She turned away, taking a sharp step back toward the path, but her body felt leaden—anchored to the spot by a gravity she couldn’t fight. Every nerve ending was screaming, raw andoverstimulated, protesting the distance she was trying to put between them.
“Enya.”
She stopped. The sound of her name was a hook, sinking deep into the soft tissue of her resolve. She hated the way she obeyed it. She hated that her feet refused to move another inch.
“I didnae expect company,” he continued. The teasing edge had vanished, replaced by a tone so raw and stripped of pretense that it felt like a physical weight. “But I’m glad ye came. I think I’ve been waiting fer ye fer a long time. Nae just here... but everywhere.”
The words struck her center-mass, a blunt-force hit to her heart that made her lungs seize. It wasn't just the words. It was the terrifying sincerity behind them, the sound of a man who had been a fortress for too long finally opening a gate. She swallowed, her throat so tight it ached, her pulse thudding a frantic, uneven rhythm in her ears.
“This was a mistake, Harald,” she whispered, her voice cracking.
“Perhaps,” he said, and she could hear the ghost of a smile in his voice, a low, vibrating hum that made her stomach flip. “But it’s the best mistake I’ve made all year. The only one that’s made me feel alive. So stay, Enya. Just fer a moment. Stop running.”
She let out a laugh—a short, breathless sound that was half-sob, half-electricity. “Ye are impossible!”
“So I’m told,” his answer came, as dark and deep as the water surrounding him.
She couldn't stay. If she stayed, she would turn around. She would never be able to leave. The mission, the lies, the Cameronblood in her veins—it would all burn to ash in the heat of his gaze.
She fled. She gathered her heavy woolen skirts in both hands and sprinted back along the path, her boots skidding on the damp earth. Her face was on fire, her heart racing so hard it felt like it would burst through her ribs.
“Enya!”
His voice chased her, echoing off the ancient, moss-covered rocks like a haunting. It followed her through the trees, a low, masculine vibration that settled in the marrow of her bones.
She didn't stop until the lake was out of sight, but it didn't matter. The image was already seared into her mind: the gold flecks in his eyes, the way his skin looked like hammered bronze in the sun, and the devastating sight of the water sliding down the hard planes of his back.
She knew, with a terrifying, soul-deep certainty, that she was ruined.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Harald stood in the shallows, his chest heaving as the silence of the cove rushed back in to fill the space where her breathing had been.
“Enya.”
Her name left his mouth like a jagged prayer, rougher and more desperate than he had intended. It carried across the dark water and was swallowed by the ancient trees, leaving him with nothing but the echo of her retreating footsteps.
He waded to the bank a heartbeat later, water streaming from his thighs as feet sank into the damp earth. Through the trees he caught one last glimpse of her retreating figure, skirts hitched in her hands, dark hair flashing once in the light before she vanished into the green.
He did not call again.
His throat was too tight, his pulse a thundering riot in his ears that made the very air feel pressurized.
He turned sharply for the rock where his clothes lay. His fingers were less steady than they should have been; they fumbled against the linen, his skin still humming with a fierce, electric awareness. He didn't dry himself. He didn't care about the chill. He dragged his shirt over his head, the damp fabric clinging to his shoulders, mirroring the way he wanted to cling to her.
He fastened his trousers with a tug so forceful a button nearly gave way, his jaw clamped shut so hard it ached. He was pulsing—a deep, rhythmic throb in his blood that the icy lake had failed to kill. If anything, the shock of her eyes on him had set his nerves on fire.
She was looking.She didn't just stumble upon me. She watched.
A savage, primal heat bloomed in his gut.
He raked a hand through his dripping hair, forcing a breath into his lungs, but it came out as a ragged growl. His pulse refused to fall in line. It was a traitor, beating for a woman who was supposed to be nothing more than a strategic piece on his board.
He buckled his belt, his shoulders settling back into the rigid line of a laird, but the armor felt hollow now. Something beneath the bone and muscle had shifted, unsettled in a way the cold water couldn't reach.
He could still see the way she had looked—the fracturing of her porcelain composure, the way her eyes had darkened with a hunger that matched his own. It was haunting, lodged beneath his ribs, visceral and sharp. He could still see the flush on her neck, imagining how it would feel to press his mouth to that heat.
A smile tugged at his mouth—tight, unsettled, and dangerously warm. He wiped it away with the heel of his hand, cursing himself, the lake, and the sheer, maddening timing of it all.
