Besieged Heart (No Ordinary Lovers Collection) Read Free Page B

have presumed to caress her with his hard, warm hands…
    Madness.
    Whatever the wizard had done to her had affected her mind. She must take care, for she had never in her life been so without protection, had never been so alone with a man.
    As the woodsman finished his task, she used the only defense she had at present, one that had always served her well. “Thank you,” she said in regal dismissal.
    Turning from him, she moved with dignity to seat herself and pick up the hot drink that had been served for her.
    She took a sip then grimaced, looking up at him with an expression of inquiry.
    “Coffee,” Rayne said in answer as he brought his own cup and took a seat across from her. “Don’t tell me you’ve never tasted it before.”
    She swallowed and shook her head. At least the brew was warming, and would, perhaps, help banish the unsettled feeling inside her.
    “I don’t think I caught just what part of the world you came from,” he went on. “Or how you came to be flaked out back there in the woods. And that title of yours—would you like to run it by me one more time?”
    She hesitated over his unfamiliar phrases, but their meaning seemed clear enough. It wasn’t necessary, of course, to give him the information he sought. “It hardly matters.”
    “Because you don’t intend to stick around? Fair enough. You can use the phone over there if you need to arrange transport.”
    She glanced at the instrument he indicated, but could not begin to guess its purpose. To disguise the fact, she asked, “Transport?”
    “Car, plane, train, bike. What cloud did you fall off of, Princess?”
    He was having fun at her expense; she could see the flash of it in his eyes. “I believe,” she said evenly, “that I can find my way without…transport.”
    “Walk, you mean? You’ve got to be kidding. It’s all of twenty miles to the nearest the town.”
    “A town?” she said with sudden hope. “Is it near Carreg Cennen?”
    “Actually, it isn’t near much of anything. It’s in Louisiana.” As she merely stared at him, he added, “Louisiana? America? The New World? You know—explorers, Columbus, independence and all that?”
    She closed her eyes as weariness overcame her. She had never heard of any of the places and things he mentioned with such blithe assurance.
    “Come on, somebody must have brought you out here and left you,” he said. “Somebody, somewhere, must be wondering where you are.”
    “I don’t—that is, there is no one, not at the moment.”
    “Or not at all? What are you hiding, honey?”
    “Nothing!”
    His gaze was narrow and far too knowing. He smiled, his dark eyes flashing with what might have been humor—or was it a threat?
    “Nobody is looking for you, and you don’t have a clue about where you want to go. I guess that means it’s just you and me, Princess.”

Chapter Two

    The princess, Rayne saw, did not trust him. It offended him, hurt him more than he’d imagined. He knew it was unreasonable to feel that way. She didn’t know him, after all. But the fact that she did not—that she could not recognize him in this guise he had assumed—was even more painful.
    He had always known she seldom saw beyond his wizard’s robes, of course. He was her counselor, her confidant, someone always there when needed. She depended on him, consulted him in all things, and discussed her thoughts, feelings, and instincts with him.
    Yet she never saw him for who and what he was beyond that, or for how he felt. She never saw him as a person, much less a man. It was supposed to be that way; still, it troubled him from the first and had grown increasingly intolerable with each passing year. The constant contact with the princess forced upon him by the siege had made the circumstances almost more than he could bear.
    All the same, he felt naked before her without his robe. He had been only fifteen when he donned it and walked at his father’s heels into her presence. At no point in all that