Highland Knight Read Online Free PDF

to do is hold firm until our family can save us.”
    So simple, Avery thought, and she sighed. Cameron took every chance he could to touch her, tease her senses, stir her with heated words, and steal kisses. The fact that she had little will to fight off those kisses worried her more than she could say. At the moment, only her fury over being chained or tied gave her the strength to push him away. If Cameron ceased to bind her, that anger could lessen, and thus so would her ability to fight the temptation of the man.
    “I will tell ye true, cousin, I am nay sure I can fight for that long.” She smiled sadly at Gillyanne’s look of shock.
    Gillyanne cleared her throat and said, “He is a verra handsome mon.”
    “Oh, aye, verra handsome, though he is as dark as sin. And sin is what he tempts me to.”
    “Ye are nearly nineteen. Ye must have been tempted before and turned aside from it.”
    “Nay, I fear not.”
    “Do ye love him?”
    “Gillyanne, the mon has chained me to a bed, tied me to his horse, and wants to use me to strike a hard blow at my family and drag poor Payton into a marriage he does not want. I would be a fool to love him.”
    “Not completely. He is wrong, but he does nay more than many another would do, believing what he does. And, ’tis clear he willnae wrest what he wants from you. So, if nay love, then ye are in lust.”
    “It would seem I am.” She echoed Gillyanne’s sigh.
    Gillyanne patted Avery on the shoulder. “Ye can only do your best. I willnae fault ye if ye weaken. And considering how often our brothers and cousins weaken, they would deserve a sound thrashing if they faulted you.” She shared a brief grin with Avery, then grew serious again. “’Twould seem to me that ye must fight as hard as ye can, but dinnae fret if ye lose the fight. Mayhap ye may e’en find a way to take the sting out of the reasons why he means to bed you. And, we both ken that, some day, he will learn that his sister has lied.”
    “Aye, and then he will wish to do the honorable thing,” Avery grumbled.
    “Weel, if by then ye are in love as weel as in lust, ’twould nay be such a bad thing.”
    “It would depend upon what else he felt. Ah, and the brute returns.”
    Cameron caught the identical glares the two small Murray females gave him and nearly grinned. They had more spirit than some men he knew. If they but had the strength and height of a man, he would be in very serious trouble. Both of them looked far too eager to hurt him.
    “Go back to the women,” he ordered Gillyanne, and he bit back a laugh over the way she muttered some very colorful curses as she obeyed him. “When that lass finishes growing, she will cause some mon a great deal of trouble.”
    “Good,” Avery said. “She will be a rich prize, and one should ne’er get one of those too easily.”
    “As easily as I got you?”
    “True, I was tossed at your feet. Ye gained the weapon to use against my family verra easily indeed. Howbeit, ye will have to fight long and hard to wield it.”
    “Will I?”
    He stepped closer, caging her between himself and his mount. The nearness of her was enough to heat his blood. If he read the flicker of warmth in her beautiful eyes correctly, it was enough to stir her as well. He prayed he was reading that look right.
    The last betrayal he had suffered, the one that had caused him to retreat from the game of love, had left him uncertain of his ability to judge women. He had thought, in all his former arrogance, that he could read a woman’s heart, could know that he and he alone stirred her desire. Time and time again he had found, not love, but faithlessness and betrayal, until it no longer shocked or surprised him, until he found himself turning his back on all women. What made his doubts even stronger now was the fact that Avery Murray was not like any other woman he knew. Was that heat in her eyes desire, or the urge to gut him like a pig? In Avery’s case, he suspected it could easily