Free Conall: The 93rd Highlanders, Book Two by Samantha Kane

like
them.
    “ What’s
wrong?” Graeme asked, coming up behind her and placing his hands on
her shoulders. He pulled her back so she rested on his broad chest,
and she sighed in contentment.
    “ Nothing,”
she lied. “The fire burned my eyes tonight is all. They’re all
teary.”
    “ Conall
didn’t come by again,” he said, slowly turning her to face him. He
still held her close. “Is that what made you sad?”
    She placed both palms
against his chest and looked up at him. “No,” she said softly. “I
don’t expect him to. He said his piece and made his feelings clear.
Unless I go to him, he won’t come to me.”
    “ Then go to
him,” Graeme urged, rubbing her back. She thought it was meant to
be a soothing gesture, but it fired her blood and made her want to
wrap her legs around him and see if he was as indifferent to her as
he seemed.
    At his suggestion she
shook her head. “I won’t. He was right, it’s for the best. I’m not
going to marry him. I can’t keep using him to warm my bed under
false pretenses.”
    “ Then you
don’t love him?” Graeme asked.
    She couldn’t lie to him,
not about Conall. He’d seen how devastated she was at his leaving.
“I do,” she confessed. “I still do. But marriage between us is out
of the question, and the longer he stays with me the less chance he
has of attracting a lady.”
    “ Nonsense,”
Graeme told her, his arms suddenly wrapped around her and holding
her against him. “You’re a lady.”
    “ I’m not,”
she whispered. “Or else I wouldn’t feel like this.”
    Graeme leaned closer, his
gaze straying from her eyes to her lips and then back. “Like what?”
he whispered. His lips were very nearly touching hers, and Avril
was strung tight as a bowstring, wanting him even
closer.
    “ Like I want
you,” Avril said, licking her lips. “In my bed. In my
body.”
    “ Avril,” he
said, and with a strangled moan he kissed her.
     
     

C hapter N ine
     
     
    Graeme wanted to be the
gentleman. He wanted to woo Avril and make love to her gently, as
he knew she deserved. But he’d wanted this for so long. It was as
though Conall’s words earlier had unleashed a beast inside him and
he couldn’t control it. He was a brute and always had been. Hadn’t
women told him so in the past? At the thought he tore his mouth
from Avril’s and shoved her away. “I’m sorry,” he said, need
clawing at him, his voice forced through a throat tight with it,
his words garbled by his panting breaths.
    “ Never,”
Avril said, approaching him cautiously, reaching for him. “Never be
sorry for kissing me like that, like I’m the only thing keeping
your feet on the ground.”
    He laughed harshly.
“Hardly. I feel as if I’m floating above it all, honor and pride
and anything worth anything passing by under my boots.” He shook
his head and looked at his trembling hands. “We shouldn’t,” he
tried. “I shouldn’t.”
    “ We should.
We will,” Avril said firmly. “I want you, and now I know how much
you want me, I’ll not take no for an answer.” She’d reached him and
pressed herself against him, her palms flat on his chest as she
looked up at him, her neck craned back because the differences in
their heights were so pronounced. “Take me. Please,
Graeme.”
    As though he had no
control over it, his arms slid around her waist and held her
tightly to him. “You should know that Conall told me to do it. Told
me he wanted us to be together.” There was so much more to it. How
could he tell her? He had to. He wouldn’t take her with lies
between them.
    Avril closed her eyes and
her lip trembled slightly. “Handing me off, is he?” She rubbed her
cheek on his jacket. “Well, I’m glad. I’m glad he’s seen the truth
of it.”
    “ He’s done
nothing of the kind,” Graeme told her. He cupped the back of her
head and forcibly turned her to look up at him again. “He said he
loves you still and wants you to be happy. He thinks taking me