Free Into the Dreaming by Karen Marie Moning

watching Aedan. Fifteen minutes ago, she’d informed him that she was going to take a quick nap before beginning preparations for their evening meal. She’d headed for the bedchamber, conveniently leaving a few pages of her manuscript lying beside the hearth, as if forgotten.
    He’d nodded nonchalantly, but his gaze had betrayed him by drifting to the parchment. Shortly after retiring to the bedchamber, she’d crept back to the hall. He was standing by the fire, reading so intently that he didn’t even notice her standing in the shadows of the stone doorway, watching as his eyes narrowed and his grip tightened on the parchment.After a few minutes, he wet his lips and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
    “I feel quite rested now,” she announced, striding briskly into the hall. “Hey!” she exclaimed, feigning outrage that he was snooping. “Those are my papers! I told you not to read them!”
    His head shot up. His eyes were dark, his pupils dilated, his chest rising and falling as if he’d run a marathon.
    He shook the parchments at her. “What are these … these … 
scribblings
?” Vengeance demanded in a voice that should have been firm but came out sounding hoarse. His chest felt tight, that heavy part of him betwixt his legs … 
och, Christ, it hurt!
Instinctively, he palmed it through the fabric of his kilt to soothe it, hoping the pain would diminish, but touching it only seemed to make it worse. Appalled, he removed his hand and glared at her. She seemed to find the gesture quite fascinating.
    Jane cornered him and tried to grab the papers from his hand, but he held them above his head.
    “Just give them back,” she snapped.
    “I doona think so,” he growled. He stood looking at her, her jaw, her neck. Her breasts. “This man you write of,” he said tensely, “he has dark hair and eyes of my hue.”
    “So?” she said, doing her best to sound defensive.
    “ ’Tis
me
you write about,” he accused. When she made no move to deny it, he scowled. “ ’Tis in no fashion a proper woman might write—” He broke off, wondering what he knew of proper women when he knew naught of female humans but what he’d learned from her. He studied her, trying to think, which was immensely difficult with parts of hisbody behaving so strangely. His breath was too short and shallow, his mouth parched, his heart pounding. He felt intensely alive, all his senses stirring … demanding.
Starving for touch
. “This pressing of the lips of yours makes one feel as if one is”—he glanced back at the papers—“burning with the scorching heat of desire?” He, who’d long been cold, ached to feel such heat.
    “Yes—if a man’s any good at it,” she said archly. “But you’re not a man, remember? It probably wouldn’t work for you,” she added sweetly.
    “You doona know that,” he snapped.
    “Trust me,” she provoked. “I doubt you have the right stuff.”
    “I doona know what this right stuff of yours is, but I know that I am formed like a man,” he said indignantly. “I look as all the villagers do.” He thought hard for a moment. “Verily, I believe I am more well formed than the lot of them,” he added defensively. “My legs more powerful,” he said, moving his plaid to display a thigh for her. “See? And my shoulders are wider. I am greater of height and girth, with no excess fatty parts.” He preened for her, and it was everything she could do not to drool. More well formed? Sheesh! The man could drive the sales of
Playgirl
right through the roof!
    “Whatever,” Jane said, purloining one of her teenage niece Jessica’s most irritating responses, guaranteed to provoke, issued in tones that implied
nothing
he could say or do might interest her.
    “You would do well not to dismiss me so lightly,” he growled.
    They stared at each other for a long tense moment, thenhe glanced back at the parchment. “Regardless of whether I’m human or no,