The Highlander's Touch

Page 57

“Did I take you from someone? A lover perhaps?” A muscle twitched in his jaw.
“No. There’s been no one.”
“I find that difficult—nay, impossible to believe.”
“Trust me,” Lisa said with a self-deprecating laugh. “Men were not exactly beating down my door.” If they had been, they would have fled shortly after gaining entrance and discovering her financial straits and her caretaker role.
“Ah, perhaps they were afraid of you, because you are so much woman?”
“I am not fat,” Lisa bristled. “I’m … healthy,” she supplied defensively.
Circenn smiled. “That you are, but that is not what I meant.”
“Well, I’m not too tall. A giantess wouldn’t be too tall for you.” At five feet ten, she had towered over many of the boys in her class until the last two years of high school.
“Not what I meant either.”
“Then what did you mean?” she asked, feeling wounded.
“You are smart—”
“No, I’m not,” she said. Anything but smart.
“Yes, you are. You were smart enough to realize it would be foolish to escape me at Dunnottar, and clever enough to deduce a way out of my chambers. Aye, even fearless enough to dare it. Tell me, do you read and write?”
“Yes.” Inwardly, Lisa glowed. She was smart in the fourteenth century.
“You are persistent. Tenacious. Determined. Strong. You doona need anyone, do you?”
“I haven’t had the opportunity to need anyone. Everyone’s always been too busy needing me,” she muttered, then felt guilty for voicing her most secret resentment.
“Need me, Lisa.”
She searched his face. What had changed him? Why was he acting this way? It was as if he genuinely cared and sincerely desired her.
“Need me,” he repeated firmly. “Use me to explore the woman who has never been given the opportunity to live. Take from me, need from me, and satisfy all that curiosity I feel burning in you. And by Dagda, let go of that maidenhead. Do you wish to live and die, never having known passion? Never having tasted what I offer you? Be bold. Take.” He uttered the last word in a low, masculine tone.
Take. The word lingered in her mind. It was almost as if it had rolled from his tongue imbued with some kind of sorcery. What would it be like to take, as he said it—to utterly consume without guilt or fear? Take because her blood demanded it, because her body needed it. Lisa’s lips parted as she contemplated his words. His upper torso was a vast expanse of olive skin that would be velvety to the touch. Her fingers ached to trail over the hard ridges of his chest, to linger over his shoulders, to curve around his powerful neck and drag him into a kiss that would make her forget where he began and she ended. “I thought you medieval men prized virginity. Don’t you think it’s wrong for a woman to have her own desires and act on them?”
“Your virginity is a piece of skin, a membrane, Lisa. My first love was long ago and it has not changed who I am in any fashion. Mind you, I am not saying you should give the gift of lovemaking to just anyone. But an obsession with virginity is absurd and serves no purpose but to make a woman turn away from a fine part of her nature. Women and men have the same desires—at least they do until the priests have their go at the women and convince them it is shameful. What the priests should be saying is ‘choose well.’”
“How many—” she broke off quickly. What a stupid question to ask. She would sound like a childish, possessive adolescent. But she wanted to know. It said something about the man. A man who’d been with hundreds of women had a real problem, as far as she was concerned.
“Seven.” His teeth flashed white against his face.
“That’s not very many. I mean for a man, you know,” she added hastily.
What would she think if she knew it was only seven in five hundred years? Thousands of times with those seven, enough to know well how to please any woman, but only seven all the same. “Each woman was a country, rich and lush as Scotland, and I loved them with the same dedication and thorough attention I give my homeland. I confess, the first few were naught but the man in me celebrating life when I was less than a score of years. But the last two were wonderful women, both friends and lovers.”
“Then why did you leave them?”
A shadow crossed his beautiful face. “They left me,” he said softly. Died. Too young, in a land too harsh.
“Why?”
“Lisa, touch me.” He moved closer, close enough that she could smell the spice of his skin. Close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his body, mingling with the heat from hers. Close enough that his lips were a breath and a “yes” away from hers. Tempting, more compelling than her need for basic survival. Fingers extended, she reached for him, but at the last moment she dropped her hand, forming a fist in her lap.