Page 51 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

The sound of her laugh was already in his chest, sitting there.

Ach, that sound…

“What?” Alba asked.

He could feel her eyes on the side of his face at close range, in a stable that smelled of horses, wet wool, and the specific warmth of an enclosed space that was getting smaller by the second.

“Nothin’,” he said, keeping his eyes glued to the mare.

She came to stand directly beside him at the stall gate, not behind him, not at a careful, polite distance, but right beside him. He registered the radiating heat of her body before she even touched the wood, a maddening awareness that arrived slightly ahead of the physical reality of her proximity.

Her hand remained at Siobhan’s jaw; his stayed flat against the mare’s neck. In the swinging lantern light, the space between them had shrunk.

The heat moved through him immediately, traveling down his arm, across his chest, and settling firm somewhere low in his body.

He did not step away. He had stopped pretending he was going to step away sometime around the third day, if he was being entirely honest with himself; a habit he was finding increasingly unavoidable around her.

Siobhan’s ear flicked. Her weight shifted slightly beneath his palm, a small, restless movement that was the only warning either of them got.

The thunder arrived like a solid wall.

It struck the stable roof with a sickening violence. A single, massive crack was followed by the rolling roar of a storm that had decided, in one intense second, to make its full intentions clear. Every horse in the row reacted instantly. The stable erupted into stamping hooves, thrown heads, and high, urgent whinnies.

Siobhan went sideways.

It was not a small movement. It was a full, violent lurch to the left, her powerful shoulder driving hard into the stall gate until the heavy timber shuddered under the force of it. The gate caught Alba square in the back and pitched her forward, her balance gone. One sharp sound of surprise left her lips before she crossed the remaining distance between them.

Sebastian’s arms came up before his mind had finished calculating her trajectory.

She hit his chest, and he caught her. Both of his arms locked tightly around her, one bracing her back and the other trapping her waist, pulling her fully against him in a single motion to absorb her forward momentum. He planted his boots wide on the straw-covered floor to take her weight.

He did not stagger an inch.

She was breathing hard. He could feel it immediately. The rapid, shallow rhythm of her breath against his chest, her ribs expanding against his forearm in short, startled pulls. Her hands had come up flat against the thick wool of his shirt when she hit him, and they had not moved since.

Neither had he.

She fit against him the same way she had on the muddy road. Every line of her matched the line of him as if the geometry of their physical form had been worked out without their consultation or consent.

He felt the curve of her waist beneath his palm, the intense warmth of her skin through the fabric, and the slight tension in her body; not quite sure whether it was pulling away or settling in his grip.

He looked at her.

Her face was tilted up, dangerously close. The swinging lantern light flickered across her high cheekbones, her jaw, and the single dark curl that had fallen loose against her temple. Her eyes were fixed on his face, wide and dark, completely stripped of the armor she usually kept on for him. The careful composure and strategic calm were gone. What remained underneath looked straight back at him without any barrier between them.

Her pulse was visibly vibrating in the hollow of her throat. It was quick, telling him everything her expression was desperately trying to hide.

Outside, the rain drove relentlessly against the stable walls. In here, the lantern swung, the horses shifted, the straw muffled the ambient noise, and the foot of space he had been carefully managing since she walked through the door ceased to exist.

His hand remained firm against her waist, refusing to loosen.

“Ye should stop fallin’ into me,” he said. His voice came out low, rougher than intended, the words carrying far more weight than he had meant to put into them.

Her breath caught. He felt the small, involuntary hitch against his ribs, her fingers pressing fractionally harder into his shirt.

“Ye should stop catchin’ me,” she whispered.

The response was barely above the roar of the roof, her eyes dark, direct, and entirely at odds with the steadiness she was trying to maintain in her voice.