Free Taming the Highland Bride by Lynsay Sands Page B

unconscious. At least she hoped he was. It was hard to tell if he was breathing, crumpled up on the top corner of the bed as he was.
    Blowing a breath out, she moved forward and began to struggle to turn him over so that he was lying properly on the bed. It was harder than she expected. The man was large and heavy, at least six feet of solid muscle. It took quite a bit of effort and a lot of huffing and puffing to get him turned on his back. Merry then promptly stepped back as she found his erection pointing accusingly at her.
    She scowled at the limb, amazed that while he appeared dead to the world, it was still hard and ready to go. Forcing her eyes away from the angry-looking thing, she glanced to his chest, a little sigh slipping from her lips when she saw that it was still rising and falling. He was alive, he’d just knocked himself senseless.
    Despite having seen it happen and knowing the clothes lying about the floor were at fault and that even she might have tripped over them had their positions been reversed, Merry couldn’t help but think he might have managed to save himself had he not been quite so inebriated.
    Grimacing, Merry shifted her gaze to his face. When awake, Alexander d’Aumesbery was attractive, with long, blond hair and strong but pleasant features often fixed in a stern expression. But asleep, that sternness was absent, and she could see that he was much more than just attractive. He was actually handsome, and if he spent less time frowning, scowling, and looking pained…
    Merry shrugged the thought aside. It mattered little if he was handsome. She would be more pleased to have an ugly but kind and sober husband. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what she had. Feeling depression and gloom slip over her, she left him as he was, walked around the bed to her side, and crawled back in. Merry then simply sat and stared at him. It seemed all her worry about the wedding night had been for naught. And she had worried and fretted over it today as she’d waited to be married and then picked at the food during her wedding feast. She’d tried not to think about it, but it had been constantly at the back of her mind. It had been wasted fretting, and now she could fret about it all over again on the morrow. In the meantime, there was little to do but go to sleep.
    Shaking her head with exasperation, Merry shifted to lie down in the bed and pulled the linen over herself. She then turned on her side to face her husband, staring at his unconscious form as she tried to relax enough to drift into slumber. However, it didn’t take her long to realize that she wasn’t likely to sleep anytime soon. Now she was worrying about the morning and the embarrassment of explaining that they had not consummated their marriage.
    Clucking with exasperation, she sat up and glared at her husband with resentment. She was wide awake and fretting while he lay there naked and—
    Merry scowled, thinking she should probably cover the man, but didn’t do so right away. She would have been ashamed to admit it, but the idea did cross her mind that it wouldn’t be a tragedy did he catch a chill and possibly die from it, leaving hera widow. Of course, Merry wasn’t at all sure she would be a widow since they had not yet consummated the wedding, as the lack of blood on the linen would prove.
    That thought made her mouth turn down unhappily. It would be just her luck did the man never wake up from this blow to the head, but die in his sleep on their wedding night without finishing the job and making her his wife. No doubt she’d then find herself married off to another drunk either in Scotland or somewhere else, and possibly an old man with no teeth and bad breath who would make her skin crawl. Clucking with disgust, she peered at her husband again, this time her attention moving to his erection. The thing was still hard and full, looking as if it was ready to burst open at any moment like an overripe plum when squeezed. She sat there