Page 51 of The Laird who Craved her

Finn disarmed Angus in three brutal moves and sent him sprawling into the mud without breaking stride. "Dead. Next."

"I'll take a turn, me Laird," Rabbie offered, stepping forward with more courage than sense.

"Daenae swing wild," Finn warned, circling. "Anger makes a man predictable, and predictable men die first."

Claire watched the whole exchange without blinking, watched rainwater trace a slow line down the column of his throat and vanish beneath his collar, and felt a low pull deep in her belly, insistent and unwelcome given the circumstances.

"He's too fast for them," she murmured.

"Too fast for most men in these hills," Douglas said, not without pride. "That's why he's the Laird."

Finn swept Rabbie's legs out from under him a moment later, dropping him into the mud beside Angus.

"Dead." He straightened, chest heaving, and turned to survey the rest of the men, who had gone very still, very interested in the mud at their own feet. "Are the rest of ye cowards, then?"

"We're exhausted, me Laird," Angus muttered from the ground.

"Then be exhausted on yer feet." Finn wiped rain from his eyes with the back of one scarred hand, tipped his face up into the downpour, and stopped.

He'd found her.

The violence in him didn't vanish, not exactly, but it changed shape, banked itself down into something quieter. His eyes held hers across the muddy field, and she felt her pulse pick up in her throat, a fast, visible flutter she was certain he could see even from that distance.

"Douglas," he said, without looking away from her. "Take the drill. Shield walls till their arms give out."

"With pleasure, me Laird." Douglas grinned, already climbing the fence. "Right, ye sorry lot, form a line!"

Finn dropped his practice sword into the mud and walked toward her, unhurried, each step deliberate in a way that made her fingers curl around the wooden rail until the grain of it pressed white lines into her palm.

"D'ye enjoy watchin' Highland men beat each other bloody, Claire?" he asked, stopping on the other side of the fence.

"I enjoy watching ye terrorize them." She lifted her chin, aiming for teasing and landing somewhere closer to breathless. "Though I confess, after last night, very little startles me anymore."

His eyebrows lifted a fraction, and the corner of his mouth pulled sideways, not quite a smile, more the ghost of one he hadn't decided to let through yet. "Ye should be by the fire."

"I was going mad by the fire." She gripped the rail tighter, needing somewhere to put her hands that wasn't him. "I needed the sky."

"The sky's grey."

"It's better than the library ceiling."

He came closer, close enough that the heat of him reached her even through the rain, an absurd, impossible thing, warmth radiating off a man standing in a downpour. "Ye slept short."

"As did ye. Ye left before the sun was even up."

"War council."

"And a training ring to conquer, apparently." She glanced pointedly at the mud caked up his trousers.

"Demons to wrestle," he said, low, and the words landed somewhere just beneath her ribs.

I am one of those demons.I am the complication he cannae afford right now, and still I keep walking toward the fire.

"Did ye win?" she asked softly.

"I never win. I only survive the round." He flexed his bruised knuckles, gaze dropping to them for a moment.

"Ye're bleedin'."