Page 35 of The Highlander's Auctioned Virgin
He had gone out to hunt deer for her. He had cooked it and had waited for her to eat her fill before he started to eat. That should count as caring, should it not? Yet it pressed down on her, like a rock sinking in water.
He was a killer. No, he wasn’t just a killer; he wasthekiller. The kind that struck fear in the hearts of men and women alike at the mere mention of his name.
He shouldnotbe caring. He should not have such a quality.
“Ye didnae touch me last night.”
Ciaran shrugged. “Ye said nae to.”
“And ye really didnae.”
“I am a killer, nae a monster.”
Elinor narrowed her eyes at him.
“Ye ken what I mean,” Ciaran said, waving her off.
She smiled in response and continued to eat.
A silence filled with unasked questions fell over the room. The sun was not fully out, but the morning light had spilled across the woods, and from what she could see, the sun would follow in a few minutes.
The thick silence pressed down on them. They had managed to discuss every other matter under the sun except the most pressing one. The one Elinor wished she could wipe from her memory.
She could still feel the ghost of his lips on hers, and she hated how it warmed her. How weak must she have been to let that happen the previous night.
“Elinor,” Ciaran started.
Oh, dear Lord.
“Ye ken we have to talk about what happened last night, right?”
She swallowed the meat in her mouth. “But who says we do? We daenae have to talk about it. It was merely a moment of weakness. The storm, the cold, the argument. Ye daenae need to attach anything more to it.”
Ciaran pushed off the wall. “I am afraid we will have to attach something more to it.”
Elinor’s appetite slowly disappeared. It looked like Ciaran would have a lot to eat, after all.
She couldn’t even close her eyes for long because that was all she saw when she did—his hands roaming over her body, his lips moving against hers.
It felt like the devil was taunting her with the biggest mistake of her life, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Ciaran, on the other hand, brushed invisible lint off the waistband of his trousers and looked back up at her. “I am afraid we need to talk about it.”
Elinor sighed.
“Ye ken we have to. Especially now that we plan to become husband and wife.”
She froze. Had she heard that right?
“Husband and what?”
“Is it nae obvious?” Ciaran continued. “Ye have to marry me.”
“Who said I have to?”
He narrowed his eyes at her, almost like he was choosing to believe that the whole thing was a joke. “Ye.”
“Me?”
