Free Return of the Highlander (Immortal Warriors) by Sara Mackenzie Page A

themselves lovingly to her curves.
    One strand of her long dark hair had fallen out of its pins, caressing her cheek. Maclean clenched his hands into fists to stop himself from trying to brush it back, knowing it would spoil the illusion that he was a real man.
    Would his father be pleased with him now? If he knew his warrior son’s one ambition was to take a woman’s lock of hair between his finger and thumb and experience the feel of it? The scent of it? No, Maclean knew his father would not be pleased about that.
    He wondered abruptly if his brutal father ever felt love for a woman, for his wife? As he stood, breathing in Bella’s scent, it occurred to Maclean that part of his father’s savage bitterness toward women may well have been because of his own hurt and betrayal. In his own way, he had loved Maclean’s mother, and her planning on leaving him for another man had curdled that love and blackened his heart forever.
    It did not excuse his treatment of her—the blows, the curses—but it made sense. Maclean’s father had blamed all women for the faults of one. And he had taught Maclean to feel the same, and to protect himself from the hurt that loving could cause. But at what cost?
    Distractedly, he glanced at the screen as the lit letters flashed upon it. And froze. The letters were no longer dancing in front of his eyes like fireflies. He could read them!
    Intrigued, Maclean shuffled closer, ignoring the disconcerting way in which parts of Bella’s body merged with his. He read the first line aloud. “Morven Maclean was named for his grandfather—”
    His name was on the screen. She was writing about him! Maclean gave her a bewildered look. Why would she be writing a book about him ? It was not as if he were a king or a prince—he could understand if she was writing about Charles Stuart or King George, but Maclean? What had he ever done, that Bella would want to write it down in a book? Though important to him, his life was private, his alone, and the idea of it being scrutinized by others made him very uncomfortable.
    “You’ve written that I was called Morven after my grandfather,” he said irritably. “That’s wrong.”
    She couldn’t hear him.
    He gave an impatient sigh and tried again. “You see, Morven was a sea warrior from the old days. He had the strength of many men and he performed heroic feats and was thought to be invincible against his enemies. My mother was fanciful and thought the name would make me a better man, and in those days my father loved her enough to let her have her way.”
    Bella kept clacking.
    Maclean restrained his frustration and moved closer to the machine, reading the new words as they appeared there.
    “No, no, lass, I wasna an only child! I had a sister, but she died when she was a wee thing. Her name was…was…Bloody hell!” His memory failed him again.
    Maclean’s unease and impatience only grew as he read through Bella’s version of his childhood. He couldn’t turn the pages of her book to peruse them at his own pace, nor could he push the buttons that removed or added the words. He tried, but his fingers slipped through into nothingness. All he could do wasstand and peer over her shoulder, and try not to grind his teeth.
    He was angry, aye, but even angry as he was, she had the ability to distract him. First her perfume tickled his nose, and then he found himself fascinated by her hair and how the darkness of it was lit by strands that had been touched by the summer sun. If he was a man of flesh and blood he would stoop and nuzzle her neck, tasting her skin, before slipping his hands around her waist and lifting them to stroke the underside of her breasts in that tight white cloth.
    Perhaps she felt his invisible gaze, because she folded her arms over her breasts. Maclean smiled and concentrated harder, imagining himself lifting her tight white shirt and revealing her skin inch by inch, and then using his tongue to explore and tease her until