Page 11 of A Bride for the Wicked Highlander (Daring a Highland Laird #2)
“ H ow did you know it was me?” Maddie asked, finding her voice.
She edged closer to the slow lapping wavelets that whispered across the pebbles, the rest of the night so silent that she could hear every thundering beat of her heart.
Oscar still hadn’t turned to look at her, as if his attention was stuck on something in the distance.
His powerful arms flexed, muscles she didn’t know the name of tensing and relaxing.
“I couldnae think of any other lass who’d use such coarse language,” he replied. “Did ye catch yer foot on a root?”
“A stone, actually,” she muttered, puzzled as to why it felt so warm all of a sudden when the temperature couldn’t have been far off freezing.
He skimmed his fingertips across the loch’s placid surface, disturbing the smooth sheen. “Perhaps, that should’ve been yer warnin’ to go back to the castle.”
“I wouldn’t have had to come out here to find you if you had been at dinner, where you’re supposed to be,” she retorted, the thrill of his bare upper body nudged aside to accommodate her anger.
“What do you mean to achieve with this, hmm? Is it punishment? Did you want to remind me that you can take tomorrow away if you want to? A little display of your advantage over me?”
He turned slowly, the moonlight just as eager to see his extraordinary physique as it pushed aside the clouds to take a lingering peek.
Maddie’s ordinarily busy mind went blank, all thoughts vanishing as she stared at him. He was everything she’d ever imagined a warrior could look like, sculpted to perfection by endless hours in the training yard.
Broad shoulders curved down into those immense arms of his, biceps almost as big as her head; his burly chest and ridged abdomen so defined that just the slightest movement revealed an entire network of smaller muscles and sinews and tendons, working in delectable harmony.
Like intricate clockwork, she longed to invest in a closer study, her fingertips tingling with the urge to touch.
And his scars: she had a sudden need to count them, examine them, ask a thousand questions about each one.
There were so many, like the scuffs on an ancient statue that had been moved from its home to a museum.
But the statue was no less incredible because of the marks, no less exhilarating to behold.
Oh... oh, goodness...
Her gaze had trailed too low, following the line down from his navel. Two sharp diagonals cut downward from his hips, guiding her eyes in the same direction. The black water was the only thing hiding the rest of him from her sight, and though she knew she should, she couldn’t look away.
“What I meant to achieve, lass, was a bath,” he said with a smirk. “I prefer ‘em cold, and I suppose I lost all sense of time while I was swimmin’.”
He moved forward through the water, toward the shore, the shallowing water threatening to reveal everything.
With a shaky gasp, Maddie squeezed her eyes shut and whirled around. She clenched her hands into fists, every muscle tensing up, as if that might suppress her desire to touch, to look, to soak in the sight of him in all his glory.
“I told ye that ye shouldnae be here,” he said with a chuckle, the splashing sounds of his emergence making her breath quicken.
She was keenly aware of the shift of the pebbles beneath his footsteps, the faint drip-drip of that cold water hitting the shore, the friction of fabric on damp skin as he dried himself. It took all her decency not to steal a glance... for educational purposes.
Perhaps, she could even sketch his particular anatomy in her notebook later, though she wasn’t much of an artist. Terrible, in truth. Lilian was the talented one when it came to drawing, and she’d have fainted long before now.
“Ye can turn around,” Oscar said.
She waited a minute more, setting down her lantern before hesitantly peering out of the corner of her eye, turning very slowly. Relief and disappointment clashed as she saw him bare-chested, his kilt covering his lower half.
“Is it an apology ye came out here for?” he asked, throwing his shirt over his shoulder, his chest gleaming from the loch. “I’ll come to dinner now.”
Maddie took a step back, for her own sake. He was closer than she’d thought he was.
“Everyone will be finished with dinner by now,” she replied, her voice tinged with regret. “I told them to begin without us because they were ravenous.”
“Ye should’ve dined with them,” Oscar said flatly. “If someone isnae where they’re supposed to be, ye should assume there’s a reason.”
Maddie bristled. “But I didn’t know what the reason was.
” She drew in a tense breath. “Look, I understand that our marriage is going to be one of convenience. It’s good for your Laird MacPhee problem; it’s good for my future.
We don’t have to care about each other, I would never expect it, but there should be respect.
What you did tonight was the opposite of that.
You disrespected my time, my friend, your friend, and my efforts. ”
“The dress is for me?” He canted his head, his gray eyes sharp with something like hunger as they admired her from top to toe. “I’m flattered.”
“No!” she barked, heat rising from her chest. “No, the dress wasn’t for you. The dress was part of my promise to be more... presentable in company. A symbol of my dedication to this union. It wasn’t for your enjoyment.”
He chuckled darkly, taking a step forward. “Aye, but I am enjoyin’ it. I can use me imagination a little more.”
“You see!” She clenched her hands, scrunching her face in frustration.
“Even now, you can’t respect me enough to have a serious conversation.
I’m trying to tell you that we need to show a united front, that we need to be seen to be genuine, that we need to have esteem between us, so that your people come to respect me too.
Otherwise, they’ll hate me, and life here will end up being worse than bloody London!
Yet, you just smirk and chuckle and... and flirt, because that’s all you seem to know how to do!
You couldn’t come to one dinner, for pity’s sake. ”
His face clouded over, his gray eyes glinting like steel, his hands twisting the ends of the shirt that draped around his neck. “I came to bathe instead of comin’ straight to dinner, Maddie, because the things I want to do to ye...”
Maddie’s breath caught in her throat, the force of her frustration snatched away like smoke on the wind.
He’d never called her by her name before.
Always “lass” or “Lady Madeleine”. Nor had he ever looked at her quite like this, as if he’d decided to forego dinner and feast on something else instead. Her.
“Ye speak of disrespect,” he continued, his throat bobbing, “but ye dinnae ken the true meanin’ of the word. Ye dinnae ken of the disrespect that’s in me head, even now. All the things I want to do to ye; nae one is what ye’d call respectful.
“Ever since ye denied me at Hunter’s table, refusin’ to let me kiss yer hand, ye started a pursuit that I didnae realize I was runnin’ ‘til ye showed up on me doorstep.” He walked closer, his knuckles white with the effort of gripping the ends of his shirt.
She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know where he would have preferred to have those hands.
“If I’d never seen ye again, I’d have had time enough to put ye out of me mind.
This afternoon and tonight, I was tryin’ to stay away from ye, for yer own sake, but ye’ve stumbled along regardless.
Ye’ve appeared before me for a second time, oblivious to the danger ye’re in by bein’ here with me.
” His breath plumed in the air, steam rising from his body.
“Ye shouldnae challenge me self-control, lass. If ye do, I might think ye want the chase. I might think ye want to be caught.”
Maddie couldn’t move, though she was fairly certain she ought to be running by now. Instead, she stood rigid on the pebbles, her legs refusing to budge, her heart somehow bounding from its usual spot in her chest to the middle of her throat, blocking her breath and her words.
All the things he wants to do to me... Her empty stomach fluttered, a shiver prickling down her spine as if a drop of the icy loch water had slipped down her collar.
“Do ye?” he murmured, so close now that she could have counted every scar if she’d had the wherewithal to do so.
His hand caught her by the chin, neither too harsh nor too gentle, tilting her head up. Peering into his eyes, she watched them burn with that dangerous hunger, the kind that could unravel all the plans she’d laid out for herself.
“Answer me,” he growled, bending his head until she felt the tingle of his breath against her lips.
Speech abandoned her, unclear as to what he wanted her to say, and what she wanted to say. Of course, she didn’t want to be chased, not in the way that required any actual sprinting. She would have picked London dinner parties over having to run anywhere fast.
But that wasn’t what he meant. The pursuit he’d spoken of had been of the slow and unexpected kind, every event and every misstep since they parted ways after Grace’s wedding leading to this point—this “capture”.
“Do ye?” he repeated, his mouth so near that it almost brushed hers as he spoke.
I should return to the castle. I should remove myself from a situation like this. That would be the wise thing to do.
But she’d been wise for most of her life, and it hadn’t helped her fare much better than if she’d spent those years making every stupid decision possible. Maybe, there came a time in everyone’s life where the best choice was to be a little foolish.
She closed her eyes and grabbed his strong arms, her fingernails sinking into his smooth skin.
“I thought so,” he purred, closing what little distance remained between them with a fierce, crushing kiss. As if he’d been waiting far longer than she knew to do just that.