Free Ronan's Bride by Gayle Eden Page A

appeared as large and powerfully built as ever, she skimmed visually up him, before meeting his gaze, which was also viewing her body, wrapped only in linen.
    She brushed her thumb over the rim of the gold cup, waiting to see what he would do or say—wondering—that he even faced her so soon afterwards.
    In the end, Ronan merely walked to her and sat on his haunches before her, his gaze taking in her face, shoulders, bare limbs and feet, before he gently reached for the tucked end of the linen and peeled it back.
    She widened her arms, silently observing him as it unraveled and fell to a pool at her hips, leaving the upper flair of hips, slimmer waist and torso, bare.
    Eyes moving up to meet hers, he murmured low, “Turn around.”
    Drawing in a breath, Sefare hesitated in exposing those marks to him again. However, eventually she set down the cup, and got to her knees, turning her back on him, having tucked the linen low on her hips.
    His fingertips touched her. She flinched only because of where they touched, tracing lines and welts, going from her shoulder blades to the top of her spine.
    “Lie down.”
    She swallowed and lay belly down on the fur, her face buried in her arms. Ronan crouched over her, his mouth and tongue soon moving over her skin from shoulders down, laving and tracing, and kissing each old wound as well as unharmed skin. Sefare felt tears seeping. She put it down to the climax rather than that such wounds could hurt her anymore. Her heart trembled when he touched his own scarred fingers—much more cruelly scarred—to her skin again, and soothed it.
    The mask, supple suede, brushed her flesh. He kissed the base of her spine. His hair slid round, brushing feather light down her side, cool and silky.
    Ronan sat back. Before she could move, his hands held each heel lightly, then caressed up her legs, the calf, bend, the back of her thigh—ending under the linen, just below her buttock. Each time, each soothing and stirring trip.
    He rasped, “Tell me if I touch too firm, or frighten you.”
    She could only nod, because such uncertainty in such an intimidating man was amazing. His thumbs would turn in at the top of her thigh, brushing light between her legs. She did not know herself to be sensitive there, nor many of the places he seemed to arouse her by touching. He kissed her legs too, lightly and supple, but working his way up to the firm mounds of her backside.
    Eventually she raised enough to rest her chin on her fists, wiping away any trace of tears. Watching their shadows, seeing him as a large and dark one, his thick hair over his shoulder, and seeing a man, only the man, she felt just that, in his touch and kiss.
    Ronan turned his head a moment. The beauty of his profile, an outline one would not note, because in light the mask distracted from it, struck her. Brow wrinkled with some sympathetic pain, she thought that were he unscarred, Ronan would put other males to shame with his appearance.
    “Do you remove it in the presence of your friend, the Celt?”
    He did not ask what. But sat back, no longer touching her. “Nay. Only pagan.”
    “Because you look much the same.”
    “In scars or—”
    She corrected his assumption, “Save for eyes and height, you look much like him.”
    He sat all the way back, his hands resting somewhere near her feet. However, she was aware he stared at the same shadow she did.
    “He has our mother’s eyes.”
    “That is what Illara said,” she mused. “I have father’s hair and eyes, but my mother was even smaller than me.” She laughed softly. “I came only to father’s waist though.”
    “And the Count…”
    “Aye, he was a huge man. But it wasn’t his size that was menacing.” She chewed her lip, and then murmured, “When he came near me, touched me, I would shut out everything, even his image. I would take myself back to the days of happiness. It worked… until he was finished with me, gone. Then it seemed akin to dreaming one’s self in