Page 12 of A Highland Rogue to Ruin

She nodded frantically as he tried to sort out what was happening, detangling the lacing up her stomacher and cinching it tight for her while she shook out her leagues of hair. He picked up her mask and handed it back as she plucked pine needles from her locks, the aftershocks of rutting still ringing through his blood.

“Let’s begin a search,” James said in the distance, once more intruding on this moment.

She started to leave but he snagged her arm. What in the hell is going on?

She looked back at his touch. Cupped his cheek fondly as his palm came up to envelop hers, brushing her mouth with his thumb one last time. Her lips felt so swollen from his devouring. She softened in his arms, kissed his thumb like a long-lost lover.

Male affirmatives echoed James. Knives unsheathed.

“My kin are coming,” she whispered, startled out of their trance. “I have to go. My brother’s nay someone to challenge.”

She darted away, and a sick feeling roiled in him when she whirled back, gripped both his cheeks, pushed up on her toes, and kissed him, shoving him away, dragging him back and kissing him again.

He chuckled at the sweetness of her antics, despite it all. She giggled and once more turned to leave—

“Over there. In the trees…” one of her brother’s men said, and hell, the search party began crunching their way.

“Sister!” boomed James.

They were getting closer. Thundering over the underbrush like a charging army.

“Go,” she whispered. “Please. Or my brother will kill ye.”

He snorted. James could try. God knew it wouldn’t be the first time, or the last.

“Now ye send me off,” he quipped, earning another laugh from her as he did what his blood warred within him not to do—for there were consequences for what they’d just done: let her go.

That smile in the shadows was the last thing he saw as she dashed away like a mirage. “I’m here, Jamie! Nay fret, I just needed a privy space…”

“Aw, thank hell, Bridgy. I worried,” James said, a deep, tender voice Tormund had never heard the growling Devil use.

Brighde. Brighde MacDonald. Christ’s bones.

Her desperate words finally cut through the haze and spiked anger at feeling his enemy close: “Before I return to my life trapped by James’s fears, for they’re stifling me.” “I never would have brought her… I’ve protected her at every cost…” The sister the Devil MacDonald had cloistered away for no man to find. The sister of the man he’d come here to make pay for murdering Owen. The last woman on earth he should have swived!

Tormund watched their silhouettes, her warrior brother slinging an arm over her shoulder as they crunched back toward the melee. Hell, but he’d just made a grand mistake. One he couldn’t take back. One that could start a war.

He scoured his face with his war-roughened hands. Enemy lass or nay, what he’d felt with her was something so genuine, so unexpected, he didn’t want to throw it away, even if he knew he couldn’t have her. Didn’t want something so special as her first to end like this, with her hurrying away after plucking pine needles from her hair.

She was the beloved sister that Marjorie had always spoken of. He’d once marveled at how Brighde danced at his brother’s wedding. He’d always wondered what had become of her.

“Ye’ll never guess what just happened, Jamie,” she was saying. “I lost at chess and yet, got the finest boon…”

“Ye lost at chess?” James snorted. “Ye do nay lose at chess, lass. Ye dance about the board and command everyone’s pieces like a puppet master.”

She’d played expertly. Tormund would give her that. She’d had him checked twice, and was going for his throat when she’d accidentally opened her king up to be checkmated…

She paused and glanced back into the trees as if gazing at a memory. His mind raced. She’d set her…king up to be check mated. When he’d told her his stakes.

She’d been flustered when he’d spoken of a kiss, and he’d chalked her mistake up to that, but no. She’d…wanted him.

“Well, I did. And yet, it’s been the best night of my life.”

“I’m glad, lass, but stay close. The Demon of the Seas has come. I need to take ye home.”

“Nay, I do no’ want to go,” she panicked. “I…I have plans…”

He was taking her home? Everything she confessed over chess crashed through Tormund’s thoughts: in the way she’d closed her eyes as if she could feel that freedom. And he couldn’t help but worry that he’d just had something wonderful at his fingertips, for once in his life.