Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The doors shut behind her, cutting off Ewan's laughter and the warm noise of the hall, but the corridor gave her no peace at all. She rounded the corner still burning, and a shadow peeled itself off the wall in front of her.
Finn. Blocking the passage, arms crossed, rain still darkening the shoulders of his shirt.
"Ye're blockin' the passage, Finn," she said.
"Ye should be in the hall with yer new admirer."
"I was in the hall." She kept walking straight at him, refusing to slow. "Until ye stood up without a word and walked out into a storm. I dinnae even ken what I did."
"I was securing the perimeter."
"Ye left without a word." She stopped a breath from his chest, chin tipped up. "The least ye owe me is an explanation. Now move."
He didn't. His eyes held hers, bright and furious in the dim torchlight, and something in her chest tightened at the sheer nearness of him, even now, even angry.
"Ye invite allied men into your home," she said, "seat me beside ye at yer table, and then storm off without so much as a word to me."
"Ye looked entertained enough without me help."
"I was being polite to a guest, Finn. That is precisely what a lady of this keep is meant to do."
"A lady of the keep doesnae let a strange man kiss her hand in front of the whole clan."
"He was telling a story!" Her hands curled into fists at her sides. "He was being kind, which is apparently a language ye refuse to learn!"
"Kind." Finn's laugh was short and humorless, scraping against the stone walls. "He was imaginin' what ye'd look like in his bed, Claire, and dinnae tell me otherwise, because I ken exactly what a man thinks when he looks at ye like that."
"He did nay such thing!"
"I have eyes." He leaned in, close enough that she caught the rain and woodsmoke smell of him, close enough that her pulse climbed without her permission. "And I ken exactly what mine were doin', which is why I left before I put a fist through his teeth."
Her breath caught, half at the words, half at how close his mouth had come to hers without either of them moving. "You have nay right to be jealous of him."
"I have every right."
"Every time I get close to ye," she pressed on, though her voice had lost some of its heat, "ye push me away. Ye remind me it's a contract. Ye tell me it's temporary. And the one time I speak to another man, ye nearly overturn the high table."
Finn said nothing. His jaw worked, the muscle jumping visibly along the line of it, and for one long moment the only sound in the corridor was the wind battering the shutters somewhere above them.
"Explain it," she said, softer now. "How can you send me to Leo with one breath and glare murder at Ewan Sinclair with the next?"
"Because ye're me betrothed, Claire," he said, low, before he could stop the words leaving him. "Ye're mine. I willnae let another man touch ye."
The corridor went very still.
He had not meant to say it so harshly. The words had snapped loose from somewhere he usually kept locked behind iron discipline, and now they hung between them in the cold, damp air. He watched them land on her face, watched her lips part in shock around a breath she did not take.
He should take it back, but he did not.
"I am nae yer property to command, Finn MacRae," she hissed, the fire returning to her eyes in a brilliant flash. "I was merely speaking to him."
"Ye let him closer than ye should have," he ground out, stepping nearer. "Smilin' up at Ewan Sinclair while half me men watched and wondered."
"He was being polite! Something ye clearly ken nothing about." Her voice cracked like a whip, and something in his chest tightened with it, some old, defensive wall he'd built brick by brick. "Why should ye care who I smile at if ye mean to cast me out anyway?"
Because Sinclair looks at ye like he wants to drag ye into the heather.
The thought tasted like copper even as it formed.
Young. Whole. Unburdened by a clan on the brink of slaughter.
He opened his mouth to say she was under his protection, that it was a matter of pride, but what came out was rawer, uglier.
"Because while ye are under me roof, ye bear me name," he snarled. "And the thought of another man thinkin' he has a right to yer attentions puts somethin' savage in me I dinnae ken how to control."
She stared at him, and he watched the shock of his temper move through her, watched her chest rise and fall too fast beneath her bodice.
"It's madness," he said, stepping forward again, and she stepped back until her shoulders met the cold stone and there was nowhere left for her to go. "The contract is a sham, I ken that better than any man alive. But I willnae have him lookin' at ye as if ye are his for the takin'."
"He only kissed me hand!"
"I dinnae care." He planted a hand against the wall beside her head, not quite touching her, close enough that he could feel the heat coming off her skin. "I dinnae care if he only looked at the hem of yer skirt. I willnae have it."
"You're completely out of yer mind," she breathed, her chin tilting up defiantly, her eyes never leaving his.
"Aye." He let his forehead drop until it rested against hers, the movement sharp and involuntary.
The contact alone nearly undid every careful year of control he'd built since his father died in the mud.
"I am losin' it. And ye are the one takin' it from me, with yer stubbornness and yer reckless smiles. "
"Then let me go," she challenged, her hands coming up to push against the leather over his chest. But they didn't push. They rested there, light, uncertain, and it was worse than if she'd struck him. "If I am such a burden to your pride, why are we standing in this hallway?"
He felt the war in himself the way he felt a blade edge testing armor, looking for the seam. I am tryin' to keep order. I am tryin' to be the Laird they need. I am tryin' to send her away so she survives.
"Because ye infuriate me," he breathed, his eyes shutting against the shudder moving through him.
"It is mutual." She didn't back down, bringing her mouth a fraction closer to his, close enough that he felt her furious breath against his lips, warm against the freezing air of the corridor.
"I dinnae want Ewan Sinclair's safety. I dinnae want a polite, quiet life in the south while ye act the tyrant here. "
"Claire, hold yer tongue."
"I will not," she said, ignoring his warning entirely, the way she ignored every command he’d ever given her. "You are insufferable. You push me away, and then you corner me in the dark because another man showed me basic kindness."
Something in him broke completely loose from its moorings.
He moved before he'd decided to, his hands shooting out to grip her waist, hauling her against him hard enough to steal the air clean out of both their lungs.
There was no space left between them at all, the rigid leather of his cuirass pressed to the soft wool of her bodice, her hands trapped flat against his chest, her heart hammering so wildly he could feel it through the layers of clothing.
"Ye drive me to madness," he grated against her hair, his voice wrecked with a fury that felt dangerously like desperation.
"And ye are impossible, " s he shot back, breathless, her fingers curling into his shoulders instead of pushing him away.
"Aye." His eyes dropped to her mouth and stayed there.
The anger in him twisted, sharpening into a living, ravenous wanting that filled the whole narrow space between the stones.
He could feel the exact moment her breath caught, the exact moment the fight drained out of her, leaving her still and waiting beneath his punishing grip.
Every reason he had for stepping back felt suddenly, dangerously thin.
He let himself have one more second of the edge. One. The the scent of rain still caught in her hair, the heat of her palms searing through his shirt, the small, helpless gasp she made low in her throat when his fingers dug tighter into the curve of her waist.
Then he kissed her. It was not gentle. His mouth crashed over hers, one hand fisting in her hair, angling her exactly where he wanted, and she made a small, helpless sound against his lips and rose up onto her toes to meet him, her fingers digging into his shoulders instead of pushing him away.
Then he tore himself away violently.
He stumbled back a full step, his chest heaving as though he'd run the length of the glen, shoving the stone-cold air between them before the last of his restraint gave out entirely and he kissed her.
"Nay," he said, rough, throwing a hand up when she instinctively reached for him.
"Finn…"
"I willnae do it." His voice shook, and he hated that it shook. "I willnae let me own temper be the thing that ruins ye."
"You aren't ruining…"
"I am." He dragged a hand down his face, dragging the Laird's mask back into place. "I am actin' like a feral beast with no lead on him. Ye need a civilized life, nae a man who cannae govern his own rage."
"I never asked for civilized!" she shouted, the plea in it nearly bringing him back to her. "I asked ye to stop hidin' behind duty and want me the way I already ken ye do!"
"Ye dinnae ken what ye are askin' for." The words came out like stones, hard and unyielding, because it was the only defense he had left.
Her eyes flashed with bright, wet fury. "Dinnae tell me what I ken."
"I am sendin' ye to Violet," he stated, turning his face away from hers because he couldnae look at her and maintain the lie. "The escort leaves as soon as the roads clear. It is decided."
"You are a coward," she shouted, the words landing exactly where she meant them to, cutting deeper than any Highland broadsword.
"I am tryin' to keep ye alive."
"Ye are tryin' to save yerself from the risk of feelin' anything at all!" Her voice shook with rage, and beneath the rage, an agonizing disappointment. "Ye would rather face an entire army on that pass than admit ye cannot control what happens between us."
He had nothing to say to that. She had laid him bare, and he had never learned how to lie to her the way he lied to everyone else.
"The perimeter needs seein' to," he said instead, his voice hollow, and he turned, walking fast down the dark corridor without looking back.
Outside, the rain poured down on him hard, and he welcomed it, tipping his face into the freezing downpour until the ice burned everything else out of him, or tried to.
It did not work. Nothing worked. He could still feel the exact, slender shape of her waist under his harsh grip, the exact furious hitch of her breath when he'd hauled her against him.
He suspected he would go on feeling it long after she was safely behind Violet's walls and impossibly far from his.
I did what a Laird must do. But he did not believe it for a single second, not even as the storm swallowed his hollow justifications whole.