Page 21 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

Alpin’s jaw locked. He kept his eyes on the black horizon where the dark water met the darker sky. "It’s nothing but an old mark, lass. The rocks down here are sharp when the tide is high."

Grisselle let out a sharp, impatient breath, her fingers tightening into fists inside the pockets of her cloak. "Everything in this keep is 'nothing' when I ask. The three notches on the lintel are nothing. The pipes in the sea are nothing. The scar on your neck is nothing."

"It's an old wound, lass. Digging at it willnae change what's under the scar," Alpin muttered, his thumb rubbing a harsh, rhythmic circle against his leather belt.

"I’ll still like to know," she shot back, stepping closer until the heat off his wool plaid cut through the damp chill between them. "But that is fine. I have spent some time in this castle learning how to ask a plain question and receive nothing but a grunt or a closed door in return. I am entirely accustomed to the silence by now."

Alpin spun around so fast his heavy boots threw a shower of wet gravel against her skirts.

He loomed over her, his face a dark, angry mask in the moonlight, his chest rising and falling in heavy, uneven gasps. "Ye want the story, then? Ye want to hear about the night the skiff went over? It was a stray iron hook from the netting. It caught me when the timber split. There is nae magic in it, Grisselle. It was just blood and cold water, and it dinnae save a single soul from the rocks."

"I didn't ask for magic!" Grisselle yelled, her chin lifting as she drove a stiff finger into his chest, her green eyes flashing with a dangerous, wild light. "I asked because you look at the water as if it owns you, and you look at me as if I am the one holding the hook! You think you are the only person who has ever had to stand by a dark window and watch the world go by without them?"

"Ye daenae ken what I think," Alpin barked, his large hands coming out to grab her forearms, his grip firm.

"Because you won't tell me!" she retorted, her breath coming in short, hot plumes that hit his chin. She didn't pull back from his touch; she leaned into it, her fingers locking into the rough wool of his plaid to anchor herself against the wind. "You want a wife who sits at your table like a painted doll and asks for nothing real, but I am not a doll, Alpin. I am here, and I am tired of seeing a man who keeps half of himself buried under the shingle!"

"I am nae buried," he roared, his black eyes narrowing into two hot, fierce slits.

"Then show me!"

The words had barely cleared her teeth before Alpin’s restraint snapped.

He didn't step back. He hauled her against his chest with a sudden, violent jerk that knocked the breath clean out of her ribs, his massive arms wrapping around her waist until she was lifted completely off her feet. His head came down, his mouth crashing onto hers with a raw, desperate hunger that had nothing to do with the polite agreements of their study or the cold limits of their contract.

It was a kiss he had been holding back since the first night in the East Tower, heavy with a dark, bruising lust that tasted of salt-spray, smoke, and years of absolute isolation. His lips pressed hard, demanding and deep, his tongue forcing her mouth open while his large, rough hand tangled into the wild copper thickness of her hair, ripping the dark ribbon away until her curls flew loose in the gale.

Grisselle didn't strike his chest. She didn't freeze.

The stubborn, defensive armor she had worn since London vanished in a single, frantic heartbeat. She let go completely.

Her arms flew up around his neck, her fingers burying themselves into his thick black hair, pulling him down into her with a fierce, matching desperation that shook her from head to heel.

She met the hard, heavy slide of his mouth with her own, tasting salt and smoke and something underneath that was only him, something she'd been chasing without knowing it since the moment he'd filled that London doorway.

His grip at her waist tightened, his palm splaying wide against the small of her back, pressing her flush against the solid wall of his chest until she felt every ragged breath he took. She arched into him rather than away, her fingers curling tighter into his hair when his mouth finally broke from hers, only to drag along the line of her jaw and down to the wild pulse hammering at her throat.

This is madness.

This is exactly the kind of madness I came north looking for.

He drew back a fraction, just far enough to look at her, her lips swollen, her hair a wrecked copper storm around her face, her breath coming as hard as his own. Whatever he saw undid the last of his control.

A low, rough sound broke out of his chest, closer to a groan than a word, and he kissed her again, slower this time, deliberate, as though he meant to learn the shape of her mouth before the tide came all the way in.

Her hands slid from his hair down over the broad plane of his shoulders, over the hard muscle beneath his sodden plaid, learning the shape of him the way she'd wanted to since the cliff, since the tower, since the moment his hand had first closed over hers in her father's study.

His fingers found the curve of her jaw, tipping her face up to his with a gentleness that didn't match the size of him at all, and for one long moment neither of them moved, foreheads pressed together, both of them breathing like they'd run the length of the shingle.

The roar of the North Sea disappeared entirely from her ears, replaced by the frantic, echoing hammer of his heart against her ribs, and the sudden, terrifying knowledge that the ghost she had married had just come violently alive.

CHAPTER TEN

Grisselle woke before dawn, staring at the dark canopy above her bed with her fingers pressed flat against her own mouth, as though she could still hold the shape of it there.

It meant nothing. Men kiss women they've no intention of keeping.

She'd told herself that a dozen times in the dark and believed it exactly as many times as she'd said it, which was to say, not at all. She rose and pulled the bell.