Unwilling (Highland Historical #2)

opening of the crevice.
 Soon the spark flared and threw her shadow against the stone wall.  She hadn’t
heard him strike tinder, and yet the brightness grew as peat and kindling
caught flame.  The light bloomed brighter as he added larger, dry logs.    
    She tracked his flickering shadow
as he approached her.  How did a man so large move so silently?  His nearness
made her uneasy, and she shifted within the cloak, painfully aware that she was
naked beneath it.  Adjusting the hem to cover her more fully, she heard his
sharp intake of breath. 
    “Why do I smell blood?" he
demanded in his cavernous brogue.
    “I know not,” she replied tartly,
her heart thudding in her chest.  “Maybe it’s all the blood you’ve spilled coming
back to haunt you.”
    He lifted her bodily from where she
sat on the ground and parted the folds of the cloak to examine her wrists. 
    “Good God, lass,” his voice was a
tortured whisper.  The pupils of his eyes rippled and then began to grow,
overtaking the iris and spreading into the white.  “What have ye done?”
     

Chapter
Seven
     
    Lindsay watched, stupefied, as man
was replaced by creature.  His muscles swelled and pulsed with blood.  Granite
black, humiliatingly familiar to her, encompassed his eyes.  Lips pulled back
from teeth that seemed to sharpen.  She hadn’t noticed that about him before. 
    He’d traded his black tunic and
trews for a clean linen shirt and a deep blue and red tartan.  The MacLauchlan colors. 
Somehow, the black had suited him, and had reinforced her idea of him as a
demon.  Now, dressed like a proper highlander, he seemed more terrifying
somehow.  More dangerous.  Because she knew he was really a man, a MacLauchlan
highlander whose soul melded with a monster or was possessed by a demon. 
Despite his claims to the contrary.
    He didn’t drop her wrists, but held
them up as though to show them to her, his features sad and accusatory.  An
animalistic sound of distress emitted from deep in his chest. 
    “You’re the one who tied me up,”
she defended her actions.  “You’re a fool if you thought I would stand for it. 
I’d be a worthless ninny if I didn’t at least try to escape capture.”
    In this form, at least, he had the
decency to look ashamed.  He rent the ropes and tossed her bindings into the
fire, then turned to examine her wounds. 
    Lindsay could only stare at him. 
What had he just done?  Those ropes had been two fingers thick, at least, and
he broke them in a different place than where she’d been fraying them with her
stone.
    Without a word, he swept her into
his arms and carried her to the pallet of furs he’d lain out after setting the
fire.  Instead of placing her upon it, he sat cRoss-legged and nestled her onto
his lap.  He reached for a skein of water from his belongings close by and took
one of her wrists from where she held them in the cloak.
    Lindsay sat in wide-eyed passivity
as he drew her wrists out over the packed earth and rinsed the blood from them
with the clean, cold water from his skein.  She winced, but the chill of the
water seemed to dull some of the raw sting.  This behavior was absolutely
incongruous with what had transpired between them before.  Yet this was the lethal
warrior who’d slaughtered twenty men on his own.  Here sat the sensual incubus
who’d seduced her beyond her wits.  Though now he treated her with careful
tenderness and gentility. 
    She watched the firelight play off
his brutal, enthralling face.  His brows drew down with concern as he
finished.  Some of the cuts still oozed, so he ripped strips of clean linen
from his own shirt.
    “I cannot marry you, you know,” she
tried to tell him, keeping her mind off the pain.  Perhaps the Demon was more
reasonable than the man.  “I’m betrothed to another.  And even if you do kill Angus,
my uncle would never allow our union.”
    He placed a soft kiss to her
forehead and nuzzled her hair with his nose as though she were an adorable
child, then proceeded to dress her wrists with the torn pieces of his shirt.
    Lindsay could have laughed,
really.  Never in her life would she imagine this absurd situation.  All but
naked in the lap of a lethal reaper who tended her with gentle fingers, explaining
why she couldn’t become his demon bride.  In spite of herself, a wry smirk played
with the side of her mouth. 
    Once finished, he lifted her wrists
and pressed the lightest of kisses to each one, as