Page 18 of A Highland Rogue to Ruin

MacLeod’s eyes narrowed murderously. “Rose, my people have naught. A penalty as such will cause them to starve this winter.”

“Ye should have thought about that before ye tried to knock her from her horse,” her brother growled back, drawing his dagger.

Brighde pinched her eyes closed, the exoneration brimming for freedom from her lips.

“This bastard’s reaves destroyed most of our crops and what he requests is all that remains,” rumbled MacLeod softly.

Her brother’s raids? “Jamie, what have ye done?” she whispered.

A hint of desperation laced the Demon’s words as his brows pulled together in the closest expression to supplication she imagined this warrior would ever deign to make. Her clan needed to make right their wrong against Tormund. The winning purse would feed his people.

“Nothing he does nay deserve,” James replied beneath his breath, “for what his brother did—”

Tormund snarled, revealing a tiny chip to the front tooth in his mouth of otherwise perfect teeth. So familiar. He opened his mouth to reply. She couldn’t bear to have a skirmish erupt when she had the power to quell it, to prevent the storm from shedding more blood between their people—

“He nay cheated!” She thrust herself between them, gasping in relief to have said it, stumbling to move their monumental bodies, Tormund’s hands catching her waist to steady her, their bodies flush.

Memories erupted upon her skin, sending every sore part of her throbbing anew at his familiar grip. Pulse fluttering so fast lightheadedness threatened to overcome her, panic surged through her blood.

Sagebrush and sea breeze littered reminders over her skin as she inhaled the wonderful musk. Nay…

“Couldna’ wait to touch me again, angel? All ye had to do was ask,” he taunted under his breath.

Oh God.

Her eyes snapped wide upon his cocksure drawl. His gaze bore into her heart and soul, his hands encasing her waist evoking memories of lips crashing to lips and hands laced with calloused fingers pinned to trees in a mossy wood, bodies united in the most primal way. His essence filled her nose. Her body erupted with desire. Her sore lips throbbed.

How was this man who’d chuckled, who brushed tenderly her lips, who played tabletop jeus and danced and smirked boyishly and kept locks of hair as keepsakes and set her body on fire, the same man who’d attacked their castle to defend the memory of a brother cut down unfairly…

God above. His admission last night. About his brother.

“Nay touch her,” James fumed.

She couldn’t tear her gaze away, breathing, “Laird MacLeod is nay going to hurt me.”

Tormund arched an arrogant brow as if to promise he’d try, and sakes, she knew what his roving hands and passionate lips and playful teeth were capable of. She’d spread herself out beneath him like a Christmastide feast at his desperate pleas to be pushed away. MacLeod’s eyes dipped to her mouth, to her teeth pinching her lip. Fixated there, then flitted back to her eyes.

Was he remembering, too? Had he been up all night, restless and wanting, as she had? Heat flared within her. But then again, he might have made last night beautiful for her, knowing she was untouched, but it clearly hadn’t been his first time. It hadn’t been special to him. Panic that what they’d had last night was over, flooded her eyes with tears, as did the realization that he’d spoken last night anonymously about his brother. The same brother her father and James had ambushed when he and his MacLeod party rode toward Tioram…cut down traveling to an enemy for help. Oh God, she was going to be sick. Her hand slipped over her belly. Was it true? He’d had no reason to lie. They’d been masked. Anonymous. Never planning to see each other again. With his mask on, he’d let her in, a little, in a way she suspected he never allowed a soul.

“What did ye say, lass?” Rose interjected.

She summoned a shaky breath. “He didna cheat. He…” Tormund’s grip on her waist tightened briefly. His gaze was fixed with concern on her hand holding her stomach. Her hair blew onto her face, tangling in her eyes, and she brushed back her tendrils, noting how his gaze traveled along the path her fingers made across her skin, hair he’d laced his fingers within and clenched as he’d kissed her. “He helped me.”

Silence.

Tormund’s eyes widened. The roughness, for just a moment, softened to what it had been last night, as his brow furrowed curiously.

Upon an inhale, she twisted her locket so viciously the chain bit into her skin and she winced. “I—I was distracted and fell off-balance…” Their eyes met again, held. “He caught me, and it cost him the lead. He saved me from a grievous injury, or worse.”

She blurted it out into the void. The silence became deafening.

“Sister, why do ye defend him?” Disgust twisted James’s words. “Now is nay the time for yer nobility.”

“But it’s true. I’d be lying to say otherwise.” Water wavering on her eyelids finally blinked over the falls to cascade down her cheeks. She wouldn’t have such a stain on her conscience, not after what she was just realizing, just piecing together. My closest friend. Most loyal man ye’d ever meet. Loved his bonny wife…life stolen from him unjustly. Tormund MacLeod had worn the talon he’d given her ever since his brother—sakes, Owen’s—death, to honor him, for no one else does. “Ye saw what ye wanted to see, but in sooth, he was chivalrous.”

“Chivalrous,” someone snorted. “Aye, he fluffs his enemies’ pillows before he slaughters them…”

“But he was chivalrous,” she admonished the crowd, feeling rare anger well. “And every single one of ye was ready to hang him first and nay ask any questions later.”