The Raider (Highland Guard #8)(22)

If she’d ever doubted the stories she’d heard of Robbie Boyd, one look told her they were all true. He appeared every inch the ruthless enforcer. Every inch one of the most feared men in England. Every inch the black-hearted devil who’d laid scourge across the Borders.

He’d changed. She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but he looked even more imposing. The distinctive height and muscular build was the same, but six years of war had honed it to a razor-sharp edge, erasing any vestiges of youth. There was a hardness, a solidness, an imperviousness to him that hadn’t been there before. He looked like a man who did nothing but fight.

His features were the same, though she would no longer call him handsome. It was far too gentle and civilized a word. And there was nothing gentle or civilized about the terrifying-looking barbarian staring down at her. From the bone-chilling ice-blue gaze to the line of dark stubble that shadowed his blunt jaw, he exuded wild and untamed menace. Fiercely good-looking—perhaps that was more apropos.

He was older than she’d initially thought—probably close to Cliff’s two and thirty—and he wore the years of battle in every line and scar on his face. And in the fierceness of his expression. It was as if every bit of good humor had been leached out of him.

Her eyes slid to the mouth that was hovering only inches above hers. It seemed impossible to believe that the wide, sensual lips that had so briefly touched hers in her first kiss could have become fixed in such a cold, hard line.

But she did remember, and in spite of the circumstances, a flush of awareness ran through her. A flush that turned to a full-fledged shudder as she became aware of the intimacy of their embrace, especially the part of him that was wedged between her legs.

Over the years of battle, Robbie had been hit on the head a few times by a war hammer. The stunned, discombobulated, slightly dazed feeling was about the same as when he first saw the face of the woman beneath him.

“Beautiful” seemed too pedestrian a word for the masterful perfection of her delicate features. Big, dark-green eyes framed by long, feathery lashes, porcelain-white skin as flawless and powdery as freshly fallen snow, high cheekbones tinged a delicate shade of pink, a slight, straight nose, a softly pointed chin, and a mouth so cherry-red and sweet it took everything he had not to taste it.

Long, wavy tresses of softly spun silk were splayed out in a golden halo behind her head. He’d never made a poetical allusion in his life, but this woman could inspire even the most prosaic of men to think of angels and goddesses descending from the heavens.

When their eyes met, he actually startled. The force of the connection had all the subtlety of a lightning rod prodding at the base of his spine.

There was something about the way she was looking at him that made him feel as if she knew him. But hers was a face he would have remembered, even in the crowds of women who thronged around him at the Highland Games.

Then she spoke, and he was reminded why he didn’t know her: she was English.

His head cleared just enough to make him aware of other things. Such as the warm softness of the body underneath him, the fullness of the br**sts crushed against his chest, and most significantly, the opportune placement of his c**k nestled in that sweet little juncture between her legs.

Ah hell. Now that he was thinking about it, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. How good it felt. How good she felt under him. How it had been over a week since he’d had a woman.

The wave of desire that hit him was so hot, so powerful, so intense that it took him aback. It rushed up between his legs, lengthening a part of him that was far too big to hide.

Apparently, his previous reaction to the lass hadn’t been an aberration.

Damn, Fraser was right. This lass made him reconsider some of his preconceived notions about being attracted to an Englishwoman. He stood corrected. He stood very hard and very thickly corrected.

She made a sound—a gasp of shock that reminded him of the less-than-appropriate circumstances for him to be stiffening like a lad with his first maid. He didn’t want to terrify the chit. And the sudden paling of her skin and widening of her eyes told him that she was terrified. But he could have sworn he’d also glimpsed a flicker of awareness on her part that mirrored his own.

Before he could disentangle himself and assure her that she wasn’t in any danger—especially that kind of danger from him—he felt a hard poke in his back that skidded off to the side.

“Get off my aunt, you cursed barbarian!” Bloody hell, he realized, his head clearing. That wasn’t a poke, it was the stab of a blade! Robbie barely managed to twist his body out of the way before the boy could strike again. “I’ll kill you if you touch her.”

Robbie sprang to his feet just as Malcolm was pulling the lad off. “Sorry,” the young warrior said. “He got to you before I could stop him.”

Robbie wasn’t about to chastise Malcolm for his own mistake. A mistake that could have cost him his life. It was a good thing Robbie had been wearing his thick, leather cotun and the lad wasn’t more adept with a dagger. Christ, the strongest man in Scotland could have been killed by a squire! If Hawk heard about this, Robbie would never hear the end of it.

But he’d been so struck by the lass, an army could have come galloping up behind him and he wouldn’t have heard it. Glimpsing Seton and his men only a few feet away, he realized they practically had. The lass—

All at once the truth struck him cold. Aunt.