If You Dare Read Free Page A

earlier.
    Who was she fooling? Vitale was still convinced the Highlander would murder them all in their sleep without the proper precautions.
    She would go because she was restless and watching the even rise and fall of his chest was . . . agreeable.
    As was touching him. Every day she would trace the star-burst scar just below his temple, along with each mark across his broad chest and down his muscular arms. She’d memorized them all and had imagined a scenario for each.
    Though he was surely her enemy, his presence broke up the monotony and loneliness in the house. Since war was on the horizon, many of her people had fled to mountains even more remote than this one, and she could only get cooks and maids from the valley to come by a few times a month. With her older brother away fighting Pascal and her parents dead, Annalía had been living alone in the main house. She’d invited the ranch hands’ wives and their children to stay, but they were ill at ease in the luxurious home. Even Vitale declined.
    Before the Scot, she’d been alone in the echoing house, and she’d hated it.
    When she unlocked the door, she saw he tossed in bed, with sweat beading his forehead. After a check of his bandages and cast, she felt his skin but found no real fever. He was probably just hot from the stuffy room. The window was open but offered no relief. She nibbled her bottom lip wondering if she should cool him, try to make him more comfortable.
    Decided, she poured water into the bowl at the dresser, then soaked a cloth. Returning to the bed, she ran it over his forehead, neck, and chest above his rib bandages.
    After guiltily looking around her, she pinched the edge ofthe sheet on each side of his hips and tugged it down, placing it, arranging it perfectly so his privates were just covered. Her hands shook as she lifted the cloth to the strip of skin below his bandages. She ran it across his hard stomach, and frowned when the muscles rippled and dove in reaction.
    When she inadvertently dripped water on the sheet over his groin she could see his manhood outlined beneath it. Could see it even more than she’d been able to on the previous days because it was larger, harder.
    She tilted her head, wondering what it would feel like—
    â€œTell me, lass,” the man’s voice rumbled, “do you like what you see?”

Two

    T he woman gasped in surprise, dropping her cloth, the cloth that had started on his body clinically and purposefully, as he’d awakened, but had soon skimmed over him in sinuous movements.
    Her heels clicked on the polished wooden floor when she retreated. Court watched as she smoothed her already crisp dress, then the perfect knot of hair at her nape, then the choker at her throat with slender hands. At each of these tasks, her chin rose higher.
    â€œI-I was merely caring for you,” she answered in accented English.
    Instead of coming to in a haze of pain, he’d woken to her breasts glancing over the hair on his chest as she reached across him, and to one of her soft, pale hands gripping his hip while the other rubbed over his skin. As he’d felt fat drops of water hitting the sheet, he’d caught the scent of her hair, making even his beaten body stir. “Then consider me still in need of your care.”
    Her cheeks turned pink.
    He tried to sit higher in the bed, then grimaced in pain. As if in answer, all his other wounds finally sounded the call. He glanced down at his wrist to find a cast. “Who are you?” he ground out. “And where am I?”
    â€œMy name is Annalía Elisabet Catherina Tristán. I am mistress of Casa del Llac, where you abide now, and daughter of the family Llorente.” Her accent told him English wasn’t her first language, though she spoke it perfectly and without hesitation, the words rolling from her tongue in a manner that was pleasing to the ear. She’d said the name Llorente proudly, as