She searched his eyes as though his was a face she didn’t recognize. “Don’t you remember what we talked about that day in the chapel? The past isn’t just the past. It stays with us, it makes us who we are. The sins we commit tonight we will have to answer for in the light of day.”
He reached out, brushing his knuckles against the downy softness of her cheek, right below where her ugly bruise used to be. “They say the past is etched in stone,” he murmured. “But ye’ve made me believe that it isn’t. It’s merely mist and mirrors, lass. Time passes and it becomes cloudy and unclear, and we can learn to leave our pain behind.”
“But certain things linger, don’t they?” she asked bitterly. “Like the acrid smell of peat smoke. The choices you make … there are so many that are impossible to escape.”
“Ye told me once that evil can make itself seem light. Good can do the same.” He leaned down to her, crowding her with his body against the table, pressing his cheek against hers as he gathered her close. “Ye make me yearn to be a good man. Let me show you how redemption can be found, even in the darkness, lass. Doona let tomorrow dawn, with all its dangerous unknowns without having let me love ye. For it canna be a sin beneath such friendly stars.”
A tear dropped onto his bare skin, scalding him as it ran into the grooves of his chest. “Don’t you understand what I’m trying to tell you? I’m not a virgin.”
“Hush, lass,” he soothed, pressing a kiss to her brow. “For I will share a confession of my own.” He tilted his head down toward hers, his hot breath hitting her ear. “Neither am I.”
Something about the obvious absurdity of his answer caused her a small hiccup of laughter. The thought of another man above Mena, inside of her, tightened every possessive instinct with such a force he thought he would snap beneath the weight. And yet …
“It changes nothing about the fact that I want ye,” he told her. “I am not a man who holds his women to an impossible standard of chastity. That’s not been our way out here in the Highlands. This is a place of handfasts and fishwives, we like to be certain of our desire before we bind our lives.” He pulled away, using a few fingers to lift her unsteady chin up toward him.
“Look into my eyes and say that yer body does not call to mine. Tell me ye doona want me.”
Her eyes shone brilliantly from her porcelain skin. “I—I can’t.”
“Then go to the north woods in five minutes. I’ll wait for a few minutes, so we are not marked as leaving together, and then I’ll find ye.” He’d not only find her, he’d assault her with such pleasure, he’d wipe the memory of any other man from her mind.
Permanently.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Highland woods were a mystical place on any given night, but to Mena, Samhain had taken on a distinct dreamlike quality. An iridescent mist crept in from the sea and settled on the soft floor of the forest. The dense fog, turned an eerie shade of blue by the moonlight and some unexplainable force of nature, carried the scent of loamy brine and evergreens.
Mena’s skirts displaced the vapor as she picked her way through the thickest parts of undergrowth, wondering just where she should pause.
And wait for him to come for her.
Dear Lord, what was she doing? It had been easy enough to look deep into Liam’s dark eyes and to drown in the desire she saw burning there. To let the scent of him arouse and intoxicate her. Soap, whisky, autumn spices, and that masculine essence that was so unique to him. The one that told her she was safe.
Or that she wasn’t.
Whatever it was, she knew that scent—her soul knew it—and she’d inhaled him deep, as though she could hold a memory in the most minuscule fibers of her body, like she could a breath.
How a man like him could seduce her so easily, so absolutely, still astounded her. He was an enigma. A man with a great deal of sense and the temper of a demon. A good man with a frightening past. A violent man with a wish for peace.
It was the paradox that drew her. He was a puzzle, a complication, someone whom she didn’t understand and who was not at all like her but who, in his own way, arrived at the very same conclusions she did. About many things.
It worried her how incompatible they were.
It amazed her how perfect they were for each other.
Liam was a hero who’d come to hate himself for the sins of his past, and she was a refugee with a secret shame. How fitting that they should find redemption in each other’s arms.
And passion, one couldn’t forget that.
She’d never known a man with such passion. Riddled with so much fathomless need. She’d never been the object of such ardent, fervent attentions. Mena shivered more from the memory of his touch than the chill in the air. Some womanly instinct whispered that the passion he’d shown her thus far was merely the surface of a roiling volcano. The pressure was building, boiling, and churning the air between them until it’d reached the point of eruption. There was simply no containing it anymore.
No denying it. He was relentless, the Demon Highlander. He would not be resisted. He would not be deterred. And Mena was tired. In the absolute way that even her bones felt tired of supporting not just her body, but the weight she carried within her soul. Tired of pretending not to want him, tired of fearing what may occur in the morning. And above all, tired of being alone and afraid.
There was going to be a moment when she regretted the decision to surrender to Liam Mackenzie. But tonight was not that night, and this moment was not that moment.