“I love the feel of you,” he whispered.
“And I love your touch.”
“I wish I could make love to you tonight, but I can barely move without it paining me.”
She slipped ever so slowly over him until her naked body covered his, and she whispered against his lips, “Then let me make love to you.”
“I don’t have the strength—”
“You need none,” she cajoled between kisses. “You need only to let me give you pleasure.”
He tried to protest, wanting this time with her to be special, but he couldn’t speak; he could only feel. And he felt every touch and kiss, his own hands seeking her intimate flesh, frustrated when it seemed beyond his reach.
Damn, why did it have to be this way? He had waited so long, so very long to be with Hope, and now his pain was too great to allow him the pleasure.
Still, she wrung groans and moans from him, or was that from the pain? He and she intermingled, and he wasn’t sure where one ended and the other began. He only knew that he was lost in a haze of pleasure.
Her lips seemed to sear every part of him, top to bottom, side to side, and all areas in between. She explored every inch of him, and he relished the pleasure. This was how he had imagined it. This was how it had been meant to be between him and Hope.
This was her loving him.
He was on the precipice of tumbling off, falling into the abyss of pleasure, when suddenly light blinded him, pain tore through his head, and his eyes sprang open.
He wasn’t sure where he was. It took him a moment to remember what had happened to him. Then, when he finally had his senses about him and realized he was in bed at the cottage, he realized someone slept beside him naked.
He shut his eyes against the inevitable, but knew he had to look, and when finally he did, he grew furious.
There beside him, pressed intimately against him, was his archenemy Carissa, stark naked.
He would have bolted from the bed if the pain in his head hadn’t stopped him when he tried to move. He did, however, push her away.
She woke startled, and he was surprised when she anxiously pulled the blanket over her nakedness. Then, as if she realized where she was, she grinned and let the blanket fall away from her breasts.
With an exaggerated stretch, she said, “What a night.”
Ronan wanted to choke her, or was it he who deserved the punishment? Had he truly made love—no—had sex with his enemy? Good lord, what had he done?
Carissa twisted her blond hair up and reached across Ronan to snatch her comb off the seat of the rocking chair and secure her long locks in place. Then she turned, and with a wicked grin and a lick of her lips, said, “Feeling better?”
“What did you do?” he demanded, realizing that if he didn’t move too fast, he’d suffer no pain.
“Nothing you didn’t want me to.”
“You’re an evil woman.”
“You didn’t think so last night,” she said with a self-satisfied smirk.
Ronan couldn’t believe that he would mistake Carissa for Hope. It just wasn’t possible. But then that would mean…
Before he turned glaring eyes on her, she slipped out of bed and dressed.
“Don’t torture yourself, Highlander. You weren’t up to performing.”
“Give me my clothes,” he demanded, truly relieved.
She tossed him his garments once she was finished, then moved the rocking chair to where it usually sat by the hearth.
He was slow to dress but not to question her. “It was you who found me?”
“Who else would it be?”
Yes, who else, he thought. Certainly not a dead woman.
“You were delirious.”
Was I? He wondered if his mind had played tricks on him, or had Carissa been playing tricks all along?
“You thought me Hope,” she said, walking to the table to slice bread for breakfast.
“And you responded as Hope.”
She shrugged. “As I said, you were delirious.”
“You sounded like Hope.”
“Did I?” she shrugged again. “Or was it what you wanted to hear?”
He moved slowly from the bed to the rocker, the pain slight. “You’re petite and slim like Hope.”
She jabbed the tip of the knife into the wooden tabletop, and it stuck there as she glared at him. “Say what you mean, Highlander.”
“There are too many similarities between you and Hope. And when I think of it, I also wonder how a slave could sneak away from her master every night without being caught.”
“So you’re suggesting that I’m Hope, the dead slave you still love?”
“It seems more and more obvious,” he admitted.
“Why would I bother to pass myself off as a slave?”
“To gain my confidence and information about the Sinclares.”