Page 235 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
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.
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.
