Page 26 of Highlander of Steel
“Ye’ll come to more harm if ye return unwed than ye will here as me wife,” he said decisively. “Ye have nay reason to go back to them.”
Ailis huffed out a breath. “That’s nae for ye to decide, and it’s nae yer choice to make. It’s up to me to choose one risk over another.” She plucked at a loose thread in the skirt of her dress. “And I choose the safety of me niece over me own safety. That lass doesnae deserve to be left there, to be raised the way I was. I daenae care what I have to suffer if I can prevent that.”
“Yer sister’s bairn?” Killian asked.
“Murdock’s,” she replied tersely.
Killian nodded slowly. “I didnae ken about her.”
“Aye, and I’m glad, or else ye would’ve kidnapped herinstead of me,” Ailis shot back.
Killian could appreciate that he had surprised her with the proposal and that she had concerns about his motivations, which allowed for some grace, but he would not permit her to speak to him like that.
Mood darkening, he closed the short distance between them and snatched her wrist. “I wouldneverbring a bairn into this,” he growled. “I’m nae yer faither, who’d stoop as low as possible, and if I must tell ye that again, then I might consider throwin’ ye in the dungeons for the night.”
“Better a true prisoner than a bride with a death sentence,” she replied, trying to wrench her hand back.
Killian held tight. “I’m offerin’ the best solution any of us can hope for.” He pulled her closer. “Aye, our weddin’ might provoke yer faither to attack or make a move to hurt ye, but ye’ll be mine then. And I willnae let anyone hurt what’s mine. I’ll protect ye with me own life if I must. Just trust me.”
Her breathing had quickened, her eyes shining as she held his gaze, her arm stilling. But her voice wasn’t soft as she said, “Would ye trust someone who traps ye, nay matter his intentions?”
“Would ye trust someone who doesnae have to save ye, but means to anyway?” he countered.
Her throat bobbed. “Nay, I would keep wondering why.”
“Because ye became me responsibility the moment I took ye from yer castle, whether ye like it or nae,” he replied. “I told ye then that ye were mine.”
“So, I must do whatever ye tell me?” she asked, her hand relaxing in his grip.
He suspected she was trying to be sarcastic, but her tone said otherwise. Her voice was breathy, as if part of her genuinely wanted to know the answer. The part of her that hadn’t pulled back when he had almost kissed her.
“As long as ye’re here with me, even if ye daenae trust me, ye must obey me,” he murmured, heat flaring in his abdomen as she bit her lower lip. “It might just save yer life.”
“And if I daenae?” she pressed, tilting her chin up. Whether in defiance or to see if he might lean in, he wasn’t certain.
He couldn’t resist sliding his arm around her waist as a surge of protectiveness shot through him. “Then ye’ll learn to,” he said quietly, “one way or another.”
“With a night in yer dungeons?”
She seemed to want to provoke him, but there was more than one meaning to the word. Right now, Killianwasprovoked, but perhaps not in the way she had intended.
“Nae every lesson requires punishment or dungeons, though itmightrequire a locked door.”
“What do ye mean?” she gasped, the sound pushing him over the edge, unraveling the rope of his discipline.
Like stepping off a cliff, he couldn’t stop what happened next. He pulled her roughly against him, his hand sliding up her arm in a slow caress, his palm gliding up the column of her throat until his fingers eased into the soft, silky hair at the nape of her neck.
A quieter gasp slipped past her lips, her head tilting into the cradle of his palm, her beautiful eyes glittering with a tentative desire that he couldn’t hope to resist.
He lowered his head, giving her a moment to push him away, to tell him to leave. When she didn’t, he kissed her.
His mouth brushed hers, a slow and hungry graze that stirred an altogether more ravenous appetite inside him. When he caught her mouth again, his kiss was harder, more insistent. Urging her to respond, while his fingertips sank into the soft, supple curve where her waist met the swell of her hip.
Ailis kissed him back clumsily. Her hands fumbled for his shirt and fisted in the fabric as she pulled herself up on her tiptoes to reach him better.
A secret smile curved his lips as he realized that she had likely never been kissed before. Other lasses might have dabbled in such things at her age, but she had been living under the strict rule of her father.
Killian held her closer, kissed her more fiercely, and as their lips ebbed and flowed in a searing tide of want and desire, he felt her confidence rising. She met his mouth without hesitation, pressed herself against him, kissed him as if she never intended to stop, as if it were a rebellion that she couldn’t relinquish.
