Kieran’s pulse spiked hard when Vivienne’s lips met his. Aye, she wanted this as badly as he did.

That knowledge nearly made him push her against the nearest wall, yank up her skirts, and thrust into her possessively. She was his, damn it.

But nay, he’d offered her far more pleasure that a swift swiving against the wall. He would take his time and make sure she knew he’d meant every word.

He deepened their kiss, mating his tongue with hers in a slow promise of what was to come. She sighed into his mouth, making the skin on the back of his neck prickle in anticipation and his cock stiffen beneath his kilt.

He began backing her toward the table, wicked plans taking shape in his mind. Oh, there was so much he wanted to do to her, but he was already weakened by his own raging need. He could only hope to show her just how serious he was about pleasuring her before he came undone himself.

She gasped when her legs bumped into the table. Without breaking their kiss, he hoisted her onto its edge, but when her hands came down on his shoulders to steady herself, he winced and muttered a curse.

Vivienne pulled back reluctantly. “We shouldn’t,” she breathed, eyeing his injured shoulder with worry. “You aren’t well enough yet.”

Like hell he wasn’t. The slight discomfort from her touch had already faded—and it was naught compared to the aching need beneath his kilt.

“Let me show ye just how well I am recovering,” he rasped, capturing her mouth with his once more. He took her wrist and guided her hand to his cock, which strained against the scratchy wool of his plaid.

She pulled in a breath as her hand encountered the hard, thick length of him. “Aye,” he growled. “It isnae my shoulder that needs relief.”

Her lips curled into a coy grin before he reclaimed them with his own. He kissed her until she was sighing and reaching for him once more. This time she threaded her arms around his neck, lacing her fingers in his hair.

He groaned his approval, his own hand tangling in the tresses at the nape of her neck. He tilted her head back and kissed a path down her throat to the top of her dress.

“Blasted clothes,” he muttered at the offending garment.

He reached behind her and began fumbling with the laces running down her back. When they loosened, he tugged on the material at her shoulders, working the gown away from her chemise.

She shimmied to allow him to pull the wool over her hips and down her legs, all the while remaining perched on the table’s edge. As he reached for her chemise, she pulled his shirt free of his belt, sliding her hands up his sides slowly.

He had to pause in his efforts to disrobe her when it came time to pull his injured shoulder free of his shirt, but the faint twinge of pain was quickly subsumed by the need coursing through him.

When at last he’d glided her linen chemise down and tossed it aside, he let himself feast on the sight of her. She hadn’t bothered to plait her hair that morn, so it hung in long, flaxen waves around her. Her lips were already rosy and damp from his kiss, and they parted on a breath as she gazed up at him. Her depthless blue eyes were dark and hooded with desire.

Taking her shoulders, he eased her back onto the table so that she lay sprawled before him. Hell and damnation, she looked more delectable than the finest meal he’d ever seen splayed out on the table like that. Her skin was all berries and cream, her lithe, slim limbs and delicious curves mouth-wateringly tempting.

Unable to hold back any longer, he leaned over the table and flicked his tongue over one pearled, petal-pink nipple. Her back arched off the table in invitation, her breath catching in her throat as he teased the peak. He shifted his ministrations to her other breast, the sound of his own blood hammering in his ears mingling with her moans and gasps of pleasure.

When she was writhing beneath him, her legs falling open of their own accord, he trailed a path of kisses down her flat stomach. He ached with the craving to pleasure her with his mouth, but he wanted to draw out her anticipation.

His lips found first one of her soft, creamy thighs and then the other, dropping kisses on each. He dragged his teeth over the sensitive skin there, moving ever closer to her womanhood.

But soon he could take no more of torturing her, or himself. He found her center, kissing her deeply.

When his mouth closed on her, she bowed off the table with a strangled moan. God, he loved the taste of her, all earth and woman and something that was uniquely Vivienne. He licked and teased her, bringing forth passionate gasps from her and then backing off, letting her catch her breath.

Soon her legs were trembling with need, his name on her lips in a plea for release. Just as her breath began to hitch toward ecstasy, he pulled back.

“Nay, no’ yet, lass,” he growled. “I want to be inside ye when ye come.”

He rose up from his knees, making quick work of his belt buckle. When it snapped free, his kilt slid down his legs and pooled at his feet.

She lifted her head from the table, her eyes sparking with passion as her gaze devoured him. Her breath came short with expectancy as he stepped between her open legs and positioned himself at her entrance, holding her eyes with his.

He took her slowly, savoring the sounds of her panting moans despite the raging need to thrust deep and hard. Once he was buried to the hilt inside her, he halted, still holding their stare.

Joined as one, she bared herself to him, revealing the contours of her soul—her strength, her vulnerability, the secret heart that she so often kept guarded. And he bared himself as well, unshuttering his eyes and lowering the wall around himself.

Something expanded in his chest, a stuttering and seizing that had naught to do with lust or bodily desire. He’d thought he knew what affection felt like, but this went far beyond the comfortable warmth and contentedness he’d experienced before. He might as well have been shot with an arrow again, but this time straight through the heart.

Vivienne moved beneath him, rolling her hips in a wordless entreaty. Lust hammered him, yet he could not lose himself solely in physical sensation anymore. Nay, his desire was entwined with the aching need in his chest, which he saw mirrored in Vivienne’s dark, defenseless eyes.

He began to rock in and out of her, feeling her shuddering pleasure as his own as they moved as one.

“Kieran,” she moaned, a half-plea, half-prayer.

The last shreds of his control slipped through his fingers at that. He thrust hard now, unable to hold off any longer. She lifted her hips, taking him fully. Her breasts bounced with his rhythm, taunting him with their lush sway and the pink tips he’d tasted earlier.

Suddenly she cried out, shattering in ecstasy. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen—her face flushed with passion, her breasts arched into the air, her lithe legs trembling around his hips.

He felt his own release surging over him and began to pull away, but Vivienne hooked her feet behind his back, halting him.

“Non, don’t,” she breathed, her eyes locking with his. “Stay inside me.”

His breath hitched in his lungs. He didn’t have time to contemplate all that it would mean between them, all that could come, for some primal instinct in him wanted this just as she did.

With a swift nod, he buried himself inside her once more. With two more thrusts, he came undone, the force of his release wringing her name from his lips.

As the last shudders receded, he folded possessively over her, catching himself on his good elbow.

Sometime later, he scooped her up and carried her to their nest of plaids on the bedstead, then fetched them each a bowl of the now-hot stew. He couldn’t help but swell with pride to feel her eyes following his naked form as he moved about the cottage, or to catch her staring and blushing when he turned to hand her a bowl.

The rain must have stopped, for water no longer dripped through the roof, making the cottage quiet except for the soft crackle of the fire. They ate in silence, for which Kieran was grateful. His mind churned with tangled thoughts, but more than that, his heart twisted strangely.

He couldn’t deny it anymore. Something had passed between them, grown between them, changing him down to his very soul.

The longer he sat with it, the more it worried him. Hadn’t he been in this position before? And didn’t he know what came next? Nay, he told himself, it had never been like this, but if his feelings were only more intense than they had once been, did that mean the inevitable pain and loss would be that much worse as well?

“What is wrong?”

Vivienne was looking at him with drawn brows. He realized he was frowning and clutching his bowl hard enough to make his knuckles white. He shook his head to clear it, but the thrumming in his heart—some mixture of longing and fear—continued. “Naught,” he replied, then muttered, “naught that a wee dram of whisky wouldnae chase away.”

“I’ll fetch the skin,” she said, setting her bowl aside and rising from the bed. He watched her move gracefully away, all soft curves and creamy skin, but she was more modest than he. She bent and retrieved her chemise, slipping it over her head before continuing on to the cupboards next to the table.

She opened one of the cupboard doors but apparently didn’t find the skin, so she opened another, peering inside. “Where did I put it?” she muttered as she continued to search. She pulled open the last door and rose up on her toes to see the top shelf. “Ah, there—”

She reached up, but when she removed her hand, she held not only the waterskin, but also some small wooden object.

“What is this?” She held up the carved piece of wood, turning it into the light of the fire for a closer look.

Kieran’s stomach dropped even as his heart leapt into his throat. Over the roar of blood in his ears, he heard himself say, “It is a carved horse. A bairn’s toy.”

Vivienne blinked, then realization dawned across her face. “It…it must have been yours, oui? From when you were a child?”

Mayhap it was a sign that the time had finally come to tell her the truth. Aye, why else would she have found that forgotten hunk of wood he’d carved as a man of twenty, full of hope for the future? It was a perfectly timed reminder from fate of all he’d lost, and all he stood to lose again if he let anyone into his heart.

How could he have been such a fool? Hadn’t he learned ten years past that loving was only an invitation for pain and suffering? How could he let himself hope, even in the most secret corner of his heart, that things could be different this time, that he could find everlasting happiness with Vivienne?

“Kieran?” Vivienne’s soft, worried voice pulled him from his thoughts, but the darkness had already descended around him.

He should never have let himself care for her. He should never have lowered the wall around his heart.

It was too late, of course. Love throbbed like a pulse deep inside him. Yet the memory of emptiness, of utter isolation after Linette’s death, clawed at him, making him wild to escape the same fate again. So he sealed his heart away behind cold stone, meeting Vivienne’s eyes with a hardened stare.

“Nay,” he ground out. “It wasnae mine, though I made it.”

Vivienne’s brow furrowed. She set aside the skin of whisky and looked at the carved horse, then back at Kieran.

“For whom?”

“For my bairn.”