"It's like this. I've been thinking, quite a lot actually." She tried not to watch the kittens swaying happily against his gentle hands.

"And?"

"And I've decided. There's no discussion, no arguing. My mind is made up." She locked her arms at her chest, hoping it would still the fluttering there.

It didn't.

"What should I not discuss or argue about?"

"You." She raised a hand as if to forestall anger or protests. "There's no other way. You've got to go, MacLeod."

"I see." He dripped more milk on the rag for his tiny charges.

"Aren't you going to ask why?"

He shrugged. "It makes no difference. You said your mind was set."

"Well, I'll tell you-since you haven't asked. You're entitled to some sort of explanation."

"I am neither kin nor mate. You owe me no duty or honesty."

Hope chewed her lip, watching the kittens meow contentedly. "You saved my life, and I appreciate it. If there were some other way, I'd let you stay." Her fingers tightened over her waist, digging restlessly. "I've spoken to the church in Glenbrae. They have a temporary residence until..."

"Until what?"

Hope took a shaky breath. "Until you sort things out, get your life back in control." She tried to smile, tried to ignore waves of abject, raw guilt for what she was doing. But self-preservation had to come first.

"Very well. I shall leave when I finish here." He set the kittens back in his helmet and calmly began gathering his equipment.

Hope's fists opened and closed. Candlelight spilled over his broad shoulders, sculpting his high cheekbones and proud chin. But there was no flicker of emotion in his eyes as he lifted harnesses and saddle.

"Damn it, stop being so calm, will you?"

"One of us needs to be calm."

"Are you saying I'm upset? Are you saying I care? Because if you are, you're wrong. I don't c-care.

And I don't trust you, not for a second. I don't trust anyone."

"I see."

"Just what do you see?"

He turned slowly. "You." There was something rough and almost dangerous in his voice. "Maybe I even see things you do not wish me to see."

His long legs crossed the room in three paces. Hope took a step back, only to feel the table behind her. His hand rose toward her, then past, jerking down a bridle from the wall. In the process he grazed her hip with the edge of his hand.

MacLeod tossed the leather strip into a basket on the floor, then reached behind Hope for his gauntlet.

His thigh slid between her legs and his gaze never wavered from her face.

"What are you doing?"

"Satisfying myself." His eyes darkened. "Satisfying both of us." He reached back for his hauberk, and their bodies met shoulder to thigh.

"Stop," Hope whispered. "I need for you to go."

"And I will. Tonight." He watched her face as his hand slid into her hair. "Be hard, Hope. Never apologize for this. It is the way you will survive-now and after I have gone."

Hope didn't feel hard when their bodies touched. She felt angry and confused.

And dangerously vulnerable.

She blurted out the words that had bothered her since that morning. "Tell me why you went with those soldiers after they killed your family."

His hands stilled. "So you can laugh?"

"So I can understand."

With a harsh sound of despair, he locked one hand to her head. His fingers were rigid, as if they wanted to push away-and couldn't. "There were broken bodies beneath my feet and blood that shone in pools. All that matters is, I failed them. I turned away. I lived and they did not."

"There must have been a reason that you went."

"They had one of my sisters. She was their bond against me."

"Oh, God," Hope breathed. She tried to dismiss this as yet another fantasy, but the hurt in his eyes was too real. "What happened to her?"

"She went to London. At the court, I was told. She died long after, when I was already in the East.

When it was too late to matter or to grieve for what she had become."

"But why was one boy so important to them?"

He took a sharp breath. "Because I could fight. Because I took five men at once, with no help. I would have died but for his order. I should have died...."

"Whose order?"

"Edward. The king you say is centuries dead. He could not win against us," MacLeod said flatly.

"Though he quartered Wallace, he could not kill what Wallace and the Highlands had begun. When he looked at me, his eyes twisted, and instead of one angry, frightened boy, he saw a country, young and proud. Because it frightened him and he was king, he attacked. Perhaps that arrogance made him a great ruler." MacLeod shrugged. "All I know is that I remained his prisoner, caught in his grip for ten long years and more." He lifted Hope's head, staring deep into her eyes. "I have done things to haunt my sleep. You are right to send me away."

Those hard, broken words took away any fear Hope might have been able to muster. Honor suited him like the weathered, ancient kilt across his thighs.

"If you did these things, it was at another's order, not by your choice." She heard her words and swept aside the warnings of logic. It didn't matter whether she believed him. He believed, and his anguish was almost enough to convince her. All she cared about was that he was lost and alone and riddled with anguish.

He made an angry gesture with one hand. "Do not try to forgive me. Wherever I go, I bring danger.

Even here. So I will leave." He pulled away, only to feel her palm against his shoulder.

"Fear me," he said roughly. "It is the only way you will be safe."

Slowly she touched the scar beside his mouth.

"It is dangerous for you," he said. "This time it would not stop between us with one kiss."

"Why?" Hope whispered.

"Because you make me blind. You make me want to claim you as I once claimed all this land."

His hands dipped. The tiny buttons at the front of her sweater shifted, straining beneath his callused fingers. "Tell me to stop."

All her words fled. The only thing left in the silent half-light was the angry glint in his eyes. Even then, Hope felt the hurt in him.

Somehow it matched her own.

A button tore free and hit the table. She still didn't pull her gaze from his.

"What do you want from me, Hope O'Hara?"

"I...I'm not sure. Nothing, I thought."

Another button pulled free. "And now?"

She made a low sound of confusion.

The wool drifted open. When MacLeod saw she wore nothing underneath, his breath jammed in his chest. "Snow against roses," he whispered. "A sight to stir a man's blood to madness. Tell me now to leave," he ordered hoarsely.

He palmed her breasts, then slowly traced the tight crimson nipples. Hope's pulse raced like autumn thunder in her ears. Then she said different words. "Show me, MacLeod. Show me what it can be like. Just once," she whispered.

He pulled her against him with a curse, creamy skin and heated crests meeting the hot friction of his broad palm. "Do you feel it now, mo run?" She was cradled in his thighs, every hard outline of his growing desire clearly felt. "Do you understand, Hope? They lied, those men. You would not disappoint a lover. By all honor, you would only drive him to heated madness."

His mouth covered the aching skin caressed seconds before. His dark hair fell over her shoulder, warmth against the greater heat of his mouth.

Hope made a small, choked sound. She had expected awkwardness, but he gave her grace. She had expected stiffness and distaste, but heat shifted into raw pleasure and something odd began to happen near her ankles, building in hot, racing spirals.

She had never known this kind of electric need. She had never felt so naked, no open.

So precious.

His teeth rimmed her breast, then closed around her. His name was a ragged plea whispered in the still, calm air as desire sank tiny teeth into her core. She moaned, caught beneath the silken probing of his tongue.

Wind sighed around the stone walls. Like a sleepwalker, Hope heard the distant murmur of the loch and the soft crunching noise of the horse at his straw.

Time seemed to crawl, endless and sweet in the stable's gloom. She tried to speak and could not.

She tried to argue or protest and she could not. Wanting was too close, need too furious. His fingers turned her fluid, pliant, restless.

She took a racing breath and touched his face. "You can...We could..." She swallowed, trying to say things she'd never said before. "You don't have to worry about complications. Entanglements. I wouldn't try to hold you."

How could a woman look so vulnerable? MacLeod wondered grimly. And how could he be such a fool to consider her breathless offer?

Her face was flushed and her hair a tumble of chestnut curls. Desire painted a glorious blush over her creamy skin and tightened her breath.

Honest, she was.

Too honest for the safety of either of them.

In MacLeod's world, women manipulated and schemed, using their bodies as coin in a complex game for power or status. Never were they honest. Never were they claimed by true desire, as she was now.

Maybe he had known the wrong women, MacLeod thought bleakly. If so, they had taught him well.

With expert eyes he measured her response. She was trembling, open. In a moment he could be sheathed in her heat. She would gasp and rock against him, lost in passion deep enough to blind them both.

And he wanted that fiercely. But there were complications. There always were, despite her obscure promise.

Gently he ran his hand through the silken cap of her hair. In his time, no woman would dream of having her hair shorn like this.

Like the rest of her, it delighted him.

Somehow he managed to keep his hands from shaking. Storming Damascus had been easier than this, he thought ruefully as needs long unassuaged raced to fiery life.

In a moment he could bare the rest of her and draw another husky moan from her lips. He could make her laugh, then topple her headlong into darkest pleasure while he watched her, skin to skin.

Heart to heart.

MacLeod stilled, realizing he had never wanted a woman so badly.

Why now? Why only with her?

Hope's eyes opened, the sun-washed green of a summer glen, and he tried to remember he was a knight. He reminded himself of honor and chivalry and oaths of pure, courtly love. But it was difficult when she shifted against him, all heat and yearning.

In a moment they would be on the oak bench. And a moment later he would be buried inside her, teaching them both about dark worlds of shifting pleasure.

He arched her back, coaxing her nipple to a greedy point. She filled his hands, filled his senses, filled his heart.

Bodies met and need bolted. As he drank in her taste with hard, searching lips, she made a lost sound. Her fingers tugged at the soft hair on his chest, then angled lower, where the folds of wool gathered at his waist.

His body tensed. "Dangerous, mo cridhe."

"No. Not dangerous enough."

MacLeod forgot the stable, forgot the date, forgot the horse eating contentedly a few feet away.

Her sweater slid off her shoulders.

But he would not have her, not the way his body demanded. The kittens meowed softly as he pulled her close and swept her onto the table, chest to chest, then stilled her protest with his lips.

Heat grew. She made a restless sound and her head tilted back.