Vivien had wondered what it would feel like to kiss Kieran; now she knew. And she could never forget it.
* * *
Kieran could feel the bemused look on his face as he watched the Sassenach mount her horse and canter away as quickly as her horse would allow.
He had no idea what had happened to cause her to flee so suddenly.
He knew she had wanted that kiss. Kieran could feel it through every inch of his body, through every part of them that had been touching. She had leaned in, welcomed his tongue against her own. There was no way that she was horrified at the kiss.
It had been a powerful kiss, even to Kieran. He shook his head at himself; he had never felt something so magnetic and undeniable for a woman before. There was just something about the woman that drew him in, like the shore pulled the ocean in.
“Och!” he exclaimed out loud to no one in particular, realizing he hadn’t gotten her name from her, try as he might have. What a travesty, he thought.
It was all Kieran could do not to run to Midnight and gallop after her. He could catch the Sassenach if he tried; he knew that much. But he also knew that that was bordering on a very dangerous and disturbing thing to do to her.
Every nerve in his body was screaming at him to follow her. He couldn’t just let her go like that; he needed to know that he would see her again. She had cast a spell on Kieran, one that he did not know how to shake. He wasn’t sure he would want to shake it in any case.
He only knew one real thing about her. He rolled his eyes at himself. She worked at the castle that had apparently recently been occupied by the English. If there was one place to find her, it was there. If there was one place he could not go to look for her, it was there.
As not only a Scotsman but a laird as well, it was highly improper to go chasing down maidens in an Englishmen’s castle. It also went against every single fiber of Kieran’s being. He could not, would not, allow himself to run after a girl who was housed in the new commander’s castle. His pride wouldn’t allow for it, no matter how much he wanted to see her again – needed to see her again.
There was no way he would be able to explain his presence in an English castle if he was there simply to follow her and find her.
Kieran’s mind drifted back to their kiss. Now there was a kiss he would never forget. He would remember it until his dying breath. She had tasted better than he had expected, all sugar and honeysuckle, heavenly and divine. Her scent was all over his chest and arms, a soft, womanly fragrance that Kieran knew he would hate washing off his skin later that day. He wanted nothing more than to envelope himself in the scent of the Sassenach for as long as he could. If he could never see her again, he needed to remember the way she smelled, the way she laughed, and the way she tasted.
Kieran found his eyes closing as he focused on the memory of her eyes – those hauntingly beautiful eyes. His mind drifted to the brief times he had allowed himself to touch her; he had not trusted himself fully at all when it came to reaching out to brush her hair behind her ear. Holding her hand at his side had him nearly come undone right there and then.
Kissing her had been the best moment of his life; he held no regrets when it came to that act, even if it seemed to have driven her to run away from him. He wished he could understand what had caused that. He might have overstepped his place by kissing her, but she had wanted it just as much as he had. He knew that much.
Kieran was no stranger to the wiles of women. He had enough experience under his belt to know what made a kiss passionate and what did not.
He had never experienced anything as powerful as their kiss.
His heart was set to racing each time he thought of it; his body reacted in slightly embarrassing ways. He was shaken to the depths of his soul. There was something life-changing in that kiss. He could not put his finger on it, but Kieran knew that no woman after her would be able to match the intensity of the passion he had shared with her in those brief moments.
He was ruined for life, he thought. No other woman could ever ignite the flame in his heart the way the Sassenach had. Of that, he was certain.
He just had no answer as to why she had fled from him. Her body and mouth had yielded to his. She had held him close to her – so close that he could feel her womanly shape beneath the simple dress she had been wearing. She had delved into the kiss just as much as he had. Her soft moans against his lips were already haunting Kieran.
He grimaced as he opened his eyes and stood up, not wanting to leave the place where he had found the only woman who had ever turned his legs to useless. And all with nothing more than a kiss.
Chapter Six
Vivien had pushed her stallion into a fast canter as soon as she could, needing to be as far away from Kieran as possible, as quickly as possible.
Her hair was a wild mess by the time she made it back to the castle, her dress dirty from sitting on the ground. She hurried to her private chambers, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t run into Reginald on the way. She didn’t know how she could face him right then – or ever again, really. Her thoughts were running amok in her head, and the last thing she could do was devise a cover story for why she looked the way she did.
Vivien breathed a sigh of relief as she closed her chamber doors behind her, moving quickly to her vanity. She brushed her hair thoroughly, yanking at the tangled strands until her hair once again shone in waves down her back. She couldn’t help but put her fingers to her bruised lips – still red from the kiss that stirred her heart to passion. She turned her face from one side to the other, judging the redness in the mirror over her vanity stand. She worried that Reginald might notice it but shook her head at herself quickly. Reginald barely noticed her at the best of times. He was highly unlikely to start doing so now.
Her dress, on the other hand, was highly damaged and filthy, to say the least. That was something he would notice. She moved over to her closet, quickly discarding the plain riding dress and taking out a more formal one to replace it. Vivien grimaced to herself; she needed her maids to help her tie herself into the garment, but she didn’t want them to take any notice of her condition.
The flush across her cheeks and neck was still highly visible to her eyes – she could not see how that would go unnoticed by her maids. But, realizing her efforts were futile, Vivien quickly washed her face with the cold water leftover from her morning ablutions and rang the bell to call her maids in.
They hurried in a couple of minutes later, the two young girls she had brought with her from England giggling over some castle gossip or the other. They were thick as thieves, and both came from decent homes. They were well-mannered for the most part, even if they weren’t really what Vivien would consider friends. They were much younger than she was, and it was not considered a maid’s place to be a Lady’s friend.
Vivien's third maid, Helen, was a girl born and raised in Scotland, though her father was an Englishman. She was much quieter than the other two girls, and from what Vivien could see, slightly ostracized for being far more Scottish than English. But Helen was the only person that Vivien trusted in the entire retinue that had followed her and her husband to Scotland. Helen was not much younger than she was, and there was something trustworthy about her gray eyes and soft tone.
The two English girls curtseyed to Vivien, their eyes twinkling with their giggles as they smiled at her, Helen curtseying much more sedately behind them.
