Chapter 25 #3
“You’re sendin’ me away,” she said, “because you want me close… and it terrifies you.”
His breath hitched.
“That’s it, isn’t it?”
She fisted his shirt, dragging the towering man down to eye level.
“You’re not protectin’ me. You’re protectin’ yourself. From wantin’. From losin’. From feelin’ anything at all.”
His eyes widened, truth laid bare like a wound.
He opened his mouth. Maybe to deny it, maybe to beg, maybe to run—
Fiona didn’t let him.
She grabbed him by the nape of his neck and kissed him first.
A strike of flint against steel.
Harris gasped against her mouth like the impact ripped the air from his lungs.
Her hands slid into his hair, dragging him closer, deepening the kiss with the reckless certainty of a woman who had nearly died twice and refused to waste another breath.
And then—
He broke.
He answered like a man who had run out of choices.
Harris’s restraint snapped with a soundless crack: a whole dam giving way.
With a low, primal growl torn straight from his ribs, he seized her waist and slammed her back against the wall with the force of every mile he’d spent denying her, every breath he’d spent wanting her.
Fiona gasped—
Not in fear,
but triumph.
Her fingers fisted in his shirt, dragging him closer, refusing to yield an inch.
“Fight me proper,” she hissed against his mouth, baring her teeth.
Harris’s answering sound was barely human.
He crushed his mouth to hers again—rough, hungry, claiming—one hand tangling in her wild curls, the other gripping her hip so firmly she felt the bruise blooming already.
Fiona bit his lower lip.
He froze just long enough for his eyes to blaze open, blue fire in the dim cottage light.
“You bite me again,” he rasped, voice shredded, forehead pressed to hers, “and I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” she challenged, teeth flashing. “Send me home?”
That did it.
A ragged, broken laugh tore from him, half desire, half surrender, as he pinned her wrists above her head with one hand, his body flush against hers, heat and strength and need pressed into every line.
“God help me,” he whispered, breath hot on her neck, “you’re goin’ tae kill me.”
She arched into him, fierce and unafraid.
“Then die like a man.”
He groaned and kissed her like a man on his knees, like she was the last honest thing in a world of treachery. Deep. Helpless.
He caught her effortlessly, hauling her up the wall with the flex of a back built for carrying burdens heavier than sin. Her legs locked around his waist on instinct while he battled her skirts out of the way, cursing into her mouth.
When his hands finally seized the bare flesh of her backside, he groaned like her skin alone had undone him.
Their breaths tangled.
Every brush, every grip, every gasp felt like a declaration they’d both been too proud, too stubborn, too afraid to make.
He kissed a trail down her jaw, her throat. Slow at first, then with a ferocity that made her spine bow.
“Harris,” she gasped, fingers digging into his shoulders.
At the sound of his name on her lips, something wild flickered behind his eyes: possession, awe, hunger sharpened to a blade’s edge.
He lifted his forehead to hers, panting, voice shaking with the effort it took not to lose himself entirely.
“Tell me tae stop,” he begged quietly—
Not because he wanted to.
But because if she didn’t…
He wouldn’t.
Fiona bared her teeth in a wicked, breathless smile.
“Why the hell would I do that?”
All permission, all challenge.
And Harris Mackenzie—finally, finally—let himself burn.
Fiona’s challenge hit him like a match to whisky.
Harris snarled, actually snarled, and his grip on her thighs tightened as he pushed her harder against the wall, his body pinning hers in a cage of muscle and heat and pure, unfiltered want.
“Christ above, lass…” he groaned, dragging his mouth along her throat, teeth grazing just hard enough to make her gasp.
“Call me by my name, Mackenzie,” she breathed, rolling her hips against him with deliberate, devastating precision.
“ Christ, Fiona— ”
With one rough, helpless sweep, he tore her wrists from the wall and spun them both—her back hitting the edge of the table with a thud that knocked a gasp out of her and a curse out of him.
She grabbed his collar and yanked him down into another kiss.
This was fire meeting fire.
War meeting war.
His hands roamed, mapping her waist, her ribs, her hips as if memorizing proof she was real.
Her fingers tugged his hair, her nails scraped his shoulders, drawing a groan so deep it vibrated through her bones.
“Harris—”
He lifted her onto the table in one swift, powerful motion, stepping between her knees before she’d fully realized he’d moved.
Her breath choked off.
He braced his hands on either side of her thighs, caging her in, gaze burning like a man who’d been starving for a decade.
“You’re no’ Flora,” he rasped.
“I should hope not,” she said, breathless.
“You’re no’ luck, or duty, or debt.”
She arched toward him. “No?”
“You’re trouble,” he whispered, as if surrendering a war he’d already lost.
“And God help me, I want every inch of it.”
Her hands slid beneath his shirt, palms flattening over the scars and heat of his chest. “Then go on and take it.”
He inhaled sharply, hips jerking forward, the table creaking under them.
Harris kissed her with teeth and tongue and weeks of survival snapping all at once, devouring every sound she made until she was clinging to him, legs tightening around his waist, pulling him closer, closer—
The table nearly toppled.
He caught it with one hand, swore viciously, then gathered her into his arms in a rush of instinct and hunger, carrying her the last few feet toward the bed with a force that stole both their breaths.
She laughed and sank her teeth lightly into his shoulder.
He groaned like a man undone.
“Woman,” he panted, lowering her onto the mattress, bracing himself above her with shaking arms, “ye’ll ruin me.”
Their lips met again, and the world narrowed to heat and breath and the soft, inevitable fall of two people who had no business wanting each other this much.
The candle guttered.
The shadows closed in.
And when Harris finally let go…
It wasn’t quiet.