Taming the Highlander by TERRI BRISBIN

Author:TERRI BRISBIN
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2006-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

If he’d been one step closer, the door would have crashed into his face. Shaking his head as he walked down the stairs, Connor recognized his failings at once. Somehow in but a few short weeks, he’d broken three of the rules he’d set up when agreeing to this marriage.

First, he allowed her to initiate a familiarity and intimacy that he swore would not happen between them.

Next, he tried to explain his actions to her.

Then, he wanted to explain his actions to her.

And all of it, each step toward a destruction as certain as that which happened in the Garden of Eden, began with a kiss. He knew how Adam felt and offered up a prayer for both of their souls.

The path down the stairway of one tower, through the corridor and up the stairway of another, seemed to take longer this time. His body, spent in a release more satisfying than any recent ones, moved with a lethargy unfamiliar to him. Reaching his chambers, he opened the window and stood before it to test if it would soothe him as it had his wife.

Jocelyn.

Her name was Jocelyn.

Truly, it had slipped out in that moment of weakness. Unprepared for what happened between them and ill-equipped to deal with her anger and her hurt, he’d let his guard down and spoken it.

And it felt good to say it. Soft like she was in his arms. Strong like the side of her she showed him tonight with her righteous ire. She was correct—he was giving her less than her due as wife. To protect himself, he did what was necessary and no more.

Now, though, after experiencing what could be between them, he wanted it. Oh, not the emotions, but the passion. Feeling her tense and tighten and then throb and melt under his touch was a wondrous thing and he knew he would enjoy it, what man would not? Still, he needed to keep this under his control.

And he needed to make other measured changes in the keep and in the village. Peering out into the darkness, the sounds of the continuing revelry could be heard in the distance. Fear could be useful, even beneficial against an enemy, but it was not the way he wished to control the clan. Generations of faithful bond and service held them together, for their common good.

Stepping back and closing the shutters, he thought on the first changes to be made. He would meet with Murdoch and Duncan to plan for moving most of the men out of the keep and into a barracks hall. That would solve a number of problems and begin the transformation of the keep into a fitting home for the Earl of Douran.

Connor poured a cupful of ale from the pitcher on his table and drank it while he considered the path he would take. The first change would lead to another and another and alter his life forever and break from his past in an irrevocable way.

A deep, ripping pain

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