Page 108 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
Laird O’Malley collapsed onto the ground and did not move again.
Ciaran turned back before the dust had fully settled. “Ava.”
She was stillslipping.
The fabric at her shoulder tightened, and her bound hands were twisted awkwardly above her head, where he still gripped the rope. He dropped flat on his stomach, braced one boot against a piece of solid rock, and hauled her upward inch by inch.
“Just hold on, all right?” he groaned, pulling with more power.
One shoe found purchase, but lost it as the other scraped across rock. He caught more of her sleeve, then the back of her arm, and pulled until half her body came over the cliff, then all of it in one hard pull that rolled her against him on the ground.
For a moment, he could do nothing but hold her.
She was alive.
Breathing.
Solid under his hands.
Her hair was full of grit, and her left cheek had a fresh scrape on it. Her dress hung torn at the shoulder where he had caught her, and he quickly ran his hand down her side, her arm, her waist, searching for broken bones he might feel before she had time to tell him.
“Ava.”
She nodded once without meeting his eyes.
He brought the bloody knife to the rope and cut it loose. It fell away, and he watched the red marks around her wrists. He took her hands in his own and rubbed them hard, as if to force warmth back into her cold fingers.
Laird O’Malley lay crumpled a few feet away, one arm bent under him at an odd angle, the blood dark at his side. The sight of him should have brought relief. But it only brought the knowledge that one threat had ended and another had begun.
“Look at me.”
Hector and two of his men reached them then, their boots striking the ground. One of them bent over Laird O’Malley’s body and the other scanned his men, who were now dead on the floor as well.
Hector crouched beside Ciaran and Ava, sword still in hand, breathing hard. “Are ye hurt?”
“She was pushed,” Ciaran said.
“I askedher.”
Ava drew a shaky breath and said. “I am fine.”
That answer should have soothed him. It did not.
Finedid not answer anything. He needed to know whether she could stand, whether anything in her was broken, whether she would faint, and whether the look she had just given him would remain after the tremors stopped.
There was only one way to find out.
He put one arm around her back and helped her sit upright, and she let him do it.
“Ava,” Ciaran murmured, quieter now.
She flinched, then steadied herself. He reached out to wipe the blood from the scrape on her cheek, and again, she let him.
“We must get ye back home,” he said.
Ava looked at him then with a strange clarity that told him she had heard every word he had said earlier.“Because I mean so little to ye?” she asked.
Hector rose and turned away, barking orders at the men to check the ground below and watch the treeline. He gave them privacy without pretending not to hear. The wind still came hard from the drop, and somewhere below, more stones shifted and fell.
