Page 16 of Her Highland Destiny

“Aye, same as my father.”

The weighty mail was lifted off and the rings clinked loudly against one another as she carefully set it aside. She was a knight’s daughter. One whose brother had earned the honor as well. She was no simple peasant, though he’d known that from her noble manner of speech and the pride with which she carried herself.

She turned back toward him and scoffed. “You needn’t look at me like that.”

He raised his brows, pretending he could not sense her thoughts. Keeping himself from hearing her was significantly more difficult than he had anticipated. After a lifetime of being open to the emotions and thoughts of others, it was almost impossible to close it off, especially when his powers were so heightened by the grace of the stone.

She didn’t want him feeling guilty about being in this room alone with her, for having held her waist on the birlinn. For having kissed her. She had liked it far too much to regret it herself.

“I’m the youngest daughter of three,” she said. “Even if I had not been born under the burden of Protector, marriage would be difficult to obtain unless it was to a local shopkeeper.”

Sensual heat radiated off her. He tried to keep his body from responding, for it was more than the energy they shared between them. There was also the simmering heat of attraction, a drawing of two bodies toward one another with the sizzling promise of consensual passion.

“I shall turn my back while ye undress,” he said.

She pressed her red lips together and nodded.

Disappointed.

He spun away and tugged at the wet wool of his surcoat to peel it away from his linens beneath. His phallus beat with the healthy thrum of his heartbeat, wanting. He tossed the surcoat to the floor with a wet slap. A similar sound came from behind him where Cassandra undressed likewise. He imagined her, slender and milky white.

His cock hardened.

She wanted him to come to her. There was a frustrating heat between her legs she knew he could ease. She tried to summon an image of his body without clothing but her innocent mind had no reference. She wanted to see, to know, to touch and feel.

He clenched his hands into fists. He could take her. Right now. The temptation was great and it had been so damn long. But she was a maiden. He squeezed his fists so his closely cropped fingernails bit into his palms and reminded himself how he had failed Allisandre.

He summoned a mental wall to block her lusty thoughts and put it in front of his own to keep his thoughts from being read by her when they touched. The effort caused sweat to prickle his brow despite the wet chill settling over his skin. A worthy effort, for the sound of her thoughts went silent at long last.

“Oh.” Cassandra’s voice startled him from the depth of his concentration. “You are not…dressed yet…I had assumed…” Her stammered words were breathy and disjointed. Clearly she was distracted.

Fergus snatched up the linen and threw it over his head. The underclothes barely reached his knees. The tunic fell similarly short and both stretched tight over his shoulders.

He turned to Cassandra with an apology on his lips and found her slender body lost in a tent of fabric, her tunic as large as his was small. Her shapely calves were visible below the hem where her clothing fell short as his did.

Her gaze slid over him and he did not need to read her mind to know she was seeing what lay beneath the cloth, her innocent interest lit. His body reacted with an eagerness to sate that curiosity, as well as other necessary needs they both shared.

Her hair was still wet and hung in limp curls down her shoulders, some falling down her back, the rest spilling over her chest where it parted over her breasts. The loose fabric did not offer any support to her breasts and left her pert nipples jutting from under the fabric. He wondered if her skin was still cold, if those pink buds would be cool and hard against his tongue while he heated her flesh with his mouth.

“Tell me about your wife,” she said softly.

Her request jarred him from his lusty thoughts and guilt slammed hard into him. He busied himself with picking up his clothing to hang on the string set before the fire.

“I need to know,” Cassandra said.

“Why?” he asked through gritted teeth. “Why must ye know?”

She lifted her wet kirtle and placed it over the hanging line by the fire. The move was nonchalant, but the gaze she slid him from the corner of her eyes was not. “I would not want to attempt to lay claim to any woman’s husband.”

The admission of desire ought to have embarrassed Cassandra, but it did not. Her longing was too great. Fergus put his back to her while he hung up his surcoat on the line.

She recalled all too well every inch of his naked body. His dark hair hanging down the broad expanse of his back, shadowed with muscle. The strength of his legs and his firm arse. It had made her mouth go dry to see him thus and she could not clear it from her mind. She had no wish to clear it from her mind.

He turned slowly to her. His wife was gone is what he’d said before. Did that mean she had left their home as people sometimes did? That she was dead?

Cassandra had been truthful when she’d said she didn’t want to lay claim to any woman’s husband. And with every molten drop of blood thundering through her veins, she wanted him.

“She’s dead.” He lifted his hose from the ground and draped them over the string.