When he groaned and deepened the kiss, when his mouth moved over hers possessively, when she felt him give in to the power and harness it with the smooth delicious strokes of a man intent on pleasure, she knew Niall understood it as well.
She loved the way he tasted like the split birch twigs he absently chewed on that were vaguely sweet and wintry. She loved the way he took control. She loved the way his strong arms held her and the granite hardness of his chest surrounding her.
Perhaps it was the long wait—the anticipation—that explained what happened next. That explained how a kiss could go from slow and exploratory to wild and out of control with a few tentative swipes of a tongue. A tongue that was in her mouth and sliding against hers, sparring, circling, sliding deeper and deeper into a chasm of pleasure.
She’d never felt anything like this. It was as if she’d fallen down a dark tunnel of need and passion, and nothing else mattered.
She’d touched him so many times, but it had never been like this. It had never felt so desperate and frantic. Muscles that her hands might have accidentally grazed before she now clutched as if they were a lifeline. He felt so wonderfully hard—and strong. She couldn’t seem to press into the granite-hard shield of his chest deep enough. Close enough. Her breasts were crushed but achy and throbbing for more.
Innocently, she pressed her hips against his and felt…
Good gracious.
He cursed and pushed her away with enough force to send her stumbling back.
“We can’t do this, damn it!” he bit out, his voice ragged and teeming with something she didn’t understand.
Why was he so angry?
“Why not?” She reached for him as if it were the most natural thing in the world, but the unconscious gesture seemed to make him even angrier.
He pushed her hands away as if she were a leper. “Damn it, Annie, stop it! I can’t marry you!”
The cold slap of his words jerked her head back. For a long moment, her heart didn’t beat.
You must have heard him wrong.
But she hadn’t. His words echoed loudly in her ears.
Stunned, she looked into the handsome face of the boy—the man—she thought she knew so well and felt a wave of confusion and hurt that was so strong it washed away all vestiges of what they’d just shared in one hard swoop. The body that had seconds before been hot and liquid now felt cold and bereft.
Wordlessly, her eyes raked his face, searching for… something. Anything that might explain what he meant.
But what she saw looked mostly like discomfort. As if he would rather be anywhere else in the world than here with her. Which hurt all the more because she felt exactly the opposite.
When the shock wore off enough, she finally managed, “Why not?”
He dragged his fingers through the wavy, jaw-length dark hair that had a tendency to fall across one side of his face. “God, Annie, how can you ask that?” He sounded pained. As if her question were torturing him. “Don’t you see?”
Her eyes locked on his. She could tell from the heat in his cheeks that he wanted to turn away.
He was embarrassed. Why would he be embarrassed?
Suddenly she sucked in her breath, the pain slicing through her lungs and heart like a razor-sharp dirk. She did see. Her brother had been right. Patrick had warned her many times, but she’d never listened because she’d been so sure that she and Niall were different.
But Niall was saying that he couldn’t marry her because she was a MacGregor.
Because he thought she wasn’t good enough for him.
Annie was far from oblivious to the realities of the world they lived in. She knew better than anyone how much the MacGregor fortunes had fallen—she lived it every day. She knew that some considered them nothing more than cutthroats and outlaws. She knew that she had little to offer him besides herself.
She’d just foolishly—naïvely—thought that she would be enough.
Annie had been poor and without a home for most of her life. She’d spent more time living in hovels than in castles. She’d only been two when her parents had been killed. Dispossessed of their home and any wealth they might have had, the four orphaned children had been forced to rely on the generosity of relatives for years.
Annie knew what it was like to feel as if you were taking food from the mouth of a starving child because she’d been in that horrible position. She knew what it was like to be poor and unwanted. To be stripped of everything you had and try to find a way to survive.
But never had she been made to feel ashamed about it. Never had she been made to feel unworthy by someone she cared about.
