Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(24)

So this is what happens to a woman, she thought, when she’s falling haplessly in love with a man.

He reached for his rope belt and, with a flick of his fingers, untied it. It thudded to the floor at his feet. Her heart throbbed a painful beat as he then hauled up his woolen surcoat to wrestle it over his head and toss it toward the pallet.

She’d seen many a man undress. The sailors, before they lugged heavy cargo on shore. The villager men at thatching-time, when the sun became fierce. But it was different watching Lachlan reach over his shoulder and grab a fistful of his linen undertunic. As the hem rode up, it revealed the ridged muscles of his thighs, and then the wound cloth of the braies hugging his hips, and, once he lifted his head free, the gleaming stretch of his naked chest.

She swallowed and it was like forcing a goose egg through a stocking. She’d seen Lachlan shirtless often enough but never when he was so upright and bright with strength—and never when she had a specific intent in mind. Unnerved, she dropped her gaze only to find herself staring at a more dangerous place—the stripe of pale skin just above the waist of his braies. She wondered what it would be like to ride her fingertips along that pale border.

The room around her bowed and swayed. The motion stopped when he turned his back to her and dropped down to sit on the hearth stool.

She mentally shook herself and placed her linens and the bowl of unguent on the little table at the foot of the pallet. She couldn’t let him affect her this way, not when she was about to risk so much.

She eased the tips of her fingers under the edge of the linen wrappings. Though the wound was healed and the angry soreness long gone, he flinched as though touched by a spark. A long muscle along his side flexed at her touch. She puzzled over these reactions as she plucked at the knot until she pulled it free. To unwind the strip of linen from his body, she needed to reach over his shoulder and across his chest.

A strand of his hair tickled her chin as she leaned in. She smelled his scent—medicinal herbs and sun-warmed linen, and something else, something musky and completely masculine. When she slipped her arm around his other side in order to seize the end of the linen, she pressed a breast against the thick, hard muscle of his shoulder.

A jolt went through him. It reverberated through her.

She eased away from his warmth more quickly than she should have, because a woman needed room to breathe if she wasn’t going to see black spots winking before her eyes. She tried very hard to fix her mind on the second layer of unwinding, but she was clumsy about it. When she reached around to seize the growing ball of cloth again, he made a hissing sound and ripped the roll from her hands. He pulled the bandage across his chest with haste and then backhanded the crumpled cloth to her.

By the time the last of the bandages fell away, her heart fretted in her chest like a trapped dove. The urge to race out of the sickroom was countered in strength only by her determination to see this through.

He growled, “Be done with it, lass.”

A pulse in his neck throbbed. With his mind closed to her and his face turned toward the hearth, she could only guess why he behaved so. The not-knowing was like an itch she couldn’t scratch.

So by desperate instinct she tried once more to read his mind. She pressed as close as she dared as she took some grease on her fingertips and ran them slickly down the wound. His ribs expanded and contracted, the muscles tensing under her hand. In his mind she felt a similar flex in the wall of his thoughts. She tumbled into that soft darkness, like plunging into the depths of the sea, a muffling of sound and sensation, and a warmth—

“Damn it, lass.”

He twisted with a grunt. He wrapped his good arm around her waist and hauled her full across his lap. A muscle moved in his cheek as his gaze devoured her. She thought this was easier than I expected just before he rasped his lips against hers.

Black spots before her eyes became black stars exploding in her mind and all thought—any thought—every thought—burned to ashes.

She’d been kissed before, by a boy her age whose mind told her that he’d welcome a few moments behind a cottage. The boy’s kiss had been clumsy, his hands greedy, and his leapfrogging thoughts so crude that she’d shoved him away before he’d dared to explore where he hadn’t been invited.

But this merging of lips bore no resemblance to that awkward moment in the shade of the cottage wall. She tasted Lachlan’s mouth and slipped her fingers into the warmth of his dark, dark hair, and realized this was what she wanted since she came upon him wounded and half-drowned upon the strand. This wanting was a force beyond her control, like the tide tugging at her knees. Suddenly she understood the passion of poor lonely Deirdre of all the old stories, meeting handsome Naoise upon the road, then casting aside her duty to king and clan all because of the desire that flowed between her and her dark-haired, ruddy-cheeked warrior.

Lachlan tilted his head and nudged her lips apart. She parted her lips at his wordless command and sensed the vibrations of a moan rumble through him. He captured her tongue and drew it into his own mouth, slipping his against hers in a way that made her quiver and tense all over.

Then, like a flash in the darkness, she heard her name whispered. It was a thought-whisper, not a sound, for all she could hear in the room was the crackle of the peat fire and their mutual breathing. His thought was like a comet shooting through the darkness. Her heart gave a little leap in her chest.

Then his hand slid down her cheek. His fingers grazed her throat. She knew where that hand was going, even before he plunged it beneath the hem of her gaping tunic and took her breast in his warm palm.