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She leaned in. There it was again, that shimmer of gold in his eyes. They were hooded. Dark and hungry.

Oh yeah. He wanted her. She could see it. Her whole body thrummed, felt poised for some great change.

He moved. She panicked for a moment, thinking that he might try to leave. But then she saw he was merely shifting. Taking his hand from the side of his leg, bringing it to rest lightly around the back of her neck. His fingers wove under her hair, found her skin.

You’ve got it in you, don’t you, Will Rollo?

Her skin beaded tight at once, her whole body ready for him, rallying to his touch. The feel of his skin against hers was heady. It was a simple connection, yet it roused some deep-down craving, stirring her to a fever pitch.

Oh wow . . . What else could those fingers do?

“Please, Will,” she whispered. She needed more.

He threaded his fingers through her hair, stroked them back out, and Felicity luxuriated in his touch.

For so many weeks, they’d been in such close proximity, and yet miles apart. But now, this . Her heart hammered in her chest. More , she thought. She wanted more.

She still held his other hand in hers. She studied it.

It was large and strong, with a thick ridge of callus from decades of gripping his cane.

Felicity traced the lines on his hand, lightly ran her fingertips over the thickened skin at the top of his palm.

How would that hand feel chafing over her nakedness, those powerful fingers gripping her flesh?

A sudden stab of desire made her flinch, and she gripped his hand, brought it to her chest. Just close enough to feel the uppermost swell of her breast.

“I . . . ” His voice cracked. He took his hand from her and clenched it, rubbing his fingers together as if to savor the memory.

“Och,” he rasped, shaking his head. Reaching a fingertip to her face, he gently traced the slope of her cheek. “You’re too lovely.”

“Please . . .” Please, please kiss me, touch me, grab me.

“You’re too . . .” He leaned closer, his eyes devouring her every feature.

Now, Will, oh please, now . . .

“Och, God help me,” he uttered, his voice hoarse with need. Darkness clouded his features, and she glimpsed a lust so keen and so powerful Felicity felt it would submerge her, sweep her away.

She leaned closer still. Her body hummed, desperate for him. His perfect, perfect lips parted. She felt his breath on her mouth.

“Kiss me.” Her voice was the barest whisper even to her own ears.

He licked his lower lip, and sparks crackled low in her belly. Too much, he was too much, too unbearably, unwittingly sexy.

Joy filled her, expanded her. She was about to kiss her Vik—

“Mum?” There was a sharp rap at the door. “I’ve the hot water you requested, mum.”

A pained sound escaped her throat. Dammit. Damn damn dammit.

“Mum?” There was another knock, louder now. “Are you all right there?”

“I . . .” Felicity cleared her throat. She pulled back, holding Will’s gaze for a heartbeat. He was raw. Vulnerable, despairing. And then his eyelids slid closed, shuttering himself to her once again.

Damn it.

“I’m fine,” she called testily. With one last look at him, she rose from his lap. “Coming.”

Three maids bustled in, but Rollo couldn’t focus. He wasn’t certain if they’d just saved him, or doomed him to an eternity of anguished need.

His world swam red. He was steeped in desire. His blood boiled with it. His body, wild and hard, his every nerve, mad with it.

He’d spent a lifetime with every impulse of his flesh utterly, deliberately, painfully suppressed.

But a thin fissure had begun to crack along that facade, and it was as if he could hear the hounds of hell baying on the other side.

The needs of a man, his needs, demanding satisfaction, demanding relief, in a cacophony of raging desire.

Dark lusts, primal urges, secret desires, all focused on Felicity. Only Felicity.

“Apologies, mum. With all the food preparations, your bath slipped my mind.” Rollo heard the women shuffling around, felt their curious gazes on him.

There was the sound of a metal washbasin clanging onto wood. “ ’Tis so late, I hope you don’t mind, t’won’t be a full bathing. Just a wee splash. Though we can arrange a nice hip bath tomorrow, to be certain.”

He leaned forward. Gathered his feet under him. Took and clutched at the head of his cane. Somehow pulled himself to standing.

“Will, wait.” Her voice was furtive, urgent at his back. But he could only shuffle forward to the door.

He shouldn’t have taken it so far. What could he have been thinking to take it so far? He needed to get out of there. Tamp down his hardened groin with a bellyful of whisky.

“Please.” She pleaded with him now. He felt the maids’ eyes on them and knew it would be the talk belowstairs.

But he couldn’t spare her a look. To glance back now would only twist the knife in his heart.

He heard the heavy slosh of water in the bucket. The slap of droplets spilled on the floor.

In his mind, water rolled down her naked body. She’d stand straight, hands combing through her hair. Her breasts would bead in the chill air. She’d cup and wash them, her palms chafing over sensitive nipples. He pictured her delicate fingers. They’d stroke between her legs, cleansing, probing.

God help him.

Gritting his teeth, he shuffled to the stairs. He’d limp his cursed body down, where he’d sit, and drink, alone.

Jamie Rollo walked into the pub, ready to get soused. His family’s castle was but a day’s ride away, and he always required a good girding with whisky before facing his brother.

Damned William. Jamie knew the self- righteous prig would be making his way back to Duncrub.

He plopped down hard at an empty table. The rickety wood creaked as he sat, and he kicked a neighboring chair free, propping his mucky boots in front of him.

He’d make his bloody younger brother pay for the fiasco back in London. Jamie couldn’t believe the cripple had managed to free a prisoner out from under him.

And now his betters doubted his commitment and competence. Outwardly questioned Jamie’s ability to manage the simple imprisonment of fools.

Oh, little Willie would pay. Dearly, and for everything.

“Whisky,” he called to a passing servingwoman. He’d been riding hard north all day and was in a mood to pickle himself with drink. “And whatever slop you’re serving for supper this evening.”

He used his heel to scrape at the mud on his boots. It was late summer, and the rain had been heavy throughout Perthshire. “I feel like a goddamned mushroom,” he grumbled. “Perth. Sweet bosom of my clan. A seething heap of shit.”

“Beg pardon?” the wench asked, setting the whisky in front of him.

“Bring me ale as well, woman. And now.” He didn’t spare her a glance as she bustled away.

He needed to think. Needed a plan.

He’d return home to wait for his lame brother. Though their father was still alive, the old man had become an imbecile since suffering a fit two years past. And so little brother Willie had nobody to protect him now.

Chuckling, he swung his feet to the floor. Their father had adored Will, but it was Jamie their mother preferred. She claimed it was because Jamie favored her side of the family, but he’d secretly known it was that Will’s legs disgusted her.

Their mother knew how to love a strapping lad. But a feeble, broken one? No, it’d been Jamie who’d been his mother’s chosen son.

Not that Will had needed any more attention. His whole life, folk attended him as if he were a bloody head of state instead of a self-righteous cripple. His series of military victories with James Graham had been the last straw. Who’d have thought a cripple could fight on the battlefield?

He scowled. Graham had been a damned popinjay who’d deserved to die. Though the way the man had been lauded, one would’ve thought he’d been the bloody Messiah instead of a supposed war hero.

The Graham clan. He cleared his throat and spat onto the floor. Jamie had married Graham’s cow of a sister, then wisely left her for a Campbell. At the time, he hadn’t cared who Campbell was fighting for; Jamie only knew it was against his brother, and that had been good enough for him.

He’d come to admire Campbell, though. Had come to respect the values that he and their Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, stood for.

And so he’d become a key figure in Cromwell’s inner circle, chasing down fools who dreamed of reinstating a Stuart to the throne.

Cromwell recognized his potential, even if his own father didn’t.

Jamie’s duty was to snare and cage Royalists like rabbits up in the Tower.

Until his damned little brother had come along.

“ I wonder at your commitment, Rollo ,” Cromwell himself had mused.

Damn his brother.

Planting his elbows on the table, he scrubbed his hands through his hair. Will was a cursed bastard who continued to thwart him left and right. And no matter how exacting his planning, Jamie always ended up looking the incompetent one. Ever since they’d been lads, it had been thus.

Except . . . A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth.

Except for his greatest triumph, when it was Will who’d been beaten.

The terror on his brother’s face when his prized pony charged .

. . Jamie chuckled. It had been worth the beating their father had laid into him. His arse had hurt for a month.

The barmaid came back with a pint. She stood for a moment, waiting, but he ignored her, instead taking a big pull from his mug. She stormed off and he sneered, shaking his head. If the hag thought he’d spare her a coin for cloudy ale the temperature of piss, she was sorely mistaken.

Threading his fingers at the back of his head, Jamie leaned back to think.

Putting a burr under that pony’s saddle had been inspired. He needed something that good, that simple and far-reaching, to get back at his brother.