Highlander in Her Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page A

stepped close, so near that the hilt of his sword pressed into her hip. “Now, lass,” he said, his gaze scorching her, “tell me. Do I feel like a ghost?”
    Kira sucked in a breath. “No, but—”
    â€œExactly.” His mouth curved with a triumphant smile. “’Tis you who is out of place, no’ me. Though I vow you dinna feel like a ghost either.”
    Then his smile went wicked, his eyes darkening as he pulled her tighter against him, lowering his head as if to give her a hard, bruising kiss. Instead, his lips only brushed hers lightly, just barely touching her before he disappeared into darkness.
    Kira screamed, but only the wind and the crashing sea answered her.
    That, and the stairwell’s emptiness. The same total blackness, icy cold and dank-smelling, that she’d been staring into all along.
    Her imagination had run away with her. There could be no other explanation. She’d wished for a Highlander with a wolfish smile and a honeyed tongue, and so she’d conjured him.
    Simple as that.
    She would just lean against the ruined wall of the drum-tower and wait until her knees stopped knocking before she gathered her untouched lunch packet and returned to the road to wait for the tour bus. It wasn’t until she was halfway there that she realized she’d picked up more than her picnic goods.
    Her heart still beating wildly, she looked at her left hand, slowly uncurling her fingers to reveal the squarish clump of granite she must’ve grabbed when she’d held so tight to the crumbling edges of the stairwell’s door arch.
    She frowned.
    The stone seemed to stare at her in mute reproach, but rather than taking it back, she hurried on, clutching the stone like a precious treasure.
    And to her it was.
    A memento of her Highlander.
    With a sigh, she paused a few feet from the road, looking back over her shoulder at the ruins. The sun had burst through the clouds, burning off the mist and gilding the tumbled walls with the bright blue and gold of the late-spring afternoon. Even the wind was lessening and the dark, jagged cliffs of Wrath Isle no longer looked quite so menacing.
    The ruined castle no longer a home to ghosts.
    An empty shell was all it was, she made herself believe, choosing as well to ignore the thickness in her throat and the stinging heat jabbing the backs of her eyes.
    Whoever or whatever he’d been, her hunky Highlander couldn’t have been real.
    Never in all her dreams.

Chapter 1
    Aldan, Pennsylvania
A Pleasant and Respectable Delaware County Borough Twelve Years Later…
    Kira Bedwell had a dirty little secret.
    A towering plaid-hung secret, masterful and passionate, impossibly addictive.
    Maddening, too, for he came to her only in her dreams.
    Deliciously heated dreams that called to her now, teasing the edges of her sleep and flooding her with tingling, languorous warmth until she began to stretch and roll beneath the bedcovers. She reached for an extra pillow, hugging it close as the walls of her apartment’s tiny bedroom shimmered and shimmied, taking on a silvery translucence. As always, her pulse leapt at the transformation, the rippling luminescence giving her a view of the cliffs and the sea, a sheep-grazed hill and tumbled, mist-clad ruins.
    Ancient ruins, well loved and remembered.
    Kira sighed, her heart catching. She bit her lip and splayed her fingers across the cool linen of her bed-sheets. She could imagine him so well, her darkly seductive Highlander. If she concentrated, she could almost see him in the shadows, waiting. Mist swirled around his tall, strapping form, a strong wind tearing at his plaid and whipping his raven hair. His hot gaze would make her burn, the raw sensuality streaming off him flowing over her like pure, molten lust, rousing her.
    He’d step closer then, a slow smile curving his lips, the sheer eroticism of him and his own insatiable need almost letting her forget she’d fallen