Page 87 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander
“I hadnae thanked ye yet.”
“I am efficient. I like to be ahead of things. Welcome to our chambers, me Lady.”
“I seem to recall a certain Highland brute complaining bitterly when his chambers were emptied for this.” She arched a brow at him, though the corner of her mouth was already fighting a smile. “Somethin’ about a perfectly good bed being replaced with blankets on the floor like a pair of vagabonds.”
“Aye.” His mouth curved slowly, unhurried, watching the firelight catch along the side of her face. “Strange how quickly a man learns to adapt, given the proper motivation.”
“And what motivation was that?”
“Ye. Every time, apparently.”
Alba laughed softly under her breath, gentle and warm, and reached up to work on the laces along her shoulder. Her fingers were numb and a little clumsy from the whisky she had drunk and the day she had had. Sebastian caught her wrist gently before she could do it and finished the task himself, slowly and deliberately, watching her face rather than his own hands.
The gown slipped from her shoulders and pooled at her feet. Her cheeks flushed at his touch, at the way his gaze moved over her without hurry, like a man who finally had all the time in the world and intended to use every last minute of it.
“And yet somehow ye ended up with me in it anyway,” she said, voice gone quieter now, the teasing edge softening into something more honest.
Sebastian laughed once, low, and closed the last of the distance between them, catching her properly against him, one hand sliding along the curve of her waist, the other tangling into her loosened hair.
“Aye,” he murmured against her mouth. “Looks like I finally won.”
“Ye didnae win anythin’, MacGregor.Ichoseye.”
“I will take that as winnin’.”
“Ye should.”
He kissed her then; slowly at first, his kiss reminiscing nothing like the desperate, bruising kiss he had given her in Kerr’s clearing, nor the fierce, triumphant one after the battle, nor even the one before the whole Clan an hour ago.
This one had nowhere to be and no one watching, and he let it show in the unhurried way he held her face between his hands. She met his pace, melting against him rather than burning him with her usual fire.
He pulled back just enough to look at her properly, his thumb brushing along her cheekbone, tracing the same path his handhad traced in Kerr’s clearing weeks earlier, though nothing about this moment carried any of that desperation now.
Her fingers found the fastenings of his own shirt, working them loose with far more patience than she had managed with her own laces. He shrugged out of it when she finally freed the last one, letting it drop somewhere near the hearth without either of them sparing it a second glance.
“Ye’re starin’,” she said against his mouth, though she made no move to stop him.
“Aye. I have earned the right, I’d say, after everythin’ it took me to get here.”
“Ye make it sound like a siege.”
“Felt like one; some days.” He walked her back a step, then another, until the backs of her knees found the pile of furs near the fire. She eased back, pulling him down with her, laughter catching in her throat as they went down together in a tangle of limbs and blankets and firelight.
He braced himself above her, one hand finding hers, threading their fingers together against the fur, and for a long moment neither of them moved, simply looking at each other in the low, golden light, the noise of the celebration below reduced to something distant and unimportant.
“Sebastian.”
“Aye.”
“Ye’re still starin’.”
“I intend to keep doin’ so.”
“For how long?”
“However long ye’ll let me.”
She reached up and pulled him down gently, no words needed between them, the fire burning low and steady while the rest of the castle celebrated without them. Fergus’s singing echoed up through the tower stone a moment later, off-key and completely unbothered by its lack of talent. A second voice, probably Hamish’s, joined in with even less skill, dragging the whole tune further away from anything resembling music.
