Page 33 of Devil’s Highlander (Clan MacAlpin #1)

Into my heart? How had that slipped from his tongue?

He took in Ree’s tousled hair, the sight of her lips swollen from his kisses. He’d kissed her and touched her, had tasted the most intimate parts of her. No, he knew exactly how he’d let it slip out. His resolve had shattered the moment she’d dropped her gown.

Her breasts had taken his breath away, full and flawless, her body glowing golden in the candlelight. And now this precious creature lay with him, their naked legs in a tangle. He held her close, stroking her pale skin, softer than any satin in his hands.

“Not since me?” She repeated his words with a smile.

He should’ve known she’d cling to that statement. “I suppose that’s what I said.”

She pursed her lips. “You suppose?”

“Yes. No. I mean . . .” He couldn’t help himself from stealing another touch. He rubbed his hand over her belly, letting his fingers sweep down to graze the small triangle of stiff curls. She was so gorgeous, so perfect, and she’d let him taste her.

He clenched his eyes shut—he couldn’t concentrate with the sight of her naked shoulders to distract him. What had he been saying? “Aye, in my heart,” he confessed. “It’s always been so.”

Cormac dropped his head to the pillow in defeat. He was doing it again, saying more than he should. Turning onto his side, he shifted away, but the rich, musky scent of her only rose to him from the sheets. “Och, Ree, you have me at a disadvantage.”

She gave a sultry little laugh, and the sound terrified him.

“Then I suppose I’ll just have to keep you here.” She traced her fingers down his arm. Her touch was so soothing, so delicate, and yet so arousing.

His skin was on fire. He took a deep, measured inhale. He’d not steal her maidenhead like some undisciplined boy.

Talking. More talking might take his mind from it. “You’re still avoiding my question.”

“Am I?” Her delicate fingers roved to his leg, outlining a pattern along the tartan draped over his thigh. She opened her hand, giving him a gentle squeeze.

He hissed out his breath. She was avoiding his question.

The look she gave him belied her inexperience. It was the look of a seductress. “But Cormac, I thought we were talking about your heart.”

“No,” he said in quick reply, eager to draw the subject away from dangerous waters.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought of his heart as anything but a practical organ, good only for pumping battle lust through his veins.

But that heart was waking back to life, and he realized Ree had been lodged just there for longer than he could remember.

He’d dreamed of her for years. He’d cared for her—aye, if he had to admit it— loved her for years.

He couldn’t let her know that, though; he couldn’t let her in. The thought of it frightened him more than any battlefield. To be so vulnerable? He’d experienced loss once before; he’d not survive loving and losing her.

“We were talking about why you’ve not married,” he said firmly.

“Mm.” She may have sounded her assent, but Marjorie’s mind was clearly on other matters. She shifted closer and slipped her arm beneath his plaid, placing her hand where she’d had it a moment before, only now it was the skin of her questing fingertips he felt on his leg.

“I wonder. Whyever have I not married?” The pattern she traced along his thigh made her words an innuendo. Her lips parted in the wicked suggestion of a smile.

He flexed his muscles, girding against Marjorie’s onslaught. All he’d need to do was tilt his pelvis to her. She’d know what he wanted. She’d wrap her cool, soft hand around him. He could teach her how to stroke him.

The mere thought of it made his cock pulse.

Though he willed his flesh to calm, his blood pumped hot, leaving him hard and wanting.

If she were to touch him, he knew there’d be no going back.

And she deserved more than him. More than this lie they enacted, more than Lord and Lady Brodie in a seedy, dockside inn. He’d not take her innocence from her.

Her touch drifted perilously close to his erection. He gently took her hand and tucked it along his side. “Why choose to live alone?”

“I don’t live alone.” Slipping her hand away, she reached around to idly stroke his backside, bringing his cock to stand at happy attention. She rubbed a thumb along his hip bone. “Why, only just last month, Uncle Humphrey—”

“You’re alone , Ree.” Tenderly, he lifted her chin to look her in the eye.

Her hand stilled. Sadness flickered in her eyes, and the sight of it speared him. He regretted his honesty, but she deserved more than this life she’d chosen for herself. And she deserved more than him .

He carefully removed her hand from where it rested heavily on his hip. “Humphrey’s an old man whose only concerns are his books and botanicals.”

“He takes care of me.”

“ You take care of him ,” he insisted. “You take care of everyone, Ree. But who is there to care for you?”

Cormac thought of his own situation. Waking, fishing, feeding his family, and sleeping alone once more. A life alone—hadn’t they both made the same choice?

He’d embraced his solitude as a sort of penance. Is that what Marjorie did? The difference was, unlike him, she bore no sins on her lovely shoulders.

He pinned her with an accusing look. “Do you think by working with the folk at Saint Machar, you can right the wrongs of all Aberdeen?”

“I’m just trying to help.” Her voice trembled.

He should’ve let it be, but he couldn’t bear the thought of Marjorie choosing such a lonely life. It was fine for a worthless soul like him, but she had a right to more. “What imagined sin do you atone for?”

“What imagined sin?” She pulled away, tugging the plaid up to tuck it over her breasts. “How can you, of all people, ask that, Cormac?”

“Good Christ, Ree, is this about Aidan? You isolate yourself because of something that happened when we were children?”

“And what is it you do?” She propped herself up on her elbow, her voice finding its strength. “What do you call living alone in some tumbledown pile of rock, fishing alone all day?”

“This is about you—”

“You keep saying that, Cormac. You keep saying it’s only about me . How could you possibly think this”—she gestured between them—“has naught to do with you?”

“You speak truly.” He grew subdued. He was there, lying with her, God spare him. He sent up a desperate plea for forgiveness. “But I gave up on my life long ago.”

“You gave me up,” she whispered, sinking her head onto the pillow.

“Aye, I gave you up. I’d failed Aidan, you see, and I saw suffering in solitude as a sort of penance. And then the war happened.”

“What happened in battle to change you so?”

“You have no idea the sins I have to atone for. But you, Ree, you’ve committed no such sin. Are you to grow old, alone, and with no one to care for you?” The thought infuriated him, lighting tinder beneath his words. “You need more. A home of your own, bairns aplenty.”

Her loneliness was a tragic waste. She was a woman of such passions. The way she ignited at his touch, it was clear she longed for completion. She should have a man to share her bed. He scowled, despising the thought as it came to him. “Don’t you want a man about?”

“Perhaps it’s the man who’d never want me.” She leaned up, angrily plumping the pillow beneath her.

“No man would ever—” Realization dawned. And it was devastating.

Cormac had once thought he’d never be worthy of her. He once thought he’d never be capable of feeling the joy of it if he did. But now he knew differently.

Though he couldn’t imagine himself ever being deserving of Ree, now he had a fantasy of what it would be . He remembered the sight of her splayed before him, innocent in body but with lust in her eyes.

“Och, Ree, to be with you . . .” He considered it, and he knew joy and loss in the same instant. “’Twould be wrong. To sully your pure soul with my dirtied hands.”

“They call you the devil, Cormac, and I think you are. Who are you to say what I need? What happened to you at war? What are the shadows in your eyes? Who are you now? When did you become this”—frustrated, she adjusted herself, kicking the sheets from her legs—“this . . . man?”

He’d kept his past cloaked in shadow for so long now, he no longer knew who he was protecting with his secrecy. He was too tired to fight it any longer.

“Fine, Ree. You wish to be my confessor; so be it.” He lay on his back, bringing his arm to rest over his head, stealing a glance at her from the corner of his eye.

How would she hear his story? Would she offer perfunctory reassurances with eyes gone cold and a smile grown false?

There was only one way to find out. “I became this man when I went to war, a boy of thirteen.”

Marjorie’s stomach fell.

Thirteen. The bald fact of it gutted her. She remembered Cormac as a boy of ten. Just three years after Aidan’s disappearance, and he’d gone off to battle? She tried to picture him as he’d been, all lanky limbs, a fringe of long eyelashes around grinning eyes.

She pictured the boys of Saint Machar. How might Paddy look, a musket slung over his back? To imagine young Cormac trudging far from home, off to God knew where, to fight in the Civil Wars . . . her stomach churned at the thought.

She schooled her face. She was being squeamish. Many boys fought for their clan at such an age. “So young,” was all she managed to say and keep her composure.

“Young,” he agreed. “But not in my own head, aye? It always was vinegar not blood that coursed through my veins.”

She gave him a gentle smile. “I remember.”

“But it turned sour after Aidan.” He stared blindly up at the ceiling. “After I couldn’t save him.”

“How could you possibly have saved him? You were only ten—”

“Hush, Ree. You asked my story, and it’s my story I’m telling.”

She nodded mutely, wondering how he could blame himself. It was a wonder they hadn’t lost Cormac that day, too, suffocated in that godforsaken chimney.