Page 29 of Bound to Her Highland Lord
“Nae before taking a piece of me.”
Her slight brows furrowed, creating a sweet kind of line between her eyes. One that he would have savored if not for the heaviness of the topic. Emotions warred within with a ferocity that he could not quell. Standing in such close proximity, watching her eyes shift and change as he hurled his story at her unnerved him. He did the only thing he could think to give himself room to breathe.
Taking half a step away from Sorcha, Oliver turned and shed his coat. He flung it across the stable door, ignoring the dirt that was sure to stain the dark navy of the fabric. Moving before he could doubt himself, before she could anticipate what he would do next, Oliver reached for the hem of his shirt and yanked the linen off his back. Her gasp told him that even in the shadows of the lantern lit stables, his scars were still visible.
It was a mercy, he thought, that he could not see her face. He didn’t want to see the way her eyes were sure to drift along his back, from the top of his shoulder to where the wound had wrapped around his hip. Despite his mother’s best efforts, the slash had been jagged, made worse by the frantic race home he had made with his back split nearly in half. It was not a neat scar, not the kind that made young maidens swoon in open admiration of some perceived heroism. This was the kind of scar that made you question how a person could be so hated, how humanity could be so cruel to its own kind.
With his shirt balled in his fists, he counted his heartbeats, willing the traitorous organ to steady itself. He had nearly accomplished the feat when her frigid fingertips grazed the now healed skin of his back, sending a chill down his neck. Her touch cooled something in him. She moved gently, as if she was nervous the scar still ached.
The only thing to thwart her path down his back were the stark white bandages his mother had wrapped him in only a few hours before. When she reached the lowest part of the wound,where the pink tinged flesh wrapped around his hip, mirroring the way the Fraser guard had pulled his sword through Oliver, he sucked in a breath and stepped away.
Neither of them said anything for a long moment. He supposed he had stunned her into silence. Curiosity had him turning back to face her, angrily shoving his arms back into the sleeves of his shirt. It wasn’t until he had tugged the fabric back into place that he spoke.
“I have lived torn in half since that day,” he confessed. “I am forced to balance my responsibilities as an English gentleman without forgetting my Scottish heritage. All the while, neither lineage will have me. It is all I can do to ensure that my tenants, the only people in the world who have any modicum of loyalty to me, survive winter after cold winter. They depend on me, ye ken. They trust that my efforts will help see them through. And I must do so with nay allies, nay one to turn to should I need a hand.”
He stepped towards her again, closing the distance between them.
“So, I do hope you will forgive me if in a moment of weakness, I quite forgot myself. I am wholly unaccustomed to seeing a woman beaten for sport, and could not stand to think of what a man like the Baron would do to you. Perhaps that makes me a coward,” he murmured, putting a hand on the wall above her head, effectively trapping her beneath him. “But my conscience would allow me no other choice.”
Sorcha couldn’t rememberthe last time a man had been able to steal her breath and muddy her thoughts so effectively. Quite simply, she was stunned.
His impressive figure, muscles taut and honed from a lifetime of work on his lands, would have been enough to sway any girl. That was nothing to say of his arresting golden eyes or the way his long light brown curled locks kept falling into them, a line of darkness over his sunkissed skin. She had been entirely unable to take her eyes off him. And when he had pulled away from her only to show him the most vulnerable parts of himself, she couldn’t help but touch his scars.
She supposed his tale was told in an effort to frighten her away, to make her second guess baiting him. Any man who had survived the wounds he had, with no help to boot, was a formidable opponent. It was clear he had loathed her pity, and so she had resigned not to give it. But she couldn’t stop the seed of empathy from blooming in her chest. She knew well what it meant to be entirely alone in the world. Just as she knew what it felt like to be the only person in the room governed by a different moral compass.
They breathed as one while she sorted through her thoughts. His confession made her second guess everything she had assumed about the Marquess. She had bristled at his accusations of ignorance and naivety, but he had been right. One look at him, and she had been utterly convinced he was a different kind of man altogether. She had no idea what to do with the version he had just revealed himself to be.
“It is in my nature to protect those who have no one else to do so,” he told her, voice low and rough. “I have done so from the moment I inherited my father’s title, and I will continue to do so until the title is passed onto the next in line.”
There was something in knowing that he had counted her amongst those in need of his aid that moved her. From any other man, it would have irritated her. She was a skilled fighter, capable of besting any man, after all. But she knew Lord Blackwood’s protection came not from underestimatingher abilities, but rather a desire to protect her from feelings of isolation. It had been a long while since she had ever been counted amongst any group of people, save for Aila and Taryn. To find herself in ranks with the Marquess’ valued and most protected warmed something in her chest she had been unaware was cold.
Much like her thoughts, her eyes were unable to remain in a single place. They darted all over his face, searching for any sign of deceit or trickery. Finding none, as she knew she would, her gaze finally landed on his mouth, full and inviting. It was there she lingered and in a mere matter of seconds, the air between them fizzled with something much different than the tension that had been there before.
He must have sensed the change as well, cataloging where her eyes had been lodged. A thin trickle of sweat ran down her back, despite the chill in the air. She was consumed with anticipation, not unlike the feeling she got moments before a battle.
As he stepped closer still, his thighs brushing against hers, Sorcha consoled herself that any woman might have fallen prey to his trap. He had left his shirt devilishly undone, leaving his tanned and taut skin on proud display.
“Oliver,” he whispered, his breath on her lips.
“What?”
Her hands went to his chest; whether to pull him in or push him away, she couldn’t tell. Her thoughts were too jumbled a mess to decide.
“Ye must call me Oliver.”
Even through the haze he had so cleverly constructed, Sorcha could still see the offer for what it was—a truce, an offering of friendship and perhaps something more.
“All right,” she breathed. “Oliver.”
His name felt right on her lips, just as she was sure his mouth would too. Had it not been for the warmth that spread across her fingertips. It was sticky and wet and so utterly out of place that Sorcha jerked back with a start.
Oliver’s laden eyes popped open at the sudden distance she had put between them.
“Forgive me,” he gritted out, his voice gravely and harsh. “I seem to have forgotten myself.”
He moved to pull away from her entirely, no doubt to turn on his heels and stalk out of the stables, leaving her in his wake. But Sorcha wasn’t going to let him.
“Nay,” she said, clearing her own thick throat. “It is nae that.”
