“Then what do ye want?”
She answered his whisper with one of her own, standing there in the corridor of her family’s keep. “I want…simplicity. I want to write, to invent, to explore. I want to be needed. I want the peace to make the world a better place.”
He nodded. “A fine house and a powerful husband—“
“A simple house with plenty of natural light,” she corrected. “And a husband who isnae afraid to correct me when I’m wrong, and doesnae think me odd for preferring to spend my time with ghosts and manuscripts and strange engineering devices.”
There was that reference to ghosts again. He grinned crookedly. “I dinnae think ye odd, Wynda. Although I find myself a bit awed.
With a scoff, she elbowed him.
He allowed himself to stumble backward, taking her with him. When his back slammed into the stone wall, he cushioned her impact with his chest. With her standing between his legs, her eyes were almost level with his.
“Well, milady?” he murmured. “Now ye have me where ye want me, what shall ye do with me?”
If she’d asked him, his answer would’ve been immediate: A kiss. It didn’t matter that anyone could step out of one of these chambers at any moment; it didn’t matter that they were embracing in the middle of her family’s private corridor. All that mattered was touching her. Tasting her.
Her lids had lowered halfway, her gaze becoming hazy with passion. He fully expected a similar answer from her, and was in fact already leaning toward her, when she sucked in a fortifying breath.
“I’ll make ye tell me a story.”
He froze abruptly, not expecting that. “A…story?”
“Aye, Pherson. I want to ken about Wren. Ye said ye didnae ken her parents. So…ye didnae sire her?”
When he inhaled, her chest pressed against his. Or vice versa. He wasn’t sure how the mechanics worked, and at that moment, didn’t really need to know. The result was the same: tits.
“Ye’re certain ye want this story here and now?” He grinned crookedly, wondering if she could feel his arousal pressed against the junction of her thighs.
The way her lips twitched as she shifted against him said more than anything that she understood.
“I have ye alone for a while and Wren is safe with Nichola. And I have plans for ye.” When she rocked her pelvis forward, he sucked in a breath. “But first, I need to hear the truth from ye.”
“I—I never intended no’ to tell ye.” He blinked, then sighed, shifting his hold on her until his palms cupped her arse. “I come from the Lowlands. I grew up there. My da was a falconer, and I would’ve learned the whole art at his side, had he no’ died when I was fifteen. I had Geraldine, and we…took care of each other.”
“We shall come back to examine that significant pause later, Pherson Ross. I suspect it means ye did things ye consider unsavory.”
Unsavory? Aye, ye could call joining a bandit gang, attacking and robbing innocents, using his skills with Geraldine to help the gang…unsavory. But he didn’t say any of that. Instead, he swallowed. “I was young and starving. I joined a gang because they were the only ones who thought me worth keeping alive. I ken that doesnae excuse—“
She stopped him with a finger at his lips. “Tell me of Wren,” she prompted softly, that low tone of hers wrapping around his cock and stroking.
How could he deny her?
He shrugged, accepting the inevitable.
“I was with them for almost ten years. I saw…” He closed his eyes on a shudder. “I kenned what they were—what I—was doing was wrong, Wynda, but I had nae other place to go.” He’d seen people killed, people who were just trying to protect what was theirs. He’d seen blood spilled for sport, for cruelty. He’d known then he had to find a new place, because while his body might survive thanks to the Campbell gang’s pillaging, his soul wouldn’t. “But…it wasnae the way my father had raised me to be. I wanted out.”
His head had come to rest against the hard stone of the corridor wall, and dimly he wondered if there was one of those secret passages behind him. When her hand cupped his cheek, his eyes opened, staring up at the support beams.
“Ye were scared,” she whispered.
And here and now, it didn’t seem weak to admit it. “Aye, I was. I’d seen the leader—Roger Campbell—murder men for defying him. I wanted to leave, but didn’t have enough of a reason.” His immortal soul hadn’t been enough of a reason to piss off Campbell. “Until, one day…”
Swallowing, he pushed his head off the wall and met her eyes. “One day I’d joined a reaving party. We were supposed to hit a crofter’s hut, but on the way I heard a strange sound. It sounded like a hatchling looking for its mother—or someone to imprint upon.”
It had been just as soft, just as weak as a baby bird, and he’d urged his horse toward it, curious enough to risk censure.
“It was Wren.”