Free To Tame a Highland Warrior by Karen Marie Moning Page A

was crouched at the edge of the loch, scrubbing his shirt with two smooth rocks. With a castle full of servants and maids to do the washing, the mending, his every bidding—even rush to his bed if he so much as crooked a seductive finger—Grimm Roderick walked to the loch, selected stones, and washed his own shirt. What pride. What independence. What … isolation.
    She wanted to wash the worn linen for him. No, she wanted to wash the muscled chest the soft linen caressed. She wanted to trace her hands over the ridges of muscle that laced his abdomen and follow that silky dark trail of hair where it dipped beneath his kilt. She wanted to be welcomed into his solitary confinement and release the man she was convinced had deliberately walled himself behind a façade of chill indifference.
    One knee in the grass, his leg bent beneath him, he scrubbed the shirt gently. Jillian watched the muscles in his shoulders flexing. He was more beautiful than any man had the right to be, with his great height and perfectly conditioned body, his black hair restrained by a leather thong, his piercing eyes.
    I adore you, Grimm Roderick
. How many times had she said those words safely in the private chambers of her head?
Loved you since the day I first saw you. Been waiting for you to notice me ever since
. Jillian dropped to the moss behind the rock, folded her arms on the stone, and rested her chin upon them, watching him hungrily. His back was bathed golden by the sun, and his wide shoulders tapered to a trim waist, where his kilt hugged his hips. His plunged a hand into his thick, dark hair, pushing it out of his face, and Jillian expelled a breath as his muscles rippled.
    He turned and looked directly at her. Jillian froze. Damn his acute hearing! He’d always had unnatural senses. How could she have forgotten?
    “Go away, peahen.” He returned his attention to the shirt he was washing.
    Jillian closed her eyes and dropped her head on her hands in defeat. She couldn’t even get to the point where she worked up the courage to try to talk to him, to reach him. The moment she started thinking mushy thoughts,the bastard said something remote and biting and it deflated the sails of her resolve before she’d even lifted anchor. She sighed louder, indulging in a generous dose of self-pity.
    He turned and looked at her again. “What?” he demanded.
    Jillian lifted her head irritably. “What do you mean, ‘what’? I didn’t say anything to you.”
    “You’re sitting back there sighing as if the world’s about to end. You’re making so much noise I can’t even scrub my shirt in peace, and then you have the gall to get snippy with me when I politely inquire as to what you’re mooning about.”
    “Politely inquire?” she echoed. “You call a barely grunted and entirely put-upon-sounding ‘what’ a polite inquiry? A ‘what’ that says ‘how dare you invade my space with your pitiful sounds?’ A ‘what’ that says ‘could you please go die somewhere else, peahen?’ Grimm Roderick, you don’t know the first damned thing about polite.”
    “There’s no need to be cursing, peahen,” he said mildly.
    “I am
not
a peahen.”
    He tossed a scathing look over his shoulder. “Yes, you are. You’re always pecking away at something. Peck-peck, peck-peck.”
    “Pecking?” Jillian shot to her feet, leapt the stone, and faced Grimm. “I’ll show you pecking.” Quick as a cat, she plucked the shirt from his hands, twisted her hands in the fabric, and ripped it down the center. She found the sound of the cloth tearing perversely satisfying. “That’s what I really feel like doing. How’s
that
for invading your space? And why are you washing your own stupid shirt in the first place?” She glared at him, flapping the tails of his shirt to punctuate her words.
    Grimm sat back on his heels, eyeing her warily. “Are you feeling all right?”
    “No, I am not feeling all right. I haven’t been feeling all right all morning.