Page 38 of The Highland Laird’s Hellion Bride

Elspeth’s eyes went wide, then squeezed shut with theatrical speed. “I am nae lookin’,” she announced, her chin lifting. “Like a song carried upon the evenin’ breeze…”

He climbed the bank in three strides.

“Elspeth.”

“—and though he fought against it, he longed only to silence her…”

He kissed her before she could finish the sentence.

It was not gentle. It was not, in any sense, planned. His hand found her jaw, tilting her face up to his. She made a small, startled sound against his mouth, and he hungrily swallowed it without realizing he had ever meant to do so.

He told himself he had done it only to stop her talking. The excuse lasted about as long as it took him to think about it.

A man who wanted silence pulled back the instant he got it. He did not pull back. His hand stayed right where it was, and he discovered he had no intention of moving it.

She went rigid for the length of one heartbeat. Then her free hand came up, fisting in the front of his shirt, and she kissed him back with a passion that undid every last piece of his intention to keep this brief.

He tasted of salt and something warmer beneath. He felt her fingers tighten in the wet linen at his chest and instinctively reached for more of her, one arm sliding around her waist, drawing her half off the rock and against him.

She made a low sound against his mouth, not a protest, and her book slid off her lap, landing on the grass with a soft thud neither of them noticed.

When he finally broke the kiss, they stared at each other.

Her lips were parted, her cheeks flushed a vivid crimson that had nothing to do with the chilly wind brushing her skin. Her hand still clung to his shirt, not willing—or able—to decide to let go.

“That,” Magnus said when he trusted his voice to remain steady and detached, “was considerably more effective than poetry.”

Elspeth opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. This time, no sound emerged at all, which he found more satisfying than he had any right to.

Then she recovered the book from the grass, and without further ceremony, struck him lightly on the shoulder with it.

“Magnus Wallace,” she said, already gathering her skirts, “ye daenae get to spend a fortnight decidin’ what I read, what I wear, and where I go, and then simply”—she flung a hand toward him, encompassing the past two minutes—“kiss me as though that settles the matter.”

“It settled somethin’,” Magnus said.

“It settled nothin’.” She was walking now, back toward the birches, spine straight as a lance. “It merely proved that for all yer talk of discipline and disappointment and decidin’ what’s best for everyone, ye are exactly as ruled by yer own wants as any man livin’.”

He stood dripping on the bank, watching her go, and found he had no argument prepared for that either.

“What about our outing?” he called after her. It suddenly seemed important that this did not end with her walking off into the trees with his book and his good sense both.

She turned, just enough to fix him with a look that could have curdled milk, and then continued without breaking stride.

Magnus watched the birches swallow her, the pale flash of her skirts visible for a few strides longer before the path bent and hid her from view. The loch settled quietly behind him, its waters lapping softly against the rocks, and somewhere off toward the ridge, a curlew called once and went silent.

He lifted two fingers to his mouth. He stood there longer than the gesture warranted, water running cold down his spine, and found himself thinking, with considerable and unwelcome clarity, that he had spent thirteen years training himself out of wanting things.

He had not trained himself out of this.

He did not take the short path back to the castle. He took the long way, through the birches, past the place where her skirts had gone out of sight, and told himself that had nothing to do with longing.

* * *

Sleep proved uncooperative.

Elspeth lay staring at the canopy above her bed for the better part of an hour, turning over the memory of cold water and warm lips until she gave up and rose before the sun had properly committed to the sky.

She dressed quickly, twisted her hair into a serviceable bun, and went searching for anything that might occupy her hands and mind enough to leave no room for the shape of Magnus Wallace’s shoulders.