For the Highlander's Pleasure Read Online Free Page A

stone.
“I did not seek the river to bathe,” she began, then shook her head impatiently. “I took a spill from the horse and hoped to rinse off my skirts.”
He remembered the rapturous look upon her face when he’d first spied her. Had his fanciful imagination supplied that facet of his recollection? He certainly hadn’t imagined the time she’d taken to wash the skin beneath her neckline. His breath grew heavy with the want of her as they strode into the darkness, leaving the noise of the musicians and servers in the hall far behind.
“You seemed to enjoy it,” he observed, his words scratching on a hoarse note.
“Nay.” She denied it so adamantly he almost believed her. Certainly he wanted to, as it would ease his hunger not to view her as an eager maid in sore need of a man’s touch.
She stopped suddenly in the silent corridor. A door had appeared in front of them, arising out of the darkness thanks to the torch he carried. He guessed the door hid the staircase and he moved to open it, but she reached out to halt his hand.
“I have led us astray,” she admitted, her eyes avoiding his as her neck cloth slipped down her shoulder once again. “We passed the stairs.”
The view of her unadorned, pale throat captured his attention, drawing his gaze down to the bodice of her gown. A silver brooch held a shawl about her shoulders, but even that was off-center as if she had shifted it about. The rapid beat of her heart would have been evident in the small twitch of a vein at her neck even if he hadn’t felt the thump for himself through the palm of her hand.
“It is sometimes enjoyable to find oneself led astray,” he admitted, knowing he could not resist the temptation she presented.
She shook her head and removed her hand from his. “I did not intend to—”
“You appear feverish.” He sketched a touch across her forehead. Down her temple. Stroked a knuckle along her cheek. “Perhaps that’s why you lingered in the river today. To cool the fever.”
He could soothe the agitation in both of them by skimming away her clothes and plunging between her thighs. He had no doubt the cure would be a pleasure for them both. As he stood so close to her, breathing in her scent and her desire, he wondered if she understood the source. She had to be an untouched maid. Yet her wanton pleasure in baring her body said otherwise.
Or was he simply justifying what he wanted so badly?
“A fever,” she repeated, as if mulling over the idea. She nodded, and his passion-fogged brain wondered if she’d agreed as easily to his idea for a cure. “ That was the magic.”
Her voice skimmed over his skin like sweet music, her soft confidence an invitation as far as he was concerned. Sharing her fever sounded magical to him. If only for a moment. If only to show a lonely maiden a kind of pleasure she would never know as long as she remained the caretaker of her drunkard father. He would not touch her for himself. He would touch her for her sake.
She looked so very…needy. Yes, that was the word he’d been searching for during the supper meal as Violet had trembled and shifted beside him. Her sweet hunger was so tangible he could all but taste it in the air between them.
“I know the cure for this kind of fever.” To free his hands, he planted the torch in the iron ring upon the stone wall near the door. “’Twill soothe the heat better than any icy stream.”
Eyes widening, she looked to the torch and then back to him again, as if trying to understand why he would linger here. But no—she must know. Her whole body undulated with the answer to her confusion. She practically writhed with need.
Reaching for her waist, he pulled her to him, sealing her body to his. Her breath huffed lightly over his skin as she gasped, but he did not allow this to dissuade him from plundering her mouth for a thoroughly intoxicating taste.

Chapter Three
     
In her mind, Violet protested.
Certainly she would have disapproved aloud as well, except