He opened his eyes. Black was staring at him with the smarmy, satisfied look of a man who knew that he had won.
“What the hell do ye want, Black?” Ciaran gritted out the words through force of effort alone.
Black’s smile spread. Ciaran could smell his fetid breath, but at least Black gave a nod to the other hired blade, who finally pulled his dirk away from Ciaran’s eye.
“Well, your little flight might be good for something after all, now that ye’ve found your way into Buchanan Keep and its nest of snakes,” Black said in a thoughtful way that made unease roil in Ciaran’s stomach. “Especially now since I’ve seen ye chatting up those lasses out there.”
“They’re women,” Ciaran snapped. “They’re nae a part of this.”
Black laughed, a humorless, cruel sound. “Again ye are wrong, mutt,” he retorted. “Laird Gordon wants the youngest sister. Eilidh, I think her name is?”
The sound of Black saying Eilidh’s name was nearly as painful as all the injuries Ciaran had suffered in his beating. He could barely hear his own response over the roaring in his ears.
“There’s naught to be gained through the lass,” he said, hoping that none of his sheer terror was apparent in his tone. Black was the kind of man who would exploit that kind of vulnerability even if he hadn’t been ordered to do so by the man who paid him. “So long as Graham Donaghey breathes, so long as he has his castle, there’s naught that Gordon can do.”
This should have wiped that greasy smile off Black’s face. But instead, he just leaned forward, like he was a schoolroom lass imparting a bit of gossip. A hank of dark, unwashed hair fell over his brow.
“Och, that may be true,” he said gleefully. “But Graham Donaghey willnae be a problem for much longer.”
Ciaran hadn’t thought it possible that his blood could run any colder. But these words proved him wrong.
And then, it got even worse.
“Ciaran Gunn, I have a bone to pick with ye!”
Black’s smile gleamed in the dim light as Eilidh’s voice rang through the space. He gave Ciaran a wink that made Ciaran pray that one day, he would get to put an end to this man.
“Time is ticking, Gunn,” he muttered. “Dinnae give Laird Gordon reason to be disappointed in ye, or I guarantee that ye will be the one to regret it.”
Eilidh was getting impatient.
Well, patience had never been her strong suit. But she was feelingparticularlyimpatient. With one particular man.
Stupid, stupid,stupidCiaran Gunn.
“What are ye even doing in here?” she called out as she approached the door to the armory. “It’s nae as though ye have stored any?—”
Her words cut off abruptly as Ciaran stepped out the door, swiftly enough that her hand, extended to open the door, met his hard chest instead. His eyes were wide, almost fearful… and was that something on his neck?
She snatched her hand back down to her side and tried to hide her flaming cheeks by peering around him into the shadowy hallway behind him. She thought she saw a flicker of something and then?—
Ciaran grabbed her around the shoulders, turned her so that her back was against the wall to the side of the small stone building, and pressed his lips, hard and firm, against hers.
For a moment, the world fell away. There was nothing but the press of him, the warm, distinctly masculine taste of his mouth on hers, and the racing of her heart, which thumped his name with every beat.
Ciaran.Ciaran.
He tasted like fire, like want. She felt her lips fall open, just enough that they could share a single breath. A wildness seized her, and she followed a mad instinct to touch the tip of her tongue to the soft skin of his lower lip. It was a gentle touch, too light to even be called a caress, but it sent a thrill through Eilidh and tore a groan from Ciaran’s throat, a deep, tortured sound.
And then herippedhimself away from her, as though she’d been the one to attack him, and not the reverse.
He stumbled away until his back hit the far wall of the corridor. It didn’t put much space between them but still made it clear that he wanted nothing more than to get as much distance from her as possible.
The rejection shot through her like a hot blade, searingly painful, leaving anger in its wake.
“What the hell was that?” she demanded, trying to push back the way that her chest was heaving, the way that she’d been left breathless by that kiss. “What—what in God’s name were ye thinking?”
Across from her, Ciaran seemed to be gasping for air himself. He looked as baffled by his actions as she felt. His eyes searched her face, and for the life of her, she didn’t know what he might be seeing in her expression.
