Page 167 of Bride of Fire
“But I’ll tell you this,” she said, stabbing her arms into the sleeves and wrenching it down over her hips. “None of them will ever care for Miles the way I do.” She snatched her surcoat from the foot of the bed and snagged her hose from atop his discarded leine. “None of them will train your archers with such dedication.” One boot she found beside the hearth. She had no idea where the other one had gone. She could hardly see for the tears of anger blurring her eyes. “And none of them will love you as much as…” To her horror, her voice broke.
“Aye?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she muttered, scouring the chamber for her missing boot. “You obviously don’t care for me.”
“What?” He burst from the bed in an explosion of linen. “Why do ye think I’ve been swivin’ ye for the past sennight?”
“Sheep swive all the time. I don’t thinktheycare all that much for each other.”
“Sheep.Sheep?”He looked at her in disbelief. “Bloody hell, lass! I told ye I loved ye that day we fought the English.”
She shook her head in dismissal. “’Twas in the heat of battle. You wanted me to go to the great hall. You would have said anything to get me to do your bidding.”
“If I’d only wanted ye to do my biddin’, I’d have dragged ye to the hall myself.”
“Fine. Maybe youdidlove me,” she said. “But now you’ve apparently changed your mind.”
He blinked, incredulous that she should say such a thing. “What?”
“You said you didn’t want to be my… What did you call it? My paramour.”
“That’s true. I don’t.”
She gave him a smoldering glare. He’d stabbed her in the heart already. He didn’t have to twist the damned knife.
“Then we understand one another,” she bit out.
“Nay,” he growled. “I don’t think we do.”
He tore the linens from the bed, knotting them around his waist.
Then he slowly advanced on her, all scowling brow and clenched fists.
“What about ye?” he demanded. “Is that all ye want?”
He took a threatening step forward.
She dropped her clothing and took a judicious step backward.
“A Highland warrior at your beck and call?” he snarled.
He ambled toward her, menacing her with his words as much as his size.
She retreated, staying carefully out of range.
“A man to warm your bed on cold winter nights?” he sneered.
His last step trapped her against the wall.
“Someone ye can command to come hither,” he breathed in a husky whisper, “when ye’ve got an itch that needs scratchin’?”
She gasped at his crude words, which both angered and aroused her. Then she shoved at his chest.
The massive brute barely budged.
He caught her wrists in a steely grip, pinning her against the wall.
“Do ye know,” he bit out, holding her as much with his demanding gaze as with his powerful body, “ye’ve not once said ye lovedme?”
