Highland Vow Read Online Free

temptress from her wild, unbound hair to her tiny booted feet. Cormac felt the sharp tug of lust. It struck as hard and as fast as a blow to the stomach. Any man who saw her or heard her speak would have to be restrained from kicking down the heavy gates of Donncoill to reach her. If his heart was not already pledged to another, Cormac knew he would be sorely tempted. He wondered if Sir Colin had simply succumbed to her allure.
    “What? Ye hesitate to strike a lass?” Elspeth taunted the glowering Sir Colin, her beautiful voice heavily ladened with contempt. “I have long thought that nothing ye could do would e’er surprise me, but mayhap I was wrong.”
    “Ye do beg to be beaten,” Sir Colin said, the faint tremor in his voice all that hinted at his struggle for control.
    “Yet ye stand there like a reeking dung heap.”
    Cormac tensed when Colin wrapped one beefy hand around her long, slender throat and, in a cold voice, drawled, “So that is your game, is it? Ye try to prod me into a blind rage? Nay, my bonny green-eyed bitch, ye are nay the one who will be doing the prodding here.” Three of the five men in the room chuckled.
    “’Tis to be rape then, is it? Ye had best be verra sure when ye stick that sad, wee twig of flesh in me that ye are willing to make it your last rut. The moment it touches me, ’twill be a doomed wee laddie.”
    Sir Colin’s hand tightened on her throat. Cormac could see the veins in the man’sthick hand bulge. His own hand went to his sword, although he knew it would be madness to interfere. Elspeth made no sound, did not move at all, but kept her gaze fixed steadily upon Sir Colin’s flushed face. Cormac noticed her hands clench behind her back until her knuckles whitened. Cormac had to admire her bravery, but he thought it foolhardy to keep goading the man as she was. He could not understand what she thought to gain from the man, save for a quick death. When Cormac decided he was going to have to interfere, no matter how slim the odds of success, Sir Colin finally released her. Elspeth gasped only once and swayed faintly, yet she had to be in pain and starved for breath.
    “Some may try to call it rape, but I mean only to bed my wife,” Sir Colin said.
    “I have already refused you,” she replied, her voice a little weaker, a little raspy. “Further discussion of the matter would just be tedious.”
    “No one refuses me.”
    “I did and I will.”
    “Ye will have no more say in this matter.” He signaled to the two men flanking her. “Secure her in the west tower.” Sir Colin brushed his blunt fingertips over her full mouth and barely snatched them away, out of her reach, before she snapped at them, her even white teeth clicking loudly in the room. “I have a room prepared especially for you.”
    “I am humbled by your generousity.”
    “Humbled? Oh, aye, ye too proud wench, ye will soon be verra humbled indeed.”
    Cormac gently pushed the door shut as far as he dared, stopping just before it latched. A moment later he was in the hall again, using the shadows cast by the torchlight to follow Elspeth and her guards. Only once did someone look back, and that was Elspeth. She stared into the shadows that sheltered him, a frown briefly curving her full lips; then she was tugged along by her guards. Cormac did not think she had seen him, but if she had, she clearly had the wit to say nothing. He followed his prey right to the door of the tower room, all the while struggling to devise some clever plan.
     
    Elspeth stumbled slightly when one of the guards roughly shoved her into the room, but she quickly steadied herself. She swallowed her sigh of relief when the other guard cut the rope binding her wrists. Then she fought the urge to rub them, thus revealing how much they hurt as the blood began to flow to them again. As the heavy door shut behind the two men and she listened to the bolt being dragged across it, she began to rub her chaffed, sore wrists and make a quick