Once Upon a Highland Christmas(6)

“Of course, he will.” Breena felt awful.

The last thing she wanted was to shame the old man.

“Dinnae look so stricken, lass.” Grim stepped closer and cupped her face in his hands. He leaned down, spoke against her ear. “He’ll no’ suspect a thing.”

Breena wasn’t so sure. “Why not?”

“Because”—Grim straightened, slid a telling glance upward at the ball of mistletoe above their heads—“I’m about to kiss you.”





Chapter Two


Grim knew his folly the moment he lowered his mouth toward Breena’s.

Rather than stiffening as he’d expected her to do, she leaned into him, almost melting against his chest. They stood beneath the mistletoe, their bodies pressed together from shoulder to thigh. She even slid her arms up and around his neck, twining her fingers in his hair. A tiny tremor rippled through her then as if she’d been waiting for this moment, hoping for his kiss.

A shame he suspected it was someone else she truly wanted.

Several of the younger garrison lads had tried to court her, wooing her with pretty words, gifts of woven cloth, and once—or so he’d heard—an armful of loveliest heather. Talk among the men was that she pretended not to hear the compliments, passed on the cloth to young mothers who needed it more, and placed the heather on graves of Duncreag’s fallen.

A few more persistent lads claimed she’d declined their attentions by saying her heart belonged to another.

And that she’d gazed wistfully into the distance when telling them so.

The lads said she looked toward Ireland.

Grim was sure she did. He was also certain the young man who held her affection ached for her as well.

It was a notion that pierced him to the core.

No saint, he swore beneath his breath, his blood heating all the same. Passion raged, fierce and demanding as he held her fast, claiming her lips with a bold roughness he just couldn’t help.

She was in his arms now.

And she tasted sweeter than the nectar of the gods.

When she lifted up on her toes and parted her lips to flick the tip of her tongue against his own, his agony was complete. Never before had a woman returned his kiss with such ardor. He believed most lasses feared him, big and rough-hewn as he was, without courtly manners. Breena was an angel beyond compare, a prize so rare he was stunned to have her in his arms, so soft and pliant.

He didn’t want to desire her.

Someday her Irish lover—if he’d survived the raid on her village—would ride up to Duncreag’s gates to claim her, taking her back across the sea. Grim certainly would if she were his. And he doubted Donegal men were any less possessive. He shouldn’t lay a finger on her.

Yet she set him aflame.

Knowing he was leaping into an abyss he could never escape, he nipped the lush curve of her lower lip and then deepened the kiss, letting his tongue glide into the soft velvet-warmth of her mouth. She kissed him back, her own tongue tangling with his, tantalizing and intimate, making him forget every reason he shouldn’t be touching her.

He pulled her closer, not caring. He shut his mind to the hurtful truth. That every time he thought she’d glanced his way, she quickly looked elsewhere. Indeed, she didn’t pay heed to any of the men at Duncreag. Not even bonnie younger lads so much more appealing than him.

Grim bit back a growl, not wanting to think of her yearning for an Inishowen lad in Donegal. Perhaps imagining such a lad now held her. Yet she was soft and warm in his arms. Her lips so yielding, her glossy tresses a spill of cool silk across his cheek, the dance of her tongue bewitching him. She even made a little mewing sound, responding eagerly as she returned the kiss.

What man could resist such temptation?

He surely couldn’t.

So he swept an arm around her, splaying his hand across her lower back until she was crushed to him. He plundered her lips, drinking deeply of her as if he were dying of thirst and only she could quench his parched need. The fever was a raging in his veins, making him burn.

Shocking him, too, for no other woman had ever affected him so powerfully.

Not with a mere kiss.

He could so easily devour her whole. By Thor, he wanted nothing more.

But something was jabbing into his side. And in the moment he realized it was the end of Archie’s crummock, the aged laird let out a hoot jarring enough to split the ears of the loudest banshee.

Breena started, her eyes flying wide.

Grim tore his lips from hers and lifted his head. His heart thundered and his breath was ragged. “By all the glories of Valhalla,” he snarled, releasing Breena from his arms, most regretfully.

“Sir!” She stared at the old man, her eyes even rounder at the sight he presented in his flowing bed-robe and with his hair sleep-mussed and standing up in tufts. “It’s late for you to be about.”