Page 56 of A Highland Rogue to Ruin

She bit her lip again. Then nodded. “I will try, Tormund.” She fingered it reverently, flashing her smile. “So how best, then, should I beat ye, since ye sabotaged our Tafl game and will no longer play me in chess?”

A laugh raked up his throat at her abrupt change of topic, though he let her steer the conversation away. That ghostly sheen on her skin would remain with him. The lurker still bothered her, even if she tried to shake away the distress.

“Ye’re determined to taunt me?”

“Because ye were determined to refuse kindness.” She began to turn Sunshine’s reins. “Fine, race me fairly—”

“I’ve a better idea.” He nodded in the other direction, the path laid before them.

He turned his reins, clicking his tongue and tapping his heels. Nykr broke into a canter, then a gallop, and when he glanced back at her, she’d bit her lip with determination as she crouched forward in the saddle and her gown billowed behind her—his lip to bite, dammit—as she made chase.

“Cheater! So much for fair!” she shouted out behind him.

He only grinned, hooves thundering.

Chapter Sixteen

The wind whipped in these upland parts, and the Cairngorms were layered in receding patterns of purples and gray-greens against the eastern sky.

The horses were spent as they spilled out onto an overlook, buried in whispering trees. The rushing sound of water intensified, a steady thrum.

“Ye never gave me a finish line to put in my sights!” Brighde called, her belly wonderfully sore from holding herself at a hearty gallop for so long.

“Aye, to keep ye guessing, so ye could nay best me!”

“Stacking the odds,” she accused with a jest, though he sent her a satisfied smirk and didn’t deny it.

He drew back his reins, slowing, and she followed suit.

Her chemise clung to her skin. Sweat beaded her temples and rolled down her back. Sakes, she would ache come the nighttime! Her thighs burned. Her arms felt loose like pennants snapping in the wind. Her hair was certainly in shambles and would take all night to comb, and she took mercy on it and unpinned it from her snood so it shimmied free.

“Whoa.” Following his lead, she nudged Sunshine toward a rocky ledge where Tormund waited.

There, below them, was a secluded pool, stretched out among a shield of tumbled rocks encasing the secret pond. The afternoon sun blinked through the trees and flashed sparkles on the water. A rushing sound transformed into a waterfall cascading a streak of silver from the ledge above.

“It’s breathtaking,” she gasped. “The water is crystal clear. I can see to the bottom.”

He clicked his tongue again and tapped Nykr to walk, navigating down a deer path crisscrossed with gnarled roots that led into the trees. She followed cautiously, until they walked out onto the bank carpeted in grass.

“It’s magical,” she breathed, as a flock of orange crossbills chirped and flitted among the greenery.

Still gazing at the paradise while swinging her leg over the cantle, hands spanned her waist from behind, setting her down onto the ground, and then muscle-thickened arms enveloped her. Yet just as she was settling back into his warmth, her girdle unclasped and fell to the grasses along with the book as his hand enclosed the blade he’d given her, also casting it aside.

“What are ye—”

“Ye’re going in.”

“What? In where?”

She whirled around, eyes darting side to side, but he only flashed that cocksure glint, as he then popped loose her bodice lacings, then unfastened her skirts.

“I’m only in a chemise beneath this!” She clutched at the curtain of skirts at her waist to hold it up as her breasts relaxed from their support.

“Again, I nay see the problem.”

She should wipe that cheeky smirk from his face with thistles. “But I’m outside this time.”

His grin finally fought to freedom, popping the boyish divot, as the sunlight haloed his dark braid and patterns on his neck.