his thumb over her palm instinctively to soothe her, but when she drew in a sharp breath, it set his blood boiling again. He should let her go. And yet, he did not.
"You're not leaving here until ye tell me what ye meant," he said, attempting a light tone.
Ilysa glanced sideways again, and her gaze appeared to become stuck on the bed. O shluagh! He should quit playing these games with her and send her out quickly. He was about to do just that until her next words sent sparks shooting through his veins.
"I bathed ye."
"What?" Surely he had misheard her, yet his whole body was alive with the misunderstanding. "Ah, ye mean ye bathed my wounds."
"Not just your wounds." She spoke so softly that he had to lean forward to hear her. "I washed all of ye. Several times."
Why would she say that? Was she trying to stop his heart and kill him? "I think I would have recalled that," he said.
"After the MacKinnons left ye for dead and Ian brought ye to Tearlag's, I tended your wounds." She paused and then added in a choked voice, "We feared we'd lose ye."
Ach, tears were suddenly spilling down her cheeks. Connor put his arms around her. He, Duncan, and Alex had been ambushed by two dozen MacKinnons and a few MacLeods. They had killed a good many of their attackers, but all three of them had been badly injured. It was Connor they were after, and they thought they had killed him.
"Ian cut your bloody clothes off in pieces and tossed them into the hearth fire," she said. "Every inch of ye was bruised and battered. I washed and bound your wounds, then for three days I fed ye broth and sponged your body to fight the fever that wanted to take ye to the other side."
"Shh. It's all right now," Connor said into her hair as he held her.
"Sometimes ye seemed to wake," she said, "so I thought ye might remember some of it."
"I was out of my head and thought I saw an angel watching over me," Connor said. "You must be my angel."
Ilysa laughed against his chest. "Hardly that."
Heat and tension flared between them, and Connor was suddenly aware of how very dangerous it was to hold her like this. He told himself to let go of her, but his arms would not obey.
"Why do ye want me to stay out of the hall, truly?" Ilysa leaned back and looked up at him with brown eyes that could melt the heart of a sea serpent. "I've always done it, and ye never minded my coming and going before."
"I don't know why I didn't notice," he said and touched the back of his fingers to her cheek. It felt so soft that he did it again. "But every time ye enter a room now, I can see nothing else."
Tension coiled in his belly and spiraled down his limbs. It was wrong to hold her like this, wrong to even think of kissing her. He knew it, and yet he wanted to feel her lips. This once, he wanted to be reckless. To do something that was just for him. And how could he help himself when he could feel her body drawing to his?
What harm could there be in one simple kiss?
"Ilysa." He breathed her name as he lowered his head.
One innocent kiss, and then he would put this behind him and do his duty, as he always did. But the moment her lips, soft and trembling, touched his, fire burned in his belly.
And yet, he might have had the strength to pull away if she had not curled her fingers into his shirt and pulled him closer. Hot jolts of lust shot through him from every point her body touched his. He thrust his tongue into her mouth and was vaguely aware that he had startled her, but she did not pull away.
When she made a high-pitched sigh against his mouth, he knew it was a lost cause. He pulled her hard against him and gave her deep, hungry kisses that should have frightened her. Instead, she returned them with an urgency that matched his own.
He could never trust a woman to want him, the man, rather than the chieftain. But he trusted Ilysa utterly and completely. She knew him, with all his flaws and shortcomings. She would not be in his arms for any reason except that she wanted him.