Page 107 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
“Ye heard me.” He kept his voice hard enough to scrape. “I daenae want her.”
The words went out into the dark morning sky and seemed to strike the air itself. Ava flinched as if he had hit her.
Ciaran held himself still. He could not let the old man see what her reaction did to him. He had chosen this. He would carry the cost later, if there was a later to carry anything in.
Laird O’Malley’s gaze darted between them. He was thinking. Testing.Enjoying it.
“So easy,” he said softly. “All these years, I thought I should kill wives and children to wound yer line. Mayhap I needed only wait for ye to do the work yerselves.”
Rage surged up hot enough to blur the edges of Ciaran’s vision, but he managed to crush it down. Rage would get Ava killed. What he needed now was time. One distracted shift of the oldman’s feet or one half-second for Hector or any of the men at his back to gain ground.
“Take me,” Ciaran offered. “If vengeance is what ye want, then take it where it belongs.”
“Oh, I shall.” Laird O’Malley smiled again, and his grip shifted.
Ciaran noticed the movement at once. The hand on Ava’s dress moved lower, searching for better leverage. Her bound hands twisted uselessly at her waist as she fought for balance. Pebbles gave way under one foot and fell into the abyss.
Every man behind him tensed. He heard leather creak and steel adjust in a gauntlet. Still, no one moved.
No one could.
Ava still stared at him.
He had gotten what he wanted. Laird O’Malley’s attention had shifted. The line of attack had changed. She was alive.
Please,he found himself pleading silently over and over again.Please, let her go.
Almost like he could read his thoughts, Laird O’Malley’s hand shifted on Ava’s dress. Then he shoved her.
“Nay!” Ciaran bellowed, moving almost in the same breath as her feet went out from under her.
The stones slid, and her body pitched backward over the edge. He reached her in two strides that felt like one and pushed Laird O’Malley back with all the force he could muster. The older man's men with him moved forward to attack, but Hector was one step closer. He had them all cornered.
“Brother, do ye?—”
“Stay back!” Ciaran called as loudly as his vocal cords would let him.Then he grabbed a fistful of fabric at Ava’s shoulder and the bound rope at her wrists, then dropped to one knee so hard the impact reverberated through his whole leg.
Her weight dragged at him at once, while loose stones spilled past them into the dark. Someone shouted behind him, but he did not know who. All he could think of was how to keep her holding on. How to keep her alive.
“Ciaran!” she screamed, the panic in her voice evident with each breath.
“I’ve got ye, Ava,” he groaned, gritting his teeth.
Ava made a short, strangled sound as she slammed against the cliff. Her body hung half over the drop, her shoes scraping uselessly against bare rock. Ciaran hauled her with everythingin him and got her up one hand’s breadth before Laird O’Malley came for him.
The bastard had a knife.
Ciaran saw the flash too late. He let go of Ava’s ropes just long enough to turn, took the old man’s wrist in his free hand, and drove his own blade upward under the ribs with all the force the panic gave him.
Laird O’Malley gasped.
“The Lord kens ye deserve more than this. But I daenae have the time,” Ciaran grunted, and stabbed him again.
A pool of warm blood ran down his knuckles as the knife fell from Laird O’Malley’s hand and skittered across the ground. Laird O’Malley sagged against him with a wet, stunned breath, still trying to look past him toward Ava, as if hatred alone might finish the work.
Ciaran held him there for a moment, face to face, with Ava still hanging from his other hand and the wind whipping at all three of them.
“I could have let ye live,” he hissed. Then he shoved him away.
