Page 11 of Outlaw Ever After (Highland Handfasts #3)

“I canna promise ye a gilded life…yet,” her warrior-scribe gruffed out, brushing the signet with a reverent thumb as her skin buzzed.

This ring was special to him. His jaw pumped. Peigi cupped his cheek to ease his distress.

“But I’m able to provide. I can promise to protect ye with my life. I can promise ye my honor—what little I retain. I can promise to till and plant and reap and mill, with me own hands, like my…sire once did.”

Was there a waver in his voice? Were his eyes stinging? He blinked and looked away, yet his brow was contorted with conviction as he made his declaration.

“At first, ye’ll go without the luxuries ye’re accustomed to.” He fingered her pearl earrings inlaid in gold, the only part of her dowry that hadn’t been reaved over the years. “Until I’m able to provide them again—”

His jaw clenched. Provide again? Was that a hint about his past?

He seemed tutored. Loved, once. Was he a fallen laird?

A noble stripped of title? Lord knew there’d been many nobles and heirs stripped of their titles in the wake of the massacre at Flodden Field and the three decades that had followed.

She fingered his beard. “If I needed those luxuries, I’d have married my suitor with three and ten bairns and his wealthy pantries apparently full of garlic.”

That earned her his laugh, and blessedly the hard lines that had creased his forehead smoothed again. He rested his forehead down to hers as her fingers continued to toy with his beard. “And ye saying that just shows all the more why ye deserve them. These fingers. How did they earn such scars?”

“Embroidery and piecework.”

“Piecework? A maid’s endeavor?”

She looked down. “Aye, to sell at our convent’s annual faires.

Poverty nay discriminates between ladies and maids.

I would have loved to play music, once dreamed of becoming a traveling bard.

” She giggled with embarrassment. “I never would have been allowed, but… My dexterity was needed to help my people, and any coin we could earn to replenish from reaves was needed.”

He chewed that cheek, deep in thought. “ Ye ken nothing about me, lass. Ye might regret it.”

“As ye might regret me,” she reasoned in the face of his moment of vulnerability. This was madness. Who married a man they had barely met?

Nobles

, her conscience rationalized. Elizabeth had been promised to Seamus in an alliance and hadn’t met him until Seamus walked to the altar. And they were

happy

. And she knew she’d never be happy with Kendrew. “But we’d have a lifetime to learn each other’s every secret.”

He tensed and yet, it was gone in a breath.

“I

can

promise ye a cottage, on the bonniest loch in Scotland, with a man who’d…” He nodded to himself as if coming to a hard-thought conclusion. “…give

anything

for a reason to sow his roots into the earth and belong again, and I believe ye’re

that

reason, that I was meant to hear ye singing—”

She threw her arms around his neck, kissing his cheek—

Like a hawk capturing a wren, he caught her kiss with his.

Energy sizzled! Lightning heat afflicted her again, like each time they were fully connected.

He growled yet engulfed her in his arms as if addicted to the sensation.

Swiveling them both, he fell back against the ruin, dragging her with him, cushioning her against his chest and belly as she collapsed atop him.

Her breath seized. She should run! Should push off him! But she…

wanted

this! And when his tongue pushed desperately into her mouth, laved across hers, a groan rumbled up his throat and reverberated through his chest, and she relented.

Leaned into him.

Let herself feel the sensation of the first kiss she’d ever wanted.

He wound his fingers into her hair and she relished the tug on her roots.

She couldn’t breathe! Didn’t want to! Patchouli and heather were filling her senses just as his body was warming her. His kiss was untutored—

interesting

—and yet, full of fervor as he nipped her lip on a groan barely tethered in his chest. His heartbeat thrashed a battle drum against her.

And then

his

eyes fluttered closed, perhaps in an attempt to master his self-control?

“I promise to never stray from ye, songbird,” he growled.

Tongue laved tongue, like harmonies full of need she’d never imagined would sound so wondrous.

The heaviness of his arousal prodded her. He felt such attraction for

her

***

His strawberry blond lashes so thick, the most beautiful of women would be jealous. Those green gems so familiar.

Eyes of deepest greenwood…

That hint of refinement, holding back, not pushing for more. It seemed as if everything he thought spilled out his mouth, and yet, covered up much more.

“Promise to only wield my weapons if our home should be threatened—”

Her hands gripped his backsheath.

He ripped it over his head and cast it aside. Ripped open his doublet and shucked it down. He seemed to bask in how she grappled to hold his arms as his manhood pressed hard and bold against her belly.

Still

not relenting to that carnal rutting all men seemed driven to slake.

“Promise to be a man my parents would have been proud of for ye.”

She nodded. She’d seen that emotion reddening his eyes when he’d withdrawn this ring and placed it upon her finger.

His hands palmed her rear and pressed her into his length of granite beneath his kilt. As if his legs had given out, his back slid down the wall, pulling her with him so she straddled his lap. Settling upon

that

part of him, and she gasped, the sensation of her weight upon it igniting heat that licked through her blood and burned trails of gunpowder across her skin. Then he undulated beneath her to ease his tension and fuel his frustration, and a whine escaped her throat.

“I nay be worthy,” he continued, sinking back into her lips, “but for ye I’ll be

anything

.”

She twined her finger in his beard. Felt him shudder beneath her touch as if he needed it, clasping her other around his neck. “Will ye make me one promise?”

“Anything,” he gnashed out.

“Always be honest with me.”

He pulled back an inch, studying her as his chest heaved for air.

He trailed a fingertip over her mouth, plucking apart her swollen lips, trailing down her chin, over her jaw, over the hollow of her neck where a wee fairy kiss sat—a freckle—down between her breasts where her bodice boosted her cleavage and God, she felt fire.

Heat pooled in her belly as the ring around her finger burned with his promise.

His calluses snagged upon her calves, her thighs, beneath her pile of silks.

His chest rose and fell as if he’d been sprinting.

The downy grasses and weeds tickled her ankles and knees.

Her hands dragged up his chest to find purchase and hold on.

He shivered as his finger traced the curve of her jaw, her neck, down and over the swells of each breast as her chest rose and fell.

“Ye hold all the power, lass,” he gruffed.

“Get up and walk away or put me out of my bloody misery.” He cradled her cheek as he wedged his hips up within the crux of her thighs, burrowing there and maintaining control, as if by a thread.

It was all she needed to know he’d have care, that he wanted her willing, or nay at all.

She wiggled back and forth atop the hardened shaft as a rough groan rolled up his throat and his head fell back.

Those emerald jewels tracked her every blink. He twisted his ring upon her finger.

His promise.

She nodded, then pressed her lips back to his.

…

That moment’s capitulation was all it took for Alex’s blood to ignite.

She was letting him kiss her, after what had been forced upon her.

She was letting him pop loose her laces.

The final shred of his control snapped. He skimmed his finger down her stomacher, dragging the laces from their eyelets.

He slipped beneath her stays to cup a lush, perfect breast in his palm.

Her breathing was erratic, tremoring; her lips, welted from his devouring, parted. Her chestnut pools fluttered shut as his thumb brushed over the tip of a nipple.

“Mon Dieu,” she whispered on an exhale and he fell back to her lips, unable to refuse himself another helping of her taste.

She gripped his neck and beard as if she might float away.

“Ye wish to stop, sweeting?” he rumbled against her lips, hand anchoring her hip to him so he could torment himself by the roll of his hips into the barriers of their clothes. “I’ll bloody stop. Do ye understand?”

Except she shook her head. “Ye promised me. I trust ye.”

Her skirts, his kilt, were dragging up. “We’ll go straight to the kirk,” he hissed through gnashing teeth as that secret part of her settled upon his bare shaft thickened and heavy for the rut.

He pushed back and forth through her seam, slickening himself, torturing himself as he palmed her rear and lifted her and aligned his proud salute with her, shuddering to know that the first act of

loving

either of them would feel would be together, because he didn’t want to turn

her

away, flatten her on her belly beneath him as he took her like a bull in heat. He wanted to see every emotion on her face, every expression in her eyes, the ecstasy that would part her lips when he gave away his most personal gift for the first time.

He wanted her to see

him

.

Always be honest with me…

Christ, he held still, willed himself to let her do the taking. He leaned into her breast, savoring the peak through her chemise as she exhaled that soft whine that would be his undoing.

“God, so sweet.” His voice, so gravelly.

She dragged on his beard and he relished the pain as her nails scored his neck.

Held his breath as she slowly slid down upon his helm, pinched his eyes in pain and pleasure at her tight body yielding to him.

He arched her backward and began to feast upon the offering of her breasts as he hooked his finger beneath her chemise and dragged the garment down.