What they’d just done together.
Instead, she muttered, “Your friend McGrath was right about the rabid deerhound.”
Possibly the least provocative sentence uttered by a woman whose lips still tingled and burned from the abrasion of an unbelievably erotic Highlander’s shadow beard.
God, she loathed him.
Didn’t she?
She just couldn’t yield her wits to another devastatingly handsome man with strong shoulders and a dimpled smile. Not again. Not after what happened last time.
The cold bit through the layers of her clothing more viciously now that the warmth he’d shared with her slid away like a careful thief into the storm.
She gestured with her chin behind him, and tried not to notice the coil and sinew of his muscular neck as he glanced over his shoulder to validate her claim.
The tall, emaciated silver hound lay crumpled on his side, bleeding from two wounds. Her first shot had broadsided him. The second one caught him behind the ears. The poor thing’s death had been a mercy.
“I’d be obliged if you’d return my pistol, or is that something else you plan to steal from me?”
Her insult washed every last vestige of a smile from his sensual, kiss-warmed lips.
He dropped her arms and stepped back, as though he suspected she might draw her own weapon from where he’d stashed it in his waistband. “I might just hold on to it a while, until I know ye’re sane enough to be armed.”
“The hell you mean by that?” she demanded, her temper replacing the heat she’d lost when she’d lost his proximity.
He crossed his arms over his chest, mirroring her wide-legged stance. It was impossible not to notice the bronze flesh molded to perfection beneath the cling of his soaked shirt. Nor the way it dipped and settled into the grooves created by the muscles in his arms. So, Samantha did what she always did when trying to ignore his damnable attractiveness.
She stared him right in the eyes.
Eyes darker than the most ancient evergreen tree, ringed with traces of amber—
Goddammit.
“Ye’ll have to admit, bonny, that it does seem ye’re mighty eager to use yer wee gun when in my company.”
“That can’t be a new phenomenon.”
“And to be fair, this is the second time ye’ve shot in my general direction.”
“I already told you.” She locked her fingers around her biceps to keep from gesturing wildly. “If I was aiming at you, you’d be full of holes.”
“It seems ye’ve something against dogs,” he continued casually. “And everyone knows that only the troubled are cruel to animals.”
“Look at it.” She stabbed a finger at the poor animal. “It’s emaciated, foaming at the mouth, and its hair is falling out. I just saved one of my herd.”
“Which ye should have let me put down in the first place, as it has been suffering all this time.”
“You mean all this time you’ve been molesting me against a tree?”
His jaw locked into a stubborn position, advertising his culpability.
The extent of his wrongness stole her capacity for speech for a full minute. “Oh, I get it. This is all because I’m a woman.”
“That has nothing to do with—”
“Do you mean to tell me that if you were out here with Callum, and he’d put down a rabid animal, you’d treat him with this same ridiculous condescension? Relieve him of his weapon? Talk down to him like he was nothing more than bog mud beneath your boot when you’re the one who’s so mistaken it’s almost laughable?”
His jaw now worked to the side in a gesture of unmitigated masculine gall, but after a bracing breath, he pulled her gun from where he’d stashed it in his waistband, and offered it to her.
“Pardon my reaction, lass. It isna every day a man’s kiss is interrupted by gunshots.”
Samantha took the weapon, checked it, and returned it to its holster before replying, “Had my aim not been obstructed by your … ironhanded, oafish ass grinding me into that tree, then I’d have only found it necessary to shoot once.”
Ignoring her remark, he stepped over to the animal, inspecting it with a solemn nod. “I’ll admit, ye’re better than a fair shot, bonny.”
Frowning, she eyed him warily, half wishing she was still ignorant as to the meaning of the word.
“Yeah … well … thanks.” If she hadn’t despised him, she’d have been flattered.
But she did. So she wasn’t.
“Now, let’s discuss what ye meant by laughably mistaken.” He arched a dubious brow at her.
She should have been grateful that he’d given her a chance to correct him. At any other moment, she’d have pounced on it like an alley cat, claws extended.
But … he’d just ceded a point. He’d begged her pardon. Well, perhaps begged was a bit of a reach, but he’d returned her gun. In her experience, confronting a man while questioning his intentions was more likely to acquaint her with the back of his hand than his admission of fault.
In the West, to call a man’s pride into account was to flirt with the business end of his pistol. Not the other way around.
“Look,” she admonished softly. “The cow isn’t rabid.”
He turned and followed the direction of her finger to where a little black nose and two ungainly hooves had already emerged from beneath the laboring heifer.
“Holy Christ,” he marveled. He reached for her, gripping her elbow gently as though he’d forgotten himself. His focus never wavered from the spectacle. “What do we do? I read that ye can help by pulling the wee thing out … should we…?”
It took Samantha longer than it should have to abandon her shock at his friendly hold on her elbow. People—men—just didn’t touch her like this. Casually. Gently.
She … liked it.
Clearing her throat, she answered. “Unless she’s in trouble, there’s really no need. Best to let her do it on her own.”
“Does she look like she’s in trouble to ye? How do ye tell?” he queried, taking only a moment to check her expression for an answer before his notice was dragged back to the delivery.
The beast’s great body was seized by another convulsion, and she instinctively pushed, and the little creature emerged to the shoulders.
“No trouble at all,” she was glad to note. “She’s doing beautifully.”
“Aye. Aye, that’s good.” He squeezed her elbow in a kind, grateful gesture, a dimple of pleasure appearing in his cheek.
He didn’t let go.
Instead of watching the quick, messy birth, Samantha observed the Earl of Thorne with something akin to openmouthed incredulity.
An alert anxiety had transformed him from a haughty, cynical Highlander to someone much, much younger. He studied the event with an intent concentration colored with a bit of excited, almost … boyish wonder. On features so fiercely masculine as his, the expression was unrelentingly endearing.
In the moment of unguarded distraction, Samantha couldn’t stop herself from laughing softly at his grimace of disgust as the new mother began to lick her newly emerged calf clean. Nudging it encouragingly with her nose.
“It’s a wee bit … slimier than a litter of cats or pups, is it not?” he remarked with an impish curl of his nose.
“Don’t tell me the great hunter Gavin St. James, Lord of Inverthorne, is squeamish,” she teased. “What will the ladies say?”
His sheepish smile unleashed a swarm of butterflies low in her belly.
“Blood and offal is one thing, this is … something else.” They fell silent, though Samantha thought she wasn’t alone in cheering the little red creature to gain its feet. “Something better, I think. The giving of life, instead of the taking of it,” he murmured many minutes later, in a voice so low, Samantha wondered if he’d realized he’d spoken out loud.
By now the cold and wet had become a part of them, seeping into their bones. Even through her layers, Samatha couldn’t remember ever being consumed with such a perva
sive chill. She couldn’t imagine how he fared in only a shirt and trousers.
His focus drawn by a violent shiver she couldn’t hide, he turned back to her. “Where’s yer cloak, lass?”
“It was soiled so I washed it last night, and foolishly hung it somewhere beneath a leak in the roof I was not aware had sprung until the storm hit last night,” she confessed with chagrin. “I thought the rain had passed when I left Erradale. I assumed my wool pelisse would be enough.”
“Highland weather is as temperamental as a randy stallion,” he remarked, striding past a few dark trees to an oak with low branches where he’d lashed his horse. He returned with a dry, folded length of cloak retrieved from his saddlebags. “Blue skies one moment, confounding mist the next, which might be chased away by a sea gale in an hour or so.”
“What about you?” she protested as he unfurled the cloak and settled it around her shoulders.
“I’ve a woolen in my other bag. Besides, this stretch of road runs through Inverthorne land and…” Samantha watched in horrified fascination as his eyes narrowed in suspicion as they traveled the length of her best dress, darted to her discarded hat, and then followed her horses’ damning tracks back toward Ravencroft.
“What have ye been up to, lass?” The mild note in his tone wouldn’t have sounded false to an ear untrained in deception. “Had ye business in Strathcarron today?”
“No,” she answered simply.
“Ravencroft, then?” He enunciated the syllables of his brother’s title and keep very carefully.
“What if I did?” she queried, defensively. “What concern is it of yours?”
“If it concerns Erradale, it concerns me.”
“Like hell it does,” Samantha snapped, retreating a few strategic steps away so she wouldn’t have to look up at him. “Erradale is and will always remain mine.” Even as she said this, Samantha knew it rang false. Erradale no more belonged to her than it did to him. And yet, she was willing to fight to the death to keep it away from him. Because of the depths he seemed to be willing to sink to take what he thought was her home.
He gave her no quarter, matching her retreat with a relentless advance. “Ye’re wasting yer time. I’ve already told ye, my brother is not my laird. He willna stop me from getting what I want.”
“You said, yourself, that you are not yet emancipated from Ravencroft,” she challenged.
“That’ll have no bearing on the outcome.” He shrugged.
“Won’t it? You didn’t want me to know that the Magistrate’s Bench is comprised of three magistrates, did you? That there’s still a chance you could be in the minority? What, did you not think I’d find out? That I wouldn’t use every means at my disposal to fight you with everything I have?”
He didn’t hide his displeasure quickly enough. The motions were almost imperceptible, but Samantha read them as easily as a child’s primer. A twitch below his eye. A slight tightening at his hairline. A ripple in the extraordinary musculature of his torso. She’d been right. He’d not expected her to figure him out. He’d known of Alison Ross’s enmity for Hamish Mackenzie’s sons, and guessed that it would be intensified for his first-born, Liam.
Enough to keep her away from Ravencroft.
“You’re not getting your way, this time,” she declared. “Not while I draw breath.”
A bit more of his impartial veneer slipped, and what she read in his eyes drove her back a few more steps.
“What is more important, lass? That ye win? Or that I lose?” A leashed aggression threaded into his brogue. A subtle warning, like the shift in the air before the carnage of a decisive battle.
Behind the charm and wit and seductive manipulation shimmering in his eyes’ mercilessly beautiful depths, Samantha read something that sent her hand to rest on her pistol …
There was violence in those eyes.
He marked the subtle motion of her hand, the corners of his lips dipping in a poorly concealed frown. “Ye’ll not need that, lass. I doona hurt women.”
“Yes you do,” she argued.
“Never.” Tension gathered in his shoulders like thunderclouds building upon themselves and she noted that the rise and fall of his breaths hadn’t slowed since their ill-conceived—admittedly unforgettable—kiss. “I’ve not raised my hand to a lass in the entirety of my life,” he said in a voice laced with more sex than rage as he opened his palms to her. “These hands have done nothing but caress wanton flesh. Or produce shivers of pleasure. Women doona fear these hands, they crave them. They doona cringe from my strength, they beg for it. They drop their fans and handkerchiefs. They run into me on purpose, only to touch my body. They titter and wave and swoon and make themselves ridiculous. I have piles of perfumed letters and unanswered invitations from women I’ve bedded, beseeching me for one more night. One more whispered conversation. One more tender caress. So doona ye dare treat me like I’m a monster. That was my father. That is my brother. They are the Lairds of the Mackenzie of Wester Ross, bathed in blood, both male and female. My hands are soiled only by slick desire and sins ye canna even begin to imagine in yer most wicked dreams.”
Samantha snorted. “You truly believe that, don’t you?”
It wasn’t the reply he’d expected, she could tell by the tightening of his lips. “I’ve heard the moans and cries of bliss, lass, which I ken are easily fabricated,” he said drolly. “But the wet rush of ecstasy and the pulsing flesh around mine are unmistakable. Belief turns to knowledge with evidence.”
She swallowed around a tongue gone suddenly dry at the pure, vulgar images his words evoked, but stepped forward fueled by principled, righteous indignation.
“Do you actually think your actions don’t hurt women?”
The wicked gleam in his eyes darkened to a villainous one. “Not unless they ask for it.
“What about all those unanswered letters?” she challenged. “Do you suppose that the cold, selfish rejection of your former conquests doesn’t cause intense pain? That it doesn’t leave a deep wound?”
“Doona speak in metaphors, lass, it doesna suit the occasion. One blow from a man like me is like to leave a wound a wee lass would never recover from. Doona think I’m unaware of that. An unanswered letter is nothing like.”
“But so does a broken promise,” she insisted. “Rejection and dismissal are their own form of cruelty.”
“What would ye have me do, offer to marry every woman who contrives her way into my bed?”
“Not at all, I wouldn’t wish marriage to you on my worst enemy. No one deserves a lifetime of nothing but arduous lessons in disappointed expectations.”
“Och, lass, ye’ll have to admit that I’m not alone in my cruelty. Yer tongue scores through like a bayonet.”
“The truth is rarely kind,” she volleyed back. “And I highly doubt most of the scores of hapless women who find themselves swept into your abbreviated attentions are contrivers. You’re a predator, Gavin St. James.”
“That’s Lord Thorne to ye,” he reminded her with haughty vehemence.
“A Thorne, maybe, but you are not. My. Lord,” she bit out. “If you refuse the Mackenzie as your laird, though he is thought to be by tradition and law, then I do not see fit to address you as mine as you are neither a gentle nor noble man. Where I come from, a man must earn an exalted title by way of education, merit, or endeavor. Call that barbaric if you like, but it makes a great deal of sense to me as I stand in front of a man who can only count his accomplishments as high as the number of women he’s bedded. Or hearts he’s broken.”
“Do not speak to me of broken hearts,” he warned, taking another dangerous step forward. “I’ve never led a woman to believe she was anything more to me than a passing fancy or a pleasant fuck. Should she build more in her mind than what I promised, the fault is hers.”
Samantha’s eyes narrowed with such strain, his impossibly beautiful face blurred into nothing more than brutal planes and sharp angles. “You are a monster. One more dangerous than those who
you would denounce. You’re a monster who believes himself other than he is.”
He threw his hands up in a sweeping gesture of derision. “So tell me, Saint Ross, whatever shall I do to gain yer condemnatory esteem? Is there no redemption in your heart for a lowly fiend like myself?”
“I’m no saint.” The fathomless void of shame swirled beneath her temper, spiking it ever higher. “I’ve allowed monsters to tempt me to do the devil’s work. I’ve frightened and hurt people. Innocent people. I’ve watched beautiful, powerful men like you hold their actions up to true evil and I found the good in the comparison. I excused who they were right up until they crossed the line they promised never to even approach. You think you’re the first wayward son or younger brother who vowed to be left untouched by the sins of his elders? In the end, the past will catch up with you, and men like you always pull the trigger when they ought not to.”
She raked him with a glare that told him she saw past his untamed beauty, to the ugly violence that rippled beneath all his taut, bronzed flesh. “As much as you’d like to think your hands are clean, we both know they’re not. They’re stained with a million sins, with a thousand tears, a hundred deceits, and maybe a little blood you pretend isn’t there. You may ignore it, but I see it. I see who you are.”
“Then why did ye fucking kiss me back?” he snarled.
Samantha hid her gasp behind a shrug. “Because maybe I’m a monster, too.”
They stared at each other, each shaking from the cold rain and icy rage.
From the electric passion arcing between them like currents of lightning, brewing a tempest each of them knew could sweep them away.
The forest darkened as the storm intensified, casting his bright eyes into shadow, and slicking his sand-colored hair a darker shade. The rivulets of water running down the grooves next to his sensual mouth, tracing the sinew of his neck, his clavicles, dripping from his hair, could have been the tears of angels who’d given up on his soul long ago.
He appeared to her a bleak pagan god, forsaken by time and progress to lurk alone in primeval forests that had once been considered his temples.
The Scot Beds His Wife Page 11