Page 5 of The Highlander's Accidental Wife
“It was well done.”
His eye narrowed, and then his lip curled. “Bloody English cheek, I tell ye.” He took her hand and went to shake it, then drew it to his lips, even as she tried to yank it away. “Ye think I didnae catch what ye really meant?” He pressed a lingering kiss to her knuckles, and she felt herself reddening further. “And what, I can kiss yer lips but nae yer hand?”
“That’s not it at all,” Helena protested. “I-I simply must go.”
She glanced back, and her shoulders sagged with relief at no longer seeing her father’s men standing there. Her ploy had worked.
Teeth nipped her knuckles, and she rounded on the man, again trying to pull away, but he yanked her close.
“Unhand me.”
He bared his teeth at her even as he gently linked their fingers. “Bossy thing.”
“Strange,” said a voice that sounded like hers, only it was far more breathless and archer than she’d ever heard in her life. “I rather thought you enjoyed it.”
She expected him to glare at her, not grin. “Aye, a bit of push and pull with a woman does stir me blood, and I dinnae care for a shrinking violet, but ye are askin’ for trouble.” His eye narrowed. “Or a firm hand.”
To her shock, he caught her other hand and pressed a kiss to her bare palm, sending a shockwave of sensations through her.
“Tell me why should I let ye go.”
“I am promised to another,” she blurted out.
To her surprise, the man’s face twisted into a snarl, darkness filling every line of his face.
She should feel fear, not a thrill. Yet, for a moment, it seemed he would carry her off past the sunset, and she knew she would not protest.
I have no plans to marry him,she almost said.I am running. He has no use for a bluestocking, I promise. No desire to marry Lady Highbrow—no one does, according to my father.
But then the man let her go and stepped back. “I see. Well, ye’re free to go now.” He looked away. “Nay one will stop ye.”
“Oh,” Helena said. She pressed her shaking, tingling hands together and tried not to notice how her legs were doing the same. “But…”
“Nay one will,” he said in a hard voice. “Ye’re safe. Go.”
He looked at her again, and from the way his jaw clenched, Helena read the clear meaning in his expression—before I change my mind.
For a moment, the daft and delirious side of her that had awoken with that kiss almost stepped forward, almost asked him to ask her to… what? Stay? Run away with this man she’d just met? For a kiss?
For a kiss that could set the whole world on fire, that could stir up the seas and shake the stars from the firmament…
“Thank you,” Helena said as she stepped back, pulling up her hood.
The man softly snorted, shaking his head as he glared at the sky.
“Truly, Sir. ‘Twas a grand first kiss.”
Helena was treated to a brief, startled look, his blue eye wide and heated, his posture suddenly curving toward her. But then she’d whirled around and was off running into the night.
I truly think I almost traded my entire future for that stolen kiss.
CHAPTER 3
First kiss?
Damien touched his lips with the same hand that had just been holding that lass’s elegant, lovely hand, shapely with long and clever fingers. Christ, but it had been hard to keep from imagining what those hands might do as they trailed down his chest, then lower?—
He interrupted those thoughts. Bad enough that he’d apparently just sullied an untouched virgin. Never mind having such thoughts about a woman promised to another.
