Page 5 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

He means to take it. He genuinely means to take me home.

Alba looked back at her three men. Good men, every one of them. John already had his bloody hand on his hilt, jaw locked, waiting for her word.

She looked at the MacGregor warriors. Ten, at least, on this road alone. More, certainly, behind them.

Her eyes moved back to John, who was already opening his mouth.

“Me Lady.”

She silenced him with one sharp look. He closed his mouth.

She turned her face back to Sebastian. Her heart was hammering against her ribs, but she refused to let the tremor reach her voice.

“If ye’re takin’ the MacClaren Castle,” she said, forcing the words out evenly, “then do it without slaughterin’ me people.”

He went very still. Something hot and dark moved across his eyes that she could not name.

“Leave them be.” She held his gaze, her jaw locked. “I will go willingly. Only leave them be.”

Rain ran down his strong jawline. He studied her the way she had seen men study land deeds, looking for the catch, for the hidden clause, for the precise place where the good terms turned bad. Whatever he found, or did not find, he made his decision without a word.

He sheathed his broadsword. He crossed the muddy ground toward her in three deliberate, commanding strides. He stopped so close to her stirrup that she could smell woodsmoke, wet wool, cold steel, and the sharp, musky scent of a man who had been riding through harsh Highland weather for days.

Then his large hands tightly grasped her waist. The warmth of his palms seeped through her thick cloak. He lifted her off her mare and onto his own horse in front of him as if she weighed nothing at all.

Alba’s breath left her body completely.

Before she could struggle, his thick forearm locked around her waist from behind, solid, heavy, and utterly immovable. His massive chest was an unyielding wall against her back, radiating an overwhelming warmth that made her skin tingle. She sat rigid with fury, her thighs pressed tightly against the coarse leather ofhis saddle, fiercely refusing to acknowledge the sudden skip in her pulse as his stallion turned back toward the valley road.

His mouth came close to her ear, his breath rising warm against the cold skin of her neck.

“Lead me to me new castle,” he said quietly, his voice a low vibration she felt in her spine. “Me Lady.”

Alba stared straight ahead between the stallion’s ears at the mist-covered mountains and the gray, indifferent sky. She did not give him the satisfaction of a response.

But down in the folds of her green cloak, where no one could see them, her fingers were shaking.

Chapter Three

Three days had passed since the road. The courtyard was already unrecognizable.

Sebastian stood near the iron gates with two of his men, speaking quietly over a rough, rain-spattered map of the outer stone walls, and watched his people move through MacLaren Castle. He observed them filling every space, making it impossible to imagine the place had ever been vacant.

Heavily loaded supply carts rolled through the archway in a steady, muddy stream. Weapons were stacked against the eastern wall, steel catching the dim light. Grain barrels lined the covered stone walkway in precise rows; his quartermaster was already counting aloud in a monotonous drone.

It was efficient. It was brutally necessary.

It still sat like a heavy weight of lead inside his chest in a way he had absolutely no intention of examining.

He saw her before she ever reached him.

Alba MacLaren stood rigid at the top of the courtyard steps with her arms pinned straight at her sides and her spine so taut it could have been used to level building stone. She was watching one of his men carry a thick barrel of winter grain across the slick cobbles.

“Careful with those barrels.” Her voice came out sharp, cutting through the damp air with absolute authority. “If ye crack them open now, they’ll spoil before first frost.”

The man, a scarred MacGregor warrior who had faced down three of Malcolm Kerr’s soldiers at a river crossing six weeks ago without so much as blinking, came to a sudden halt, looked up at her, and immediately adjusted his grip. Sebastian noted that.

She came down the stone steps toward him. There was thick brown mud smeared along the hem of her green riding cloak. Neither thing appeared to concern her in the slightest.