Page 58 of The Laird who Craved her

"It is mutual." She didn't back down, bringing her mouth a fraction closer to his, close enough that he felt her furious breath against his lips, warm against the freezing air of the corridor. "I dinnae want Ewan Sinclair's safety. I dinnae want a polite, quiet life in the south while ye act the tyrant here."

"Claire, hold yer tongue."

"I will not," she said, ignoring his warning entirely, the way she ignored every command he’d ever given her. "You are insufferable. You push me away, and then you corner me in the dark because another man showed me basic kindness."

Something in him broke completely loose from its moorings. He moved before he'd decided to, his hands shooting out to grip her waist, hauling her against him hard enough to steal the air clean out of both their lungs. There was no space left between them at all, the rigid leather of his cuirass pressed to the soft wool of her bodice, her hands trapped flat against his chest, her heart hammering so wildly he could feel it through the layers of clothing.

"Ye drive me to madness," he grated against her hair, his voice wrecked with a fury that felt dangerously like desperation.

"And ye are impossible, " s he shot back, breathless, her fingers curling into his shoulders instead of pushing him away.

"Aye." His eyes dropped to her mouth and stayed there. The anger in him twisted, sharpening into a living, ravenous wanting that filled the whole narrow space between the stones. He could feel the exact moment her breath caught, the exact moment the fight drained out of her, leaving her still and waiting beneath his punishing grip. Every reason he had for stepping back felt suddenly, dangerously thin.

He let himself have one more second of the edge. One. The the scent of rain still caught in her hair, the heat of her palms searing through his shirt, the small, helpless gasp she made low in her throat when his fingers dug tighter into the curve of her waist.

Then he kissed her. It was not gentle. His mouth crashed over hers, one hand fisting in her hair, angling her exactly where he wanted, and she made a small, helpless sound against his lipsand rose up onto her toes to meet him, her fingers digging into his shoulders instead of pushing him away.

Then he tore himself away violently.

He stumbled back a full step, his chest heaving as though he'd run the length of the glen, shoving the stone-cold air between them before the last of his restraint gave out entirely and he kissed her.

"Nay," he said, rough, throwing a hand up when she instinctively reached for him.

"Finn…"

"I willnae do it." His voice shook, and he hated that it shook. "I willnae let me own temper be the thing that ruins ye."

"You aren't ruining…"

"I am." He dragged a hand down his face, dragging the Laird's mask back into place. "I am actin' like a feral beast with no lead on him. Ye need a civilized life, nae a man who cannae govern his own rage."

"I never asked for civilized!" she shouted, the plea in it nearly bringing him back to her. "I asked ye to stop hidin' behind duty and want me the way I already ken ye do!"

"Ye dinnae ken what ye are askin' for." The words came out like stones, hard and unyielding, because it was the only defense he had left.

Her eyes flashed with bright, wet fury. "Dinnae tell me what I ken."

"I am sendin' ye to Violet," he stated, turning his face away from hers because he couldnae look at her and maintain the lie. "The escort leaves as soon as the roads clear. It is decided."

"You are a coward," she shouted, the words landing exactly where she meant them to, cutting deeper than any Highland broadsword.

"I am tryin' to keep ye alive."

"Ye are tryin' to save yerself from the risk of feelin' anything at all!" Her voice shook with rage, and beneath the rage, an agonizing disappointment. "Ye would rather face an entire army on that pass than admit ye cannot control what happens between us."

He had nothing to say to that. She had laid him bare, and he had never learned how to lie to her the way he lied to everyone else.

"The perimeter needs seein' to," he said instead, his voice hollow, and he turned, walking fast down the dark corridor without looking back.

Outside, the rain poured down on him hard, and he welcomed it, tipping his face into the freezing downpour until the ice burned everything else out of him, or tried to.

It did not work. Nothing worked. He could still feel the exact, slender shape of her waist under his harsh grip, the exact furious hitch of her breath when he'd hauled her against him. He suspected he would go on feeling it long after she was safely behind Violet's walls and impossibly far from his.

I did what a Laird must do.But he did not believe it for a single second, not even as the storm swallowed his hollow justifications whole.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The patrol went out an hour before midnight and came back short one horse and one man's blood on the saddle.