Page 24 of The Highlander’s Untamed Lady

Evander grunted. He still wanted to see the bastard dead at the end of his sword. And Diana’s father while he was at it.

“You’re not angry with me?” She peered up at him. “For not being a virgin? I never cared before because I didn’t care to marry, but now, here with you, I do care.”

He stared at her, incredulous. “Why would I be angry with ye, lass?”

“Because I’ve been touched by another man.” She shook her head. “I’m not the woman you’d expected to marry. And now when you touch me, even when I desire for you to, I can’t help but think back when he—” She pulled her fingers from his and cupped her hands over her face. “I don’t want him to haunt me. I don’t want him to win.”

“Then he willna.” Evander gently held her wrists and lowered her hands. She gazed up at him, her wide blue eyes large in her slender face.

“You still wish to have me?” she asked.

“I dinna think I could ever stop needing ye,” Evander said earnestly. “Short of telling me ye dinna want me.”

“I could never say that,” Diana breathed. “You’re so wonderful, so patient and kind and…handsome.”

It was Evander’s turn to blush, given the heat flaring in his cheeks. “I dinna think a lass has ever called me handsome before.”

“But you are,” Diana protested. “The sharp lines of your face.” She traced his jawline, and a path of fire burned over his skin. “The deep emotion in your eyes. The fullness of your mouth, and the way your kisses make me feel.” She touched his lips, and the torch of desire flared to life once more.

“How do I make ye feel?” he asked in a gravelly voice.

“Like I’m burning,” she whispered. “Hot and tingling, as if I might explode. Evander, make me your wife. Replace the awful memories with ones I want to cherish.”

Evander reached out to her. His hands shook. With need, with awareness, with responsibility for what she’d placed on his shoulders. “Tell me to stop and I will.”

Diana leaned into him and pressed a kiss to his lips. “I know you will, and it’s also why I want you so damn bad.”

Diana’s body trembled with a dizzying mix of excitement, anticipation, and nerves. The last weeks had shown her Evander’s patience and kindness. She knew without a doubt if she told him to stop, he would. The earnest expression he gave her, and the sentiment brimming there, promised everything she knew she could trust.

He returned her kisses with a gentler, tamer passion. Defiance flickered up inside her. She was not a weak thing, a victim to be so carefully handled.

She held his face in her hands and swept her tongue into his mouth. He groaned, and the careful kisses deepened into something that didn’t make her feel so bloody fragile.

Her fingers swept down his strong neck and over the broad lines of his chest where he was impossibly firm and powerful. Evander’s hands made their own careful way down her waist, his caress light and slow. Giving her a chance to stop him.

His touch burned through the silk of her gown. Everything pounded with a heady lust, desperate to feel his naked skin – first tested with her hands, and then…her body.

Evander sucked Diana’s lower lip, kissed her, and trailed the pleasure of his mouth down her jaw to her neck, where the brush of his lips sent decadent shivers cascading through her.

“I want to see you,” Diana said, her voice throatier than she’d ever heard it.

He drew back and pulled the leine over his head. His muscles flexed and squeezed beneath his skin with the movement, while the firelight played across the chiseled lines of his torso. Diana’s eyes widened in appreciation. He was even more powerful under his clothing than she assumed he would be.

She reached out and skimmed her fingertips over his chest. His skin was warm and soft atop the hard muscles jumping at her touch. He watched her exploration with hooded eyes. Encouraged, she continued over his chest, her fingernails lightly trailing over one nipple. Evander’s breath caught and his stare intensified.

He found her desirable, as he’d said. But words were one thing. This – the way he watched her as if she were his entire world – this proved so much more than words ever could. Diana kept her eyes fixed on him, on his reaction, and traced her fingers over the corded muscle of his stomach.

Evander’s body flexed at her touch. God, the man was made of stone. She stopped near his navel and drew her touch down the narrow strip of dark hair leading into his kilt. Diana licked her suddenly dry lips. “Will you take this off?” she asked.

He put his hands to his belt and hesitated, as if seeking additional confirmation. Diana nodded and held her breath.

This part of a man she’d seen only once before. It was a part she thought she’d never want to see again. At the last minute, fear pulled at her and she shot her stare to Evander’s face, watching it rather than the spiral of the kilt as it fell to the floor. As if understanding, he held her gaze and did not reach for her. In fact, he didn’t even move. He stood frozen under her observation.

Finally, slowly, her eyes lowered. First to the safety of his broad chest, then to his tight, flat stomach, then to the cluster of dark hair, and finally to where his phallus rose thick and hard, bobbing slightly in time with his heartbeat.

She looked up at Evander again, confirming it was him. Of course, she knew it was, but the racing of her pulse told a different tale.

She put her hands on his chest while keeping a safe distance from his hips. It was Evander’s skin against her hands, his kind heart beating a frenzy beneath her palms, his powerful body he would never use to hurt her. His powerful, beautiful body.