Highland Warrior by McCollum, Heather (good summer reads .txt) 📕

hair. He lifted the quilt over their heads to keep her from getting a chill. For a long pause, he held her against him, wishing he could pull her fragile body inside his large one. The slice of a blade, a thrown rock or shot arrow, even a fall from a horse could steal the life from her.

“You’re holding me rather tight,” she said, against his shoulder.

He loosened quickly. “Did I hurt ye?”

“I am not so breakable, Highlander.”

“Aye, ye are, Kára,” he said. Under the blanket he could not see even a shadow of her, but he knew exactly where she was and probably what frown she was giving him. “I will protect ye more. Keep ye close. No more battles.”

He felt her stiffen. “Joshua, I have been taking care of myself for the last nine years. Well, except for the Henry attack. And I suppose Patrick, but otherwise I am perfectly able to stay whole and well.”

“I do not want ye anywhere near the palace on the morrow,” he said, using his fingers to stroke through her unbound tresses.

“I do not think Hilda would let me. Plus, I am already supposed to be dead.”

Her words chilled him. He kissed her forehead. “I would rather put ye on your horse and send ye to Skaill to find passage across.”

“I will be well, Joshua. I survived too much to die from acting dead.” She laughed lightly.

She did not understand. Joshua barely did. This turmoil within him, this simmering rage that her presence calmed. Never before had he felt…peace. But when he held Kára, his warring heart calmed.

There was a long pause between them. “Joshua?”

He ran a hand over his face. “My mother died birthing my youngest brother,” he said.

“The one named Bás or Death?”

“Aye.” He laid his head back down on the pillow level with her face. He knew she was directly before him even if they could not see each other. Perhaps the darkness made it easier to talk.

“My father was a warlord. He loved strength and victory, and he also loved my mother. I remember him laughing with her, deep bellowing laughter. I was young, but I remember it clearly. Because when she died…”

He felt Kára’s hand find his along his naked hip under the covers. Her fingers intertwined with his. “When she died…?” she prompted in a whisper.

“He… His laughter turned to roars, his smiles to gnashing teeth, his tolerance to bloody fury. It was then that he began weaving the legend of my brothers and me being the Four Horsemen.”

“He grieved for her,” she whispered.

“It was as if the shackles that he kept on the frenzy within him shattered with his sorrow, letting out a beast that raged against anyone he saw as an enemy. I never understood how someone as small and gentle as my mother could have tamed him while she was alive. But in the palace, when I saw ye thrown to the floor, blood wetting your tunic…”

She squeezed his hand. “You worry overmuch about me,” she said.

“I do, but I also worry…” He pushed up on his elbow to touch her hair with his free hand. “Ye bring me peace, Kára. I have never felt calm in here before,” he said, raising their intertwined fingers so that her hand rested over his beating heart. “Ye have altered me, helped me quell my want to battle, even as ye did everything to get me to lead your people in war.”

“I thought that was South Ronaldsay,” she whispered.

His chest squeezed. “That altered me, too, but not enough to stop me from journeying on to Lord Robert’s to train his men to fight.”

“But you trained them to defend, not attack.”

“’Tis a thin line between the two.”

“Well, you did something,” she said, “because my people survived the other night.”

He exhaled long. She did not understand. Something had changed in him, something that could prove his complete unraveling. “I worry that if ye die,” he said, “I will…” His lips curled in as if they were unwilling to speak. “I will truly become the harbinger of death, a warrior full of unchecked rage. A perfect version of my father.” Bloody hell. He had said it. “Do ye understand?”

She was quiet for a long moment. Could she hear the thumping of his heart that echoed in his ears? Wrapped together under pounds of bedding in total darkness, he’d opened enough to expose his darkest secret, the thing that made him the most vulnerable.

“Kára—”

“Shhhh…” She unlaced her fingers from his, her finger rising to his lips to gently lie across them.

But he would not keep quiet. “Do ye understand what I am saying?” Did he? Maybe she could put this worry, this frenzy to protect her into perspective.

She leaned into him until he could feel the slightest brush of her breath upon his lips. “Love me tonight, Joshua Sinclair.”

…

Kára’s heart pounded inside her. Did she understand what he was saying? That he would go insane if she died? That her life meant so much to him, that her death could threaten the world in which they lived? That he possessed such deep feelings about her?

Pressing forward, her lips found his directly before her. Her questions melded into a growing heat inside her, a heat that teased her, giving her hope. Joshua Sinclair, mighty Highlander, was rugged, kind, and clever. Full of courage and honor. And he felt something for her: maybe something powerful and maddening, something she was feeling, too.

But she dared not speak. If she were wrong, the pain would hurt her more than Patrick’s blade.

What had at first been built on carnal satisfaction had grown into much more. She had pushed thoughts of him away to protect herself, allowing it to grow only when she realized that they may not part ways. And now he was asking her if she understood him. She was not certain, and she was too anxious of the pain of being wrong to answer.

Joshua met her kiss with immediate intensity when she slanted