Page 46 of Highland Ruse

He should be glad for her indifference.

It was for the best.

“What will you do with us?” she asked, her voice hard. “Lock us in the dungeon while you wait to hear from Laird MacKenzie?”

“Ye’ll be guests in my home,” he said. The room had been set for her arrival before he’d even departed.

“Regardless of the politeness you’ve extended, it’s quite obvious we are not guests but prisoners.” She lifted her chin in the pretentious manner he despised so much.

He frowned at her. “I’ve tried to explain—”

“That changes nothing.” She spun toward him, facing him as if he were an attacker. Her body was tense, her gaze bright with passion, and her cheeks blazing.

Perhaps it was those things, or how the sun spilled over her and turned her hair into curls of gold, but she was more beautiful than he’d ever seen her.

“Elizabeth, I—”

“It’s unfair.” Tears shone bright in her eyes and twisted at his heart. He’d never seen her cry before. Even that night in the woods, when he’d known she’d probably cried, he hadn’t seen her. He knew now how very painful it was to behold.

Especially when he was the culprit.

“All of this is so unfair.” The tiny freckle next to her cheek stood out to him as it always had: not as an imperfection, but as the final note of beauty on an already exquisite face.

He stepped closer and opened his arms to her.

She shrugged him off.

“Elizabeth.”

“Don’t.”

But he couldn’t stop himself. He stepped forward again, toward her.

This time her hand flew toward his face, but he caught her wrist. “Dinna hit me,” he warned.

“Let me go,” she gritted out through her teeth.

Her other hand came at his face, but he caught that one too. He held her for a moment, her arms pinned.

And then he kissed her.

Chapter Twelve

Kaid should not have kissed Lady Elizabeth Seymour.

Every warning within him told him what he already knew—how the hard press of his lips to hers would reignite the passion between them.

He’d spent the last several days trying not to think of her sweet taste, her throaty moan, her perfect beauty, her cheeks flushed with passion.

But he did kiss her, and now desire licked through his body like a flame across tinder.

He caught her bottom lip between his teeth and sucked.

Elizabeth gasped, but did not jerk away.

He still pinned her arms, keeping her at his mercy and yet not forcing her into anything, as was evidenced by her lean into him.

Her face tilted up. “Please,” she whispered against his lips.