“I fought it with both hands. I told meself it was a pity, and then I told meself it was a habit, and then I ran out of lies to tell.” Her voice dropped and broke on the drop. “And then ye sent me home, and the castle was full of kin who cared for me, and it was the emptiest I’ve ever been in me life.
“Because ye werenae in it. And yer daft dog wasnae in it. And Rosie wasnae in it. And I stood in me maither’s garden with the sun on me face, and I ached like a pulled tooth for a place I’d been dragged to in chains.” She rubbed the back of her hand across her wet cheek and glared at him through it. “So, aye. Aye,ye great locked fool. I feel the same. I’ve felt it that long I daenae ken who I’d be without it now, and I’ve half a mind to hate ye afresh for makin’ me say it first.”
He crossed the last of the space between them, took her face in both his hands, the bound arm and the good, and kissed her.
There was nothing careful about it. A month of holding breath, of keeping hands and rules laid down in the dark, erupted like dry gorse catching a spark.
Olivia made a small, broken sound against his mouth and returned it with her whole self, her fingers clutching the front of his shirt to pull him closer. He felt the final hinge of that long-locked door tear away completely.
“Say it again,” he breathed against her lips. “The last part. Say it once more so I ken I didnae dream it.”
“I feel the same.” She said it fiercely, her forehead pressed hard against his, her hands still knotted in his shirt as if she feared he’d vanish. “I feel the same, Ragnall. Now, in the name of all that’s holy, stop talkin’.”
CHAPTER 38
He kissedher the way he had wanted to since the day a priest had bound them, with nothing held in reserve and nothing kept back for safety, and she met him at every turn.
She had thought, the once or twice she had let herself think of it at all in the dark of the south tower, that a man like Ragnall would come at this the way he came at a fight—all force and certainty.
He did not.
He kissed her slowly, deeply, and thoroughly, one large hand slipping into her loosened hair to cradle the back of her head, the other warm on the small of her back to bring her flush against the entire hard length of him.
He took his time, learning her mouth as if they had all their lives to do it, which she now understood dizzily that they did.
She sensed the restraint within him, the careful way he handled things, and recognized it for what it was. He had wanted her for a month, and he planned to take his time with her.
“Ye’re certain?” he said against her jaw, her throat, the soft place below her ear that made her knees go weak. It was not quite a question. “Say it, lassie. There’s nay rule left to stop us, and that’s the very reason I willnae move a hand ye havenae asked for.”
“I ken.” She turned her face into his and felt him shiver.
“Ye mind what I told ye the night of the weddin’, when ye kissed me and I stopped ye?” His voice had dropped to something she felt in her chest more than heard. “That when ye came to me, it’d be because ye wanted the man ye ken me to be. Nae the enemy. Nae the gratitude. Nae the duty. Me. I will have it that way or nae at all, Olivia. Even now, even with me half out of me mind for ye. Tell me it’s me ye want.”
“I ken who ye are.” She drew back just far enough to hold his dark eyes, her hands coming up to frame the scar that ran from the corner of his eye to his lip, tracing the old silver line of it with her thumb without flinching, watching him fight the old habit of turning from her touch and lose that fight.
“I’ve ken who ye are a good while now, whatever I said with me sharp tongue. It’s ye I want, Ragnall Crawford. Nae the Laird, nae the monster I made ye in me head that first black night. But ye. The man who binds his own wounds sooner than wake a soul, and rocks a bairn in the dark, and takes a blade for an auldwoman. Now, take me to bed, husband. I’ve wanted ye that long; I am half-mad with it.”
Something came loose inside him then that she felt, more than saw, a low sound breaking in his chest.
He bent and slid an arm behind her knees and lifted her off her feet as if she weighed nothing at all, and carried her the few steps to the wide tower bed and laid her down in the candlelight with a care that belied the hunger she could feel running through every line of him.
He undressed her slowly, treating it like a reverence. The laces of her bodice loosened one by one under his patient fingers, and he followed each new inch of exposed skin with his mouth—tracing the slope of her shoulders, the wing of her collarbone, and the soft swell of her breasts as he pulled the shift down and away.
She lay bare to the cool night air, the warm gold of the candlelight, and the darker heat of his gaze as it traveled the entire length of her.
Under his gaze, she did not feel exposed at all. She only felt wanted, and that feeling unraveled her more than any touch had so far.
Instead of pulling away, she reached for him and saw the wonder in that hard look on his face, knowing he had marked it too.
“Look at ye,” he said, low and rough, like a man come unexpectedly upon something holy. “I nearly died wantin’ this. Ye will never ken the half of it. The nights I lay a handsbreadth from ye in the dark with me fists clenched in the linen so I wouldnae reach for ye. I’d listen to yer breathin’ go slow, and I’d lie there and burn and call it honor.”
“Then daenae make me wait for it any longer.” She reached for the hem of his shirt and dragged it up, and he pulled it over his head and let her look her fill in turn, the broad scarred plane of his chest, the dark trail of hair below his navel, the old wounds and the new one bound at his forearm, all the hard-used map of him.
She pressed her palms flat against his chest and felt his heart pounding beneath them, just as wild as her own. The awareness of that—knowing she had wrecked him just as thoroughly as he had wrecked her—was its own kind of intoxication.
She let her hands drift down over the contours of him, learning him the way he was learning her, and felt his breath catch when her fingers reached the laces of his trews.
He came down over her, careful of his weight on his good arm, and set his mouth to her breast. She arched up off the bed with a gasp as he drew her nipple between his lips and worked it slowly with his tongue. He gave the other nipple the same unhurried ruin until she was writhing beneath him and her hands had found his loose black hair to hold him there, her breath coming quick and helpless in the quiet.
