Unfortunately, now was not the time. The Highlander was more skilled than most with a sword and currently surrounded by his newly established allies. Leon needed an edge, one that he didn’t have now. Soon, though, he would have everything owed to him. He just needed to be patient.
Makenna stared in shocked silence as MacCuaig bowed his head toward her and then to his table of potential comrades. She held her breath as he stormed out of the hall and ordered his men to prepare for immediate departure.
Exhaling, she felt relieved, but the sensation only lasted for a moment. Her eyes searched for Colin and widened the moment they locked with his. His gaze was blazing with fury and anger, and it was aimed not at the departed Leon MacCuaig, but at her.
Makenna had thought she had witnessed Colin’s anger many times since his arrival at Lochlen. She had been wrong. Never had she seen Colin truly mad.
Immediately following MacCuaig’s departure, Colin had ordered Brodie and Gorten to escort her to the Black Tower and wait for him in his chambers. Makenna had presumed Colin intended to make her stew for hours, but no more than ten minutes had passed when he charged through the door.
Makenna usually could disregard Colin’s imposing stature, but the raw fury roaring through him made her wish she were anything but its target.
She felt herself swallow heavily and shrink in fear. But just as she was about to retreat a few steps away from the path of his furious pacing, her inner voice called her a coward. “I have no reason to cower to you, Colin McTiernay. I have done nothing wrong,” she said to herself, this time making sure her mouth was closed.
Donning a mask of calm indifference, Makenna sauntered over to the basin and splashed some water on her face. The action was a deliberate show of ease, that she was not one of the Lowland lairds easily intimidated by his commanding presence. She patted her face dry and then faced him, arching a single brow.
Colin watched with incredulity as Makenna straightened her back, briefly assessed him, and then marched to the table acting as if he were not even there, let alone furious. He had no doubt that she was fully aware he was seething. Still, she offered no apologies, no requests for leniency, and no entreaties for forgiveness. The woman practically challenged his right to be angry.
“When were you going to tell me?” he roared.
“Colin, stop yelling at me.”
“I am not yelling. Whenever I do yell, there will be no mistaking it.” He had lowered his voice by several decibels, but it was definitely still loud.
Makenna watched as Colin resumed his pacing in front of the cold hearth. She had been about to light a fire when she had heard him order Brodie and Gorten and everyone else out of the tower just before he had stormed through the door.
Over the past few years, she had witnessed him in several moods, but never one like this. And all because of MacCuaig’s distorted sense of their relationship. Makenna decided to treat this argument with the level of intensity it deserved. None.
She leaned casually against the table and gripped the sides loosely. “Fine, then stop growling. It is most upsetting.”
Her relaxed demeanor both floored and inflamed him. “Your indifference to my anger shows that you have no regard to how I felt when MacCuaig told me of your trysts in the woods. Were you ever going to tell me?”
“So that’s what he whispered to you,” Makenna mused aloud. Hearing Colin grunt, she crossed her arms and shrugged nonchalantly. “Honestly? I don’t think I ever was going to mention it. It meant nothing. Those meetings, if you can even call them that, occurred long ago, well before you came to Lochlen. Leon didn’t care that I wasn’t like all the other girls. Every once in a while, he would be in the woods at the same time as I and join me in my hunts. He would praise my skills. It was very flattering, but I never thought his proposal of marriage was serious. Then or now. I remember him laughing when I turned him down.”
Colin stopped his pacing and stood between two of the hearth chairs. He clenched the back of each chair and leaned forward. “Trust me, Makenna. Leon MacCuaig was not laughing. Then or now.”
Makenna quashed a shiver caused by the dangerous softness in his voice. Rallying, she replied, “See, I knew you would not understand. It was just a few innocent kisses. Flirtations to pass the time.”
“That man was at our wedding!”
Colin could still remember seeing the tense look in MacCuaig’s eyes when Makenna entered the chapel. At the time, he had dismissed it, deciding instead to focus on the vision coming to accept his hand. He should have confronted MacCuaig that very night, at the celebration when the man openly displayed his jealousy and lust. Instead, he had fought his instincts to call the man out, thinking that he was being irrational, seeing something where there was nothing.
But his instincts had been completely accurate. Makenna and MacCuaig did have a past, and it was enough of one to make Leon believe that she somehow belonged to him. The idea of Makenna with another man shot through Colin’s mind, and he felt a new bout of possessive fury building within him.
Makenna furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. For a fleeting moment, she wondered if Colin’s anger stemmed from a type of jealousy. She dismissed the idea. Jealousy would imply a level of emotional attachment, and Makenna knew she was too vulnerable to hope Colin was developing a tenderness for her. It was best to remain indifferent. “So he was at our wedding. I promise you Leon MacCuaig has no interest in me, why would he? The only reason he said any of those things tonight was to goad you into a response. He tried all other tactics. He was just grasping at anything to get you to react to his taunts. What I find hard to believe is that you allowed him to do so.”
Colin looked at her with appalled silence. Was the woman completely unaware of her own allure? Could she truly be that naïve of how powerful her unconventional beauty was? The question suddenly brought back the conversation he’d had with Dunlop less than a week ago. He had failed to see Makenna as a beautiful, desirable woman. Could she also be incapable of seeing herself as others did?
“The man wants you, but you belong to me, Makenna,” Colin muttered darkly, walking toward her.
She raised her chin, her green eyes glittering with pride. “Belong to you? I belong to no one, Colin McTiernay.”
He reached out and pulled her fiercely against him. “Wrong, Makenna, you belong to me.”
Makenna felt her temper start to flare and wrenched free from his grasp, moving backward until she bumped into the stone barrier. “Deirdre might have belonged to you, but I never will.”
Colin placed his two hands on either side of her head and pinned her between his body and the wall. “That is where you are wrong again. Deirdre never belonged to me the way you do.”
Colin’s mouth came down with a fierce possessiveness, cutting off any attempt at a rejoinder. His lips moved against hers hard and deliberately, letting her feel the frustration and temper she had aroused in him. “Ah, Makenna, what you do to me,” he murmured against her lips before plunging inside her mouth once more, tasting, teasing, voraciously consuming her very essence.
Stunned by the near violence of his embrace, Makenna instinctively stiffened only to find herself weaken and melt moments later. Desperately she tried to find some scrap of will to push him away and argue that she was not his, that she was her own person whom no one laid claim to.
The sensation of being so powerless to anyone, especially Colin, frightened her. But even more frightening was her unfailing reaction to his touch. Even when angry, the man created an instantaneous effect on her senses.
Makenna relaxed, and Colin’s body came ablaze with desire. No matter how much she challenged him or angered him, she still came alive with passion when she was in his arms. Her fingers dove into his hair, pulling him tighter, pleading with him to deepen the embrace. His heart jolted and a sense of urgency drove him to comply with her wishes. The world was closing in, and he realized he needed to breathe. Inhaling, her elusive, womanly scent aroused him even further.