Bannockburn Binding (Beloved Bloody Time) Read Free Page A

question?”
    “If you want me to escort the wonderful Ms. Shun back to Halfway, I wouldn’t if I were you.” But he wore a smile, too.
    “Damn it, Christian, you have no respect for your elders,” Nayara replied.
    Christian touched his hand to an invisible hat brim. “I find it hard to remember to treat you as anything but a lady when you’re so beautiful and sexy, Nayara.” He turned, heading for the living quarters. “’tis little wonder Ryan’s temper is so unstable,” he said over his shoulder. “You really should consider putting him out of his misery, you know.”
    Nayara quietened the lurch of her heart Christian’s parting words caused and waited for her breathing to steady before she turned in the other direction and headed for Administration. Christian was irreverent, that was all. It didn’t mean he was accurate. He had simply been deflecting her gentle admonition back. Yes, that was it. He had been on the defensive.
    Her mind and heart settled, Nayara tapped back into her messages and tasks as she walked, picking up the myriad strings of her busy day, deliberately dismissing Christian’s barb from her memory altogether.
    After all, Christian was no judge. He had his own affaire de coeur troubles.

Chapter Two
     
    Rob managed to stay away from his tent until sunset, then he could stand it no longer. He found a platter that was near to clean and heaped piping hot stew upon it, grabbed a hunk of honey bread and even managed to scrounge up a spoon. He took it all back to the tent, with a lantern in the other hand.
    She was slumped against the tent pole, her face against her arms. His heart leapt into his mouth at the paleness of her. “Natalie, lass,” he murmured. “I’ve food for ye.”
    She didn’t move and his fear bloomed larger. After all, she had been doing naught but picking mushrooms. If he’d killed her….
    He sat his burdens down and cut her hands free with his dagger. She fell against him, a dead weight.
    “Ye should’ve called out sooner, lassie,” he told her, knowing she probably couldn’t hear him. He began to massage her upper arms and shoulders, where most of the strain would have been.
    She flashed to life, her knee driving into the front of his kilt, aiming for parts that no maiden should have been aware of. Her arms stiffened, the elbows driving into his chest. Her right elbow landed true and his shoulder instantly numbed, leaving his left arm useless.
    She squirmed out of his reach and lunged for the dirk he’d left on the skins behind him.
    Both furious and amazed, he threw himself on top of her, reaching over her head to pin her forearm to the floor, even as her fingers closed on the haft of the knife. With his left arm useless, he could only pin her down until his weight and her own struggles exhausted her.
    “Wriggle all ye like,” he told her harshly. “It’ll do naught but tire ye and make your meal cold. I have no intention of letting ye take the knife.” He shook his fingers as feeling started to return to his arm. “And the longer ye wriggle the sooner my other hand will recover.”
    She lay still and silent. Waiting.
    As soon as he was able, he reached with his left hand and tossed the knife far out of the way. Then he flipped her on her back.
    Instantly, she heaved upwards with her head, intending to smash her forehead into his and blind him. But he had been ready for such a trick and was out of reach, so she did nothing but strain her already stressed shoulders. She fell back on the skins with a cry of pain, her eyes closing.
    It was much too close to a more intimate positioning than Rob cared to consider. He cleared his throat. “Ye cannot win any match against me, Natalie.” His words emerged ragged and harsh. “D’ye not see? Will ye not give it up and let me treat ye civilly?”
    She was breathing deeply, but the eyes were slit open, showing dark brown and black. “Give me back my manservant.”
    “I canna.”
    She turned her head away.