Redeemed (Heroes of the Highlands) (The MacKays #2) Read Online Free Page B

been…”
    “An unmitigated arse?” she helpfully supplied.
    Daroch scowled at her. “Unwelcoming.”
    She shrugged, setting her long auburn curls to flowing about her body as though she were under water. The effect was disturbingly lovely. “All this interests me, and I’ve nothing better to do.”
    Something about her answer displeased him, but Daroch couldn’t identify it. Deciding he needed to busy his body before it betrayed him further, he snatched a tool and smothered one of the fires with loose earth, noting that the Banshee didn’t drift into that section of the cave until the flames had died.
    Intrigued, he sank to his pallet by the dying embers of his cook fire and took the last of his dried fish from where it warmed on the rocks, trying to figure out how to inspect her without looking at her.
    She stayed where she was, looking very young and very lost.
    A cold pit formed low in his belly and he suddenly wasn’t hungry. Not for food, in any case. “Doona ye have someone else to torment? A vengeance to reap or some such Banshee justice to meet out on a deserving villain that will result in ye leaving ?”
    “Nay, not really.” She hugged her arms to her middle.
    “I’m going to sleep now,” he informed her presenting her with his back and lying on the pallet facing the glowing coals. Wide awake.
    “So early?” She sounded disappointed. And closer. “Can I… watch you?”
    He bit back a savage curse. Her words reached through the layers of his robes, the silt, his flesh, and straight to his cock.
    One hundred years. One hundred years since a woman had watched him. Objectified him.
    “If ye stay, ye’ll watch me do more than sleep,” he ground out.
    Her glow vanished, leaving him in frigid darkness but for the dying embers which he stared at for hours.

Chapter Five
    He must have gone into the sea. Kylah inventoried the belongings in front of her. Freshly laundered, still-damp Druid robes and a dark pair of trews flapped in the ever-present wind, secured to the cliff’s ledge by heavy stones. Beside them, a birch staff and a pair of gigantic knee boots were neatly lined up next to an iron sword that Kylah recognized from his cave the night before.
    She peeked over the cliff and shook her head. Situated somewhere between the point at Cape Wrath and the sands of the Allt Dubh , this bluff plummeted dangerously into deep water, yet no rocks jutted from the seafloor to catch an unwary diver. Still, she’d have been certain the drop would kill a man, but the ceaseless sensation of unfathomable, swirling emotion called to her from deep beneath the waves.
    The Druid was down there, and had been for some time.
    Rare sunlight warmed the spring chill, and the sea was calmer than usual, lapping against the cliffs with small white breaks instead of volatile surges. Kylah could see rather far into the blue gulf, but had no sign of the man.
    No one could hold their breath for that long.
    She stepped off the cliff and dropped into the water, barely registering the change in temperature after plunging into the sea. To someone whose life still heated their flesh, the icy chill of the ocean would feel like a thousand needles driven into skin by a relentless hammer. Kylah couldn’t fathom how Daroch McLeod could stand it.
    Maybe he couldn’t. Mayhap the frigid sea had frozen his limbs and stolen the life-giving heat from his body. Spurred by the thought, Kylah followed the signature of emotion reaching through the space separating them, roiling beneath her translucent skin and dancing along veins no longer filled with blood.
    In this ghostly form, the water didn’t hinder her movement and Kylah didn’t let the wonders of the sea distract her as she drove herself ever deeper and farther from shore. Until a strong movement from just ahead and beneath her caught a shaft of sunlight that pierced deeper than the rest. She froze just in time to see the Druid plunge a several-pronged wooden spear into a school of sea