Claiming Her

Why, this was just how young Bran had stood in the solar, absent the hawkish smile. It was unsurprising, and doubtless unconscious. Aodh Mac Con emanated a presence like air or light. Elemental. The sort men wished to emulate, the kind one absorbed without intent, the way a sheet laid on the grass absorbs the morning dew, or a rag tossed onto a spill absorbs the wine.

Water. Wine. Aodh.

A flush moved up her cheeks. She had to physically force herself not to cover them with her fingertips as he slid his gaze down her body, forehead to boots, a swift, masculine appraisal. Heat trailed behind, searing everywhere his gaze had touched.

“It depends,” was all he said.

He’d been correct; the wine was quite strong. Katarina had the smallest, waviest feeling of being out of her senses.

“I am unsurprised you find such a thing relative, sir,” she said. “Most folk, though, take a certain comfort in knowing that coups of castles are almost always a poor occasion upon which to render oneself witless.”

A dark brow arched up. “Do they now?” He moved his gaze pointedly to the wine cup she’d emptied in a single downing. “Then why did you just do so?”

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nbsp; Her eyebrows lifted. “Aodh Mac Con, you do not think me witless now, do you?”

A smile of something, perhaps delight?, crossed his face. “Ahh,” he exhaled, as if a new clue had just been discovered in a treasure hunt. His eyes were all but dancing. “I do not know. You did take my blade.”

“And you did take my castle.”

“Ah.” His gaze roamed her face. “Was that unwise of me?”

“Exceptionally.”

“And yet I have done many unwise things in my time.”

“As have I.”

“How unwise?”

“Enough to almost get me kicked out of Ireland,” she said without thinking. How could one think properly, locked in his ice-blue eyes?

“That would be bad indeed. Mine was enough to bring me back again. And since then, lass, how has your wisdom fared?” Rough, low-pitched, dangerous, the questions were like tiny tools chipping away at her composure.

“At times, ’tis practically nonexistent,” she admitted in a whisper.

A slow, dangerous smile crossed his face. “Good.”

“My steward would not agree how fare my men?”

She threw the question out the way an anchor is thrown off a ship, so it became a single unstoppable sentence, trying to slow down this thing he’d set in motion, this river comprised of Aodh Mac Con holding her gaze, talking about wisdom and the things they had done and the things they might do, and how dangerous it all could be.

He pushed away from the table and leaned over her so she had to tip her head back. His mouth was bare inches away, his tongue so close, so able to do the things it had done before. He will take me now, she thought wildly, her body charged, and she, standing here with her lips parted, not to receive him—not at all, that would be madness—but to draw air into her suddenly breathless body.

He smiled just above her mouth and said, “Stubborn,” then turned away, striding into the room.

She tripped backward a step, almost reeling at the…nothingness. The absence. At the way her expectations had not been met.

“Stubborn?” she echoed. “My men are stubborn?”

He made his way deeper into the room, touching small things as he went: the edge of her dressing table; the long oak table that dominated the side of the room, the post at the corner of the bed. He touched everything he passed, brushing it with his fingertips as if testing its quality.

Or laying claim.

“They are reluctant to surrender.” He ran his hand gently over a small beveled glass perfume bottle on her table. It rocked slightly but did not fall. “It seems they await a word from you on the matter.”

“Fools,” she said aloud, but inside, she smiled. Loyal, wonderful fools.