Free A Highlander Christmas by Sophie Renwick Cindy Miles Dawn Halliday

love your husband?”
    Logan frowned, wondering where the hell that question had come from, and why he’d asked it. He didn’t even want to know the damned answer. He gave himself a mental smack on the forehead and spoke in a tight voice. “Forgive me. You don’t have to respond.”
    “It’s all right,” she said. “I did love him, but I was very young. I think of love differently now.”
    “How old were you?”
    “Nineteen when he died. Eighteen when we married.”
    “Ah.” That made her about twenty-f our. Five years younger than he was.
    “I’ve changed since then, I suppose.” She laughed softly. “I never imagined I could enjoy roughness in a man . . . but you’re rough all over, and I like it in you.”
    He cut a sidelong glance at her. “Is that so?”
    “Duneghall was very kind and tender with me, always . . . But perhaps that’s why I never . . .”
    Her flush flared crimson in the firelight, and it was beautiful. He pressed his lips to where the red slashed over her cheekbone.
    “Bonny Maggie,” he said against her skin.
    Something—a hint of mischief, perhaps—flickered in her eyes, and she turned the conversation around abruptly. “What about you? Have you taken many lovers?”
    “Er . . .” He pulled back. “That is not something most women wish to know.”
    “I do.”
    “Not so many, and none . . . none I would have married.”
    She turned to face him, her brows drawn together in confusion. “Why not?”
    Because they weren’t you. Banishing that thought, he shrugged. “They didn’t want commitment from me, nor did I wish for it from them. They were lasses to warm a man on a cold night . . . not to spend a lifetime with.”
    “I see.” She looked thoughtful.
    It was difficult to keep from touching her. Whenever she was close, his fingers itched to feel her skin against his own.
    “You make me feel so . . . different.”
    He cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
    “Different from how anyone has ever made me feel.” She paused. “Special.”
    She was special. The most special, precious thing he’d ever seen. Raising his hand, he fingered one of her soft curls, then brought it to his lips and kissed it. He pulled it straight and released it, fascinated by how it bounced back. She watched him, her lips tilted in a soft smile.
    Tenderly, he touched her plump bottom lip with his fingertip. He trailed his hand across her red-splashed cheekbone and down her nose, marveling at how it turned up slightly at the end. Then he gently traced her bruised eye and her arched, dark eyebrows. Finally he pressed his lips to the freckle between her brows.
    She lay passively, studying him, the expression in her blue eyes unfathomable. He continued his exploration with his lips, moving around her hairline to her rounded jaw and then over the soft, silky skin of her neck. As he slid his lips over her collarbones, brushing over the scab between them, her hand tangled in his hair.
    He moved on, allowing his eyes to drift closed, glorying in the taste and scent of her. She smelled fresh, like the forest after a rain, and she tasted like sweet cream. His lips drifted lower, and he opened his eyes as his mouth grazed the side of her breast. The pale round globes flushed wherever he touched them, and he touched them all over. Kissed them and loved them before closing his mouth over the taut berry of one of her nipples.
    Gasping and shuddering beneath him, she whispered, “Logan, oh . . .”
    He nipped gently, grazing his teeth over the peak, and she squealed. Suddenly tense all over, Logan raised his head to look at her. “Did I hurt—?”
    Growling at him, she yanked his head back to her breast. “More,” she demanded.
    He gave her more. He worshipped her breasts, licked them, teased, nipped, and suckled until she writhed beneath him, groaning his name over and over.
    He slid his hand between her legs and was gratified to feel her slick and ready.
    “Turn over,” he said hoarsely.
    She