Page 48 of Promised to the Cursed Laird

"Aye."

"Even kenning it changes naething about what ye've already promised me. The horse. The road. The letter tae Fearchar."

"It changes naething." He held her eyes, steady even as something raw and unguarded moved behind them. "I meant every word I gave ye at that gate, Neilina, and wanting ye disnae undo a single one of them. I'll still see ye safe tae Fearchar's lands myself if that's truly what ye choose, however much it costs me tae do it. Wanting ye disnae give me the right tae keep ye. It only means I'll grieve ye considerably more than I expected tae, if ye go."

He means it, she thought, and felt something in her chest crack open at the plain, unbearable honesty of a man handing her the one thing that might have given him leverage over her, and using it instead to hand her more freedom, not less.

"I dinnae ken what tae do with that," she said, quietly.

"Ye dinnae have tae do anything with it. I only wanted ye tae ken it, before either of us pretends any longer that this is only about a King's writ."

She looked at him a long moment, the wind moving through his hair and the stars wheeling cold and bright above the black water. The terrifying honesty still sitting raw in his eyes, and she felt every careful wall she'd been rebuilding since the gallery this morning come down at once.

She kissed him first this time.

She felt him go still with surprise for the length of one heartbeat. Then his arms came around her fast and sure, one hand sliding into her hair, the other pressing flat against the small of her back and drawing her fully against him as the kiss deepened. This was nothing like the careful, hesitant kiss that had happened at the inn.

This was hunger, plain and unhidden, his mouth hard and certain against hers, her own hands fisting in the front of his shirt to keep herself upright against the sheer force of what was moving through her.

"Neilina," he said against her mouth, her name sounding like something being torn out of him.

"Hmmm," she moaned and felt him make a low sound against her lips that was half laugh, half groan, before he kissed her again with an intensity that stole the last of her breath entirely.

He sucked her lower lip into his mouth, biting down just hard enough to make her gasp, his tongue sweeping through her mouth with a possessive intensity that made her squirm. He shifted his grip, his fingers tightening in her hair to pull her head back further, exposing the line of her throat, and for a second, she thought he might bite her there, too.

The wind howled around them, cold and vast, the sea crashing somewhere far below, and none of it mattered. Not the council, not the Accord, not Fearchar or Cailleach or any of the tangled danger still waiting beyond this rock: There was only his mouth on hers, one hand tangled in her hair, the other roaming all over her, the racing thunder of both their hearts, and the plain, terrifying certainty settling into her chest that whatever this was, she no longer had the first idea how to stop wanting it.

When he finally drew back, both of them breathless, his forehead resting against hers. She felt his hands still trembling faintly where they held her, and understood, with a clarity that frightened her more than the ambush on the road had, that this man had just handed her the truth of himself entirely undefended. She had no answer ready that felt remotely large enough to give him back.

"That," he said, low, a ghost of the old wickedness finally returning to his voice, "was nae naething either."

"Nae," she agreed, breathless. "It verra much wasnae."

She woke the next morning with the memory of that kiss still sitting warm and unsettled in her chest, so she did the only sensible thing she could think to do about it, which was avoid him entirely.

She took her morning meal in her own chamber rather than the hall. She found errands for herself in the still-room with Elspeth, in the weaving room with two of the older women—anywhere that put walls and other people's chatter between herself and whatever conversation would inevitably come if she let him corner her alone.

I cannae think clearly when he's near me, she thought, crossing the inner ward toward the kitchens on some invented pretext about needing air. And I need tae think clearly. He told me he wants me, plainly, without a single condition attached tae it, and I kissed him like a woman with nae sense left at all, and now I need tae work out what that means before I say another word tae him about any of it.

She was still turning that over, unresolved, when the sound of children's laughter pulled her attention toward the lower paddock.

A dozen or so children, none older than ten, stood scattered about the fenced yard while a harried-looking groom tried, with limited success, to teach the lot of them the basics of sitting a pony properly. One small boy had his reins hopelessly crossed. A girl no older than six sat tipped so far forward she looked a moment away from landing in the dirt.

Neilina stopped at the fence rail, watching, and felt the tension in her chest ease for the first time all morning.

"Ye're holding them backward," she called to the boy with the crossed reins, before she'd fully decided to involve herself. "Here…may I show ye?"

The groom looked relieved enough to hand over the whole enterprise on the spot. Within minutes, she'd climbed the fence and was moving among them, straightening the girl's seat with two careful hands at her shoulders, sorting the tangled reins, showing a solemn, serious-eyed boy how to hold his hands soft rather than white-knuckled.

"Like this," she said, guiding his fingers looser around the leather. "A pony's mouth is soft. Ye needn't grip it like ye're wrestling a bear."

"I wasnae wrestling."

"Ye were."

"I wasnae."

"Ye nearly pulled the poor creature's head off."