Chapter 10
Chapter ten
In Which the Highlander Burns for Her (Literally)
The air in Tavish’s tent smelled of rain, smoke, and male complaint.
Tavish sat on a stool, glowering at the bandage she had not yet applied. Wanton knelt before him with crisp, professional purpose. She had decided—firmly, bravely, foolishly—to avoid any further intimacies of the emotional variety.
For once, she would rely on her restraint.
Her restraint was not a virtue so much as a fussy little supervisor lodged somewhere between her ribs, forever straightening its cuffs and insisting on proper boundaries.
It believed in distance. In decorum. In not kneeling between the knees of a half-naked Highlander with arms capable of founding new countries.
Wanton inhaled, squared her shoulders.
Restraint adjusted its spectacles and gave an approving nod.
This would go well.
(It would not.)
"Hold still," Wanton ordered, dabbing his wound with carbolic acid.
Tavish hissed through his teeth. "Saints, woman! Are ye cleanin' it or tryin' to pickle me?"
"I am sterilizing the area," she said primly, leaning in with disquieting enthusiasm. "Do stop wriggling. You're behaving like a startled ox."
"I am not wrigglin'," he growled, immediately wriggling.
Wanton planted a firm hand on his shoulder—purely to stabilize the patient, absolutely not to appreciate the breadth and density of Highland musculature. "This would go faster if you cooperated."
Field Observation 23.4: Subject's pain tolerance decreases sharply when confronted with small, stinging things. Hypothesis—gargantuan bravery inversely proportional to wound size.
Tavish growled. "Lass, if ye jab me one more—"
"I'll jab you as much as I like. I won't let sepsis, necrosis, or any of the seventeen avoidable causes of male mortality take you."
He grinned.
And Wanton, mortified by her own tenderness, cleared her throat violently. "Medically," she amended. "I won't let anything hurt you medically. Emotional injury remains outside my jurisdiction."
His lips twitched. Slowly. "Aye, I see."
But he held still.
Perfectly still.
And Wanton's heart performed a scandalous pirouette.
She tied the bandage tight, breath catching as her knuckles brushed his skin. The lamplight turned everything intimate—his lashes too dark, his gaze too intent.
Field Observation 42.2: Low, flickering illumination significantly increases perceived romance levels, softens male jawlines, and—according to one dubious 18th-century pamphlet—raises the probability of unplanned offspring by up to forty percent.
He watched her with an expression that stripped away every layer of irony she'd ever hidden behind.
After a long silence, he said quietly, "Do ye ken why I won't sell the land?"
She looked up, startled. "Because you're stubborn?"
He smiled faintly. "Aye, that too. But mostly…" He glanced toward the flap of the tent, where the wind whispered over the hills. "My father's bones rest in this soil. So do half the clan's. Ye canna sell what keeps ye alive."
Wanton's throat tightened. Logic fluttered, failed, and fled. "That's…illogical," she murmured. "And magnificent."
He laughed quietly, a sound that wrapped around her like warmth. "Ye're impossible, lass."
"I prefer improbable," she said, voice catching.
He reached for her hand, calloused fingers closing around her ink-stained ones. "Improbable, then."
Their eyes met, and the world stilled.
He leaned closer. So did she. Objectively, she should have avoided this.
But his gaze—steady, storm-dark, infuriatingly sincere—tilted all her internal instruments.
Perhaps… perhaps it was wiser to allow him to kiss her.
Once.
For the sake of data integrity.
A scientific kiss.
Controlled variables, limited duration, minimal emotional contamination.
Purely to observe the effect of Highland proximity on soft tissues and cardiac stability.
"Yes," she reasoned silently, heart tripping over itself, "this is necessary research."
Her chin lifted half an inch.
She braced for contact like a natural philosopher preparing to witness an eclipse.
(Reader, here we witness the scholar in her most vulnerable state: foolishly certain she can resist the mating display of a Highlander.)
Their lips met, and it was a wonder that the earth kept its orbit.
Heat surged through her, a brilliant, reckless current that rewrote every theorem she had ever trusted.
Tavish's mouth was hot, sure, startlingly gentle at first—then deeper, firmer, as if he'd been waiting for this exact moment since the Highlands formed.
Wanton made a sound. A soft, eager, mortifying sound.
(Field Observation 22.3: Upon contact, vocal restraint becomes hypothetical.)
His hand rose to cradle her jaw, thumb sweeping slowly—achingly—across her cheek. Her knees forgot their contract with gravity. Her fingers curled into the leather straps across his shoulders, pulling him closer as though she were conducting an experiment in magnetic attraction.
Tavish groaned and slid his other hand to the small of her back. The world tilted. The tent blurred. Her pulse spiked in a way no responsible scientist would chart without a disclaimer.
She kissed him back—enthusiastically, disastrously—part lips, part logic failure.
Warmth pooled low in her belly. Her toes curled inside her boots.
He deepened the kiss, mouth slanting over hers with Highland certainty, and Wanton's spine liquefied. Her notebook slipped from her lap and thudded to the furs below.
Field Observation 22.1: Kiss intensity increases in direct correlation to emotional sincerity and exposed musculature.
The kiss should have been brief. For data. For notes.
Instead, she surged upward, pushing off her haunches with all the grace of a woman who had once tried to mount a mule backwards but had now discovered a far more rewarding ascent.
Her restraint shrieked, like a timid governess arriving to chaperone a bacchanal. The poor dear fled her body with the velocity of a startled pheasant. It flapped toward the tent flap, collided with a pole, and escaped into the night, never to be heard from again.
“Good riddance,” Wanton thought, feeling oddly lighter without the meddling creature. Truly, restraint had overstayed its welcome—an unwanted guest blocking the door between her and empirical discovery. And Tavish’s mouth. And several promising data points in between.
Her last scrap of caution sighed, picked up its skirts, and also left.
Which left Wanton with Tavish, a racing pulse, and the dawning realization that some experiments were meant to be conducted without supervision.
Her palms splayed across his bare chest, a topography of muscle and stubbornness. Every inch of her pressed against him with the sort of academic fervor that would get her expelled from any institution with standards. Tavish exhaled her name and tangled his fingers in her curls, pulling her closer.
His lips parted hers with aching slowness, like he was memorizing the taste of defiance.
She tilted her head, angled for better access—as any dedicated scholar would—and immediately felt something hot and urgent pressing low against her belly, only the kilt and a gasp between discovery and full dissertation.
She whimpered. Actually whimpered.
Field Note: Must never let Prudence hear of this.
The kiss deepened, and suddenly her hands weren't obeying commands. They slid downward, trailing past his ribs, past the ridged landscape of his abdomen, until—
Her fingers planted firmly on his thighs.
Tavish groaned.
Low. Raw. The kind of sound that rearranged organs and cracked internal moral compasses clean in half.
His legs tensed beneath her palms. Strong, spread just enough. Waiting. Wanting.
She pressed a little harder, curious. For science.
He pulled back just enough to look at her, and Saints help her, his pupils were blown wide, like a man facing something holy. Or wholly unmanageable.
"Lass," he rasped, "if ye keep lookin' at me like that, I'm gonna forget all about my arm."
"Excellent," she whispered. "Forgetfulness is scientifically proven to accelerate recovery." She then kissed him again, fueled by every thrum of blood in her limbs and every curiosity in her bones.
His hands found her hips, dragging her closer between his knees, until her skirts bunched around her thighs and her body slotted against his like an equation solved at last.
She pulled back, breath trembling. "I want to continue the experiment."
Tavish gave a huffed laugh, kissed her chin, then her neck, then lower, his mouth branding her skin like ink on parchment.
"You mean the one where I lose my sanity?" he murmured.
"No," she said, "the one where you lose your kilt."
For half a heartbeat, he simply stared at her.
Then—with a growl so deep it might've come from the stone beneath Glenravish—he grabbed her hips and hauled her upward, silk and cotton rustling, until she was straddling his lap.
Wanton gasped, and her hands flew to his shoulders, steadying herself against a landscape of sin and sinew.
Her skirts bunched around her hips. Her knees bracketed his thighs. His erection pressed exactly where her curiosity burned hottest.
She rocked, a teasing glide of her wet core against the heavy ridge beneath the kilt.
Tavish groaned like a man in mortal peril.
"Lass," he warned, voice frayed, breath uneven, "ye keep doin' that and this experiment's gonna end before I loose the first plait."
"I'm collecting data," she whispered, breath trembling as she rocked again, the friction sending sparks along her spine.
"Field Observation 22.9: The plaid barrier creates heightened friction and overwhelming pleasure. Must recommend future replication. Repeatedly."
His hands clamped around her waist, fingers digging into her curves, guiding her rhythm now, his gaze locked on her face.
She circled her hips, her core gliding along the length of him beneath the kilt, separated only by tartan and tension.
Tavish's head fell back.
"Sweet saints," he groaned, "this kilt's gettin' blessed tonight."
Blushing, she threaded her fingers through his hair, pulling his mouth back to hers.
His hips bucked upward, grinding hard against her, and she cried out, the pleasure so sharp it ricocheted through her bones.
"Field Observation 23.0," she gasped, rocking again, chasing that edge, "Kilted contact may result in spontaneous disintegration of spine, reason, and maidenly restraint."
"Lass," Tavish groaned, "if ye come like this…"
"I may... For science, of course."
"Then may God bless academia."
The lantern flared. Somewhere outside, wind rattled the tent ropes in applause.
Tavish groaned—a sound that could have felled armies.
Then—crash!
A flaming torch burst through the tent flap, landing in a shower of sparks inches from Tavish's plaid.
They froze.
Then Wanton moved first. "Assassination attempt number four!" she shrieked, grabbing the nearest liquid—his whisky flask—and dumping it over the fire.
The result was instant. WHOOF!
Flames exploded upward with drunken enthusiasm.
"Bloody hell!" Tavish bellowed, kicking the burning remains toward the entrance.
His plaid caught fire briefly—glorious, heroic, and deeply alarming.
Wanton dove forward, smacking the flames with a cloth until the fire died, leaving only smoke, the stench of scorched wool, and a half-naked laird blinking at her in disbelief.
She coughed, eyes streaming, and announced, "Scientific observation: flammable—but worth preserving."
Field Observation 22.4: Attempted assassination successfully diverted through rapid application of whisky, chaos, and questionable technique. Casualty: her er… research.