Fairest Of Them All Read Online Free PDF Page A

The jarring impact of her feet striking his chest had convinced her the knight was wearing chain mail, yet she felt no betraying links beneath the faded linen of his surcoat Casting a furtive glance over her shoulder as if expecting Brother Nathanael to spring out of the budding heliotropes, she slipped a shy hand inside both surcoat and tunic to discover a chest armored not with the cold artifice of steel, but with an extravagant expanse of warm muscle. Crisp whorls of hair tickled her questing fingertips.
    She snatched her hand back, disturbed by the urge to explore further. Jerking up her hood, she prepared to flee, but a heartrending groan stopped her. Trapped in a vise of indecision, Holly wanted to groan, too. So the man wasn’t dead. But what if he were dying? Did she dare leave him at the mercy of the cold damp seeping into his bones? Perhaps if she revived him, she could convince herself to flee before he came fully to his senses and decided to pursue whatever sinister purpose had brought him to the garden.
    She leaned over him. Her hair brushed his nose, making it twitch. “Sir?” she whispered. “Oh, sir? I pray, sir, can you hear me?”
    His lips parted in a gentle snore, as if he would be content to slumber forever, deaf to her pleas.
    There was no help for it, Holly thought. She was going to have to touch him again.
    Amazed that one being could radiate so much heat, she curled her hand around his throat, determined to shake him awake if necessary. His hair teased her knuckles. The unruly locks felt soft and clean, not coarse and tangled as she had expected. She peered curiously at his face, wondering what manner of features such a forbidding growth of hair obscured. Beguiled by the mystery, she drew her thumb along the edge of his beard, exploring the strong curve of the jaw beneath.
    “Witch.”
    Before she could react to the hoarse mutter, a brawny forearm clamped around her waist One powerful hand seized her nape, dragging her down until she sprawled in ungainly shock across the knight’s chest. Holly turned her face away, convinced he was going to snap her fragile neck like a twig.
    “Witch,” he whispered, this time the word more endearment than accusation.
    Quivering with terror, Holly eased her head back around. She expected his eyes to be as dark as the rest of him. Her shock was doubled when she found herself gazing down into orbs of glacial blue lit not by flame, but smoldering frost. It wasn’t the absence of threat in those eyes that paralyzed her. It was the pained brew of dread and anticipation simmering in their depths. With unspeakable tenderness, the knighf s big hand drifted up from her nape to smooth back her hood, baring her face to the moonlight.
    Holly resisted the urge to flinch. Not even when being displayed on a dais before a potential suitor and his gawking retinue had she felt so exposed.
    At the sight of her face, a shudder rocked the powerful masculine frame beneath her. The unspoken confession of vulnerability robbed her of conscious will. This man wore no mask to shield her from his desire. Holly knew instinctively that in that moment, he was as defenseless as she. He slid his fingers beneath her hair to capture her nape with gentle mastery, drawing her mouth down to his.
    Holly had been kissed before—shy pecks on the cheek, fervent kisses pressed to the back of her hand, and once even a moist kiss on the lips from Eugene de Legget that had earned him a resounding slap. But this man did not so much kiss her mouth as partake of it
    With Eugene, she had kept her lips clamped tight, but with this stranger, it seemed only natural that they part beneath the coaxing urgency of his own. The unfamiliar tickle of his mustache and the silken heat of his tongue dipping into her mouth was blunted by the irresistible tenderness with which he seemed to savor their mingled flavors. A small sound, half dismay, half delight, escaped her throat
    As if her involuntary moan had jarred him to