Highland Scoundrel (Campbell Trilogy #3)(88)

Duncan chuckled. “You'd best check with Jam”—he stopped to correct himself—”the captain first.”

“I'll do it right now,” Dougall said and ran off toward the keep. Jeannie opened her mouth to stop him, but snapped it shut again, deciding to let her son go. The way Duncan was looking at him made her uneasy. He couldn't guess. But saying it over and over did not stop the panic from eating at her.

In Dougall's eagerness, he'd neglected to return the bow and arrows he'd been practicing with to the armory. Jeannie walked toward them, but Duncan cut her off. “You don't want me around your son, why?”

The suspicion in his voice chilled her blood. He was too damned observant. She forced her gaze to his, holding it steady and unflinching. No reaction. No emotion. “What good can come of it?” she said brusquely. “In a few days you will go your way and I will go mine. It is better that way.”

“A clean break, is that it?”

There was a dark edge to his voice that made the hair on her arms stand up straight. Jeannie didn't think of herself as a coward, but her first instinct was to turn and run. That dangerous energy she'd sensed in him on their journey was right there, just under the surface, threatening to break free.

His fingers wrapped around her wrist and brought her toward him. “Do you really think that is possible, Jeannie?”

She wrenched her arm away. “Yes.” It had to be. But her heart called her a liar. And he knew it.

Just leave me alone! She picked up the bow and quiver and marched toward the armory. The small wooden building was cold and dark and smelled of damp. After replacing the weapons, she turned to leave, but Duncan blocked the door, his tall, well-muscled physique an imposing silhouette.

“I'm not finished.”

It had been a mistake to turn her back on him, to let him corner her. She didn't trust herself. His being close like this always made her unable to think straight.

He closed the door behind him, making the room feel even smaller. The musty air of the armory darkened with his masculine scent and the cool air heated with the fire crackling between them. Thin rays of light streamed through the spaces between the wooden planks, providing barely enough light to see. But she could feel him; her senses honed on everything about him. Every inch of his tall, muscled frame. Every strand of silky black hair. Every thin line etched around his mouth.

He was using his size—his masculinity—against her, as if challenging her to ignore the desire taut between them. She wouldn't let him intimidate her. But she felt a flash of sympathy for the men he'd faced on the battlefield.

“Well, I am,” Jeannie said, trying to push past him. But he wouldn't let her go, catching her to him, their bodies brushing against one another, yet to her it felt as if she'd just caught fire. “There is nothing more to say.” Her voice shook, her nerves fluttering wildly.

“I think there is much more to say.” The deep brogue of his voice seeped into her bones. His jaw was pulled taut and his piercing blue eyes seemed to tear away her secrets as he stared down into her face.

Her heart thudded with premonition. She sensed his curiosity about Dougall and knew she had to distract him.

Or maybe that was just her excuse for what she did next.

She did the only thing she could think of when he surrounded her like this. When her body hummed with sensation. When she looked up at his mouth and her body flooded with desire.

She kissed him. Not a chaste touch of the lips, but a full meeting of mouth and body. The rope holding them apart snapped and all the passion building between them over the past weeks exploded into fierce, drowning need.

They tore at one another, trying to get closer, trying to douse the flames that threatened to incinerate them both.

His heat enveloped her. His maleness. The seductive power of his rock-hard body. There was something primitively satisfying about a big, strong man taking you in his arms.

It felt too good. Too right. She wanted to cry out with the perfection of it. This was what she'd been missing, this was what had haunted her for all those years.

His mouth moved over hers, hungrily, passionately. Every touch a brand.

He groaned, opening her lips with his, devouring her with his mouth, with bold thrusts of his tongue, with his hand as he cupped her bottom and brought her against him. His erection rose hard between them, the thick steel column nudged erotically between her legs.

She felt his size. His power.

She quivered—softened—and felt the hot pulse between her legs. Her hips circled, rubbing against him as she tried to ease the restlessness, the anxiousness, the urgency.

All she could think about was him inside her. Filling her. Making her his. Again.

Duncan was out of control. The hunger raged inside him, wild and ravenous. The taste of her passion was like ambrosia to a starving man.

He couldn't get enough. He kissed her harder. Deeper. Drinking her in with his mouth and tongue. With every breath.

He'd forgotten how good she felt in his arms. How soft and feminine. How she smelled like some kind of exotic flower. The silky soft waves of her hair tumbled down her back over his hands. He remembered how it had felt spilled out over his chest and he groaned, sliding his tongue in her mouth with long, insistent strokes.

Her kiss had taken him by surprise, but the flare of passion that burst between them did not. For ten long years this primitive part of him had been repressed, but one taste of her and the chains of civility snapped like a silken thread.