Until the Knight Comes Read Online Free PDF

in Cuidrach’s hall and more of his rain-splattered ilk were streaming in behind him. Several of these wind-tossed souls also bore good-sized travel chests and what looked to be assorted knightly accoutrements of the highest quality.
    The kind of gear her warrior laird father would have examined with a gleam in his eye, his tongue clicking in hearty approval.
    She
clenched her fists in her cloak, strove for composure. “We are not wood pigeons or angels,” she said, her pulse racing. “Merely women—”
    “That we can see,” said another man, his voice a shade deeper and carrying none of the others’ levity. “Indeed, I doubt an angel has graced these walls in longer than man can remember. And with surety, not two.”
    Stepping from the shadows, he narrowed dark eyes at her. “Celestial beings can surely find more amenable haunts to grace with their hallowed presence. Do you not agree, my lady?”
    “Not necessarily.” Mariota lifted her chin at his arrogant menace. “Mayhap it would depend on what conditions such a being found amenable?”
    “Or,” he said, arching a raven brow, “perhaps what conditions drove the . . .
angel
to such a place as this?”
    “And you, good sir?” Mariota returned, struggling against the urge to squirm beneath his midnight gaze. “Devils are known to seek such places as well. What brings
you
here this dark and rainy night?”
    To her surprise, the corners of his mouth lifted in a smile . . . a sensual-looking smile but without warmth.
    He said nothing.
    Nor did he need words.
    Faith, she could
feel
him all over her, sliding round and inside her, his all-possessing power so palpable, for one crazy-mad moment she imagined him seizing her, pulling her close for a deep, bruising kiss that would blot out her past and banish her cares and hurts in one shattering, decadent moment.
    A lightning-quick impulse that would make her forget, possibly even love again.
    Certainly desire.
    But the coldness of his stare restored sanity and Mariota raised her chin a notch higher, puffed a wayward strand of hair off her forehead. “I asked you a question,” she prodded, some not-to-be-repressed part of her femininity still taking his measure. “Why are you here?”
    “You cannot guess?” He stepped backward, held up his hands, as if inviting her to examine him.
    And she did, her blood heating more with each slow-beating
thump
of her heart.
    Tall, raven-haired, and powerfully built, he
was
a man to inflame a woman’s . . . interest. Much to her discomfiture. Indeed, the sheer male dominance of his presence brought a hot flush to her cheeks and, worse, smashed any remaining vestiges of her hope that he and his men might be simple wayfarers-in-passing.
    These were men with a purpose.
    And judging from the number of them moving about in the thin curtain of rain visible beyond the hall’s open door arch, there were enough of them to garrison a much larger holding than these ruinous walls.
    And how she wished this dark-frowning specimen of maleness had taken his men and his business to one of those other, more commodious keeps.
    Instead he loomed far too near, the rain-fresh, outdoorsy scent of him and the heat of his large, masculine body, filling the small space between them. Befuddling her wits and making her shiver.
    And that was just the beginning of it.
    In truth, everything about him made it increasingly difficult for her to breathe.
    And next to impossible to feign calm.
    As if he sensed her ill ease and meant to seize advantage, he stepped even closer, his stare burning her, displeasure and something else—something infinitely more unsettling—pouring off him until she had to lock her knees to keep from swaying beneath his stare.
    A measuring, all-seeing perusal that, she was certain, pierced clear through her cloak and gown to her nakedness beneath.
    She returned the look, damning propriety to glare right back at him, straight into the deepest, darkest blue eyes she’d ever seen. And