She couldn’t believe she was to be expected to do something like this, something so… bizarre and twisted. She would takeTavishas a husband. There was a reason she had chosen his brother as her betrothed the year before, and not him. They might have been from the same family, but whatever blood ran through their veins, it was not the same kind.
She made her way towards her chambers, not entirely sure where she was going, but not interested in spending another moment with her parents. She could hear the sounds of revelry from down the corridor, and she wished more than anything that she could feel so free and at ease in that moment. But the shackles that already hung from her were heavy, and she dragged them with every step, as strong and pressing as his hand on her?—
Footsteps sounded behind her, the same footsteps as the night before, and she flashed around in a fury to catch him. Tavish stood before her, his eyes glinting in the dim light.
“I can handle myself walking alone,” she snapped at him, and he cocked an eyebrow, clearly amused by her tone.
“It’s nae ye I dinnae trust,” he replied simply with that warning tone of his.
“And yet ye are the most dangerous thing in these halls, nae?” she reminded him.
A dark smirk touched his lips as she tossed his own words back in his face.
“And I’d never deny such a thing. But that doesnae mean I’m not to be yer husband.”
That word snagged on her mind once more, the weight of it more than she could take. Her brows knitted together, and she shook her head as she tried to speak some sense into him.
“Why now, Tavish?” she demanded. “It’s been months since… yer brother passed. Ye havenae shown a lick of interest in me, ye hardly even offered yer condolences. So ye cannae pretend that ye’re a man of honor, doing this because it’s what yer brother would have wanted, and ye?—"
“A man of honor, eh?” he remarked, moving closer to her, giving her no choice but to step back against the wall behind her. “Is that what ye want, Ailsa?”
“Ye know nothing of what I want.”
She did not dare respond directly. She was sure that one wrong word on her part would give him the excuse he was clearly searching for to lash out at her, and she refused to give him the chance. She had a whole lifetime to get through with him, and she was not sure she would survive if she began to annoy him now.
“My brother may have been,” he continued, lowering his face close to hers. “But honor’s a waste of time, dinnae ye think?”
He came even closer, taking a deep breath like he was trying to commit her scent to memory—like a wolf sniffing her fear. With the torches behind him, he looked like a specter, silhouetted against the stone.
She tucked her hands behind her, leaning as far away from him as she could manage. She had to keep her head clear and show him she was not afraid of him—or at least try to.
“If ye touch me,” she warned him. “I’ll scream.”
He planted a hand tauntingly on the wall beside her.
“Aye, ye will eventually,” he agreed breathily, his voice dropping.
But the tone to it was not a threat, as it had been before, but something else entirely. Something that spoke more to the touch of his hand around her waist than it did to the way he looked with an axe in his hand.
She did her best to meet his gaze, but she found her eyes flickering helplessly, almost as though they were threatening to burst into flames before him.
“But no’ for the reasons ye think,” he added.
He inched closer to her. For an instant, she was sure he was going to kiss her. She found herself craning her head towards him slightly, half to get it over with and half because she could not resist it. Her teeth found her bottom lip, almost in anticipation of his touch, and his gaze flicked down, a smirk curling his lips as he read her reaction with ease.
His warm breath mingled with hers in the air between them, her senses filling with the scent of him until there was no room for anything else. His thumb stretched for her cheek, and his calloused skin found hers, enough to send a shock of heat pulsing out from the point of contact to set her mind alight with possibility.
“We ride at dawn,” he told her, pulling back, like he knew exactly what was going through her mind and intended to coax even more out of it of her in turn. “Dinnae bother packing. Everything will be replaced.”
And, with that, he turned to make his way back down the corridor and strode away from her. She had not realized until he walked away from her that she had been holding her breath for every instant that he had been in front of her. If he could tasteher breath, her very life force, then she wasn’t sure what else she had to keep from him, and she did not care to find out.
Closing her eyes, she rested her head against the cool stone behind her, trying her best to pull herself together. She would have to find ways to rebel against him, something that would allow her to stand against the demands that he seemed so intent on laying on her shoulders.
But, even as she stormed on to her chambers, she could not shake the pressure of his touch from her skin. Nor the strange curiosity as to what it would mean to be his wife completely…
Chapter Three
Her mother pulledher into a tight hug as they stood outside the Keep, but Ailsa hardly made an effort to return it. She could see the tears glistening in her eyes, but she did not make any effort to soothe them. Her mother was the one who had agreed to this union, and yet she would have to be the one to live with what it meant for her to be married to such a cruel man.
