Highland Vow Read Online Free Page B

smiling faintly at the way his beautiful eyes widened slightly in surprise.
    “Ye remember me?” he asked softly, a little shaken by the warm look in her rich green eyes and the soft, enticing smile of greeting she gifted him with.
    “Ah, ye dinnae remember me. Ye are but tiptoeing through the bedchambers of Duncallie to see if any hold something ye like. I am devastated.”
    Cormac straightened up and put his hands on his hips. Her drawled taunt had quickly yanked him free of his bemusement better than a sharp slap to the face. She was even more beautiful close to, and for just a moment, as he had stared into her wide, slumberous eyes, he had been seized by the overwhelming urge to crawl onto that bedwith her. The way she had whispered his name in her rich, sensuous voice had reached deep inside of him, dragging his tightly controlled lusts to fierce, immediate life. The feeling still lingered, but now he struggled to cool his heated blood.
    “Aye, I recall you,” he said. “Ye are a wee bit bigger and sharper of tongue, but ye are certainly Elspeth—my tiny, begrimed savior from years past.”
    Slowly, Elspeth sat up, then knelt on the bed facing him. Some of those not so maidenly dreams she had had about him were crowding her mind, and she fought to push them aside. He had come to rescue her. Elspeth inwardly smiled as she mused that it was a poor time to tell a man that she had loved and lusted after him for ten long years. For all she knew, he was a wedded man with a bairn or two to bounce on his knee. Finding that thought painful, she forced her mind to settle on the matter of rescue.
    “And have ye come to be my savior now?” she asked.
    “Aye.”
    Elspeth smiled and abruptly decided to make at least one small dream into a true memory. Cormac could easily think her next action was simply an impulsive expression of relief and gratitude—or be made to think so. She leaned closer and kissed him. His lips were as soft and as delicious as she had always imagined they would be. If he was wed, this stolen kiss would be but a small trespass.
    And then it happened. Her mother had warned her. Elspeth wished she had listened more closely, but she had been too young to be comfortable hearing such words as desire and passion upon her mother’s lips.
    He trembled faintly and so did she, but she was not really sure where his shiver ended and hers began. His body tightened and she felt a responsive ache low in her belly. She felt his heat, could almost smell his desire. Cormac gripped her by the shoulders and deepened the kiss. Elspeth readily opened her mouth to welcome the invasion of his tongue. As he caressed the inside of her mouth, she felt as if he stroked her very soul. She wanted to pull him down onto the bed with her, ached to wrap herself around his lean body. Even as that thought passed through her passion-clouded mind, she felt Cormac dredge up some inner strength and start to pull away from her. Elspeth fought the urge to cling to him, to halt his retreat.
    Cormac stared at the young woman kneeling in front of him. He fought the urge to vigorously shake his head in an attempt to clear the haze from his mind. It was not easy to cool the fire in his blood as he looked into her wide green eyes, for he was sure he saw passion there. He had to sternly remind himself that Elspeth was a highborn woman—one he owed his life to—and he was not free. He had come to rescue her, not to ravish her.
    “Why?” he asked, then hastily cleared his throat to try to banish the huskiness from his voice.
    “Why not?” she asked back. “Are ye wed?”
    “Nay, but—”
    Elspeth did not want to hear the rest, not when her heart still pounded fiercely and she could still taste him. “A rash act, born of my delight to see ye alive and here. I ken that my kinsmen will soon hunt for me, but ’twould be help that would come too late.”
    “And if we do not move quickly, my aid could also prove worthless.”
    “Ye have a plan,