Page 49 of Highland Ruse

She blinked hard as the thought broke through her bliss.

Her mind still fogged with lust, her body still arching and moving with Kaid, she loosed the dirt in her hand and ran her palm down her right leg where her hidden dagger was strapped to her thigh.

The heavy skirts still lay over it like a shield.

Kaid seemed to swell and grow hotter insider her. A wanted distraction from the thought of her hidden blade. She let herself be pulled into the fog of desire once more.

He watched her, his clear, blue stare a fascinating view into the extent of his pleasure. Seeing his enjoyment while she experienced her own sent another winding tightness through her. A cry slipped from her mouth in anticipation.

He held her face in his hands, all the affection she’d never known shining in his eyes. “Elizabeth.”

Delilah stiffened at the sound of the other woman’s name, and Kaid gave a hoarse groan of pleasure.

Elizabeth.

Kaid’s mouth brushed hers, but she no longer felt the warmth of his kiss.

In fact, everything in her had gone cold.

It wasn’t she, Delilah, whom he made love to with such passion, such love—it had been Elizabeth.

Delilah had known better, of course. She’d been fooling him the entire time, after all.

Why, then, did it make her feel so empty inside?

The threat of tears prickled warm and certain, but she snapped the emotion shut inside her.

She would not fall into sadness as she’d done the last time she fancied a man in love with her. She was stronger than that now.

The hollow twinge in her chest grew, and she nurtured it. She wanted the cold nothing, the lack of feeling.

She still had a job to do.

Kaid stared down at the woman he thought her to be with love he didn’t know was fake, but this time Delilah did not allow herself to be moved by it.

Elizabeth.

Anger tightened through her. She slipped her fingers between the folds of her skirts, grasped the hilt of her concealed dagger and whipped the blade up toward his neck.

He jerked, the way any warrior might do, then gave a confused little smile, as if he were embarrassed at having darted back from a blade. “What are ye doing?”

“I’m abducting you, Kaid MacLeod,” she said in a cold voice. “The same as you tried to do to me.”

The confusion was replaced with a furrowed brow.

She shoved him off her and got to her feet. Pleasure thrummed still between her legs, but she refused to acknowledge it. Her skirts swept back into place. Aside from the possibility of grass in her hair, one might never know she’d just been rutting on the ground.

Kaid slowly rose, his arms held defensively in the air. “I dinna understand.”

“I’m taking you in to be punished for the crime of abducting a lady with the intent to blackmail.” The words should have eased the ache in Delilah’s chest. Why, then, did they seem to make it more tender?

“Ye lied to me?” There was something in his gaze. Hurt.

Delilah grit her teeth.

She knew why he’d done what he did. She knew how well he’d treated them, how apologetic he’d been—how awful he felt.

But none of it mattered.