She hardly had to look around to make sense of who it was, but when she did, her heart twisted into a painful knot in her chest.
Tavish MacDonald.
His low, weighted remarks the day before about how much would change the next day rushed back into her mind, making her skin crawl.
He watched her from where he stood at the head of the table. He was not engaged in conversation with anyone, hardly seemed to be present in the room at all. It was as if he had been waiting like a predator for the moment she walked through the door, and he could see the look on her face as she walked into his trap.
He cast aside his cup and made his way towards them, and she stiffened, her whole body wracked with tension. Her confidence faltered in an instant, her mind twisting in a million directions as she tried to find a way out of there; a way out of what was going to unfold.
He reached her side, and, at a glance, he might have looked like any of the other young men in this room. His kilt, made up of the green and blue MacDonald tartan, hung from his strong body; his shirt was laced around his broad chest, the muscles visible beneath the fabric. But there was something in his eyes,something that cast doubt into her mind, and something that she knew she could not ignore.
“Laird McFadden,” he greeted their host as she quickly extracted her arm from his.
She glanced around, trying to catch the eye of someone, anyone else who might be able to get her out of this, but nobody seemed to look. In fact, if she hadn’t known better, she would have thought that they were trying to avoid her gaze, like they were worried what this man might do to them if they dared get in the way of his intentions.
“A dance, my lady?” he asked as he extended his hand to her.
It was hardly a question, more a demand, like he knew what he wanted and would not take no for an answer. For a moment, she hesitated, wondering if she could find some way to brush him off and ask for a drink or something to eat first. But McFadden was smiling at her pointedly, clearly encouraging her to go ahead and accept the offer, and she knew that any attempt to brush him off would make her look stubborn and difficult as a result.
Locking eyes with Tavish, she slipped her hand into his.
“Of course, My Laird,” she replied, speaking his title with a pointed tone to remind him that she knew him better than most in this room did.
His hand closed around hers, more tightly than it needed to, his grip sending a sharp shock of sensation coursing along her arm. He led her to the floor in a few strides and then pulled her against him in a single motion. The air was knocked from her lungs as their bodies came together, his hand moving to the small of her back to press her against him. His touch was not careful, like his brother’s had been, but commanding, insistent, almost.
“Can ye keep up wi’ me, lass?” he asked as she jerked towards him, his mouth close enough to her ear that she had no choice but to listen.
“If ye spar like ye dance, then I pray fer yer partner’s feet.”
His eyes shone with amusement, his wolfish grin adorning his sharp facial features. “I’m sure ye remember me sparring.”
Her anger flared with his response, but so did something else. Something that was all too aware of the weight of his body against her, the strength of his hands upon her.
“Dinnae flatter yerself,” she replied with a fake smile.
“Just leave yerself tae me and I’ll lead ye throught it all,” he said in a low, husky voice that stirred the butterflies in her stomach.
This man could have done anything he wanted to her in that moment, and she would have been helpless to resist. Moreover, there was a small, traitorous part of her that craved such freedom from the responsibility that usually clung to her shoulders…
He swept her along with the music, his feet moving quickly, and she struggled to match him, refusing to let him see her having such trouble matching his pace. She could feel him watching her, eyeing her with amusement, and the few times she glanced up at him to meet his gaze, his eyes were lingering on her mouth. She could almost imagine what it would feel like for him to kiss her; how rough he would be, how beastly, the same way he was behind a sword.
His kilt swung out against her in time with the music, and she had no choice but to clutch to him for dear life—just as he intended, no doubt. The scent of him invaded her senses, the smell of oakmoss and the cold, hard edge of steel beneath it.
Every now and then, he would flick his tongue over his lips, like a wolf tasting the fear in its prey, and something in her would pull towards him like a rabbit racing for the trap.
“Dinnae try tae resist, lass. Come tae me willingly or…”
She had to get away from him.She had to.
If she did not act fast, she would be trapped there with him, and she could not let that happen. Whatever games he was playing with her, whatever grief had twisted into cruelty within him, she wouldn’t go along with it just because he was Callum’s brother.
And just because no one had ever touched her before like that in her life.
“Then watch me walk away from ye.”
Finally, she wrenched herself from his grip and caught the hand of another man who had just been breaking away to take a rest.
“Ah, there ye are!” she exclaimed with a bright, false earnestness, as though this was the very fellow she had been looking for since she had arrived.
