Page 41 of A Highland Healer Captured
But it lingered.
The way her lips had parted stubbornly but yielding just enough for him to imagine how easily he could press her against the wall, tip her head back, and taste her defiance again and again.
He had to shove the thoughts down hard, but it left a mark in his blood… and in the restless clench of his hands.
When she sanded the page and lifted it for him to read, he closed the distance between them and took it without reaching too close. He told himself it was better that way. Safter. Because if he leaned even a hair nearer, he’d want to test just how her skin would feel against his mouth, how her breath would sound if he kissed the curve of her perfect throat instead of her lips.
Arrived safely. Occupied in me work. The keep holds what we need. I’ll write again at week’s end.
No signals, no code he could see.
Zander nodded thoughtfully, rounded his desk, folded, and then sealed the letter. Then he placed it on the messaging tray for his steward to see to upon his next visit to the study.
“The list,” she said into the small quiet that followed, “—I didnae expect ye to approve it so quickly.”
“Ye asked for what would help,” he said simply. “I made the asking easy. If I cannae move a jar from one shelf to another for me own son, then I’m nae worth the breath folk waste naming me laird.”
Her gaze searched his face as if the truth might be hiding in the bones. He wanted to look away, but he didn’t. He let her look. He wanted her to look until she found it.
“Him seeing ye—hearing ye she said, softer now, “—italsohelps.”
The words slid into him like a blade he had expected and still couldn’t quite brace to meet. A father’s guilt, dressed neatly in her voice. “Aye, I ken,” he said, because anything else would be cowardice. “I’ll do more of it.”
She nodded once, quick, as if any more would turn her thank-you to something harder to carry.
The room held for a beat, a balance he couldn’t recall having with her: no barbs, no defiance sharpened against his orders. For once, they were just two people set on the same narrow path and trying not to destroy it by wanting the wrong things.
Of course wanting filled the quiet anyway.
Her cloak had slipped back on one shoulder, revealing the pale column of her throat. He found himself staring at the pulse there, wondering if it would race fast under his mouth, wondering if she would tilt her head to give him more. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth, with words he couldn’t’ say, heavier still with the taste of memory and fantasy.
She smoothed the edge of the parchment with her fingertips, so precise, and all he could think of was those same fingers curled into his tunic, tugging him closer. His blood beat hot in his veins at the image, and he ground his teeth against it.
She’s here for the boy,he told himself.For the lad, nae for me.
But then her eyes lifted, catching his, and he watched as her tongue rolled over her bottom lip before she sucked it in between her teeth.
He didn’t know which of them moved first.
One moment they stood with the desk between them like a line drawn in the sand. The next, she was near enough that the lantern glossed the curve of her cheek and the ink-smudge on her thumb, and he could see the quick thud of her pulse at the hollow of her throat.
He reached without thinking, his fingers setting gently beneath her jaw, and felt the warm, stubborn line of her there.
“I—,” she started to say, but there was no iron in it. Skylar was breathless, and Zander found himself fighting for air as well.
He bent toward her.
The first brush of his mouth to hers was cautious, almost formal, as if he’d meant to prove he could have chosen softness and then leave it. That illusion lasted a heartbeat.
Skylar’s hand came up, found his shoulder, and tightened. Zander made a sound he hadn’t meant to make, and then kissed her properly as his hand had slid from her jaw to the back of her head and her braid was pressed to his palm.
Heat shook him. Control steadied him.
The two of them fought and found a narrow ledge of truce. Zander kept the kiss on the right side of madness as long as he could. That is, until Skylar gasped, “Zander?—”
He lost it, mouth parting, the taste of her like rosemary and smoke and some sweetness.
He meant to step back.Shouldhave stepped back.
