Page 17 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

“I daenae want yer goodwill.”

“I ken that fine.” He looked at her steadily. “Ye’ll have it regardless. It’s the Laird’s bed after all, so I daenae mind sharin’ if you daenae want me in the chair.”

She stared at him. He looked back without difficulty and waited, because he had learned in four days that waiting was the most disorienting thing he could do to Alba MacLaren.

She was built for forward motion, for argument and action, and the next move. Stillness without resolution confused her. It was the one weapon in his limited social arsenal that consistently worked on her, and he was not above using it.

“This wasmechamber,” she said quietly. Not the sharp edge of fury anymore. Something hidden underneath it.

“Aye.” His gaze dropped to her mouth before he could stop it. The candlelight was not helping anything. He brought his eyes back up with effort. “Itwas.”

He became aware, without moving, that the distance between them had shrunk since a moment ago. He did not notice when he had stepped forward. The warmth of her body reached him. Her dark hair fell loosely over her bare shoulders, and he was aware of it with a clarity he had no use for.

Her pulse was visible at her throat. Quick. Steady. Telling him things she was not saying.

“Careful, lass.” His voice came out lower than intended. He did not correct it.

He leaned in, just slightly, just barely enough, until his mouth nearly grazed the edge of her ear. She went completely still beneath it, every muscle arrested mid-breath. He could feel the stillness. He let the silence stretch one beat past comfortable.

“I have remarkable restraint,” he said quietly against her ear. “But if I wake to find ye in me bed again…” He paused. He felt her breath catch. “I may finally forget how honorable I am tryin’ to be.”

The knock at the door split the silence like an axe through timber.

Both of them went still.

“Me Lady?” A soft voice from the corridor, careful and apologetic. “I have brought yer sleepin’ tea. Philomena said ye’d be wantin’ it late tonight.”

Sebastian straightened and stepped back, giving her space in a single motion.

Alba drew a sharp, deep breath, her shoulders snapping back into a rigid line before her lungs had even filled. By the second breath, the wide-eyed flash of heat in her gaze disappeared behind a cold, flat stare. Her fingers untangled from the blanket, smoothing over the white wool with a slow, deliberate stroke as she lifted her chin, the flushed, breathless woman from a moment ago concealed behind a mask of unblinking ice.

“I will take me tea in the chambers across the corridor,” she said, her voice coming out without a single tremor. “They’ve a better view when the sun rises.”

She reached for the robe at the foot of the bed. Then her palm struck the center of his chest, pushing hard, sudden, and with more force than her size suggested, causing him to rock backward on his heels before he could brace for it.

“Ye will pay for this,” she breathed, fierce and low, not quite a whisper and not quite a hiss, directly into the space in front of his face.

Then she swept toward the door, pulled it open, and was gone.

The door clicked shut.

Sebastian stood alone in the quiet and the candlelight and let the laugh out now that there was no one to hear it. Low and real andinvoluntary, the kind he had not practiced suppressing because he had so rarely needed to.

He dropped back onto the bed. Stared at the ceiling where slow light moved across the stone.

She would come around. That was simply the truth of it. He had offered her safety, protection, a future for her clan and her lands—everything a woman in her position needed and could not provide for herself forever, no matter what she believed.

The only thing standing between her and the sensible decision was her pride; and pride, in his experience, eventually ran out of places to hide.

She had four days remaining. She would use every single one of them, he had no doubt. She would scheme and maneuver, making his life thoroughly difficult in the process.

He thought about her shoving him backward with both hands. The precise, furious force of it. He thought about the pulse at her throat when she had not been able to answer him.

Shewouldcome around.

He closed his eyes.

Brian needed a mother. MacLaren needed a laird. The math was straightforward, and she was a practical woman beneath all thatstubbornness, and by Sunday, she would see it the same way he did.