Free The Legend of Lady MacLaoch by Becky Banks

brows, dark against her fair skin, seemed to be permanently arched in anger, and her face, though beautiful, was pinched tight from the upset she was working on.
    Kelly rolled his eyes heavenward just as the music, this time jumpy and lively, started back up.
    “Good,” he said and snatched my hand. “Let’s dance.”
    “But—” was all I managed before I was dragged from the bar to the dance floor, the whiskies rolling like a heavy hand through my body. Before we disappeared completely into the crowd, I caught a glimpse of Ice Empress talking to someone on her cell phone.
    Kelly pulled me in against him as he danced to the music, a hop and a twist here, then some move that I suspected was completely Kelly-only. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I tried to emulate him. After a moment I felt foolish. It was as if I were a fumbling newborn trying to walk, and Kelly was everywhere and right in front of me all at once.
    Bodies elbowed and jarred me as they moved in sync with the jumpy fiddle, and I thought of the mosh pits I’d been in at concerts in undergrad. The crowd jostled me farther and farther from Kelly. Taking a moment from his one-man party, he saw the gap opening between us and moved to close it.
    Kelly reached forward and, planting both hands on my ass, wrenched me in against him. My head bounced off his chest and, before I got my wits about me, I realized he had also licked my ear.
    “Yeah, baby. Mmmm,” he said, his voice barely heard over the high pitch of Fletcher’s and his counterpart’s strings.
    “Whoa, buddy,” I said, trying to put some distance between us again. I was thinking drunkenly he’d obviously missed a step in How to Woo a Woman.
    “I’m sorry, love, you are just too beautiful for me not to sample,” he said into my ear, then licked it again and began ministrations that went beyond ear licking. They were far too personal, with his body against mine.
    “Kelly. Yuck, don’t lick my ear.” I wiped the spit off with my shoulder, thinking this is what Fletcher might be like in several years, if he ever moved out of his mother’s house. “And get your paws off of me.” I slapped his hands off my ass.
    He looked down at me without pausing in his dancing and rolled his eyes. “Stop being such a fucking American prude. Just relax.” He grabbed at me again.
    “Excuse me?” I raised my voice to be sure he heard me. This dance was definitely over.
    “I said, stop being such a fucking American prude.”
    I sneered. “I wasn’t asking because I’m deaf, but in case you are dense, I meant: your girlfriend is at the bar and I don’t want to fuck you, so let go!” I gave him a shove, but it was like shoving a stack of bricks.
    Instead of moving away from me, he leaned back again so we made eye contact. “She’s not my girlfriend, and ye can’t be serious about not wanting to fuck.” He didn’t take his eyes off mine. “Not dressed like that.”
    The room jerked to a standstill as I stared at him, hard. My mind replayed the words he’d just said to me, trying to find another set of words that he could have meant. Though I tried, for his benefit—this stranger in whose country I was a guest—I knew that’s exactly what I had heard him say.
    Twisting out of his mauling grip, I squeezed around a nearby couple. Kelly’s hand wrapped around my arm and yanked me back to him. I stumbled backward and fell into him, and he grabbed at me again.
    “Get your fucking hands off me,” I hissed in Kelly’s face.
    He tried on a look that was an attempt, I could only assume, at dark and dangerous but looked more like the California Valley girl sneer of whatever. His words were dark, however. “Ye don’t leave until I say ye do.”
    It was now undeniably clear that Kelly wasn’t used to hearing the word no and that in order to have him respect my wishes, I’d have to teach him sign language. With my knee.
    Just as I shifted to the side for his first lesson, a shoulder moved in between