Page 40 of Enchantment of a Highlander

He’d never thought of anyone but his damn self.

Alec cupped his hands and scoured his face. He should have readily accepted Laird MacDougall’s offer to marry Saraid.

If Alec were a good man, he would have.

But he wasn’t a good man. He was a fraud, a shadow cast in undeserving light.

He was selfish.

He lifted the decanter of whisky from the table. It rose with ease. Empty.

Rage tightened his body.

If he were a good man, he would have taken MacDougall’s offer without thought instead of asking for time to consider.

Alec stared bitterly at the fallen bottle.

If he were a good man, he would not have turned to alcohol to assuage his troubles. He’d avoided drinking liquor for ten long years, yet only one taste confirmed his weakness to avoid another.

Just like his father.

“It worked well for ye, dinna it, da?” he shouted into the empty hall.

All his good intentions when he’d left for Aros Castle, all his stoic determination, all his begging at the feet of a man he didn’t respect—all in forfeit for her.

Celia.

He closed his eyes against the spinning room and saw her in his mind’s eye, rising from the water like a selkie.

His blood bubbled with heat.

Every movement she’d made the day she’d lain with him replayed in his mind. The erotic removal of her clothing as she watched him, the way she’d glided through the water as if she were liquid herself, the way she’d caressed him with the boldness of a whore.

But she’d been innocent, untouched.

He groaned out loud and his hands curled against the arms of his chair until the wood pressed hard and cool into the wet heat of his palms.

She’d had no man but him.

And still she refused him.

Even though she stared at him as if she wanted to devour him every time they met. The deep blue of her eyes burned with the same desire they had that day at the loch. She could deny it all she wanted, but he knew the truth.

Celia wanted him as much as he wanted her.

And damn it, he wanted her.

She filled his thoughts with such insistence it was as though she’d bewitched him.

The thought floated in his mind.

Maybe she had.

A frigid wind whistled through the open windows and pushed icy cold across his blazing cheeks. The scent of rosemary wafted from the rushes below.

Alec pushed his hands against the table and stood. He would not sit idle and muse over Celia, not when he could see her.

Alcohol sloshed in his empty stomach. He clenched his teeth against the wave of disorienting weakness and strode across the room.