Page 41 of A Highland Healer Captured (Scottish Daddies #3)

Zander sat the head of the table because he could not be pried from it without a lever. He ate enough to keep strength, drank enough to be sociable and not enough to be foolish, and watched.

He watched his men grin with cracked lips and swollen knuckles.

He watched Hamish tell three stories in a row, each of them true and none of them entirely accurate.

He watched Skylar move like a light between needs—Katie’s cup, Grayson’s chair, a shy kiss to the top of the boy’s head that lit the entire end of the hall.

When the last bowl was scraped, when the last toast sank into the rushes, Zander rose and stood. The room quieted the way it does when a man who has bled for it takes breath to speak.

“To Kirn,” he said. “To the folk who brought us to it. To the folk who’ll see us past it.”

They answered with a rumble that shook the boards. Hamish thumped the table. Grayson, propped sideways in his chair, slept through it with his cheek on one fist and a crust in the other.

Mason drifted close. Zander angled his shoulder toward him. “I’ll walk,” he murmured. Mason’s eyes said I’ll follow without following , and the man disappeared like good muscle disappears—felt, not seen.

Zander left by the side door. The yard was a dark bowl of embers. The spike stood like a warning and a lesson; Zander didn’t spare it a glance. He crossed to the stair, climbed, and went to a door he had sworn to keep shut until he had earned the right to knock on it.

He knocked.

“Enter,” Skylar called, voice steady and—God help him—warm.

Her chamber had learned her shape already: the small table neat, the cloak hung with care, the dirk in easy reach. She stood at the window-slit, watching the last of the bonfires write orange onto the undersides of the clouds. She turned when the door shut.

For a moment he forgot the words he’d prepared.

She wore no crown tonight, no shawl, no armor but the braid coiled at the nape of her neck and the steadiness in her eyes.

The mark at her cheekbone, left by the intruder’s skull, had turned to a faint smear of plum.

He wanted to kiss it until it forgot it had hurt.

“Ye look like a man who’s carried a keep on his back and set it down without droppin’ it,” she said lightly, and his throat tried to learn how to laugh and failed halfway.

“I asked yer faither for yer hand at dinner,” he said, because he had never been a man for stepping around a thing he meant to do. “And he told me that it would be yer choice.”

Her lips parted, the smallest breath catching. “He… left it to me?”

“Aye.” Zander’s mouth tilted. “He said words I cannae repeat about yer maither. Then he said ye’ve always kenned yer own mind and he’d be damned if he’d tie a rope to it now ye’ve found work it likes.”

Skylar let out a shaky laugh that had the shape of tears at the edges, “Aye.”

He blinked. “Aye?”

“Aye,” she said again, stronger. “I’ll have ye.” A beat, wickedness flickering through the earnest. “If ye still want a woman who speaks of boils at table.”

“I’m mad for her,” he said, because some truths were better plain.

She came to him, slow for three steps, then quick the rest of the way, as if she’d remembered she’d already made the decision. He gathered her, careful of his shoulder, which she ignored by fitting herself under his arm like she’d been shaped there.

He kissed her, and the kiss had nothing of battle in it.

It was warm and certain and built out of a hundred small mercies: the way she’d steadied his son, the way she’d forgiven a broken girl, the way she’d stayed beside a bed and spoke him awake.

Her hands slid up his chest, over linen, over bandage, over scars that had never before been touched like something a heart might be grateful for.

“Ye’re sure,” he said against her mouth, not because he doubted her, but because the asking felt holy.

“Aye,” she said, smiling into him, cheek brushing his beard. “I’d say it as many times as ye need.”

“Once was enough,” he murmured, and kissed her again.

Clothing became something to navigate rather than admire. He found the ties by touch, not hurry; she answered with the quiet intake of breath a man learns to covet.

He laid her on the bed and braced himself above her, he was careful of his shoulder, that is, until desire threw caution to the wind. She traced the white lines of old wounds as if reading his history with her fingertips and choosing to keep every page.

“Zander,” she whispered, the name a blessing and a dare, and he answered with the reverence a man gives when the thing he’s wanted finally wants him back.

They were not shy. They moved like flames finding dry kindling, bodies arching toward one another with an ancient hunger.

Her fingers traced the curve of his spine, leaving trails of fire in their wake. When his mouth found the hollow of her throat, she gasped and pulled him closer until there was nothing between them but heat and want.

He thrust into her with reckless abandon, not hurried and clumsy, but sure and aimed to push her past pleasure and into ecstasy. Zander’s rhythm was relentless as he crashed into her again and again. “Say yer mine,” he commanded through gritted teeth.

The words tumbled out of her mouth in a crazed frenzy of curses and prayers. And his world narrowed to the feel of her molten-hot sex throbbing around him.

Mine. He said to himself. Again and again with each thrust. Each moan and cry that escaped her lips sent an undeniable sensation coursing through his veins like liquid metal.

When she fell, she cried out, clutching him as if he were the only solid thing in a dissolving world. He felt the sting of his stitches open, but pounded into her still until he found his own release moments later, her name a broken sound on his lips.

They lay there, tangled, sweat cooling on flushed skin. His fingers traced lazy circles on her hip; her leg hooked possessively over his, anchoring him to her as surely as a promise.

“Ye ken,” he said into her hair, voice lazy with the kind of peace that sits rare on a man like him, “ye’ll never be able to leave now.”

She tipped her head back to look at him, eyes narrow with mock challenge. “I’d like to see ye try and stop me.”

He huffed a laugh that shook them both. “Och, I’ll make a sport of it.”

“Will ye, now?”

“Aye. First, I’ll bribe ye with a stillroom key. Then with a lad who cheats at dice. Then with a keep that insists on bein’ mended exactly the way ye like.”

She pretended to ponder. “And if that fails?”

“I’ll ask ye,” he said simply. “Every mornin’ I wake, I’ll ask ye to stay. Every night I sleep, I’ll thank ye if ye do.”

Her mouth softened. “That’s a terrible trap.”

“Aye,” he said, grinning. “And ye sprung it yerself.”

She squealed once when he rolled, tugged, and drew her atop him again—more laughter than sound—and then quieted with a kiss that felt like a promise they would learn to keep in a hundred plain ways.

“I love ye,” she said into his smile.

“I love ye,” he answered, and the keep—stone-sure, blood-cleaned, storm-tested—held their words the way old walls hold heat: slow to take, slow to lose, steadfast through weather.