Page 10 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

“It-it’s nay much. A ruin like this, but it’s mine and my songbird wouldst make it a home…

” He shrugged, so sheepishly he ought to be ashamed.

“I’d be honored to lay down my sword and finally come home to it if I kenned someone like ye were there.

The soil and grass is lush for grazing and I’m afraid if I walk away ye’re going to vanish like an apparition that was never real and that song, that bloody

song—”

He cut off his rambling and cleared his throat again

, his fist to his lips. She was still; he dared not look at her to see her shock, or worse, her fear of the eejit who’d just met her in one breath and was asking for a lifelong commitment in the next. What the hell was his problem? Rambling like a fool? Jaw pumping, he stepped back.

Scouring his face, he gave himself a rousing shake, as if waking himself from a dream, and landed his stride to leave. “Christ, lass, I’m sorry. I shall return ye—”

Soft fingers tentatively touched his forearm.

“Wait.”

He halted as if she’d commanded him. Rubbed the back of his neck and felt her gaze upon his twitching bicep, sucked his lower lip in and ran his tongue across it, too nervous to speak with his boot wedged firmly in his mouth.

He didn’t like feeling disoriented. But he liked her.

Liked her voice and that sense of humor lurking within the gilded cage of her demureness.

Liked her smell and her genuine simplicity.

She pushed up on her toes, fingers slipping around his nape, and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

“What are ye asking?”

He froze. This skittish woman, who had a right to detest every man, was offering him this boon and he was standing here like a green lad who had no idea what end of his arse was up.

He swallowed.

She dropped down to her heels, pulling back. “I should nay have done that—”

He snagged her hand as it slipped away.

Relished that she didn’t flinch from him. Wove his fingers with hers. From the moment he’d heard her song, he’d felt a harkening for the past, a longing for a future, a swirl of memories he couldn’t place.

“I think, eh, I was asking ye to elope with me.” He husked, laughed nervously, and shook his head at how ridiculous he sounded, ripping a hand through his hair and dragging strands from his knot.

Her tongue wetted her plush lips that Christ

, he wanted to taste. She had no

idea the seduction such an action wove upon him.

“Ye would wish to wed

me? Keep me?” she whispered.

Nay just bed her, like the horrible monster who’d once hurt her so.

He hoped he never crossed paths with them, for there would be no containing the Reaper taking such a soul with pleasure.

He finally gave his thumb license to touch again.

He hated the vulnerability in her shaky words.

She was worth so much more than her virtue, yet couldn’t see it.

Her lips like silk, smooth and plump and delicate.

Her breath came out erratically against his thumb.

Her hair, so warm from the summer sunshine.

Her breath hitched and he leaned in an inch.

Gentle, gentle, so as not to spook the skittish songbird.

Eyes trained upon her mouth like the boon it was, a sweet melody worth tasting.

Back and forth, his thumb caressed, as his forehead came to rest on hers and her lashes closed, fanning onto her skin and hiding those doe eyes from him.

His gaze bounced between them, taking in the details, as her hand settled upon his chest, wanting but unsure.

Her touch, so special when earned. In kind, his fingers sifted along her cheek, over her ears, cupping her neck where her heartbeat fluttered erratically like hummingbird wings, as one of her hands crept up to tentatively twine his beard about her finger.

Shivers racked his frame at her curiosity. At this mask he wore. “Ye can touch me as ye wish, too, songbird.”

Her forehead dug harder into his as her chest quivered on an exhale, as if she wished to be close, as if wanting to relent.

His thumb continued to debauch her lips, pressing carefully betwixt the bewitching flesh.

He scored across her teeth. Listened to her fail to stifle an airy whine.

Jesu. Such a sound and he was lost. His other hand slipped onto her hip, around her back to score up and down her spine as her fingers tightened on his tunic and beard to… pull him closer still?

He answered her call. Pressed into the small of her back and sealed their bodies flush. Roses. Song and silence—

A sliver in time where he was letting down all pretense. He meant every word he’d uttered to her about laying down the Reaper’s scythe for a future he’d never thought he’d get.

Someone who’d make peace with his past so he can look toward his future and lay down his arms… Except he wanted everything that had once been stolen from him so badly. It had been years since he’d snuck back onto his ancestral land, trying to find the most important thing to him.

“Tell me what ye want, songbird,” he whispered, slipping his cheek alongside hers, bringing his lips down to her ear and relishing her shiver.

Her curves were soft against his hard body honed from a life of roving and laboring.

Rosewater suffused his every sense. Her finger teased the tip of his beard, pulling his lips down to hers, suffusing his bollocks with heat and his body with tingling, anchoring him down from the clouds where he felt like he drifted.

Her idle toying sparked like static with each knead.

Jesu, she could rein him by it like a besotted palfrey, ready to do his mistress’s bidding, when normally he hated anyone touching it.

“If ye want me, I’m yers,” he said hoarsely, desperate for her to invite him.

He’d frighten his songbird away if he came on too strong and knew, if he ever married, it would be to this lass.

So rash, yet she felt

so

right.

Nose brushed nose. Chests rose and fell, her bosom pressed to him.

So tender was this moment. Had he ever slowed to savor such a game of touch?

A laziness that belied the flood of passion that could undam at any moment?

No. He’d never planned to keep a brothel wench.

He paid to bend them over a barrel so he didn’t have to look into their hollow eyes and see his own hollowness reflected back at him, then rutted out his primal needs so he could focus on his studies or think straight with his weapons or keep trying to forget.

Refused to kiss them, for his kiss had always belonged to another, so long ago…

Was it strange that with her, he wasn’t afraid of remembering? Wanted to kiss her so?

His lips brushed her lobe, her jaw, that place of secrets beneath her ear where her pulse fluttered. He wanted her affection more than he’d wanted anything else as their lips found each other’s and he ghosted the merest touch to them.

Christ, could she not give him any indication that she’d welcome more of him? After the horror she’d once endured, she

had

to do the asking. Her heart pounded madly against his torso and her breath, erratic, warmed his mouth. He scored his fingers steadily down and up her backbone. One wrong move would dash it all.

His main mast thickened between them in heavy throbs, begging for one scrap of her touch. He couldn’t help it. Pinched his eyes closed and willed it to stop for there was no way she

couldn’t

feel his desire sizzling through his blood, but it wouldn’t abate.

“Sweet lass,” he breathed against her lips, needing her to deepen the moment to know she was with him. “I’d be heartsick to make ye shy from me,” he gruffed. “’Twould break me heart to think I frighten ye.” Christ, could she not either push him away or sink into him?

Anything

, other than hold his feet to a fire he couldn’t douse?

Fok, he was ruining this. Sank his forehead to her shoulder and nestled it into her neck, a final beg for some sort of astrolabe to guide him through the churning waters, realizing he had her wrapped entirely in his hold when she whispered,

“How do I ken ye mean yer words?”

He pulled up an inch.

Was

she considering him? His heart leapt like wings in flight. She was right to be worried. He was asking much of her to trust him.

He rummaged within the pouch strapped across his chest, within his tunic. Where he kept the things most special to him: a linen purse, within which was a blessing given to him years ago, and a ring. Small and delicate. Made of gold.

He pulled it out. Brushed his thumb over the engraved signet upon the bezel as her chest heaved and her lips parted as her wide eyes rested on the ring in his hold.

He lifted his songbird’s hand. Slid it over her left finger.