hard line of him where his hip pressed against her thigh, could feel exactly and undeniably what holding himself back was costing him. Her breath went ragged in her throat.
His eyes dropped to her mouth and stayed there.
“Olivia,” he said, and the sound of her name in his rough, low voice nearly undid her.
He bent his head. She felt his warm breath fan her lips, felt him hovering on the very knife-edge of it, and she did not pull away, God help her. She lifted her chin that last small fraction to meet him.
“Ye must be me punishment,” he breathed against her mouth, “for every sin I’ve ever committed. I swear to God, lassie, ye’ll be the one who finally breaks me. I will lose me mind over ye, and go gladly.”
He suddenly pushed himself up off the bed and turned away from her, his shoulders tense and rigid, trying to master his emotions through sheer force.
“Sleep.” His voice had flattened back into the Laird’s voice, the one that gave away nothing at all. “I will go down and show the clan that their Laird hasnae been struck dead by the sight of his marriage bed. Bar the door behind me if it eases ye. There’s nay one left in this castle who will trouble ye until I return.”
He was gone before she could find one single word, the heavy door clicking shut behind him.
Olivia lay alone in the vast dark bed that smelled of him, in her torn wedding gown with his silver brooch holding it closed over her heart, and pressed both hands flat to her chest.
She understood, with a dawning horror that was nearly worse than any grief, that she had wanted him to stay.
