Page 6 of Highlander of Steel
“For how long do ye mean to keep me?” she asked as his arm tightened around her waist, pulling her back.
“As long as it takes,” Laird MacNairn replied vaguely.
Ailis nodded, ready to play her best hand. “Then ye should ken that Fraser is alive.”
“He had better be,” he said, stiffening against her back.
She nodded in earnest. “I spoke to him a few hours ago. Gave him somethin’ to eat and drink. I even slipped him a blanket so he wouldnae be cold.” She paused. “That’s why ye should have left me there. I was the only one takin’ care of yer braither.”
“This serves the same purpose and more,” he declared.
What is his name?
She racked her brain for it, but it wasn’t easy to do when her brother and father always referred to MacNairn men as “that bastard” or worse.
“Will I… make it out of this alive?” she asked breathily.
He gave that same grunt that might have been a laugh. “What use are ye to me if ye’re dead, lass?”
She mentally prepared a list of her other merits and good reasons as to why she should be returned in one piece, gathering them on her tongue. But, as she began to speak, her words turned into a yelp.
The horse had reached the top of the slope and turned right, and she had made the mistake of looking down. What she had assumed to be the crest of a hill was, in fact, the jagged edge of a cliff. The roar she had been hearing came from the thrashing sea below, not the rush of blood in her ears.
Spray burst upward in frothy plumes as angry waves slammed into the rock. Even calm and mirror-still, her reaction would have been the same.
“Oh nay… nay… nay, nay, nay…” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut.
She put her fingers in her ears to block out the pounding surf, cursing that the roar of the blood in her ears was identical.
No longer caring about proximity, she leaned fully into the solidity of Laird MacNairn and dropped her chin to her chest. Withdrawing into herself to escape that terrifying mass of surging, seething water.
A few moments later, she felt his arm tighten around her waist, holding her so close that there wasn’t an inch between his body and hers. Not a hair’s breadth.
He willnae let me fall. He willnae throw me over the edge. He said it himself—I’m nay use to him dead.
She repeated it in her head until it blocked out the roar of her blood and the sea. Although she wasn’t yet ready to open her eyes.
In the darkness behind her closed eyelids, and the security of Laird MacNairn’s tight grip, she became aware of a surprisingly tender touch. His. Rather, his fingertips, drawing small, comforting circles on the dip of her waist.
She frowned at the sensation. It would have been a barefaced lie to say that it didn’t feel pleasant. In fact, the gentle caress somehow managed to anchor her in calmer waters. But beneath it tugged a small current of suspicion.
Why is he doin’ that?
A gesture so intimate had no place between two strangers, much less a captor and captive.
She didn’t trust it one bit, and it rather ruined the comforting essence of the touch.
If she had been less afraid of the crashing sea, she certainly would have told him to loosen his hold on her. But, as it was, her fear of the water was far stronger than her mistrust of the Laird’s intentions. So, she let it continue… and tried veryhard not to like the sensation.
Indeed, it was only when the Laird’s grip slackened and the pleasant caresses stopped that she finally dared to open her eyes.
They had ridden inland, away from the cliff, the horse now patiently waiting on the bank of a river. The same river she had seen glittering in the distance earlier. The boundary between territories. As soon as she crossed it, she would truly be Laird MacNairn’s prisoner.
“Daenae run,” he warned.
At first, she was uncertain of what he meant, but she understood a moment later as he jumped down from the saddle.
He paced the riverbank for a minute or so, crouching down here and there as if looking for something. Ailis observed him with curiosity while, in the back of her mind, a voice whispered for her to make her escape.
