Page 33 of Fierce Highland Longing

I went in for her.

I have no account of the decision because there was not one. I was in the passage going out, and then I was in the chamber going in, led by my heart.

She was up against the high side of the wall with her chin at the roof and about eight inches of air left. I got her under the arms, which was what she did for me on a beach in October, and I took her down and through.

Rock came past us in the dark. Something took my shoulder open. She held on to me the whole way with both hands in my fur and did not let go once. She must have thought she was dying, and she did not let go.

The shelf under the cliff was wet and black and above the water for another hour.

I got her onto the rock. She came up on her hands and was sick, and then she sat with her arms around herself, shaking, breathing. Her right arm was hanging wrong at the shoulder. There was nothing I could do about a shoulder.

The storm was straight over us. White water going up the rock below and the tide climbing the shelf and the whole coast roaring.

Neither of us did anything for a while.

She got her breath and lost it and got it again. I stayed where I was on the wet rock with the sea at my back. I had no idea in the world what she was going to do, and there was no version of it I could have argued with.

Then she got her head up and wrapped an arm over me.

Nobody had seen me. Not in nineteen years. Not one living person on this earth has seen what I am, and she sat there in the wind with her arm broken and her hair in her face and she took in all of me.

“God,” she whispered. “You’re . . . you’re beautiful.”

I had no words. There was no mouth for them. I could not have asked her if I had wanted to.

I shifted instead.

I moved closer, the wet rock biting into my knees, and lifted my hand. My fingers brushed the hair back from her face, tucking the strands behind her ear. Her skin was cold under my touch. She shivered, but she didn’t pull away.

“Tavish,” she said, my name barely audible over the storm.

I didn’t think. I leaned in and pressed my forehead to hers, closing my eyes, breathing her in. Salt and rain and her, solid and alive and here.

“I could have lost you,” I said, my voice rough.

“You didn’t,” she said. “You came back.”

“I will always come back,” I said, and I meant it more than I had ever meant anything.

She lifted her good hand and pressed it to my chest, over my heart. I could feel her palm through the wet fur, feel the way her fingers curled like she was holding on for dear life.

“Then don’t go,” she said. “Not yet.”

I closed the last inch between us and kissed her.

It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t careful. It was years of hunger and fear and hope crashing into one point, and she kissed me back like she’d been waiting for it since the first night she found me on the beach.

Her fingers tightened in my fur. My hand slid to the back of her neck, holding her steady, anchoring her to me as the storm raged around us.

When I finally pulled back, we were both breathing hard, our foreheads still pressed together.

“Go,” she said, but her voice shook, and her hand was still on my chest.

I turned my head and put my lips to her temple, lingering there. “I’ll come back to you,” I said. “I promise.”

She nodded, once, and let her hand fall.

I went into the water.