11
" In a world where men paint the ground with blood, the stars gave me a reason to look up. They’re a map when ye’re lost, and points of light when all is dark. I ken why you think it makes them seem friendly.” “Yes,” she agreed. “I suppose that they remind me that the world always turns. That things are constantly changing. This moment, every moment, whether good or terrible, will pass into oblivion and so I must live it. I must see it through. And, eventually, a new day will come again. "
― Kerrigan Byrne , The Highlander (Victorian Rebels, #3)
14
" Then ye must go to her, claim her, right away.” She stood, as though ready to shoo him from her house. “Ye make it sound so easy.” He stood as well, feeling large and encumbered in her dainty room. “Nothing worthwhile is easy,” she quipped. “Ye helped to dismantle the East India Company. Ye’ve stormed castles and replaced entire regimes. Should she resist ye, lay siege to her defenses and scale her walls, Lieutenant Colonel, it’s not as if ye doona ken how to do that. "
― Kerrigan Byrne , The Highlander (Victorian Rebels, #3)
16
" It still shocks me that this comes as a surprise to most men, adorable idiots that ye are, but doona ye ken a woman who is not after you for yer title and yer fortune needs to be wooed?” “Wooed?” The word tasted as foreign in his mouth as the idea was to his thoughts. “Ye mean, gifts and jewelry—” “Nay, dammit.” She pressed a beleaguered and dramatic hand to her forehead. “The most precious thing you can give a woman, a worthy woman, is intimacy, time, truth, safety, and friendship.” “Friendship?” He lifted his own hand to his temple, pressing at the place where his head was starting to pound. “Talk to her. Know her and let her know ye, as well. Intimacy is not only in the bedroom, ye know. To love each other, ye must first like each other. Do ye like her? "
― Kerrigan Byrne , The Highlander (Victorian Rebels, #3)
17
" I can’t,” she cried, feeling her knees melt. His lips left her with a wet, wicked sound. “Ye will,” he breathed against her most intimate flesh. “I’m going to fall,” she warned weakly, her hips undulating toward his mouth with mortifying wantonness. “Fall apart in my arms, lass,” he soothed, his hands caressing around to fill his palms with the flesh of her backside, making a cradle of her hips. “I’ll not let ye go. "
― Kerrigan Byrne , The Highlander (Victorian Rebels, #3)
20
" Suddenly her hands were pinned above her head, and he was filling her mouth with his tongue. She tasted the salt of her skin on his lips and the pervasive ache between her legs became a flooding, insistent sort of pain. He kissed her with such scorching thoroughness, he quite erased the last vestiges of rational thought. “Now,” she sobbed against his mouth, too distressed to feel shame at the pleading note in her voice. His dark noise was full of masculine victory as he continued his seductive assault on her lips, caressing down the soft curve of her hip, then slid lower, gathering the folds of her skirts in his hand, tugging them up her leg. Mena’s fingers blindly gripped the stone behind her as frantically as she grasped for her sanity. Then he dropped to his knees. “What are you doing?” she gasped, reaching for him, meaning to pull him back against her. “Doona touch me, lass,” he commanded, sliding his hands up beneath her dress, his calluses rasping against the silk of her stockings with a delightfully wicked sensation. “I’ll not be able to stop myself from taking ye.” Her brows drew together in bemused consternation. “But I told you that you could take me.” She was almost panting now, as though she’d run a great length. “Aye.” He chuckled, his clever fingers stopping to toy with a garter, effectively rendering her witless. “I give before I take, lass. It’ll always be thus. "
― Kerrigan Byrne , The Highlander (Victorian Rebels, #3)
