A name? A state of being? A woman with a locked heart.
Was it her innocence or mystery that drew him? Her keen intellect? Her troubling secrets? The depth of the understanding in her eyes, or the depth of her warm, lush body?
He wanted all of it. All of her. He wanted to uncover her, body and soul. To lay her bare and wide and make a conquest of her.
He wanted to own her. To claim her. To brand her skin with his mark and to see the same, violent desire mirrored in her eyes.
Aye, he knew how wrong it was. He knew that he must master these wicked thoughts and temper these sinful urges before they burned out of control and consumed him.
She made him hard, so fucking hard that he couldn’t think.
But she made him soft, too. In those spaces he’d built walls and fortresses, around those places where memories, sins, and pain lay scattered about like shards of glass in a dark room, waiting for an unsuspecting victim to venture forth. And therein lay the danger.
Every time her hand found his skin, or his lips found her mouth, something forged into cold steel by the heat of his temper … melted.
The problem was, he hadn’t erected those walls to keep those he loved out, but to keep something from escaping.
The devil is in all of us, I think, she’d said.
Nay, mo ailleachd. No, my beauty, he thought as he leaped from the Craeg and let the icy Atlantic steal the breath from his lungs and the fire from his arousal. Not all of us …
Only me.
* * *
Though she hadn’t slept in two days, a pervasive agitation drove Mena to haunt the halls of Ravencroft Keep like a restless ghost. She knew the cause, of course.
The inescapable Laird Mackenzie. An undefeated warrior with profound wounds and hidden depths.
It was as though he’d branded her. Seared his delectable, masculine taste to her lips and marked her skin with only the gentle hold of his large hands.
Mena had been marked and bruised by her husband, Gordon, many times over, and those wounds could last a week or more. The pain, of course, lingered even longer.
But the undeniable impact of Liam Mackenzie’s kiss was infinite. She’d live a thousand years and still feel the possession of his lips.
What distressed her the most was how he hadn’t allowed her a moment’s escape. When he wasn’t busy at the distillery, he seemed to be everywhere she was. Just yesterday, he interrupted her waltzing lessons with the children, sweeping his daughter up for a few dances. He proved to be a more than adequate dancer, but would occasionally trip Rhianna and catch her, cursing his clumsy feet whilst the girl berated him for obviously doing it on purpose.
Laughter had filled the keep with the most beautiful cacophony, and it made Mena’s heart ache for some reason she couldn’t define.
Ravencroft had also taken to having tea with them while they lounged in their favorite solarium, and read from The Count of Monte Cristo in French. He would listen with rapt attention, never asking questions or clarifying words as the children did. He merely sat and stared at her with those unnerving dark eyes, jaw perched on his templed fingers.
He prowled about her like a great, rapacious cat, his huge body filling every room so completely, she felt crowded and overwrought. In his presence, her own body was in a constant state of awareness. His gaze, as tangible as a caress, lifted the fine hairs on her flesh until they tingled and pricked with warning when he entered the room.
Here is a dangerous creature, her primitive instincts told her. A beast. A predator. She’d do well to run.
To hide.
Mena would often look up to find him fixated on her lips, or her breasts. The words would seize in her throat and she’d have to pause to catch her breath. A dark, sexual promise lurked in his eyes, and robbed her of her every thought. Yet he said nothing and hid nothing. When she caught his stare, he did not avert his eyes, nor did he try to hide his frank appreciation of her. He merely looked at her with enough heat to melt the stones of the keep, while remaining still and silent as a statue chiseled by the loving hands of an artisan. Hard. Smooth.
Flawless.
Damn him for kissing her!
Damn her for wanting him to do it again.
Despite all that, his constant presence likewise caused more difficulties when attempting to collude with Andrew about his care of the pup. They’d had to devise all sorts of inventive ways to excuse themselves from his company.
And then there was the incident this very morning, from which Mena hadn’t seemed able to recover.