Page 3 of The Highlander Steals a Virgin
One of the men let out a surprised but chillingly gleeful laugh and then she heard their feet trampling through the heather after her. Amara raised her skirts and ran as if her very life depended on how fast she could run. And likely, it did.
She didn’t make it far before she was jerked to a halt, a large hand tangled in the back of her dress. She was pulled back into a pair of strong arms, her back pressed against a wide chest.
“Easy lass,” one of the men said as he wrapped his arms tighter around her.
“Unhand me, this instant!” she growled, and bucked her head backwards hopeful to connect with the man’s chin.
Then the red-haired O’Donnell man stepped in front of her, smiling in victory. Amara scowled. One of these men could be responsible for her mother’s death. She would not let them take her, too. Bending her head, she clamped her teeth down on the man’s arm around her chest hard enough for the metallic taste surge through her mouth.
“Ow!” he bellowed, instantly shoving her to the ground. “Devils from hell!”
The red-haired man spat his drink out on a shocked laugh. A wicked grin peeled across her own blood-marked mouth, and she had hoped to hit the bone, but didn’t stick around long enough to tell. Amara took off, and had sprinted half the distance to the trees by the time her captors collected themselves.
“Daenae just stand there like an idiot, Myles,” she heard the one who had been holding her bellow. “Catch the lass!”
Footsteps sounded behind her and Amara’s breath hitched in her throat.
Her mother’s voice sounded across her senses,“Run Amara! Yer life depends on it, child!”
The man was getting closer. Any second he would be on her.
She caught sight of a sturdy branch laying on the ground. She didn’t have time to think about the wisdom of what she was going to do.
“I’m sorry, Maither,” Amara whispered as she swooped down, picked up the branch that ended up being a little heavier than she’d expected, then turned to face her approaching attacker.
He hadn’t expected her to stop, and the action took him by surprise. His light green eyes widened even as his arms started windmilling to try and stop his momentum. Amara raised the branch and whacked him over the head the instant he was close enough.
Myles, as the other man had called him, spun halfway around from the force, then fell to the ground with a loud thud. Amada dropped the branch and took off running again, knowing the other man would catch up to her if she didn’t.
“Bonnet!” she called out. “Bonnet!” Amara whistled loudly with two of her fingers, as her father had once taught her how to do, but the golden mare was nowhere to be found.
She changed her direction wildly, aiming now for the further tree line, hoping to find a hiding spot in the forest. She’d only made it a few steps inside the thick trees when she was stopped again, this time by a different pair of hands. Amara opened her mouth to scream for all she was worth, but her captor chose that moment to step in front of her and the scream withered and died.
It was him. The man who haunted her dreams, drove her nightmares, and… to her dismay… starred in her fantasies.
Rhys Adams.
Her heart sped up and her knees startled to wobble. He was older, his features harder, but it was unmistakably the laird. And, she noticed, he was even more handsome than he’d been six years ago.
He didn’t say anything, just stared down at her with hard, deep brown eyes. His gaze dropped and landed on the blood that stained her mouth and chin, and an almost imperceptible grin lifted one side of his lips before his eyes met hers once more. Rhys gripped her upper arm in a tight, but painless way. A way that sent a thrill through her, instead of fear.
“Ye shouldnae be here,” Amara found herself saying.
“Neither should ye, but here we are,” Rhys retorted.
Amara had been trying to warn him, which was mad on her part.Hewas the enemy.Hisclan had massacred her people, killed her mother. But she didn’t want to see him captured and hauled down into the old cellar like his kinsman.
He glanced over her head, and heard the panting and cursing of the two men joining them. “Do ye think ye can hold on to the lass this time?”
His tone was sarcastic and irritated. Neither man answered, at least not with words. The next instant she found herself torn from Rhys’s hold and with an O’Donnell holding each of her arms. Then they were moving.
2
He should have been annoyed.
Rhys glanced at the lass held between his men, Myles and William. Myles’ long red hair had come undone from its binding and was sticking out at odd angles. The side of his cheek was scraped and bloody from where she’d whacked him a good one with a tree limb. William held the lass with his good hand. The other arm dripped blood down it from where she’d sank her sharp little teeth into his skin.
He almost laughed. To think that little lass was able to escape from two of his toughest warriors, drawing blood from them both, was almost inconceivable. If the bards found out, they’d be spinning stories for years to come.
