Chapter Fifteen
They had been riding for hours and Katrina thought that she might still be blushing.
She could not believe her audacity. She had kissed him. She had kissed the Bloodhound.
No. She’d kissed Blake.
Because he was so much more than what Laird MacFarlane had made him.
She had kissed him, and he had kissed her in return.
It was dreadfully complicated. He was still taking her to MacFarlane lands. They hadn’t discussed anything beyond leaving the clearing that was strewn with the bodies of their enemies, but she knew that was where they were still going.
She was still promised to Brodie. Blake was still beholden to his laird. He was still trying to kidnap her friends. The whole of the Highlands was still teetering precariously on the precipice of all-out war.
All those things were true.
Still, though, she didn’t regret it. She just… couldn’t.
He had been rough because he was a rough man. But he hadn’t hurt her. It had been more like he was… devouring her, like he might actually die if he didn’t kiss her for as long as she would allow it.
She had wanted to allow it forever. She’d wanted to absorb him into her as much as he’d been trying to consume her.
If she was supposed to be sorry about it, if she should disdain this man who had saved her just as many times as he had done her ill…
Maybe she would manage it tomorrow.
“We’re in MacFarlane territory now,” Blake said as the sun started to dip, the light turning golden as it waned. “We passed the border a half mile ago.”
“Oh,” she said softly.
She felt dread, to be certain. She didn’t want to get to MacFarlane.
But a stupid, stupid part of her, one that she would never admit to and did not even want to recognize, knew that it wasn’t just because she knew that it would be that much harder to get out of a marriage to Brodie once he had her in his grasp.
She dreaded arriving at MacFarlane Keep because it meant that she wouldn’t see Blake any longer.
“We willnae arrive tonight,” he went on, his voice a soothing rumble against her back. “But there’s a hut nearby. We’ll stay there, and tomorrow, we’ll continue.”
“Aye, of course,” she agreed softly.
She didn’t argue, but it didn’t settle any of the taut energy between them. If anything, Blake grew increasingly restless as they rode for the last hour or so, the shadows growing longer and longer.
The hut appeared in the distance, then grew closer and closer.
Blake was like a statue behind her, tension radiating off him in waves.
The building was old but sturdy, and Katrina knew she had fully lost her mind because they made it all the way to the weather-worn hitching post before it occurred to her to be worried about being in a house alone with Blake.
And even when the thought did pass her mind, she dismissed it as quickly as it had come. He wasn’t going to harm her. She knew that.
In fact, when he dismounted, instead of reaching up to lower her down as he had done throughout their journey, he hesitated.
“Ye should go,” he said, his eyes on the ground.
She laughed. “What, have ye finally gotten tired of lugging me around? I told ye from the start that I could dismount myself—or, nay. Is it your shoulder that’s bothering ye? Step back so I can look at it.”
He did not step back.
“Nay, Katrina,” he said, his fist clenched around the reins so tightly that his knuckles shone white. “Ye should go. Run. While ye can. Take the horse, I willnae chase ye. I will… I’ll find some story for how ye escaped. I dinnae ken. It doesnae matter. Ye should just-just go.”
He said all this with stilted, pained sentences, like the words tasted foreign in his mouth. They felt foreign in Katrina’s ears.
Everything that had happened, everything they’d gone through—and now he wanted to just release her?
“But won’t Laird MacFarlane be angry with ye?” she asked. She could not imagine what revenge the laird would lay at Blake’s feet if he failed, not when this was the same man who had ordered his best soldier to poison himself daily.
Blake shook his head, but it wasn’t a refusal.
“It doesnae matter. What matters—” He looked up then, and his face was creased with misery.
“Dinnae ye see, Katrina? I can protect ye from soldiers that wish ye harm, but once ye get to MacFarlane Keep... I cannae protect ye. Not from the laird, if he decides to punish ye to lure out Arran and Makenna.”
A chill went over Katrina. She hadn’t considered that.
“And even if he doesnae do any such thing,” Blake went on, pressing his advantage with that predator’s sense of victory, “how do ye think I can protect ye from Brodie once ye are wed to him? I cannae. I-I dinnae have the power.”
He sounded like the admission broke something inside him.
I willnae fail ye, he had promised her. I couldnae save my family.
And her heart broke a little, too.
“Blake,” she said softly.
He closed his eyes, like looking at her was too painful to bear.
“Katrina, please,” he said. He wasn’t a man accustomed to asking for what he wanted; he took the things he desired. But now, he was begging her. “Ye have to go, lass.”
“And what, leave ye to the laird’s displeasure?” she demanded hotly.
He huffed out a breath. “Aye. I have suffered it before, and I daresay I will suffer it again and it doesnae matter,” he stressed again when she opened her mouth to argue.
“I told ye, I am a weapon raised for violence. A hound trained to obey. I live under the laird’s thumb and call it freedom.
I dinnae have a choice—except for in this.
I can keep ye away from that life. I can let ye go. So, please. Just go.”
She slithered down the far side of the horse, the one he wasn’t blocking, dodging when he tried to grab and force her to remain atop the horse’s back. She stomped around to Blake, not stopping until she was inches from him, staring up into his face.
Strange how she hadn’t noticed the weariness that lurked in those eyes before now. As soon as she recognized it, she knew that it had been there all along—probably long before she’d known him, even. But she hadn’t really seen it, not until right now.
“Ye arenae just a weapon,” she told him, summoning every ounce of fierceness she possessed.
“And ye do have a choice. Ye chose to protect me when those men attacked. Ye chose to care when I bled. Ye chose to bring me medicine, shield me from harm, give me clothing and food and shelter. Nobody made ye do any of that.”
“I abducted ye,” he countered. “Twice.”
“Aye,” she agreed. “But ye also slaughtered my enemies and laid them at my feet. Not with the sword of a monster, but with the vengeance of a guardian,” she told him. “And I saved ye, too, when ye were bleeding alone on the ground. I stopped ye from hurting yourself again.”
“It was more than I deserved,” he snapped. “Ye should have let me die.”
“I decided!” She was shouting now, alone with him in the woods, just the two of them and the horse, standing and yelling at one another.
It was absurd, truly, but she thought it might be the most important thing she’d ever done.
“I decided to save ye because, no matter what ye may think, there is something in ye worth saving. And I am deciding now. I am nae going anywhere without ye.”
“I am a monster,” he insisted.
“Ye are more than a monster,” she returned. “And if there is a monster in ye—well, that’s my damned monster, and I willnae have ye malign him.”
They lunged for one another, not that there was much space to close.
Blake had kissed her roughly before, but it was nothing compared to the way he grabbed her now, his arms going around her waist, reaching under her arse and hoisting her so that her face was even closer to his.
And she gave as good as she got; she grasped great big handfuls of that red hair and used it to press him tight against her until she could feel the hard press of his teeth behind his lips.
It wasn’t enough.
It was not nearly enough.
She could tame his monster and he could withstand her fire and together they could do something remarkable.
When his tongue probed her bottom lip, she opened to him on instinct, sparing a quick prayer of thanks for the ease with which her breeches let her wrap her legs around his waist.
“Oh, Christ on the—” Blake didn’t even make it all the way through his swear before he was licking into her mouth again, as though mere seconds was too long to go without her taste.
She shivered joyously against him, committing each part of him to memory: the sturdy muscles beneath her limbs, the soft wetness inside his mouth, the faint prickle of stubble across his jaw that spoke of too many days without proper amenities for shaving.
She had never hungered like this before. It was glorious.
She was no longer even remotely in control of the kiss, and she didn’t regret it for a moment.
Blake didn’t release her as he moved toward the door to the little hut, either trusting the horse to stay where it was or not caring if it left.
Katrina didn’t blame him; she was finding it impossible to care about much else than his hands and mouth on her, though she spared a shiver for the barely-leased strength in his body as he opened the door to the hut with a mighty kick.
“Tell me to stop,” he commanded even as he led her into the small, dark room, which was neat save for the fine layer of dust in the air from disuse. “Katrina. Tell me I should stop.”
She shook her head without letting her mouth leave his.
“Nay,” she said, just in case he hadn’t gotten the message from her violent reaction. “Dinnae stop. Dinnae go.”
He snarled his approval and wound his fingers through her hair, then used the grip to hold her as he wished.
He pressed kisses across her jaw, then bit lightly at the place where her pulse thrummed in her neck, the firm, not quite painful pressure of his teeth enough to send a flare of heat through her.