Keeper of my Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

pounded in her breast. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t tear herself away from him like she knew she should and run where it was safe.
    He touched her and set her flesh ablaze. He held her close and the churning in her stomach burned like liquid fire, rushing in molten rivers to that place deep within her she never knew existed. Her knees weakened beneath her and she wrapped her arms around his neck with even more desperation and kissed him back.
    She had no idea a man’s touch could do this. No idea a man’s kiss could bring her to this point. No wonder her mother had told her a man’s passion was more dangerous than the temptation of the greatest sin. The world moved beneath her feet every time he touched his lips to hers, demanding more of her soul than it was safe for her to relinquish. She burned in the pits of Hades and could not find a way to escape.
    Her mind screamed the warning but her body yearned for more. She wanted this MacAlister like she never thought she would want a man. She wanted to give to him what he would take from her. She would gladly burn in hellfire just for a moment in his arms. Isn’t this how her mother warned her it would be?
    Màiri’s mother’s dying words echoed through the dark recesses of her mind. Her warning to find pleasure with no man. To find seclusion with the good sisters of the convent. The warning to trust her heart to no man because no man could ever understand the gift.
    Màiri thought back to the years of torture her mother had endured because she’d given herself to a man. Kissing this Scot was a mistake. She never should have weakened before him. It was a mistake that would be infinitely more terrifying than death.
    With new-found strength, she turned her face away from his kisses and flattened her palms against his chest. She pushed as hard as she could until his grasp around her loosened. A desperate plea escaped her lips and she pulled out of his arms until she was safe on the other side of the room.
    “Do na be afraid of me, Agatha,” he whispered in the darkness. He sounded as out of breath as she and spoke with the same ragged voice.
    “I should na have allowed you to kiss me. It was wrong.”
    “Nay. It was na wrong.”
    “It was wrong! I would have your word you will never do so again.”
    “We only shared—”
    “I would have your word or when Kenneth and I leave, you will stay behind and he can come for you when I am safely at the convent.”
    “You are that afraid of a kiss? It was meant only—”
    “I would have your word, or we will na wait, but leave in the morning without you.”
    He hesitated slightly. “Very well. You have my word. And my apology. I will never make such advances again.”
    Màiri rubbed her kiss-swollen lips as she huddled before the dying embers of the fire in the hearth. By all that was holy, what had she almost done? Her heart pounded in her breast as she fought the panic rising in her throat.
    Unable to control the tremendous guilt one more second, she grabbed the cover from her pallet and wrapped it around her shoulders before running from the cottage. She needed to separate herself from what she had done. She needed to get away from the MacAlister Scot who had given her a glimpse of what it was like to lose her heart to a man and begin the journey down the path that would lead to nothing but pain.
    His voice echoed her name once as she made her way across the courtyard to the small enclosure where Kenneth kept the horses. When she reached the far side of the pen, she rested her arms on the wooden barrier and lowered her forehead. She’d never felt so confused in her life. She’d never felt so alone.
    “Are you all right, mistress?”
    Kenneth’s voice came as a whisper from the shadows.
    “I let the MacAlister kiss me. After all my mother’s warnings, I let him kiss me.”
    Kenneth didn’t say words to comfort her or chastise her. A window opened in her mind and Màiri saw that Kenneth