Page 28 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

“Alba.”

Her pulse was a deafening roar in her own ears.

“Ye took me home by force,” she whispered.

“Aye.” He did not blink. He did not look away.

“Ye threatened me into marriage.”

His jaw tightened, a muscle leaping under the stubble. “I gave ye choices.”

“Terrible choices.”

“They were the only ones I had.” His voice dropped into a lower, darker register. “I’d have made different ones if I could.”

Alba looked at his mouth before she could stop herself.

His breathing changed. She heard the slight catch, the sharp shift in the rhythm of his chest against her hand, and the knowledge that she had done that. That the simple, silent direction of her eyes had broken his composure, moved through her veins like a current.

He brought her hand up.

It was not a thought-out decision. She could see that clearly. The way his eyes followed the movement a half-second after his arm had already made it, as if part of him had moved before the rest of him had agreed.

He slowly turned her hand in his, his thumb pressing into the center of her palm, and held it against his jaw. The stubble felt rough beneath her fingertips. The skin underneath was warm. His eyes remained fixed on hers, dark and steady, but his jaw moved against her palm in a way that was far from steady.

She forgot, briefly, how to form words.

“Ye say ye hate me,” he said, his voice dropping into a rough growl, the control costing him visible effort. “But ye keep lookin’ at me like that.”

She tried to pull her gaze back to his eyes. It went directly to his mouth instead. She could not seem to stop doing it, a realization that was humiliating and entirely beyond her management.

“Like what?” she whispered.

He did not answer. Instead, he turned his head, just slightly, just enough, and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist.

A moment of stillness, his mouth against the thin skin above her pulse point, where her heartbeat was absolutely betraying her. He stayed there one breath, two, his eyes closing briefly, a man allowing himself something he had been refusing for days.

Then he lifted his head and looked at her.

“Like that,” he said quietly.

The wordnayexisted somewhere in her vocabulary. She was certain it did. She had used it against him in various forms for five consecutive days with considerable conviction, and she could locate it now if she only tried hard enough.

Instead, her free hand came up and caught the front of his doublet.

Sebastian went completely still for one suspended second, as if the gesture had found him not braced for it, as if Alba MacLaren taking a fistful of his shirt had undone something in him more thoroughly than anything else in nine days of siege.

Then the last of whatever he had been holding in place gave way entirely, and he closed the remaining distance between them.

The lantern she was still somehow gripping in her left hand swung sideways. She braced herself without thinking, her right hand coming up flat against his chest, and then his mouth crashed down onto hers; the last of her thoughts went entirely dark.

His mouth was rough, certain, and hungry in a way that told her he had been fighting this exact moment for days and was finished fighting. She gasped against his lips, and the moment she did, he caught her. His arm hooked around her waist and hauled her fully against him, lifting her back from the stone wall until her body came flush against his chest with a solidity that knocked the remaining breath from her lungs.

Dear God.

His other hand tangled deep into her loose, dark curls, his fingers spreading against the back of her head to lift her face, anchoring her to the kiss. She let him. She was fully aware of allowing him, knowing this was a choice, and all of it existed at the same time in some detached part of her mind that was still observing while the rest of her had stopped functioning entirely.

He made a low, private sound against her mouth. It went through her like a struck chord, resonating in places she had carefully guarded, and her knees went so unreliable she was grateful his weight was pinning her up.