The Condemned Highlander (Highland Intrigue Trilogy 2)

“You didn’t answer me,” she said.

“You bombard me with questions that can wait.”

“Nay, they cannot.” She gasped. “The blood! Is it on my face? Tell me if it is on my face.”

“Do you know how easy it is to follow you?” he asked with a laugh.

“I am not easy to follow. I avoided Chieftain Emory’s warriors who came looking for me,” she said proudly.

“They do not know you like I do,” Brogan boasted.

“You do not know me at all,” she argued.

He laughed again. “I challenge you on that. I found you and that’s proof enough.”

Annis gasped again. “The blood—it’s on my face that’s why you chatter on.”

“Do you really want me to answer that?” he asked with another laugh.

Annis shut her eyes tight. “Please. Please get it off me.”

Brogan worried she’d faint again, her face turning pale. “It’s not much at all. I’m stained with the most blood. We are almost at the stream. I will clean you off first.”

“Thank you,” she said in a whisper and rested her head on his shoulder without giving thought to how intimate it might seem.

Brogan quickened his pace and placed Annis under a pine tree, resting her back against the thick tree trunk. “Stay here while I get the water.”

Annis grabbed his arm, fright taking hold of her with her eyes closed and not being able to see. “You’ll come back to me, Brogan?”

“Always, mo ghràdh,” he said and kissed her cheek.

Why did her heart and stomach have to falter? So what if he called her my love. He probably said the same to countless women.

He was barely gone when he returned and when his hand slipped beneath her to gently grip her chin, her heart fluttered again. He scrubbed her cheek with a firm hand but used a lighter hand when he ran the cloth over the rest of her face. She almost sighed with relief at his thorough ministrations.

“Once I clean you off, I’ll return to the stream to see to myself. I’ll let you know as soon as my back is to you so you may open your eyes,” he said, making certain to get every last drop of blood off her and realizing that nothing, not blood or grime could mar Annis’s beauty—or her face or her luscious body. And his loins reacted to the thought.

“I am grateful for your help, Brogan, I mean Lord Brogan,” she said, forgetting to address him properly.

“I prefer you call me Brogan. I love the way it sounds on your lips.”

Annis scrunched her nose. “Do you attempt to seduce every woman you meet?”

Brogan leaned down and whispered in her ear, “When I seduce you, you will well know it.”

Annis shivered not only from the whisper of his warm breath along her ear, but his words. When I seduce you, left no doubt to his intentions.

“You can open your eyes,” Brogan said.

She hadn’t realized he had left her side, his words had so mesmerized her and that annoyed her. She had to stay focused on her task. She couldn’t fail her sister.

She opened her eyes to see Brogan bent over the stream bringing handfuls of water to his face. She looked away, worried she might catch sight of some blood and gave her garments a quick look. She was a strong, determined woman, so why was she weak when it came to the sight of blood? She wished she knew.

“Are you all right, Annis?”

She looked up to see Brogan standing in front of her. His lip was split but not bleeding and a good-sized wet spot was near one shoulder. He’d done a thorough job of ridding himself of the blood. What caught her eye even more, though, were his features. That he was handsome wasn’t new to her, that she realized just how fine his features were, was new to her. Even the wound to his lip could not distract from a face that surely melted women’s hearts and robbed them of any common sense.

Something she intended not to let happen to her.

“Annis?” he said, squatting down in front of her.

“I am good,” she said quickly, realizing her tongue had, for a moment, lost the ability to speak, and to her great annoyance her heart fluttered again.

“My horse waits for us,” Brogan said with a nod toward a chestnut-colored mare drinking from the stream. “I will see you home safely.”

“I am not going home,” Annis said, sending Brogan to his feet as she scrambled to stand.

Brogan rubbed the back of his neck. The woman could frustrate. “I will not leave you out here in the forest alone on a senseless, foolhardy quest that is doomed to fail.”

“You may have failed—I don’t intend to.”

“You are as impossibly stubborn as the fiery red curls in your hair that refuses to be tamed,” he said, his fingers raking his hair in annoyance and to keep his hand from reaching out and running his fingers through her wild curls and yanking her against him to kiss her—something he’d been aching to do since first kissing her.