Page 62 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

"He pushed me away," Alpin said, the words dropping like lead weights into the dark space between them. He turned his head toward her, his black eyes hollow, stripped clean of the arrogant, teasing warmth he usually wore like armor. "He dinnae drown holding me. He looked right at me with calm eyes, fixed on me face with a strange, hard certainty."

Grisselle’s hand twitched at her side, her chest tightening until she could barely draw the sharp night air into her lungs. She stayed motionless, letting the raw bite of his voice fill the quiet.

"He told me to tell me father he went into the water proud," Alpin said, his throat working as he swallowed against the memory. "I reached out. I caught his wrist with me hand and screamed at him to pull himself up, that there was room on the wood for both of us."

He dragged a breath in through his nose, his hand clenching into a fist at his side.

"'Live, lad,' he said. And then he pushed. A hard, deliberate thrust of his arm that shoved the bow stem, and me with it, out into the current. His white beard disappeared beneath the surface, and the water took him."

He looked away, his eyes locking back onto the dark, churning Atlantic below. "I was ten. I watched him go under because he chose to put me on that timber instead of saving himself. I came back with a torn throat and a chest full of brine, and they put his plaid on me father’s shoulders."

"You were a boy," Grisselle whispered, her voice cracking despite her best efforts.

"I was the one who survived," he corrected, turning his full frame toward her. He took a short step forward, hovering over her, his chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged bursts. "Every breath I've drawn since that morning has felt stolen. This keep, the clan, the bread on me table, none of it belongs to me. It belongs to the man who stayed at the bottom of the bay."

He looked back toward the dark stairs leading down to the hall. "The bairn sleeping upstairs in the crib. Ye, standing here in the wind with yer chin set like ye mean to fight the world for me. It sits on top of a debt I havenae paid. I havenae earned a single inch of it."

"Alpin."

"I have to go back out," he said, cutting her off, his eyes locking onto hers with a desperate, unyielding glare. "The longboats are being readied for the morning tide. I'm taking the men out to the deep water where the ledge drops off. Where it happened."

Her blood ran cold. "The sea is turning violent. The squall is coming in from the north."

"It doesnae matter," he said, his fingers reaching out, hovering an inch above her cheek without quite touching her skin. His hand was trembling. A tiny, involuntary tremor that made her heart seize in her chest. "I cannae stay in this hall, looking at ye, looking at that child, pretending I am a man who deserves to live in the light. I have to face it. I have to go back to the water and let the ledger be settled."

Grisselle looked at the tremor in his fingers, then up into the dark, tormented depths of his eyes. The sharp, fiery retorts that usually sprang so easily to her tongue vanished. She did not tell him he was being foolish. She did not argue against the madness of taking a boat out into a gathering storm.

She reached out.

Her fingers closed around his wrist, feeling the frantic, hammering pulse beneath his skin. She pulled his hand down from the air and pressed it flat against her own cheek, wrapping her smaller fingers over his cold knuckles.

Alpin froze. A low, ragged intake of breath rattled in his throat.

"Grisselle..." he breathed, his voice breaking on her name.

She did not let go. Instead, she stepped directly into his space, closing the distance until the wool of her dress brushed the linen of his shirt. She raised her other hand and pressed her palm flat against the center of his chest, right over his beating heart, feeling the raw, thundering heat of him through the cloth.

Alpin’s resistance snapped like dry kindling.

He let out a long, shuddering sound—half-groan, half-sigh—and buried his face into the crook of her neck. His arms wrapped around her waist, locking her against him with a fierce, desperate strength that threatened to lift her off her feet.

He held her as if the world were slipping out from beneath them, his broad hands gripping the fabric of her dress, burying his face in the warmth of her hair.

Grisselle wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, pulling him down, holding his head against her shoulder. She felt the heavy, ragged rise and fall of his chest against hers, the tension that had held him rigid for weeks slowly melting into the desperate, overwhelming need of the moment.

When he pulled back, his eyes were pitch black, searching her face in the pale moonlight. He did not ask for permission, and she did not give him room to ask.

Alpin leaned down, his mouth catching hers in a kiss that was devoid of hesitation or banter. It was raw, fierce, and deep, tasting of salt, cold wind, and heat. Grisselle gasped against his lips, her fingers sliding up into his thick, damp hair, pulling him closer, yielding completely to the weight of his body pressing her back against the stone wall.

His hands moved to her waist, lifting her slightly, his mouth tracing the sharp line of her jaw down to the exposed slope of her neck. A soft sound escaped her throat, her head tilting back against the granite as the cool night air burned against her heated skin.

The careful, measured boundary they had drawn between themselves for weeks crumbled into ash under the force of the tide pulling them together.

He pressed his forehead against hers, his breath hot and ragged against her lips, his dark eyes wide and fixed entirely on her face.

"I am not letting the sea take you," she whispered against his skin, her thumb tracing the rough, scarred line along his jaw.

Alpin closed his eyes, his grip on her waist tightening until it bruised, holding her fast against the wind that howled off the dark water below.