Free Moon Craving by Lucy Monroe Page B

away, wife."

    She felt a blush climb her cheeks at his verbal claim to her. "I won't."

    "You are small."

    "Are Highlander women so much larger, then?" Emily hadn't mentioned such a thing in her letters.

    "Nay, but you are fragile." He said the last word with a twist of his mouth.

    Ah, the weakness thing again. "Emily is no bigger than me, and she's doing just fine among your brethren."

    "She lives among the Balmoral."

    "Same thing."

    "No, it is not." He frowned fiercely. "We are the Sinclair, they are Balmoral."

    "Are there no Chrechte among them?" she asked, trying to understand her new husband's point.

    Perhaps he thought the fiercer warriors a danger to her. Though that didn't make much sense to her either, but then much of the way men thought didn't.

    "The Balmoral is Chrechte."

    "Emily's husband?"

    "Aye."

    "There, you see? I will do fine." She might be afflicted, but that had only made her stronger, not encouraged weakness.

    Though only Emily had ever acknowledged such.

    "You think to compare me to the Balmoral?"

    She decided she would be best served with one of the shrugs so popular with the Highland warriors.

    He shook his head as if unable to believe her. "You are a Sinclair now, you will not forget that."

    "Trust me, I'm not likely to." She was deaf, not daft.

    "It is time to sleep."

    "Finally," she muttered as she turned and attempted to find a spot to lie on that would not put her body into contact with his.

    He had no such compunction. As he stripped his plaid and shirt from his body, he made no effort to avoid brushing her side with first an arm and then his leg.

    "Are we on Sinclair land then?" she asked with a squeak she could not be sure had enough volume to be heard.

    He turned to stare at her. "Nay."

    "But . . ."

    "Undress. You'll not sleep all twisted up in your plaid."

    "I . . ."

    He blew out an impatient breath. "You may remove your plaid under the furs to protect your modesty."

    He should have thought of that before hopelessly compromising it by getting wholly naked in front of her. She'd never seen a man's body before, and she found it both frighteningly repelling and inexplicably fascinating.

    He made no move to cover himself as she stared at him in helpless curiosity. In fact, the part he should have covered and that she should definitely not have been looking at began to grow. She remembered he'd mentioned such a phenomenon that morning, when explaining the marriage bed. But she had not understood what he meant. Now, she did.

    Oh dear, did she understand . It was quite amazing and entirely mortifying.
    Especially since she could not seem to look away.

    "That's . . ." She licked her lips and swallowed. "Does it get bigger?" She was unable to stop herself from asking.

    "Keep looking at it like a kitten ready to lap up cream and it will."

    She jolted at his words. "I . . . I wasn't. Not thinking of licking." Licking? Was he truly serious? He looked so, not a flicker of amusement anywhere in his expression. But licking ?

    He'd told her they might do that. Taste each other in such intimacy. She'd thought he must surely be exaggerating, playing on her ignorance. Clearly, he hadn't been. Oh, my.

    Did he expect her to do that now?

    He reached for her.

    Surprisingly, she did not faint again. And showing a complete lack of self-preservation, she made no move to run screaming from the tent.

    His face a mask over some emotion so fierce, the very blankness alluding to it, he untied her belt. She grabbed it and stared at him, unable to voice a question or complaint.

    He said nothing. No words of comfort, no demand she not impede him.

    Was the fire burning in his blue gaze lust? A man's desire for a woman was not something she had any experience with. Though Jolenta had told her stories, implying the whole time that Abigail would never have to worry about such a thing.

    Isn't that what they'd all thought, Abigail herself included?

    Sybil had not come right out and said she