Page 12 of The Highlander’s Fallen Angel (Brotherhood of Solway Moss #2)

“Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!”

William Butler Yeats – Irish Poet, 1865–1939

Tierney wiggled one foot free and kicked it toward her backside in an effort to hit Kenan’s face, but her petticoat got in the way. “Daingead!” she cursed. “What are you doing?”

“Let’s call it retribution.”

“For me meeting in the dark with Jacob?” Was Kenan jealous? Of Jacob? There was hardly a comparison between the boy she’d grown up with and the man who was currently humiliating her.

“Nay. For drugging me, tying me up, and carrying me off against my will.”

“Are you going to hold that over my head forever?”

“For a year and a day.”

She exhaled. Daingead. She’d done all that to him, and he’d still said they were handfasted to help her save face before her clan and break her father’s damn betrothal contract.

“Put me down, Kenan Macdonald.” The press of his shoulder against her middle made it hard to draw deep breaths to feed her temper, and she rested, deciding to keep her energy for when she got her feet under her again. Then Kenan would suffer even if he’d saved her, saved Maggie. Her anger ebbed with that reminder.

Kenan climbed onto the meadow where the warriors trained during the day. When he got to the edge of trees, the bonfire’s illumination only a distant dot, he shifted her off his shoulder.

Tierney waited for her feet to touch the ground and shoved him with all her pent-up frustration, confusion, and anger at the whole situation. But the damn man didn’t move. ’Twas like shoving a two-foot-thick oak.

Her hands pulled back, and she thumped her palms against his hard chest again. At the same time, she kicked his shin.

He grunted. “Bloody hell, Tierney.”

She smiled with triumph at the pain in his tone.

“That’s for carrying me off like a helpless child.” She thumped his chest again. “In front of my whole clan, like a child. You…you barbarian.”

“So ye’ve moved past being angry that I knocked Jacob down?”

“That, too.”

In the dim light from a moon that tried to peek past the moving clouds, she saw Kenan cross his arms, his legs braced for battle.

“I was handling him,” she said. “I don’t need you to rescue me.”

“So far, evidence refutes that statement.” He flipped up fingers as he spoke. “First, I had to rescue ye from the ocean and drowning. Second, I saved ye from Ranulf and his men, and third I defended yer wild plan before Henry and yer clan, even though ye drugged and tricked me.”

He really was going to hold that over her forever, although she did deserve that.

Kenan dropped her arm. “And that fool lad needed more than yer paltry punch to teach him not to force unwanted kisses, especially on a woman who belongs to someone else.”

“Belongs to someone else?” she repeated; his territorial language reminded her of Wallace. Her heart beat wildly, but it was with anger, not fear. It felt refreshing, so she let her temper flare. “Would that be you? I belong to you?”

“Aye, for a year,” he said, leaning closer, “and a day. That’s what bloody handfasting means, Tierney. And if anyone is going to kiss ye, ’tis me, not some heartsick swain who’s lost his head to whisky and regret. Me.”

She could point out that they’d never really handfasted, but he would just throw back that everyone thought they had. Instead, she glared, taking a different route that plagued her more. “Will you force your kisses on me, then?” Her face tipped up to him with a scowl. She’d only been kissed by Wallace before and now Jacob, and neither of them had been pleasant at all. “Slobbery, sour kisses.”

“My kisses are not slobbery and sour,” he said. “Bloody hell.” His hands went to his head, and his elbows jutted out as he tipped his face up to the sky. “This was a foking mistake.”

Tierney’s anger flipped to worry so suddenly that it caused a nauseous wave in her stomach. Was Kenan going to leave? Walk away like Asher had after he argued with her father? Would Kenan take his offer of support away and let Ranulf come in to do what he wanted with her and her people, with Maggie? Would he tell her people about the lie? A different kind of fear washed over her. Could she withstand another abandonment?

She breathed deeply, lowering her voice to a calmer tone. “I’ve only ever had slobbery, sour kisses before, so I know nothing else. Perhaps your kisses are dry and sweet.”

He leveled his face back to hers. “Ye will never know unless ye want one.” He leaned closer so that his lips were only inches away from hers. “Because I don’t force them on anyone, and those who do force kisses deserve to end up on their arses in the dirt.” The ending “T” was hard and final like he thought it was the last word of their disagreement.

Kenan didn’t know yet that Tierney always had the last word, even if it wasn’t spoken aloud. She grabbed his shoulders, her fingers curling into the muscles there. He met her gaze with curiosity, surrounded by a frown in all the angles of his face. Her hands slid up to cup his cheeks, her heart pounding, and she pressed her lips against his mouth. It was deliberately hard and closed. With a smacking sound, she pulled back still holding onto him. “Will you knock me on my arse now?”

For a moment, Kenan said nothing, and the smugness at leaving him speechless warmed her.

Tierney opened her mouth to tell him his kiss was lacking when he pulled her to him. A breathy gasp left her as his lips met hers. But his mouth wasn’t hard and punishing. It was soft and warm. His fingers threaded through her hair to the back of her head while his other hand slid gently under her jawline to tilt her face.

The stiffness in her body dissolved in response, and she found herself pressing back into the kiss. Not wet. Not dry. Just right. The thought flickered through her as she sank closer into the comfort of his arm against his chest where her hands rested. The leaning helped to steady her, because her legs felt weak as if she’d had too much whisky.

Despite the breeze that had grown chilled as the sun surrendered to darkness, warmth slid down from her cheeks to her neck and farther. The fire of worry and embarrassment inside Tierney quickly changed into an inferno of sensation, a heat that melted her past.

Their mouths slid against each other, and when his tongue touched her lip, she opened with a soft moan. He dipped inside, and she momentarily worried that she tasted sour from the wine and Jacob’s breath. But Kenan didn’t seem to mind as his hands stroked through her hair and his mouth devoured her.

She inhaled through damp lips as he kissed her jawline. Tierney had always been ticklish, but the way he touched and left a trail along her neck just made her tip her head back farther, giving him greater access. Sensations sizzled under her skin that made her shift against him. Her hands slid over the muscles of his chest. They were firm and built into rock from training for war. Pressed so intimately against him with only one petticoat and his wool wrap separating them, she could feel the growing hardness of his jack, and he reached down to adjust it upward through the plaid.

Tierney stiffened slightly at the memory of Wallace brandishing his jack like a weapon, telling her to just lie there and spread herself for him. But the feel of Kenan’s gentle strength holding her, not entrapping her, made her press more into him as if to escape her past.

Kenan’s lips lifted from its path along her neck, leaving a chill with the dampness there. She inhaled the night breeze mixed with his now familiar scent. It pulled her instead of making her wish to escape.

He’s safe .

His breathing was ragged as if the kiss had affected him, too. She liked that idea. He rested his chin on the top of her head as he held her in his arms.

“Slobbery and sour?”

She smiled against his chest. “No, which is unexpected.”

A chuckle rumbled in his chest. “Dry and sweet?”

She sniffed the smallest laugh. “No.”

“Then what?” he asked, his voice devoid of the anger from before. “Dry and sour? Slobbery and sweet?”

She arched back enough to look up into his face. With eyes adjusted to the scant light, she could see his handsome, angular features, the only imperfection being a bump over the bridge of his nose. He waited for her to answer with what looked like great patience. The hardness of his jack gave evidence that she might not be the only one feeling anything but patient. The thrumming in her body was becoming more insistent as her heart beat rapidly with what a romantic might call a flutter. The feelings were foreign to Tierney.

“No words to describe my kiss, then?” he asked, and she detected a light smugness. She certainly couldn’t let him have the last word.

“Hmmm…” She tapped a finger against her lips as if she were judging a baking contest. “Not too wet or too dry. Soft but firm with a hint of whisky and ale, but not bad.”

He reached between them to clasp her hand, bringing it up to where he could kiss her bruised knuckles gently. His dark eyes held a wicked glint. “There are many types of kisses, Tierney, given on many parts of the body. Do ye know about those?” The way he spoke sent shivers through her, a friction that ran across the embers that the kiss had lit.

Words abandoned her under the seduction of his tone. She shook her head slightly.

His face was serious again. “If we belong to each other for a year,” he said, his voice rough and full of heavy promise, “we should spend it well.”

“Well,” she repeated, pushing away the thought that they weren’t actually handfasted. She watched his lips, how they came together as he spoke. Where would those lips kiss her? Her breasts? The thought sent another thrill through her middle, making her nipples pearl.

He nodded, moving his face before hers. “And just to clear up any misperceptions, I belong to ye as much as ye belong to me during this year.”

She remembered the fury that had burned through her as he carried her, saying she belonged to him. “A mutual commitment, then.”

“Aye.”

“But we didn’t handfast,” she said, her voice just above a whisper.

“We can act as if we did, but then ye can decide if we end our year early. I would leave it up to ye.”

“And there would be…education between us,” she said, and the tip of her tongue slid briefly to her upper lip as if licking a sweet off it. His gaze dropped instantly to her mouth. The energy that seemed to radiate between them there on the dark moorland rippled through Tierney, changing any unease into molten honey.

“As much as ye want,” he said. “Ye have freedom in the fact ye aren’t a virgin, Tierney.”

She swallowed, her heart thumping. “I should tell you I’ve been called cold in bed before.” Tierney’s cheeks flamed, and she was glad for the darkness. Her stomach curled inward. “Icy, in fact.”

Kenan’s brows lowered, bringing back a hint of the tight anger from before. She tried to take a step back, but he kept her close. “He was wrong.” In the dim light from the moon, she could see his brows pinch and his whole face contract in contained anger. “And I hate that ye believed him.”

She shrugged, as if Wallace’s words hadn’t hurt her. But they had, as much as his strikes against her flesh.

Kenan’s hands came up to cup her cheeks. “Tierney, there was absolutely no ice in yer kiss just now.”

He was right. She’d gone from fiery fury to inferno passion without any dip in temperature. Perhaps it had been Wallace that made her icy.

He leaned in, kissed her cheek and then her temple and over to her ear. “I’m guessing the heat of that kiss traveled down through ye, down to where ye might have started to ache, where I want to kiss ye.”

If the heat in her had faded somewhat, Kenan’s words shot flaming arrows back into her. Her lips parted, and she brought in a trembling breath. Suddenly, she wished they were in her chamber at the tower or even back at the cabin where she’d originally shackled him. Anywhere alone with a soft floor or bed and the glow of firelight so she could see Kenan’s rock-hard, beautiful body again.

Her fingers reached up to tug his face back to hers, and she kissed him. Not hard like before, not soft and timid, but with an unspoken need that turned the kiss wild from the start. Mouths opening, neither of them seemed to care what form the kiss took as long as they were linked.

As if waking from a long, frozen sleep, Tierney’s body pressed against Kenan, her hips rocking into him in a natural, needful rhythm. With a growl, Kenan’s hands lifted under her backside, fitting her against his hard jack. Arms around his neck, she held herself to him so intimately that, for a moment, it was as if their clothes had burned right off them.

Tierney’s hands began to slide down his thick arms as he helped her grind into him. The friction against the sensitive crux of her legs made her want to strip the clothes away. Never before had she felt so strong and weak at the same time. Her hands landed at the base of his back, and she squeezed his arse.

A cool breeze slid against her bared legs, and she realized Kenan had rucked up the back of her petticoat, his fingers bunching the fabric at her hips. Warm hands covered her naked backside, stroking down. Her back arched without thought as if the hot ache in her cleft sought his touch. She breathed heavily as he expertly slid down over her cheeks to part her from behind. She moaned when his fingers found her.

He groaned, too, as he slid inside her tight sheath while kissing a path to her ear. “Wet, hot, and I’m guessing sweet.”

Tierney shuddered at the erotic promise in his tone. When he moved his fingers in a mating cadence, she strained backward. He was building a fire inside her that was rampaging out of control. She valued her control, but with this feeling growing inside her, she eagerly surrendered it if this delicious heat continued to grow toward something she wanted so badly.

Kenan was wrapped around her as he taught her how to feel passion and embrace the surrender to it. Could she drag him inside the forest line where there must be a soft spread of moss? “Yes,” she hissed into the night as he stroked her inside, his other hand freeing her breast.

His mouth dropped to her nipple, sucking, picking up the rhythm he’d started below until she felt like a cord connected both aching parts of her. “Oh, my sweet Joan, yes,” she whispered.

Crack!

Kenan stiffened, his hand and mouth disappearing from her, leaving need so fierce she cursed with a ragged groan. But Kenan was cursing louder.

“What the bloody foking hell?” he yelled, as he pulled her behind him, shielding her. He lowered his hand from his head, and Tierney saw the darkness of blood on his fingers.