Free Highlander's Faerie (Highlander Heat Book 5) by Joanne Wadsworth Page A

slashed the sky in a frenzy of electric whites and yellows. With his hand at her back, he guided her toward the stone ledge. Between two cracks in the rock, slick with the water’s spray, he squeezed through.
    She wriggled inside after him and scampered down the precariously wet tunnel carved of stone. “Thank you for sharing this place with me.”
    “You and I are bound, Katherine. I’ll permit no secrets between us, a fact you will learn swiftly and well.” He leaped from the edge of the passageway and landed with a soft thump on the grainy white sand three feet below. Arms extended, he nodded. “Jump.”
    She sprang into his arms and he swung her down beside him. Water lapped onto a small curved beach surrounded by black rocks glistening from the hot pool’s rising steam. “It’s so beautiful, John, and so much more vivid and real than my dream portrayed.”
    He pointed upward at the craggy ceiling. “That’s the shaft that vents out over the cliffs.” A trickle of light beamed through a tiny cavity and washed over the pool’s glassy, darkened surface. “As a lad, I wriggled through only far enough to see what beckoned below.”
    “I can’t believe you fell from the cliffs as I did. So much for not keeping any secrets, huh?” She brushed gritty sand from her teal skirts and a stringy cobweb from her arm.
    “Nor can I believe you escaped the guardsmen’s watchful eye and ended up in the sea.” He removed his sword belt, propped it against a rock and divested himself of his wrist daggers. His dark brown hair wisped with golden ends lay slick on his shoulders as he crouched at the water’s edge and swirled a hand through. Waves rippled across the stillness.
    “I didn’t mean to worry you. I’m sorry. It’s just that I can be a little sneaky, and now you’ve had fair warning.” She unlaced her gown’s front stays, dragged her arms out of the long, clingy sleeves then shimmied her teal skirts over her hips and onto the ground. She picked up the wet mess, wrung it out and laid it overtop one of the boulders at the rear of the cave to dry.
    “Is everything still the same as you saw it in your dream?” John stared at her, so hungrily.
    “So close as to almost be the same.” She rolled her sark’s clammy sleeves to the elbow, dipped her toes into the water then waded in. Her ankle-length white linen shift tangled around her legs as she lowered to her chest in the deliciously warm water. “I did though refrain last night from telling you about certain things.”
    “As in…”
    “This sark hinders me when I swim. In my time, women wear swimsuits and such.”
    “And what is a swimsuit?” He perched on a rock and tugged off his boots.
    “It’s a small suit of clothing one wears in the water that allows fluid movement.” She lifted her sark’s hem over her head and tossed it onto the sand where it hit with a resounding slap.
    John’s hands stilled on the fastening of his white tunic’s ties. He lifted his gaze and ogled the mop of wet linen. “You unclothed yourself?”
    “I’m wearing the equivalent of a two-piece swimsuit underneath. My bra and panties will do as a bikini. A girl can’t give up all her favorite pieces of clothing when she travels to the past. Anyway, it’s dark and I’m underneath the water. Just strip off and hop in.” She winked at him. “You do, with very little persuasion by the way.”
    “You tempt me beyond my endurance.” He shucked his tunic, leaving his black leather pants on as he strode toward her. His wide chest held a smattering of hair, the same dark shade as his head. Thick biceps bulged as he dove in. Underneath the water, he swam then emerged a mere breath before her. “Aye, ’tis dark enough. I see naught.”
    “Trust me. You’ve nothing to fear from my underwear. Let me show you.” She caught his hands, slid them around her waist. “As I told you in my dream, a bra has two pieces of fabric which cover a woman’s breasts and—”
    “Oh