Chapter Twenty-Two #3
A pale strand lay caught against the corner of her lips, another fluttering across her cheek beneath one eye.
He lifted his hand and caught them gently with his fingers, drawing them away from her face.
Rather than release them at once, he carried them back toward her temple and tucked them behind her ear, the backs of his fingers grazing the warm softness of her cheek.
Anastasia went very still, indeed seemed to hold her breath.
His hand lingered beside her face, and she made no effort to retreat from it. Her eyes remained fixed upon his, wide and quiet, the sadness of moments ago still lingering there but something else rising now beneath it.
His gaze fell to her mouth.
He remembered it too well, the softness of her lips beneath his, the startled breath she’d drawn the first time he’d kissed her, and then the way she’d answered him.
He remembered the taste of her and the feel of her body in his arms and with the memories came a swift and powerful desire to know all of it again.
When he raised his gaze, Anastasia was watching him.
She’d seen where he’d looked—there could be no mistaking it, nor, Bram imagined, the intent that must be plain upon his face now. Her lips parted slightly upon a shallow breath, but she did not step away.
Bram moved his thumb once across her cheek and still she did not retreat.
So Bram bent his head and kissed her.
It wasn’t born of pity. He didn’t touch his lips softly to hers because her eyes shone with tears or because she looked so forlorn, nor did he imagine a kiss might somehow ease the ache of all she had lost. Selfishly, he kissed her for no reason save that he wanted to.
God, how he wanted to!
For one suspended moment Anastasia remained perfectly still beneath his mouth, and Bram wondered if he had misread her after all. Then she drew a sharp breath through her nose and her lips moved beneath his.
The response was small at first, almost cautious, but it was enough.
Bram slipped his hand from her cheek to the nape of her neck as he deepened the kiss, and whatever hesitation had fleetingly held Anastasia still vanished.
Her hands rose to his chest, clutching at the wool of his tunic.
She rose slightly onto her toes and kissed him back with a suddenness and hunger that sent a fierce surge of satisfaction through him.
There she was. Not the maddeningly polite woman who wished him good morning as though they were barely acquainted.
Not the distant creature who spoke with so little inflection in the last several days.
This was the Anastasia he remembered, warm and impulsive and incapable of concealing anything she felt when she forgot to guard herself.
Bram tightened his arm around her.
She came willingly, fitting herself against him as his arm circled her waist, and the kiss lost all restraint.
He remembered her mouth, but memory had done it poor justice.
He remembered the taste of her, the way her breathing had changed as his kiss grew deeper and more demanding, but not the startling pleasure of having her answer him with equal fervor, nor how swiftly the rest of the world seemed to recede when she did.
Anastasia hands left his chest and slid around his shoulders. Her fingers found the hair at his nape and curled there, holding him nearer.
Bram made a low sound against her mouth.
—but that might have been what broke the spell.
Anastasia stiffened.
Her hands fell abruptly from his neck and flattened against his chest. She turned her face away, breaking the kiss, and Bram stopped at once, though for another moment neither of them actually moved apart.
Her breath came quickly and she pushed at him at last.
Bram let his hands fall away.
Anastasia stepped backward so hastily that her heel sank into the sand and she nearly lost her balance. Bram’s hand came out instinctively, but she righted herself before he touched her and immediately put another pace between them.
Anastasia stepped back, staring at him with wide eyes. Her lips were parted and flushed from his, her cheeks equally bright, and the composure she had worn so diligently for days was nowhere to be found. Bram suspected his own appearance betrayed him little less.
She looked away first, turning and striding to another large rock, bending swiftly to retrieve the shoes and hose she’d abandoned there earlier. Bram dragged a hand over his mouth, attempting to gather thoughts that had scattered somewhere around the moment she’d slid her arms around him.
Anastasia straightened and faced him, clutching her things against her chest. “Why—why would you do that?”
There were a dozen answers Bram might have given, including the simplest and truest one—that despite all his best efforts, he thought about it—kissing her again—every day, sometimes hourly.
“Why?” she pressed when he failed to answer swiftly enough. “I thought—” She stopped, her mouth tightening before she began again. “You made it pretty clear before that kissing me didn’t mean very much to you.”
He had no answer that didn’t expose the first for the lie it had been, and he wasn’t yet prepared to explain all that had driven him to tell it. Irritation rose instead, directed mostly at himself but finding a far more convenient target standing directly before him.
“Ye kissed me as well.”
Color deepened starkly in her face.
“Why did ye kiss me, Anastasia, if ye believe it means so little to me?”
For a moment she only stared at him, before lifting her chin and replying coolly, “That’s just my body, Bram.” She swallowed. “That’s fear and loneliness and...” she hesitated, her gaze darting away, “and attraction, obviously. I’m not denying that. But that’s all.”
His lip curled with his displeasure, even as he understood how much he deserved exactly that reply. He’d been the first to declare a kiss between them meaningless. He could hardly take offense now because Anastasia chose to essentially throw that back in his face.
His jaw worked as he swallowed everything he suddenly wanted to say. He bent and retrieved one of her hose she’d dropped in the sand. He shook it once and held it toward her.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Supper will be waiting.”
***
Days later, Bram watched Anastasia from the battlements as she walked with Etta, her head bent in conversation, a borrowed MacCailin plaid shielding her from the wind.
In the days since the beach, she had given him nothing reasonable to resent.
She was polite, present, and entirely self-contained.
He’d wanted her safe and no longer dependent upon him, and he’d gotten his wish.
He simply had not anticipated the sharp dissatisfaction of seeing her manage so perfectly well without him.
He turned from the wall. Raghnall Hay was a more useful occupation for his thoughts.
By the eighth day, the reports were sufficient that he and Harsain had begun making actual plans.
Their inquiries had placed Hay at Cairnmore, a fortified holding south of Elgin whose owner’s English sympathies were no surprise.
It was yet to be confirmed if Raghnall remained there, but two reports had placed his men on nearby roads.
They would take a small force rather than enough men to announce their approach from miles away, and Raghnall was not to be killed unless there was no other choice.
Harsain proposed three possible approaches to Cairnmore; Bram dismissed one immediately, considered another, and sent two men ahead to determine whether the third remained passable after the recent rains.
If the information they presently awaited confirmed what they suspected, they would be ready to ride within several days.
The increasing likelihood of his departure brought with it other considerations, and late that afternoon Bram found his mother in the small chamber off the hall where Fearchar ordinarily kept the accounts and records of the estate.
The steward himself had departed several minutes earlier with instructions concerning the men Bram intended to take, leaving sheets of parchment scattered across the table and Mairead seated opposite her son, reading through something Fearchar had given her.
Bram waited until she reached the bottom before saying, “If I dinna return—”
“Cease.”
His mother did not so much as lift her head, and Bram stared at her for several seconds before saying, “Mam.”
“Say what ye must about Craig na Coille,” Mairead replied, setting one parchment aside for another. “The men, the horses, your damned boots—I will see to it. But dinna stand before your màthair eight days after returning from the dead and speak of not returning again.”
Bram’s jaw tightened. When she reached for the next page, he said the one word he knew she could not ignore. “Anastasia.”