The Sapphire Brooch Katherine Logan (best beach reads TXT) 📖

me when you left the plantation. I imagined all sorts of things had happened to you, and almost all of them would have been better than what actually happened.”

His large hand traced the muscles of her arm with unsuspected gentleness. He brushed the shawl off her shoulder and pinched a bit of her gown between his thumb and forefinger, toying with it softly. His eyes roved over her hungrily.

“I’m sorry.” There was a still, smooth tone to his voice, lulling.

The stew of her emotions came to a boil. “Now I understand how you can go into enemy territory and do what you do. It was no small feat to drive a car almost five hundred miles when you’d never driven before. You have nerves of steel.”

“Sometimes.” He let go of her gown and picked up one of her ringlets carefully. “Ye looked beautiful tonight, elegant. I’d never seen ye in anything other than scrubs and jeans.” The fingers of his other hand swept seductively across her chest below her collarbone, above her breasts. “Yer décolletage”—he raised an eyebrow—“is not for cads to view. Next time, I suggest ye wear scrubs. If there is a next time.”

Heat rushed to her cheeks. There was nothing particularly revealing about the dress she’d worn tonight, at least by twenty-first century standards. Was it her imagination, or was he truly attracted to her? Did he find her desirable? Was his heart beating to the double-time cadence of a drummer like hers? “And now?” she asked, her voice soft, and she anchored her attention on him, careful not to move or blink or think beyond this moment. “How do you see me?”

“Very desirable.” His mouth twitched with the tiniest and briefest of smiles. He dropped the curl and picked up another one close to her ear, brushing her neck with the back of his hand. “I like yer hair falling down around yer face and shoulders.” He pulled the curl to his nose and sniffed, smiling.

She was silent for a long time, and so was he, seemingly content to listen to the wind. Embers fell apart and sparks floated like fireflies in the dimness of the room. She returned his gaze, waiting to hear the unspoken whispers hovering in the air. To say them would strip away all vestige of hope. He let the curl fall back into place and, instead of picking up another one, he touched her cheek again. His scent was fresh and clean from the Proctor & Gamble white soap he had used, but there was an underlying scent—his own male musk—the kind of scent that pulled on a woman at a primal level. His thumb slid over the curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw, stopping at her mouth, and he gazed at her with a visual caress.

“I came for one last memory of ye.”

“So, you said.” She realized she sounded a bit breathless. “What you didn’t say was what kind of memory you would prefer.”

He nudged her chin up with his thumb. “I didn’t, did I?”

She touched his arm, and a shudder went through him. It went through her, too, pulsing and vibrating, and she moaned with a rush of desire. It seemed so natural to slip into his arms and share a kiss. His mouth came down slowly, tentative at first, then he kissed her full on the mouth, pulling on her bottom lip with his teeth, lightly and erotically. His large, gentle hands stroked her face. When their tongues touched, she tasted sweet whisky on his warm breath. His tongue moved against hers, tantalizing her mouth with thorough, languid movements. She kissed him back, astonishing herself with a depth of passion she had not believed possible.

He leaned back with a groan, pulling her with him until she lay on top of his sprawled body. Only the thin silk of her gown and the wool of his trousers separated their tightly strung bodies, each molding against the other. Braham gripped the curves of her buttocks and nudged her ever closer. The hard outline of his pulsing erection pressed against her almost bare thigh.

And she desired him as feverishly as he wanted her. She skimmed her hand down the side of his face, tracing the lines of his chin, his neck, to the hollow of his throat, and kissed him there. He shifted his fingers through her curls from her nape to her crown. He nudged her chin up and coaxed her mouth to stay open.

He tasted wild and fresh, and the touch of lips seemed like something other than kissing—more urgent, more relentless, eroding her balance. She clutched his shoulders, curving her fingers over the long plane of bone and muscle to the hard nape of his neck. If she could crawl inside his skin and know him, know the flesh and blood of him, know his thoughts, she would go now, this very instant, and never look back. She threaded her fingers through damp, satiny hair, cradled his head, and kissed him intensely. A desperate ache burst low in her belly. Responding on her need alone, she pressed his hand against her breast.

“Do you feel the beat of my heart, the hum of my soul?” she whispered.

His fingers drifted over the round shape, cupping the top of the slope until her nipple ached sweetly.

“Yes.” There was a slight quiver in his voice.

“You’ve crumbled the defenses I created so long ago to keep from loving and wanting this much,” she said.

As their looks entwined, her hands moved to his buttons, longing to feel skin against skin, and aching to show him, silently, the depth of her desire for him.

He held her tightly against him, slowing her hands, and whispered in her ear words she did not understand—Gaelic words, she suspected—words making the candle he had lit in her heart flicker with hope.

With a soft breath she asked, “What’d you say?”

“I’ll live with yer absence every day.” He eased curly wisps of hair behind her ear. “Ye’ve bewitched