The Raider (Highland Guard #8)(46)

She froze as the sound seemed to reverberate through the quiet night like a church bell. Maybe he wouldn’t hear…

Movement and the sound of the door rattling told her otherwise. Thank God she’d thought to latch it.

“Rosalin. Open the door.”

She looked outside and her heart lurched, almost as if it were trying to tell her to jump. To go after her nephew and do whatever she could to escape.

But she had to give Roger a chance. Quickly untying the rope, she let it drop and drew the shutters closed. Her hands were still on the latch when the door banged open.

Restless and on edge, Robbie hadn’t bothered to try to sleep. Instead he sat with his back propped against the door and attempted to concentrate on Kirkton’s fiery whisky rather than the woman firing his blood.

It wasn’t working. He was so attuned to her in the chamber behind him, his pulse jumped every time he heard a noise.

But this noise was different. It wasn’t footsteps or whispered voices or the sound of the bed creaking as she rolled around; it was a loud slam that was out of place in the middle of the night. So when she didn’t respond right away, he didn’t hesitate to snap the paltry latch with a hard slam of his shoulder against the door and burst inside.

A blast of cold air hit him. The window had been open. A fact seemingly confirmed by her current position, kneeling on the bed with her hands on the shutters. She turned to him with a startled gasp. He thought he detected a flash of panic in her eyes, but it might have been just surprise. “What are you doing in here?”

He closed the door behind him and strode toward her. “I might ask you the same thing.”

He was close enough to see the flush heat her skin and the pulse in her neck begin to quicken. She was nervous. But whether it was his presence in her chamber, the fact that he stood close enough to smell the mint of the rub she’d used to clean her teeth, or something else, he didn’t know. “Why were the shutters open?”

He was watching her closely, closely enough to see the flutter of that quickened pulse before she replied. “The room was warm, so I cracked one of the shutters. It must have blown open while I slept. I’m sorry to have woken you, but as you can see, there is no cause for your concern.”

A quick sweeping glance of the room seemed to confirm her words. The iron brazier was stocked with peat and burning in the far corner of the room, the small table set out with the items he’d asked Kirkton to procure for her next to it, candle on the nightstand, bed against the window…

Everything was where it should be.

But something wasn’t right. He reached for the latch of the shutters behind her. She hitched her breath as his hand crossed right in front of her, grazing her chest. He jerked at the contact, every nerve ending snapping to attention, but didn’t look at her.

Leaning over, he peered outside. It was a mistake. Her soft feminine scent, which to that point had been faint and gently teasing, turned deep and penetrating, engulfing his senses and making him feel as if he were drowning.

How anyone could smell that good after two days in a saddle and being trapped in a burning building, he didn’t know. It must be some secret women’s magic to drive men insane.

His body was pulled as tight as one of MacGregor’s bowstrings as he quickly scanned the darkness. Though he didn’t see anything, his instincts were telling him that something was wrong, and they’d saved him too many times for him to ignore them.

The boy. “Where’s Roger?”

Though it was dark, he could see her eyes flicker before darting to the adjoining garret. “Sleeping.”

He started to move toward the door, but she stopped him with the soft press of her hand on his arm.

Jesus! His blood hammered. She was too close. Touching him.

“Please, don’t wake him. He’s so tired and needs to rest.”

Their eyes met. Something passed between them. Something that stopped his breath, stopped his heart, and made the floor shift under his feet.

He was hot, hard, and poised on the edge of a precipice, struggling to hold on. Struggling not to touch her. But this might be a battle he could not win.

His heart pounded, restraint making his muscles flex. The weight of inevitability came crushing down on top of him, a weight too heavy for even him to hold off. He wanted her so intensely he could taste her on his tongue.

Her eyes fell to his mouth. Her lips parted. She leaned closer.

The subtle invitation was too much to resist; the battle was lost. His mouth fell on hers with a deep groan. For a moment it was just like the first time he’d kissed her. He felt the same unexpected ripple of shock at how good she tasted. How soft her lips were. How the innocent tremble of her mouth under his made him ache to be the one to teach her about passion.

But then it changed, because this time he didn’t pull back. This time he didn’t fight the urge to deepen the kiss. This time he slid his arm around her waist, dragged her up against him, and let himself sink into the honey softness of her mouth to taste her fully. This time he caught the tremble of her lips with his and showed her how to open for him, how to take his tongue in her mouth and let him stroke her.

Aye, he stroked her. With long, slow pulls of his tongue until she stroked him back. The first flick of her tongue against his made him groan. His knees almost buckled.

It was incredible.

Bone melting.

Blood heating.