Free To Catch a Highlander: A Highland Erotic Romance by Krystal LaCroix

mine. “I just…I don’t blame you at all, Ewan –”
    “I’m glad one of us doesn’t.”
    “Now, that’s not fair to yourself!” I insisted. “You had no choice, you said so yourself!”
    “Thank you, Brianna. But I’ve had twenty-five years to go over every moment of that horrible day, and all I can ever conclude is tha t if only I had kept my mouth shut about our engagement…”
    “No doubt Gordan feels he’s having the last laugh now that he’ll have her daughter for his bride,” I mused bitterly. “I’m the spoils of war. Wonderful.”
    Ewan set his hands on my shoulders and leaned over the side of the barrel to look into my eyes. “My darling, I know you are up to the task of avenging your mother. I know not how you shall do it, but having known you all your life and observed you these past two days, I cannot but know Gordan will soon rue the day I delivered you to him.”
    I was misty-eyed gazing back at him. Finally I spoke. “For heaven’s sake, Ewan, take me to bed!” I stood up and opened my arms.
    He still had doubt in his eyes; that I could see. But he did sweep me up in his arms and lift me out of the water, and the kiss he planted on my lips was just as refreshing as the bath had been, a lovely reprieve I vowed to treasure during my imprisonment with Gordan. After a brisk and enthusiastic patting dry all over my body, during which I said nothing for fear of changing his mind, he once again picked me up and carried me to the bed, where he lay me down gently. “You know, of course, that nothing can ever be quite the same if we do this,” he said as he stood over me and undressed.
    “I ce rtainly hope not!” I replied, eyeing him hungrily. He was tired and strung out from the two days’ travel and it showed, yet he was perfectly delightful all the same in the very vulnerability that conferred. Father’s men had long since disabused both Penny and myself of any girlhood fantasies of lightning and thunder in any man’s arms, and the prospect of lying with Gordan was an additional strike against my hunger. But nothing could have destroyed the tenderness I felt between us as Ewan lay down naked beside me and cupped my breast in his hand, his nearness a wonderful bulwark against the chilly evening air. Free at last to respond in kind, I teased his hairy chest gently at first, then rubbed harder and let my hand wander downward across his torso. Farther still, he was rock hard, standing outward and nearly brushing my thighs. I felt a tickle between them just anticipating such a touch, and I let a mild laugh escape in spite of myself. “It appears you are wide awake for this hour,” I said.
    “My dear, I am so very sorry about your mother...”
    “None of that!” I admonished him, reaching back up to place a finger to his lips. “I’m yours, Ewan, should you only find your backbone and show a bit of patience, and there is no use in apologizing for what you could never have hoped to change.”
    To my delight, he said nothing more at first, but pushed me over gently onto my back and parted my thighs. With a gentle stroke on my womanhood, he whispered, “Then I shall be yours as well, Brianna. Shall we consummate the dea l?”
    “We had better!” I spread my legs farther to welcome his touch, and craned my neck up to kiss him. This kiss was longer than the last, the sweet taste of our new love mingling with the night for some moments, during which his fingers found his way insi de me. I broke the silence with a joyful yelp as I ground my hips up against his palm, thrilling to his gentle strokes on my tender inner flesh. It was like nothing I had ever experienced in Father’s barn! The horrors on the horizon receded from my conscience at last as I allowed myself to be thoroughly enveloped in the joy of the moment, just as I was enveloping Ewan’s fingers.
    I was deliciously aware of myself, naked and vulnerable in the most joyous way , and writhing about in pleasure under Ewan’s