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“Remove both at once.” MacKechnie takes no notice of Finlay’s dark glare. “I’ll store them somewhere safe. Given your history, I’d be out of my mind having someone with several violent weapons rocking up to visit Mr. Milton.”
“‘Given my history’?” Finlay snaps with an unhappy sneer as he unclasps his sporran. “Jesus Christ, ye falter from a path o’ complete righteousness once in yer life and ye’re never allowed tae forget it.”
“It is you, is it not, who aided and abetted the manufacture of a document designed to remove my charge and his family from power?” MacKechnie’s tone is clipped and professional, yet his words are pure acid. “Next time, try not to get ideas above your station. It could have saved us all from this hassle.”
My eyes widen at MacKechnie. As his scanner travels over my body, I get the impression he’s been bursting to say this to Finlay for a very long time. Now that we’re far beyond the Lochkelvin walls, he’s finally had his chance. Obligingly, I hand over the dagger from my bag, secretly relieved not to be in charge of it any longer.
Frankly, I don’t think Luke could have asked for a better bodyguard.
“Never liked history anyway,” Finlay mutters scornfully when we’re both de-clawed. Without a word, MacKechnie leaves us at one of the doors on the second floor. “‘Ideas above my station.’ Honestly, whit a fuckin’ prick.”
I find myself drowning out Finlay’s grouching. Because Luke… Luke is right behind this door and my heart is tight with anticipation. All I want is to be wrapped up in his arms, to sweep kisses across his handsome face, and to tell him how much he’s been missed. All I want is for us to cuddle for long wintry days, to be syrupy-sweet with our affection, to be tangled up in love and pure joy—
I open the door to the sight of a glinting knife.
It whizzes through the air like a white streak of lightning, and before I can make sense of it, the handle of the blade quivers, the knife embedded in a wooden plaque in the wall beside my cheek. I blink unseeingly into the depths of the darkened room, trying to gather my thoughts, which have just packed up and fled in terror.
“Enter,” Luke drawls, and I watch as if in an out-of-body experience as he lifts himself from the chaise, swaggering across to the plaque and removing the blade without so much as a grunt. He takes a long metal rod, which I belatedly realize is some kind of blade sharpener, and draws the knife against it in lethal, sparking strokes.
A not-inconsiderable collection of weapons rests in racks beside the chaise. In the darkness, I think I even spot the head of an ax.
Luke doesn’t acknowledge either of us as he diligently sharpens his knife. His opened shirt hangs from him, sweat shining along his skin. The silence is so thick with tension that I have the urgent need to swipe the knife from Luke and cut it.
“Busy…?” I ask after a long, silent minute.
“Cooped up all month. Little else to do other than train.” His voice is oddly menacing. He acts on edge around us, still not focusing on me or Finlay, his head bowed to his knife. It makes me wonder how much hateful news about himself he’s been listening to alongside his training regime. In the time he’s been gone, Luke seems to have turned into a soldier.
“WhenI’mcooped up, I usually just play video games or somethin’,” Finlay says in a quiet voice, slowly entering the room. “You seem tae have taken it intae real life.”
“If this were a game,” Luke drawls, “my attack stats will have been maxed out.” It’s the most gentlemanly warning shot:wrong me and I will fuck you up.
“If this were a game,” Finlay fires back, “yer charisma stat’s plummeted tae fuckin’ zero.”
I can’t tell if Luke’s ire is actually directed atus. As my eyes scan the room, I note there are hints of who he is beyond a fighter. A thick red Bible, heavily bookmarked, lies on a small wooden table adjacent to the chaise. Beside it are books I remember from the Munros’ library — non-fiction, history, biographies of medieval kings. There’s even a compendium of fairy tales, richly illustrated.
I take tentative steps toward Luke, into the murk of the room with its tightly drawn curtains. His dark eyes finally focus on me, the muscles in his shoulders slowly slackening, but then he gives his head a sudden shake. “No. You’re my weakness, I can’t look at you. Back off.” And Luke physically turns from me, picking up yet another dagger to embed into the wall.
“Are you aff yer fuckin’ rocker? Fuckin’ hell, it’sus.” Finlay bursts into the room. He clamps his hand around Luke’s wrist, yanking it back, and Luke stares at him in outrage. With lightning reflexes, his other hand slants into a fist that Finlay is too slow to avoid. As Luke’s knuckles collide with the side of Finlay’s face, the dagger he’d been holding shines sharply between his fingers and slants ominously against Finlay’s jaw.
“Sassenach,” Finlay mutters in a tense voice, the tendons in his neck straining against the blade’s edge, “move.”
I pivot to where Luke can see me, holding Finlay in my arms as he nurses his jaw. I dare to reach my hands up the bunched line of muscle along Luke’s forearms, along the arm carrying the dagger. Luke draws away from me as though my fingers are flames. I glance nervously at the dagger pointing upward and outward —he could plunge it straight into me… But Luke refuses to even look in my direction, focusing with dark intent on Finlay. Only when I lean forward and give him the most desperate, yearning kiss does Luke finally falter.
We’re a messy tangle of bodies, though not in the same ways we’d been in the past. Luke’s tongue glides against mine as he clutches my face between unexpectedly rough hands. I find myself falling into him, into the sheer power of repressed desire.
Trapped. He’s been trapped far too long with no one but MacKechnie and an endless stream of bad news. No wonder he’s gone stir-crazy.
As I kiss Luke soundly, Finlay manages to slip free beneath us. Luke pulls back, his eyes flickering, his breathing quick. He breathes me in deeply, his forehead resting against mine and his fingers hard around the handle of his dagger.
“They hate me,” Luke mutters to me in a private, broken whisper. “They want to kill me.”
“We’re not them,” I tell him defiantly, stroking his cropped hair and holding him close to me. “Weloveyou. Remember? Remember the way it was on the island, what we did together? All of us?”
Luke says nothing but his eyes remain closed — and for someone who hadn’t dared to blink the instant we walked through the door, I decide this is a major achievement. I catch Finlay’s eye and encourage him to hold Luke likewise, but he hangs back, looking faintly disturbed by their interaction.
“He needs you,” I quietly insist as I run a calming palm down Luke’s back. Grudgingly, and only doing so because I asked, Finlay shuffles forward and gives Luke an awkward pat on his shoulder. Luke, to his credit, doesn’t snap at Finlay this time, but his back tenses so completely beneath my fingers that I worry about the level of mistrust between them. It seems to have surged since they last met. I don’t know what the hell nonsense MacKechnie’s been filling Luke’s head with since we’ve been gone, but whatever it is, it’s enough to have him waving a sharpened blade at his old, dear friend.
Undone. All that progress between them, erased by one long month of confinement.
