Page 101 of Blood of the Thistle

“I had a nice time tonight,” she said.

“Aye. So did I.”

“It was nice talking to you again.”

Bram understood what she meant by again—before the storm, before he’d decided distance was necessary and accomplished it with infuriating and astounding success.

Neither moved, save for Bram shifting his weight on his hip.

“I want to kiss ye again, lass—Jesu, how I want to kiss ye—but I willna if ye—”

Anastasia pushed away from the door, closed the small distance between them, and rose on her toes to press her mouth against his, rendering the rest of his cautious preamble entirely unnecessary.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Anastasia had barely pressed her mouth against his before Bram’s hand came around the back of her neck and drew her against him. He kissed her with an immediate hunger that sent a shiver through her and compelled her to slide her arms around his neck. His other hand found her waist, and when he drew her against him, she went willingly, rising higher onto her toes and opening her mouth beneath his.

Good Lord. She remembered this. She’d thought about it so many times and had lain awake recalling the feel of his mouth and the roughness of his beard against her skin, but memory had done a remarkably poor job of imitating the real thing. There was nothing tentative in the way Bram kissed her now, nothing that allowed her to remain detached enough to question what she was doing, and when his hand moved from the back of her neck into her hair, tilting her head to deepen the kiss, she made a soft sound against his mouth and felt his answering breath warm upon her cheek.

This was what she wanted, and for once, Anna refused to make it more complicated than that.

She was twenty-eight years old. She wanted him, and he very obviously wanted her. After everything the last few weeks had taken from her, surely she was allowed this one thing simply because it felt good. If she woke tomorrow in York, restored inexplicably to the life she’d lost, she suspected she would regret not having kissed him far more than she would regret having done so.

Bram’s mouth left hers and traveled along her cheek, and Anna tipped her head instinctively when his lips found the sensitive place beneath her ear. Her fingers tightened in his hair.

“Bram,” she breathed.

His arm tightened around her.

Somewhere amid the kisses, they had shifted closer to her door, and her back met the heavy wood. Bram followed, his body settling against hers as his mouth returned to her own. She could feel the hard rise and fall of his chest beneath her hands, could taste the ale they’d drunk tonight and feel the scrape of his stubble at the corners of her mouth, and she returned his kiss with an abandon she would have found alarming if she’d been capable of caring just then.

Anna felt his arm move beside her, heard the quiet scrape of iron, and understood only when the latch lifted behind her that he was opening her chamber door.

He pushed the door inward with the hand stretched behind her, and Anna moved with it, taking one step backward and then another as he followed her into the chamber, the kiss unbroken, tongues entwined. The faint light from the passage reached only a little way inside, and when Bram kicked the door shut behind him, the sudden privacy of the room registered with considerably more force than the darkness.

She knew exactly where this was going. The realization sent a nervous flutter through her stomach, but it did not make her step away. Instead she reached for him again, catching the front of his tunic and pulling him back to her mouth, not caring that she’d not shaved her legs in weeks or wanting to pause to brush her teeth.

Bram’s mouth claimed hers, not with tenderness but with a raw, unchecked hunger—a collision of lips and teeth and shared breath that left no space for hesitation. His hands slid from her waist to her lower back, pressing her flush against him as he angled his head to deepen the kiss. She tasted the faint salt of sweat on his skin, felt the scrape of his unshaven jaw, and met his urgency with her own, her fingers tangling in the rough linen of his tunic as if she could pull him even closer. There was nothing gentle in it—only need, immediate and consuming, a force that swept thought away like river current.

Then he abruptly resisted the hands urging him closer. Anna opened her eyes.

His forehead rested against hers, his breath warm and uneven across her face, while his hands remained at her waist. For several seconds the only sound was their heavy breathing.

“Is this fear and loneliness, then?” he asked.

Oh. Crap.

“Maybe.” Anna hated that he had put it out there, but she wasn’t prepared to offer him anything more vulnerable.

His hands loosened upon her waist, and even in the dimness she saw something change in his face.

“Does it matter?” she asked, her voice coming out thin and defensive.

“Aye,” he answered without hesitation. “I willna have ye choose this tonight and wish on the morrow that ye had nae.”

Some of the tightness in her chest eased when she realized he wasn’t asking her to confess anything. He was only asking whether she was certain.

“I won’t.”