Page 33 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
CHAPTER 11
Ciaran carriedher into her chambers, his arms steady around her. Ava, on the other hand, was still trying to come back to herself.
The world behind the door almost seemed foreign. She could hear the noise and the sound of boots moving fast through passageways. She could even hear the distant voices, but it all felt immensely distant.
Inside the room, the air felt completely different.
Ciaran set her carefully on the edge of the bed. Only then did she fully feel the heat still trapped in her body, the tremors that had not yet worked themselves out of her hands, and the sick, slow echo of terror that kept returning in waves.
And worse, there was something else.
Him.
She could smell the blood and sweat on his skin. She could also feel how steadily he moved despite the wound in his shoulder.
The fact that it was Ciaran standing before her, not Isobel, or a maid, or some older woman clucking kindly over her nerves, made the entire thing even more absurd.
“Are ye all right?”
She could not speak because of the overwhelming despair still draped around her. All she could do was nod.
His gaze dropped to the dark stain on the front of her gown. “How about we get ye out of this dress?”
The words struck her so hard that her breath caught.
Speak! Speak, Ava!
A wave of heat rushed straight into her face.
It wasabsurd.
Her gown was ruined. She knew that. His blood was on it, and she knew that too, but something about the room had become too intimate, too charged by what had happened outside and by the memory of his arms around her, for the suggestion to sound simple.
It suddenly felt impossible to look at him.
He noticed.Of course,he noticed.
Something sharpened in his expression for one dangerous moment, something that made her think he had felt the same charge in the air. Then he cleared his throat and looked at her more clearly. “We need to burn it. Ye cannae keep a bloodstained dress in yer wardrobe forever.”
That only made her blush deepen.
He turned away from her before she could embarrass herself further and crossed to the press where her clothes had been laid out. He chose another gown and raised it to the firelight, examining it closely as if for something that would prove it was the right choice.That would relieve her of all the emotions that kept building inside her with each passing second.
“A maid could help me,” Ava suddenly said, her voice sharp.
Ye gain yer voice back, and that is the first thing ye say? Get a hold of yerself, Ava!
“Or Isobel.”
He looked back over his shoulder at her. “Yer wedding gown was ruined because of me.” The words landed more deeply than she had expected. “So I will see to it.”
He came back to her with the clean gown over one arm, and what followed ought to have been no more than a necessity.
He moved slowly and carefully, never once rushing her, though his shoulder had to be a great inconvenience. Although his hands were steady the whole time, she could tell from the way he winced sometimes that this couldn’t be easy for him as well.
His hands were steady on the fastenings, gentler than she had imagined they could be. Some vague, foolish part of her had thought that a man like Ciaran would be rough by instinct, too strong to know how not to jar delicate things. Instead, he handled the bloodied fabric as though it might injure her further if he were not mindful enough.
I daenae ken anything about this man at all, do I?
