Page 47 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

Steam curling around pale shoulders. Wet hair clinging to the nape of her neck. The startled look in her eyes when she'd realized he was there. Her cheeks rosy from the heat andthe swell of her breasts just above the water.

God.

He had come perilously close to forgetting every decent instinct he'd ever possessed that afternoon.

For one wild second, he'd wanted to cross the space between them, reach into the water, haul her against him and discover what she would do if he stopped pretending the sight of her had not affected him. It had taken every scrap of restraint he possessed to turn away and give her back the privacy she deserved.

And it was becoming harder.

He was a hot-blooded Highlander, not a saint, and Neilina seemed determined to test the distinction at every turn.

"Ye're quiet," she said.

He dragged his attention back to the present.

"Thinking."

"That sounds dangerous."

"It can be."

She smiled faintly and looked out over the sea. The wind moved through her hair.

He looked away before she could catch him staring.

"I found this place as a boy. I've brought verra few people up here since."

"Why bring me, then?"

He didn't answer immediately.

The question was innocent enough. His answer was not.

Because he had needed somewhere away from the household. Somewhere no council member could interrupt. Somewhere he could stand beside her without half a dozen watchful eyes measuring what passed between them.

He looked out at the water instead.

"I thought ye might like it here."

She turned towards him, her expression softening.

And Marcas had the distinct and unwelcome thought that he had brought her to precisely the wrong place if his intention had been to regain control of himself."Also because I've spent the whole of this week telling ye the marriage means naething tae me beyond what ye choose to make it," he said, finally. "And I wanted tae bring ye somewhere honest enough tae finish saying the rest of it properly, without a council chamber or a bathtub or a hall full of my own clan listening in."

Her heart had gone very still and very loud at once, the wind suddenly seeming quieter than it had a moment before.

"The rest of it."

"Aye." He turned to face her fully now, and there was none of the wickedness in his eyes tonight, none of the careful banter he usually wrapped around anything that cost him something to say. "The Accord means naething tae me, Neilina. I'd tear the whole of it tae pieces tomorrow if it bought ye a single hour of peace ye didnae have tae fight for. I've told ye that plainly enough already, and I meant every word." He stopped, and she watched something harder to say gather behind his eyes, something rawer. "But I willnae pretend any longer that the Accord's the only reason I want ye tae stay."

The wind seemed to stop entirely, or perhaps it was only her own breath that had.

"What are ye saying?"

"I want ye," he said, plain, unadorned, without the careful phrasing a laird would use to assert himseld. "Nae because a piece of the King's parchment says I should. Nae because my council thinks it a fine bargain for the clan's future. I want ye the way a man wants a woman he cannae stop thinking of, whatever contract does or disnae exist between them. I wanted ye at the inn and I want ye now, standing on this rock with the wind ruining yer hair, and I'll nae keep pretending otherwise simply because it's easier for both of us if I do."

She stared at him, the whole of her chest gone tight and strange, because she'd braced herself, walking up that narrow stair, for another careful speech about freedom and choice and open gates, and had gotten instead something far more dangerous. She got his plain desire, offered without apology, without a single word of the Accord attached to it.

"Ye'd say that," she said, her voice less steady than she wanted it to be, "even kenning I might still choose tae leave."