“Desire?”
She had intended to say a political pawn, but stopped herself ’ere she spoke the words.
He pulled her into a kiss with the other hand, inviting her passion. Passion was safe. It asked for everything yet nothing at all. Passion was merely physical.
Thunder shook the rafters. Outside, the storm continued to blow, and he looked over her head toward the windows. Rain continued to beat against the glass but without the same intensity as before. “The rain is moving east.”
Toward the sunrise and a new day. He leaned his cheek against her hair, then kissed a warm trail down her temple to her throat.
Their breathing ragged, he joined his mouth to hers, and seized her lips in a long, fierce kiss, and soon it didn’t matter that the storm had moved away and would leave a starlit night.
He was moving between her legs, indulging her senses, and she did not think about anything else at all.
She was lost. But so was he.
Chapter 12
The ride to Stonehaven remained cloaked in a wet grayish mist that twined around trees and blanketed the glens and rocky slopes. Dawn had barely touched the mists by the time they reached the stable.
Aware of the man who rode behind her, his hands loosely holding the reins, Rose was almost sad to glimpse a structure rise from the sea of waspish vapor. Ruark dismounted in front of the stable and reached up to lift Rose from the saddle.
Even through the wool of his cloak protecting her, she felt the warmth of his hands around her waist. Her gown remained damp from the rains the day before, and the chill of the morn had done little to warm her.
He held her to him and she lifted her chin. The thick morning mist shrouding the countryside had wet his hair.
“Are you all right?” he queried.
Neither she nor Ruark had spoken since leaving the lodge. The shroud of fog made her feel more isolated, but not alone. “Aye.” She shivered. “I am merely cold and wish to change.”
Two groomsmen ran out of the stable. Ruark greeted the men and handed off Loki’s reins. “Rub him down andfeed him,” he said, placing a guiding hand beneath Rose’s elbow and turning her up the hill.
She could feel the groomsmen’s eyes on her back and, pulling the cloak tighter about her shoulders, she kept her head down to better watch the path. “They all think I tried to escape,” she said. “And that ...”
“We spent the night together and that I ravished you? I dislike informing you, love, but most already think that.”
Wet leaves muffled their footsteps. “I do not regret what happened between us,” she said, momentarily lost to the tempest swirling around her heart.
“Your words have eased my conscience, love.”
She stole a glance at him. Hedidlook quite at his ease, she thought, somewhat perturbed that he could return to Stonehaven unchanged for what had occurred between them.
“I care naught what anyone thinks of me or you, Rose.”
“You are laird. ’Tis not you they judge.”
“Iamlaird. My opinion of you is all that counts.”
She frowned up at his profile, but he remained looking straight ahead. “Truly your conceit is enormous even for a laird.”
She saw one corner of his mouth slip upward. “Aye, ’tis,” he agreed, slanting her a rakish glance that would bring ruin to Aphrodite herself. He drew her around. “But that does not change the facts. I am still laird, love. And you are still mine.”
She caught her palms against his chest. His fingers dug into her upper arms. Then gentled. “And I have something to say before we go inside, Rose. I mean to say it now—”
She pressed a fingertip to his lips. His features werelost in the shadows of the mist but she could feel tension inside him. Since the moment they’d left the lodge, he’d been silent in a restless manner that told her something weighed heavily in his thoughts. She feared what he might say.
She had made her mind up to return to her father. She was finished running from her past. She would not allow him to risk his brother’s life for anything they might have shared last night. Not for her.
“I know what you are going to say ...”
