Page 87 of Bride of Mist
How dared he try to buy her forgiveness?
How dared he put a price on her virginity?
Like healing fire, rage suddenly swept in to sear and seal her wounds.
She wouldn’t let him get away with that.
This matter of Kirkoswald was as much her concern as his, curse him. The Rivenloch clan had married into the mac Girics, after all.
She’d be damned if she’d be shoved away and left behind.
If Dougal mac Darragh thought paying her off would somehow alleviate his guilt, drive her back home, and purge her from his mind, he was dead wrong.
She rushed down the stairs. Before flying out the door, she grabbed three oatcakes from the platter the innkeeper’s wife offered.
The woman clucked her tongue and gave her a conspiratorial wink. “Ye just missed him.”
“I’ll catch up to him,” Feiyan bit out, “and when I do, I’ll pummel him so fiercely, his ears will ring for a sennight.”
The woman gasped. “The king?”
“What?”
“I mean…” The woman seemed flustered. “Nothin’. Ye didn’t hear it from me. Just…take care with the pummelin’.”
Feiyan’s puzzled glance sent the woman scurrying back to her cauldron of frumenty.
Armed with all her weapons again, when she strode down the path, Feiyan began to feel like her old self. Strong. Confident. Capable.
She picked up Dougal’s crack-heeled trail easily. But either the innkeeper’s wife was mistaken about his recent departure, or he was tearing along the path, because she followed his tracks for half the day before she spotted him.
He’d stopped to sit on a moss-covered rock. Chewing on a hunk of cheat bread, he didn’t hear her as she stole slowly through the elm branches above him.
She’d planned this encounter for hours now. Practiced what she would say. Imagined what she would do.
First, she meant to disparage him with vile curses. Call him ignoble. Dishonorable. Disgusting. The spawn of Satan. Lucifer’s bastard. A minion of the Devil.
If he flinched from her onslaught, she’d spit on him and name him a coward.
If he fought back, she’d teach him a lesson. Clout him. Plow her fist into his noble nose. Split his lip. Blacken his eye. Leave him moaning in the dust.
That was what she’d planned. It seemed just, considering he’d betrayed and deserted her.
But now that she saw him, she knew she couldn’t carry it out.
He looked so despondent. So dispirited.
She glanced at the hands holding the chunk of bread and remembered how his fingertips felt on her skin.
When a lock of ebony hair fell over his brow, she recalled how thick and silky it felt to her touch.
When he opened his mouth for a bite, she was reminded of the way his lips tasted. Warm. Sweet. Demanding.
And the sight of his legs—stretched out, knees wide—did strange things to her insides as she remembered how his thighs had hugged her hips, holding her in delicious confinement as he spilled his seed into her.
Her heart softened. Her resolve faltered.
Still, she wasn’t about to forgive and forget. He owed her an explanation.
