Between the fire, the stew, and tea, and Grant’s knees brushing against hers, she was getting hot. But she wasn’t backing away from him as much as she knew she should, while she wickedly enjoyed the intimacy of their touch. Wishing in a naughty way that they could do more.

“It will never happen,” she said emphatically.

“I don’t want you to leave,” Grant said, his voice somber, his eyes dark.

He sounded so sincere that she was really taken aback. He really must have had a change of heart.

She smiled a little. “I have nearly a year before I do. Maybe in that time you’ll change your mind.”

“Nay. I should have gone to America and brought you home to Farraige Castle so you could have been with your grandmother,” he said, again so serious, as if they’d finally made a connection—a tentative friendship.

“You should have,” she heartily agreed. “I wish I’d known her.”

“Then I wouldn’t have wasted all that time not getting to know you.”

She raised a brow. Was he serious? “And you wouldn’t have tried to scare me off when I first arrived,” she teased.

“I never expected you to stand there recording us, or that my brothers would join you as if they were your bodyguards. I should have known I’d already lost the battle.”

She smiled. “You had. As soon as Julia gave me a heads-up, you had lost. Well, except when it came to the whisky, but that was my fault. I should have known better.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry about not welcoming you like I should have,” he said again, his voice full of regret.

“Truly, I don’t believe we’d be here like this today if you hadn’t. I might have thought you were terribly dull.”

He chuckled.

“I would love to run in the glen over the hills as wolves sometime.”

“Aye.”

She wanted him to know from the bottom of her heart that she would never have replaced Grant or his pack. She reached over to pat his hand. “Archibald would never have run the estates.”

Grant rose from his chair and took her hand gently and pulled her from her seat. “You can’t know how I felt when I saw you and Ollie in the sea.”

She swore Grant’s eyes misted with tears. And she hugged him to say she was sorry for his losses, and to thank him for saving her and Ollie.

For a long time, he held her close, rubbing one hand down her back, his other lying gently on her hip. His head rested on the top of hers, her cheek pressed against his chest. He smelled of his shower, of spices, and more—an interested male wolf.

“I nearly had a heart attack seeing the two of you in the water like that.”

Then she realized how deeply affected he had to have been, with the memories of his mother and father drowning off those same cliffs, and his inability to save them. “You were so brave to jump in after us.”

“I acted on instinct,” he said.

“Just like I did,” she said, sighing against his chest, listening to his heart racing, smelling his hot wolf interest.

He cupped her face and lifted it so he could gaze into her eyes. “Next time…”

She heard the scold in his tone of voice. “Let’s not let there be a next time.” And this time, she initiated the kiss—but not on his cheek.

The pipes grumbled in the bathroom, and she cast Grant an elusive smile before they got back to kissing—the hot, heavy, and needy kind.

Grant rubbed his body affectionately against hers, tantalizing her, making her body heat and tighten and moisten just for him.

Tongues came into play, and with the fire and their kissing, she was burning up. She didn’t figure it would go any further than some really hot kissing, but the next thing she knew, he was stroking his hand down her back, and she had her arms about his neck while she gyrated against him. She hadn’t meant to, not the way she was dressed, but it just seemed like a natural thing to do with him.

All she could think about was him in a kilt, and then him without, and how his very hard body was making her feel hot and desirable. She couldn’t help but want to rub up against him in a wolf’s courtship kind of way. Did he know how much his touch affected her?

Yes. He could smell her turned-on scent just like she recognized his. So it had been just as much of a turn-on for him.

What was it about the alpha Highland wolf that made her lose her business sense and want to take this in a different direction?

“Lass,” Grant groaned against her ear as his body moved against hers.

She loved the way he sounded like he was dying to have her. He cupped her velvet-covered breasts, caressing her mouth with his, their breath coming quickly.

He slipped his hand inside her robe to touch her breast and froze.

“I didn’t expect company,” she said and sucked on his tongue, not about to apologize or be embarrassed. Even if she was.

He reached for her tie and smiled such a wolfishly wicked grin that she quickly stayed his hands. “Not too far.”

“Agreed,” he said, his voice rough with need.

As wolves, mating was for a lifetime. If they were careful, fooling around was the only alternative for sexy wolf loving without the forever commitment. Not that wolves took even this kind of sexual play this far unless they believed they might have something to build on.

Then he untied her robe and parted it. She heard his intake of breath before he murmured, “Beautiful.”

“You probably say that to all the women you rescue from the sea,” she said.

“Since you are the only woman I’ve ever rescued from the sea, aye,” he said, smiling.

He leaned down and took a nipple in his mouth as his hand stroked the other, making her wrap her leg around his calf and rub. She would leave her scent on him, like a wolf claiming him, even if this wasn’t forever.

Her fingers slipped under his shirt, and for the first time, she was able to lightly scratch his back, running her fingers up and down his skin, adoring every bit of him.

Every part of him was sexy. His mouth was made for kissing, she decided as she combed her fingers through his hair and kissed him back, feathering, nipping, licking, pressuring. Before she knew it, she was on his bed—the laird’s bed—their pulses racing to the moon, the heat flaring between them.

She hadn’t been with a man like this in a very long time, and their passionate touches were wilder and more intimate then she had ever experienced.