Reluctant (Heroes of the Highlands) (The MacKays #3) Read Free Page A

you !” she scolded, latching on to indignation with desperate fingers. “This is why I’ve been sent here, you know. This unacceptable behavior.” Gripping the dirk’s bejeweled hilt, she let out a gasp as she pulled it from her body, already feeling the flesh begin to knit back together. “Really, who throws daggers at a guest before ascertaining whether they are friend or foe?”
    “Do. Not. Do… That .” The dark command held a bewildering pleading note.
    “Do what?” she queried, holding the dirk up for inspection. It was long and wicked and since she was so small, it almost stabbed clean through her.
    The Berserker’s eyes flickered, and shadows of a different sort began to swirl in their depths.
    “Bleed.” The word was growled from lips peeled back from sharpened teeth. Kamdyn froze in fascination as the black of his pupils deepened and spread until his entire eye was a void, empty of emotion and full of every shade of darkness.
    She’d been warned that blood would bring on Berserkergang. That it turned him into a ruthless beast of indiscriminate rage that would kill anyone in his path.
    His body arched and he snarled as muscles built and compounded upon each other. He seemed to grow taller, wider, even monstrous. Either that or the tent was shrinking, which Kamdyn very much doubted. The part of him that defined his sex twitched and grew, becoming full and large.
    Kamdyn’s mouth went dry. Then flooded with moisture.
    He’d become some kind of beast. He turned those abysmal eyes on her again and an expression crossed his face that astounded and bewildered her all at once.
    On a dog, she would have called it joy. But on the Berserker’s feral features, it had to be called something else. He was too savage to smile. To brutal to possess something like hope. Too ruthless to love. She was certain of it.
    But to possess, to dominate, to destroy, of these things he was more than capable. Every dark intent she could imagine was blasted toward her by the muddled emotions drowning in the soupy remnants of his tainted soul.
    As he stalked her, Kamdyn decided she was almost glad he’d become this monster. It would be less like killing a human. It would be easier to look into the soulless voids that should be his eyes and watch the life ebb from them, taken by her Banshee magic. His murderous intent would soothe the shame at wasting all that masculine beauty.
    He leapt for her.
    She reached out toward him, bracing for the impact, ready to send her deadly currents through his body.
    But didn’t. The closer he came, the better she could see just how wrong she’d been. The swirling darkness of the beast’s eyes weren’t empty at all, just deeper. And what she saw in their depths was a timid, undiscovered tenderness that took her breath away. And a fear of… something. Rejection? That couldn’t be right. Her Banshee senses had to be shorting out.
    When he seized her, she’d expected him to try to rip her apart with his strong bare hands.
    What she hadn’t expected was for him to kiss her.

Chapter Four
    He didn’t just kiss her. He captured her lips with his mouth. Captured her hair with his hand, and crushed her body to his nakedness.
    Kamdyn stood frozen. His flesh was so warm beneath her hands, like silk stretched over sun-heated stone. His dangerously hot mouth threatened to melt her where she stood. In fact, her skin felt as though she’d been set ablaze for the second time in her life, but the sensation carried waves of disquieting pleasure scattering through the flames.
    He was so strong. Too strong. Strong enough to rend her limbs from her body without using more than two fingers. She could feel it in the unerringly solid band of his arm imprisoning her against him. In the handfuls of hard, meaty muscle on his chest. In the press of his alarmingly thick thighs against her. In the fact that her feet no longer touched the ground, but dangled above it as he devoured her.
    He forced his tongue past her