The Highlander's Dark Seduction

“Very well.” He nodded. “You can ride in front of me.”

Once more his broad hands clamped around her waist and he lifted her high onto the back of the monstrous horse.

She made a small, undignified shriek, but the horse did not even twitch as she landed sideways on the beast’s back. In a trice, Magnus Darroch flung himself beside her without the help of a stirrup or even—goodness—a saddle.

“We will fall off,” she protested, grabbing a fistful of mane in one hand before the man—Magnus—scooped her up and dropped her across his hard thighs as easily as he might handle a sack of grain. “Oh!”

“I’ve been riding horses for even longer than I have been dodging sidhe,” he proclaimed, wrapping an arm around her waist and clamping her tight to his chest. “There is nae a chance you will fall on my watch.”

He had no saddle, but he held reins in his hand—a simple bridle around the horse’s head that didn’t seem nearly enough to keep the animal in check, but with the slightest encouragement from Magnus Darroch, the powerful beast responded to a simple nudge of the rider’s knee. A nudge Elizabeth felt all too well since she was seated on his lap.

Heaven help her, the night had been thoroughly shocking from the moment she’d opened her eyes. She had no business making the trip to Invergale while wrapped in a foreign warrior’s arms. She’d be ruined. Fodder for scandal. Completely…

Unmarriageable?

The idea suddenly took on a certain appeal, especially since it would discourage the destitute earl she’d refused and others of his shallow ilk….

But then she came to her senses. She must be even more distressed and out of sorts than she’d realized to entertain such a notion. Her first priority right now should be figuring out what on earth was happening. Had Lily been drawn into the same strangeness that Elizabeth felt right now?

“I don’t understand what’s happening to me.” Her hand rested on the warrior’s forearm that went around her waist. She stared at it, hardly recognizing it as her own. His flesh was so warm. The muscle beneath impossibly strong. Magnus Darroch seemed to be the only stable, solid thing in a world suddenly off-kilter. “I don’t even understand where we are. What was that place?”