Page 52 of Outlaw Ever After

In addition to stitching piecework. No wonder her fingers were so nicked and scarred.

She wiped clean the poultice from his shoulder and threaded the catgut through the needle.

Alex took a swig from the flagon. The potent drink burned a path to his stomach, his throat bobbing as he swallowed gulp after gulp.

The burn hit his veins as he shook it away on a growl. He dragged the back of his forearm across his mouth.

“Breathe,” she whispered, as the tip of the needle rested to his shoulder. “I’m sorry—”

“Do it,” he grunted.

It punctured his skin.

“Fok …” he wheezed, a harsh exhale as she stitched into him, tying off the thread.

Again, she aligned it. Pierced through his skin and drew the threading out.

Groaning, he rested his head against her belly, rising and falling as she breathed. Gripped her hip. Heard hunger pangs rumble—all that food below stairs and she’d nay eaten? He tightened his grip as if to hold her to him so she nay vanished into the mists again. Couldn’t believe he was here, with her, as the needle wove in and out of his skin.

He ground his forehead into her belly harder, each jab reminding him of each pang of desperation he’d felt these last three months, but now realizing how he’d wronged her. Wronged the little girl he owed his life to, who’d become a woman who’d put her trust in him. When she tented up the edges of the slice so she could suture again , he blacked out.

How long it was, a few minutes or many, he finally came to as if coming out of a dream, definitely affected by the whiskybae, the sensation of fingernails scraping tenderly through his hair inducing gooseflesh. She combed it, again and again, his forehead still to her belly.

The wolfhound nudged his cheek, sniffing at the leeches.

“Sing me a song, woman,” he whispered, his hand still anchoring her hip, and he finally looked up at her to see a sadness deep in her watery brown eyes. “I’m so desperate for yer voice, for ye to remember—”

“What good is remembering when the past can nay be undone?” she breathed.

“Who says our song is already complete and nay just beginning?” he countered—

“What is this!”

Peigi yelped and jumped back at a man’s bellow. Alexander bolted to his feet, sobering, wrenching her behind him. The dog bolted up, bloodcurdling barks shaking the rafters as Alex’s rib slitters flicked loose from his wrist guards, spinning into each grip as he faced…Seamus Grant .

Half naked in a private bedchamber with a woman wasn’t how any man who wished to keep his bollocks hoped to be found by her brother, and Alex was at the top of this man’s shite list—in more ways than one. Still, like hell the arse would charge in here searching for a fight, frightening his woman—

Nay yer woman anymore.

The dog quieted at Peigi’s touch.

“Seamus, I-I was just—” Peigi stammered, when her finger gingerly touched his back and traced the riot of crisscrosses he knew resided there.

Fok. She’d once felt his scars, but now she could see them.

“Mon Dieu, how did this happen?” she whispered.

His muscles twitched beneath her fingertip. He pulled away from her touch.

“Mi laird. She’s assisting me treating the man’s injuries.” Joslyn hurried in behind Seamus.

“I was stitching your knife wound, brother,” Peigi added carefully.

Her voice was composed again, as if that sadness swimming in her amber pools a moment ago had drained, leaving a void.

“Aye, but he need nay have his hands on ye for ye to do it.” Seamus’s eyes were locked on his . Fury burned there, as bright as oil upon the water’s surface. “Nay raise a weapon to me, man.”

“Temper nay yet cooled, man ?” Alexander couldn’t help taunting, eyes narrowing. “Nay raise yer voice to yer sister. She’s done nothing wrong.”