Page 73 of Blood & Claw

His hands didn’t falter.

They moved with slow, steady pressure, working the ache from her lower back. The pain resisted at first—clinging stubbornly—but then, gradually, it began to ease.

A traitorous sound pressed at the back of her throat. She swallowed it down.

Better he didn’t hear that. She didn’t want him to know how good it felt, or how aware of him she was. That wasn’t right, not with Kayla lost somewhere ahead in the dark.

“Your parents,” she said after a while, her voice a touch unsteady. “It sounds as if they had a happy marriage?”

“Aye … they did.”

“Did? They’re gone now?”

“Aye.”

His hands shifted, thumbs pressing into the muscles on either side of her spine, circling slowly. She sucked in a breath through her nose as the pressure deepened.

“Your mother was blessed by The Five indeed … if your father massaged her like this,” she murmured. Her cheeks warmed. Curse her. She needed to shut up.

He didn’t answer that. “Here,” he said instead, quieter now. “Lean forward a little.”

She hesitated and then did as he asked.

His hands followed the movement, sliding slightly higher. The pressure changed.

Her eyes fluttered shut. That was even better than before.

“I never knew my real parents,” she said, the words slipping out before she could stop them.

Why had she told him that?

“No?” His voice was low, closer now.

“I was abandoned at birth … left on Kayla’s doorstep. She brought me up as her own.”

The pressure of his thumbs deepened—just for a moment—before easing again.

“A foundling, then?”

“It’s not uncommon.” Defensiveness crept into Ailsa’s tone, even as her pulse quickened. Of late, she’d found herself worrying about the things she’d always taken for granted. What if Kayla lied to me? “Many lasses get with bairn and have no means to look after them.”

His thumbs slowed. “You must wonder who you are.”

Ailsa didn’t reply. Instead, she remembered the thief’s face. The satisfaction she’d felt when her nails tore his skin. The way the Reedohran’s blood had steamed across the stones. How she’d run toward danger instead of away from it.

Last night’s dream revisited her then, and her pulse lurched. Fear flickered up. What if it got worse?

“Sometimes,” she said, her voice roughening. “Although Kayla has been a mother to me in all the ways that count.”

Another silence settled. This one felt different, more companionable. Shared.

His hands stilled. For a moment, she thought he might pull away. Instead, his thumbs resumed their slow, steady circles. “She sounds formidable,” he said at last.

Ailsa’s lips curved faintly, her tension easing once more. “She is.”

She let herself sink into the massage then, into the heat of the fire—enjoying the steady rhythm of his hands, the absence of pain.

Just for a moment.