When MacCarrick stormed from the room, Annalía dove for her clothes. Undressed like this! Here, with no lock on the door! She yanked one bag to the bed, casting away the bunch of bound wildflowers she’d hastily hidden behind it. One of the mercenaries had given them to her this morning, and she hadn’t wanted MacCarrick to know his men had let her outside.
But MacCarrick returned not a minute later with a towel. He tossed it to her, and as she’d known he would, he glanced past her, scowling at the flowers on the floor. “You were outside with them?”
“How deductive you are!” she exclaimed, wrapping the towel around her.
“Who gave those to you?”
“I don’t know.” Some younger, fairly handsome redhead had. “Someone called Mac-something.”
“They’re all called Mac-something.”
“Which is precisely why it is so difficult to differentiate, and hardly of any account anyway”—she skewered him with a look—“since you are all the same.”
He looked like he’d throttle her. “Is that so?”
“Aye,” she said with a sneer, hating him so much it burned inside. She’d had enough.
Before MacCarrick had returned to toss her into an icy stream and strip her by knife, his men had freed her, apparently for their entertainment. They’d towered over her, and on Liam’s suggestion, they’d wanted to touch her “wee, soft hands,” fondling her like the clan’s new bizarre pet.
They’d wanted to hear her speak Catalan and French. A few asked to smell her hair, like animals, and the rest thought that a fine idea, but she’d peered up to the one-eyed giant helplessly, and he’d drawn the line. Literally. Over his throat to tell the others without words to behave. Enough.
“Who?” MacCarrick’s huge fists were clenched, his sleeves rolled up so she could see bulging ridges in his arms.
She had to wonder if her better prospect might be letting the horde smell her hair.
“I don’t know who.” As the giant had shown her around, the entire scarred lot of them had come up to her and introduced themselves, and of course all the names had sounded the same. She exhaled wearily. “Mac-something.”
“An entire morning with the crew?” His tone was deceptively calm and all the more terrifying for it. “They’re no’ a modest lot. Far from it. I bet you saw sights you’d never seen before.”
She felt her face flush, which seemed to make him even angrier. It wasn’t as if she’d sought to watch brawny Highlanders without their shirts, sweating and fighting in the sun. But yes, she’d continued watching, even when one tripped another to the ground and she’d discovered that at least one Scot wore nothing beneath his kilt.
She’d watched not only out of dazed curiosity—she’d also been noting where and how they hit each other. “I will concede that I saw…things a proper young lady should not.”
“A proper young lady, then?” he asked as he closed in on her. “You’ve decided that I’m nothing but a lowly Scot and a brute, but I’m no’ quite convinced what you are.” He grabbed her by the waist, making her cry out in surprise, then carried her to the table in the corner. When he dropped her on the edge, the wood snagged the material of the bath linen. “Tell me, would a proper young lady kiss the first lowly Scot to come into her home?” He grasped her chin in between his thumb and forefinger. “Would she clutch his shoulders so the brute would no’ stop tasting her skin?” He put his lips directly by her ear. “I doona believe she’d moan when he shoved himself between her legs and took her mouth.”
She turned away, humiliated, but he laid his coarse hands on her cheeks and forced her to look up at him. At length, she said, “You are correct.”
His eyes narrowed. He had the devil’s own eyes. And when his face was drawn like this, the deep starburst scar below his temple whitened. When he’d first come to her home, she’d run her fingers over it. Tenderly. She was not being treated tenderly in kind.
“I’m not the lady I strive to be. Clearly I’m flawed. I might even be so improper that I would welcome one of these men into my bed, though I was meant for better.” She pulled from his hands but still met his eyes. “But it would never be you, MacCarrick. Mai en la meva vida!”
“Never in your life? But it would be Pascal? Did you let him kiss you?”
She shut her eyes to that.
“Did you? Did he touch you?”
“No, but he will! And I’d let him before you any day!”
“You’ve just sealed your fate.” His jaw tensed and his hands landed on her hips, his fingers biting into her flesh. “Because he will no’ before I do.”