Free Midnight's Warrior by Donna Grant

interesting in their own way.”
    “Not me,” she said with a laugh.
    Ramsey wanted her to get more comfortable with him, to trust him. And that meant she had to start opening up to him. “How about telling me something you did that you weren’t supposed to as a child?”
    She bit the side of her bottom lip, her blue-green eyes alight with pleasure. “All right. I used to sneak out of my house to swim in the loch.”
    “That’s the best you can do?” he teased as he stirred the mixture in the bowl. “I didna just sneak out. I would take something from my father and put it with one of my cousins so he’d get in trouble. It was a game we had played since we were old enough to walk.”
    “Did they ever discover you?”
    He grinned. “No’ once.”
    They shared a laugh, their eyes locking. Ramsey was the first to look away. He told himself it was because he didn’t want the pancake to burn, but the real reason was that he didn’t trust himself with Tara.
    She was allowing him to see a little bit into her world, and it startled him how much more he wanted to know. She only had herself to lean on to survive, and through it all, she could still smile as if Fate hadn’t screwed her.
    “What?” she asked, her head cocked to the side so that her wavy, light brown hair hung over her shoulder.
    He flipped the pancakes with a twist of his wrist. “How long will you run from this man who is after you?”
    She looked down at the table and exhaled. “Either until he catches me or I kill him.”
    “You doona believe he’ll give up?”
    “No.”
    The firm note in her voice made him nod. “What if I said I could help?”
    “Why would you want to? You don’t know me, Ramsey. I’m not going to hand my problems off to you or anyone else.”
    He got out a plate and put the first pancake on it before handing it to her. “Why did you stay here last night?”
    “What?” she asked as she slowly lowered her plate to the table.
    “Why did you stay?”
    Tara pushed herself up from the table. “I shouldn’t have.”
    “But you did, and there’s a reason. Say it.”
    She shook her head.
    Ramsey closed the distance between them and lifted a lock of her golden-brown hair with his fingers. “You felt safe.”
    Already Ramsey could feel her magic moving from her hair onto his fingers. His god all but purred at the unique and heady sensation that was becoming all too familiar.
    He found himself leaning closer to her, drowning in her beautiful blue-green depths. The tendrils of magic were once more swirling around his hand and were working their way up his arm the longer he touched her hair.
    “Yes,” she finally admitted. “Thank you for that.”
    She rose up on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. Her lips on his skin was his undoing. He turned his head slightly so that their mouths brushed, which halted her retreat.
    Her lids lifted so that she looked into his eyes, and the need he saw there was all it took for him to shift his head a little more until their lips brushed.
    Ramsey’s breath locked in his lungs at that first, hesitant touch of their mouths. He tilted his head and kissed her again, longer, deeper.
    His body roared to life, demanding and needy. The ends of her hair tickled his hands as he placed them on her back. He coaxed, he seduced. Anything to get closer to her, to feel more of her.
    To know more of her.
    To have her.
    Tara’s soft moan had his blood burning through his veins like quicksilver, and when she softly laid her hand upon his chest, Ramsey wanted to crush her to him. The urge to pin her against the wall and ravage her lips was overwhelming.
    His chest constricted, his heart pounding inside him as if he’d run for days. He heard her soft intake of breath that was part gasp, part pant.
    And it drove him wild.
    Ramsey fisted his hands in her shirt as he swept his tongue inside her mouth and she eagerly returned his kiss. For a moment he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, the passion and pleasure was