Page 66 of The Scot Beds His Wife

Breath escaped her at the sight. She imagined the lashes fresh and open, the skin flayed apart by vicious, repetitive violence.

Drawn by a well of sympathy so deep it threatened to drown her, Samantha’s hand drifted up from the bed with dreamlike sluggishness, and reached for him. She felt driven to trace the strange, exacting angles, and smooth the offending scars away.

How had he come by these? His hated father? Were they the reason for his—

The moment her fingertips found the ridge of one scar close to his spine, her wrist was caught in a painful grip, the spell of compassion broken.

Startled, she blinked up at Lord Thorne…

And found someone else.

Someone fierce and wild and violent. His green eyes burned down at her, his nostrils flared, and his shoulders—his broad, disfigured shoulders—heaved with the rhythm of furious breaths.

She wanted to tell him to unhand her, almost as badly as she wanted to apologize. She hadn’t been thinking when she’d reached for him.

Only feeling.

What she read behind the verdant inferno in his eyes caught any breath that would feed her voice behind a lump in her throat. The pain was as naked as the rest of him. And wariness resided there, too. Along with a strange vulnerability behind the hostility that would be easy to miss if one didn’t look closely enough.

“Do. Not.”His words were enunciated with a low, muttered exactitude that reverberated through her entire being.

He didn’t say more. He didn’t need to. She knew exactly what he meant.

Do not touch. Do not ask. Do not mention.

This was a wound he didn’t share, an experience he didn’t discuss.

She had a few of those, herself.

“I won’t,” she said evenly, having learned long ago that the best way to avoid a topic was to redirect it. “Is there a church close by? I haven’t really seen one since I’ve been here.”

“There’s a chapel at Ravencroft.” The sardonic twist of his lips took on a cruel cast, but he released her. “My father ran off the priest before I was born, but we only need a justice of the peace to make our nuptials official.”

“But you’re the…”

“That’s right, though Liam will have to perform the ceremony, as I canna perform my own.” An unholy darkness cooled the heat in his eyes.

“Are you sure that’s wise? Would he even agree to it?”

“He has to.” He shrugged shoulders that she made a very concerted effort not to even glance at. “It’s his responsibility as Laird and as one of the magistrates. He canna very well refuse.”

“But… I mean… there’s bad blood between you, isn’t there? You’re emancipating yourself from him, after all.”

“Aye, there’s bad blood, Mackenzie blood, but that willna stop Liam from doing what has to be done. I’ll say that much for my brother.” Pausing, he scrutinized her from beneath a suspicious brow. “What do ye ken of it, lass? Ye went to Ravencroft. What did ye learn of the bad Mackenzie blood?”

She didn’t know what compelled her to be honest. The challenge she read in the set of his jaw, or the anxiety beneath the dark anticipation in his eyes.

“I—I heard you had an affair with his late wife, Colleen.”

She didn’t miss that he visibly flinched when she said the name.

“Is it true?”

“Aye,” he clipped.

“Was it because you loved her? Or because you hated him?” The question escaped her before she could call it back. And oh, how she wished to when the darkness he’d summoned to his features became absolute.

“If we are to marry, ye’ll have to accept that there are three things I will never discuss with ye. My scars, my father, and Colleen Mackenzie. Do ye understand?”