“You!” she assured him.
He smiled grimly, no thought of releasing her as yet seeming to cross his mind. “There is no hurt I would inflict upon you, my lady, that could begin to compare to the pain you brought down upon me.”
“If I could go back, I would undo what I did that night, by God, I swear it. Sweet Jesus!” To her horror, she felt tears stinging her eyes. She fought them with a tremendous effort.
She couldn’t falter. She’d never tell him what she had gone through after that night. Never.
“I would endure your hell for you, if I could, Laird Douglas!” she hissed angrily.
“Would you really?” he demanded, arching a brow. “I’m quite glad of it, for, though I haven’t it in mind to condemn you to hell, I think I’d like the bed tonight. A chair before the fire isn’t exactly torture, but it isn’t comfortable, either.”
To her incredulous relief, he released her, turning away, striding to the bed.
He plumped up one pillow and tossed the other to her. She caught it, her anger growing.
“Would you be so good as to toss the blanket, too?” she inquired.
He threw the blanket casually to her, turning away. It landed atop her head. Furiously, she pulled it off, and before she could control the urge, she found herself rising, ready to fly at him.
She caught herself just in time, for he spun around to face her again. She stood dead still, hands clasped behind her back, chin high, voice scathing as she spoke. “You overbearing, wretched bastard! This castle abounds with rooms and beds, and you have easy access to any and all of them—so it seems!”
He arched a brow. Smiling and with a curious taunt to his voice he repeated, “Overbearing, wretched bastard?”
“Indeed! There are at least a dozen beds you can choose from, but instead you savor the act of throwing me upon the floor!”
He lowered his lashes for a moment, then gazed at her once again, a teasing light in his eyes. He played with her, she thought then. Cat and mouse. He played a game. “Throwing you upon the floor,” he murmured, taking steps toward her.
They seemed predatory steps.
Menacing steps. Slow. Easy. Calculated. They brought him directly to her.
Then circling around her. “I’ve yet,” he said quite softly, and she felt his eyes raking over her, head to toe, “to throw you upon the floor, though the idea does have its merits!” he assured her. He remained at her back. She spun swiftly around to face him, unnerved to have him behind her, feeling his every breath against her neck.
“You’ve stolen my bed. Mine—not yours. This is not your room. So, in a manner of speaking, you have thrown me from my bed,” she accused him indignantly. “It is one and the same.”
“Is that how you see it?”
“Aye.”
“But the castle, we’ve agreed, is mine?”
“Aye,” she murmured uneasily.
“Then every bed within it is mine,” he stated.
“Not when it is occupied by someone else!”
“Then pray, if I have thrown you from your bed, let me throw you back into it!”
She gasped, nearly shrieking aloud as his hands fell upon her. There was no violence in his touch, no brutality to his hold, yet he lifted her, casting her indeed, and sending her flying.
She landed upon the bed, stunned, breathless, afraid to move, and afraid to lie still. She gasped again when he was suddenly next to her, a muscled leg thrown over her hip, his arm barring her from rising then as he observed her from a position upon his elbow. “My dearest Lady MacGinnis, since the act of ‘throwing’ you upon the floor seemed such a cruel behavior on my part, I welcome you back to the bed. I wouldn’t dream of putting you through the torture of a night on the floor.”
His eyes were green fire. She didn’t know if he spoke with anger, or if he taunted her still. She only knew his nearness alarmed and excited her. She was very afraid of moving, even breathing, for she could feel him within every fiber of her being. He spoke in a pleasant, evenly modulated voice, yet there was an edge beneath it, as if he seethed beneath the surface, as if the fire within his eyes burned throughout him, and his cat-and-mouse game was about to come to an end.
She gasped in a long, desperate breath in order to manage a reply.
“Actually, I think I rather enjoy the cool feel of stone at my back.”