Page 64 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

“Answer me honestly,” he said, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly vibration that was little more than a breath away from her face.

Alba’s pulse thumped wildly at his proximity, a sudden, erratic pounding against her ribs that made it hard to breathe in the cold air.

Curse the man.

Curse the towering, broad-shouldered certainty of him, and curse the way the small Solar seemed to shrink until there was nothing left in the world but the heat radiating from his chest. She could smell the winter storm on his wool cloak, mixed with the bitter tang of iron and the faint, sweet scent of the spiced ale from the Hall below.

She braced her heels against the stone floor, her fingers curling into tight fists within the folds of her sleeves to keep from trembling. She needed a shield. She needed a blade. Instead, she used the only weapon she had left, the blunt, unyielding truth of her own anger.

“Why do ye want to marry me?” she demanded suddenly.

Sebastian opened his mouth automatically, a sharp, defensive retort clearing his lips. But then he stopped, his jaw locking into a rigid, shadowed line as his dark eyes searched her face.

Her heart stopped. In the dead, suffocating silence that followed, the distant hum of the fiddles through the floorboards seemed to vanish entirely. She watched the slight twitch of his throat, her mind racing through the possibilities, her soul secretly begging for him to say something that had nothing to do with contracts. She wanted him to say he could not breathe when she was not in the room. She wanted him to say he was drowning.

“Brian needs someone to care for him,” Sebastian said.

The statement was flat. Practical. Deliberately stripped of any texture that might give her a toehold.

Alba felt her face hurt; a sharp, physical tightening of the muscles across her cheekbones and behind her eyes took hold.

I am just an asset.

“I see,” Alba said, her voice dropping into a cold, hollow register that sounded entirely detached from the frantic hammering in her chest. She looked away from him, her gaze fixing on the bare stone of the wall where the moonlight did not reach. “Me servants,yerservants, are excellent. They will take good care of him. He does nae require a Lady of the house to see to his porridge or ensure his linens are dry.”

She turned, her skirts rustling sharply against the floorboards as she began to walk away, to escape this suffocating perimeter before the tears she refused to shed could compromise her administrative armor.

Sebastian caught her wrist before she could take a single step.

The contact was instant, a fierce flash of heat that sharply exploded between them, where his heavy, calloused fingers pressed against her thin skin. Alba went stiff, her breath catching in her throat as the raw, brute power of his grip held her in place.

“Alba,” he grunted, his voice rougher now, the gravel catching deep in his chest.

Daenae call me name!,she thought desperately, her eyes closing as the sound of it ripped through her defenses.Daenae call me name!

When he used her title, she was the Lady MacLaren, a woman with a Castle and a Clan to defend. But when he said her name in that low, ragged cadence, she was just a woman standingin the dark, stripped of her ledger, stripped of her ice, entirely vulnerable to the man who had broken her Gates.

Sebastian’s thumb brushed deliberately once against the sensitive, pale skin on the inside of her wrist, right over the frantic, leaping rhythm of her pulse. The rough friction of his hands against her skin was excruciatingly sweet, like a direct current of heat that traveled straight up her arm and settled deep in her belly. He stepped closer, his chest nearly touching the green wool of her bodice.

“Are ye sure?” he whispered, his eyes dark and heavy as they locked onto hers. “Are ye certain ye want to ride out that Gate tomorrow, Alba?”

Her breath caught softly, a tiny, fractured sound in the quiet Solar. She wanted to tell him the truth. She wanted to look him straight in his shadowed eyes and tell him that she was certain of one thing.

But his gaze was paralyzing her. The sheer, predatory intensity of his dark eyes held her in place, stripping away her words until her tongue felt heavy and useless behind her teeth. She did not speak. She stood there, her lips parted, her chest heaving against the tight constraints of her stays, and she knew her hesitation would cost her. In the game they were playing, silence was an invitation.

Sebastian did not wait for her to find her voice.

He reached out with his other hand, his broad palm cupping the back of her neck, his fingers tangling roughly into the loose, dark curls of her hair as he hauled her against him. He brought his mouth down on hers, kissing her hard.

Alba gasped softly against his lips, the sudden, bruising force of the collision knocking the remaining air from her lungs. But before her brain could form a single logical protest, the wall of ice inside her shattered completely. The fierce, suppressed hunger of the last seven days rose up like a wildfire, and she kissed him back with an equal, desperate intensity that terrified her.

Her fingers flew out from her sleeves, her hands clawing blindly at the heavy, rough wool of his dark cloak, twisting the fabric into her palms. Heat exploded instantly between them.

Sebastian let out a low, feral growl against her mouth, his teeth grazing her lower lip before his tongue pushed past her teeth, consuming her with a dark, heavy dominance that left her weak-kneed. His large hands slid down her spine, the thick calluses on his palms catching against the grain of her green gown, until they settled tightly at her waist. He lifted her slightly, pressing her hips firmly against the unyielding line of his belt, letting her feel his hard desire through the layers of their clothes.

Alba’s hands slid upward, abandoning his cloak to tear at the laces of his leather doublet, her fingers driving through the openings to find the thick, roaring warmth of his dark wool shirt beneath. She climbed him, her arms wrapping around his neck,her fingers tangling into the short, coarse hair at the nape of his neck as she pulled him down deeper into the kiss.

The world narrowed down to the taste of him—salt, spiced ale. He shifted his weight, his heavy boots scuffing against the timber as he guided her back into the deeper shadows of the Solar, away from the windowsill, until her spine met the solid, cold masonry of the chimney breast.