She threw it back at him like a market trader negotiating a price. He bristled. If she thought he was going to let her walk outof here when he had only just found a way to keep her in these walls, she had another thing coming.
“And why do ye think ye need that?”
“Because they’re my family,” she shot back. Her tone was clipped, her accent coming through more strongly than it had before, as though she was doing her best to remind him that she’d had a life before this, before him, an existence and a family that had nothing to do with what was happening here.
He shook his head, taking a step towards her. Visions filled his mind; of her, fleeing from the Keep and never coming back, leaving him behind before he’d even had a chance to make her his.No.He refused.
“This is yer home now,” he reminded her. “And yer family.”
She shook her head, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. She was so small, they looked almost comical on her, instead of threatening.
“I deserve to see them. I’ve been here for?—”
Before he could stop himself, he reached out to catch her wrist, his fingers closing around her arm tightly. He could not let her go. He refused.
“Ye’ll stay,” he replied. Her breath hitched in her throat. Was she scared, or was it something else? The expression on her face made it nearly impossible for him to tell the difference. He wondered if she was even able to, either.
Because, as he stood there before her, staring back at her, he found himself torn between anger and a lust so intense he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to control it.
11
Amelia steadied her breathing as she looked back into his eyes, not breaking his gaze for a moment. Effie had encouraged her to come to speak to the Laird about her desire to see her family, but she had been reticent. It wasn’t as though she had given him much she could bargain with, but Effie insisted.
“He’s not as hard a man as you might imagine,” she’d told her. And it was with that in mind that Amelia had come to the hall to see him. Truth be told, when she had seen the glint of the sword in his hand, her heart had skipped several beats, but she’d held her sisters at the front of her mind, and forced herself to say what she needed to say.
And now, he was holding her, so tight it was as though he never wanted to let her go. It reminded her of the way he had touched her in the carriage on the day of their wedding, that rough, intense grip that spoke to the depths of his desire for her.
Only now, as he stared at her, she got the feeling it wasn’t desire that he felt, no. It was anger. Anger that she would have dared try to do something like this, that she would have dared ask for a small sliver of her freedom. But it had been a long time since she had seen her sisters, and she needed to make certainthat her father wasn’t doing anything to them, that they weren’t lined up to marry some ancient landowner to pay off whatever debts he had done his best to hide till now.
The grip on her wrist was almost painful, but something about his touch soothed that edge of discomfort. Finally, as though realizing how roughly he was handling her, he let go of her, taking a step back, and shook his head.
“Ye’ll be staying here from now on. This is yer home.”
“And what of my sisters?”
He narrowed his eyes at her.
“What of them?”
“If you had taken the time to learn anything about me,” she shot back, her voice a little sharper than she had intended, “then you’d know how important my sisters are to me. I’m the oldest, they look to me to protect them, and I don’t know what my father might have planned for them now that he’s got me out of the picture.”
A shadow crossed his face.
“You care for yer kin, aye?”
“I care for my sisters, yes,” she replied. He was standing so close to her that she could smell the scent of him again, that scent that had been there from the first moment they’d laid eyes on each other. Something deep and dark and masculine, something that coursed through her veins and led down to the very darkest parts of her soul.
“Which you would know if you’d bothered to talk to me at all since we got married,” she continued, pulling back from him slightly, doing whatever she could to break the spell. She couldn’t let her attraction to him—if that was what this was—get the better of her. She had to control herself, to think of her sisters, of Mary and Lily, and how worried they must have been about her since she had been wed.
“Ye’ve hardly given me the chance to get to know you,” he replied, his voice dropping slightly. She could not read his tone, whether it was meant as a warning, an insult, or some kind of invitation.
“You were the one who took me to my bedchamber alone on our wedding night,” she blurted out. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she felt her cheeks heating. What was she thinking? That hadn’t been the kind of knowledge she’d been talking about, but it was the first place her mind went when she thought of all they had left to learn about one another.
The corner of his mouth quirked up into a smile, a smile that sent a shiver running down the length of her spine. She could feel a prickling at the base of her neck, as though his very fingertips were resting against her where she stood.
“Aye, and would ye like me to ken you that way?” he asked her softly. They were standing so close together now, she could feel his breath mingling with hers, warm against the cool air. The soles of her feet tingled, his gaze enough to light up every inch of her body at once.
“I… I…”
