Page 23 of Outlaw Ever After

He rummaged within the pouch strapped across his chest, within his tunic. Where he kept the things most special to him: a linen purse, within which was a blessing given to him years ago, and a ring. Small and delicate. Made of gold.

He pulled it out. Brushed his thumb over the engraved signet upon the bezel as her chest heaved and her lips parted as her wide eyes rested on the ring in his hold.

He lifted his songbird’s hand. Slid it over her left finger.

Chapter Six

“I canna promise ye a gilded life…yet,” her warrior-scribe gruffed out, brushing the signet with a reverent thumb as her skin buzzed.

This ring was special to him. His jaw pumped. Peigi cupped his cheek to ease his distress.

“But I’m able to provide. I can promise to protect ye with my life. I can promise ye my honor—what little I retain. I can promise to till and plant and reap and mill, with me own hands, like my…sire once did.”

Was there a waver in his voice? Were his eyes stinging? He blinked and looked away, yet his brow was contorted with conviction as he made his declaration.

“At first, ye’ll go without the luxuries ye’re accustomed to.” He fingered her pearl earrings inlaid in gold, the only part of her dowry that hadn’t been reaved over the years. “Until I’m able to provide them again—”

His jaw clenched. Provide again? Was that a hint about his past? He seemed tutored. Loved, once. Was he a fallen laird? A noble stripped of title? Lord knew there’d been many nobles and heirs stripped of their titles in the wake of the massacre at Flodden Field and the three decades that had followed.

She fingered his beard. “If I needed those luxuries, I’d have married my suitor with three and ten bairns and his wealthy pantries apparently full of garlic.”

That earned her his laugh, and blessedly the hard lines that had creased his forehead smoothed again. He rested his forehead down to hers as her fingers continued to toy with his beard. “And ye saying that just shows all the more why ye deserve them. These fingers. How did they earn such scars?”

“Embroidery and piecework.”

“Piecework? A maid’s endeavor?”

She looked down. “Aye, to sell at our convent’s annual faires. Poverty nay discriminates between ladies and maids. I would have loved to play music, once dreamed of becoming a traveling bard.” She giggled with embarrassment. “I never would have been allowed, but… My dexterity was needed to help my people, and any coin we could earn to replenish from reaves was needed.”

He chewed that cheek, deep in thought. “Ye ken nothing about me, lass. Ye might regret it.”

“As ye might regret me,” she reasoned in the face of his moment of vulnerability. This was madness. Who married a man they had barely met? Nobles , her conscience rationalized. Elizabeth had been promised to Seamus in an alliance and hadn’t met him until Seamus walked to the altar. And they were happy . And she knew she’d never be happy with Kendrew. “But we’d have a lifetime to learn each other’s every secret.”

He tensed and yet, it was gone in a breath.

“I can promise ye a cottage, on the bonniest loch in Scotland, with a man who’d…” He nodded to himself as if coming to a hard-thought conclusion. “…give anything for a reason to sow his roots into the earth and belong again, and I believe ye’re that reason, that I was meant to hear ye singing—”

She threw her arms around his neck, kissing his cheek—

Like a hawk capturing a wren, he caught her kiss with his. Energy sizzled! Lightning heat afflicted her again, like each time they were fully connected. He growled yet engulfed her in his arms as if addicted to the sensation. Swiveling them both, he fell back against the ruin, dragging her with him, cushioning her against his chest and belly as she collapsed atop him.

Her breath seized. She should run! Should push off him! But she… wanted this! And when his tongue pushed desperately into her mouth, laved across hers, a groan rumbled up his throat and reverberated through his chest, and she relented.

Leaned into him.

Let herself feel the sensation of the first kiss she’d ever wanted.

He wound his fingers into her hair and she relished the tug on her roots.

She couldn’t breathe! Didn’t want to! Patchouli and heather were filling her senses just as his body was warming her. His kiss was untutored— interesting —and yet, full of fervor as he nipped her lip on a groan barely tethered in his chest. His heartbeat thrashed a battle drum against her.

And then his eyes fluttered closed, perhaps in an attempt to master his self-control?

“I promise to never stray from ye, songbird,” he growled.

Tongue laved tongue, like harmonies full of need she’d never imagined would sound so wondrous.

The heaviness of his arousal prodded her. He felt such attraction for her ?