But she wasn’t alone she realized as she neared the small stream that ran behind the cottage.
Ewan had beaten her awake and to her spot.
She froze the instant she saw him. His black hair slicked back from his sculpted face, he was waist deep in the water, holding a knife to his throat as he shaved himself.
Her gaze feasted on the sight of his tanned flesh. On the way the waves of the water lapped against his bare, tawny skin, caressing and teasing it to a fine sheen.
She traced the line of his muscles with her eyes, watching the way his body bunched and flexed with every move he made.
Aye, Ewan MacAllister was the finest looking man she’d ever beheld.
Always sheltered at home, Nora had never known such desire for a man, but she felt it now. Felt it in every part of her body. Her heart that raced, her lungs that struggled to breathe, her legs that threatened to buckle.
What was it about this unrefined ruffian that he appealed to her so? He wasn’t the kind of man to woo her with poetry. Nor the kind of man who would sit for hours with her while she listened to a bard sing.
Like as not, he’d be like her father, ever impatient with a minstrel. She couldn’t count the times her father had forced her mother up to their room rather than sit and listen to a bard’s tale.
Her father was ever quick to bellow for her mother and never content to sit and listen to others.
Her mother, God bless her soul, was ever patient and caring as a wife should be. But Nora wanted more than that.
She didn’t want to be the dutiful wife who lost herself to her husband’s bidding.
When she closed her eyes, she saw her perfect man. A man of culture and thought who would read with her and compose poetry and songs.
Not one who stormed off to attack trees with an ax every time he got angry.
But as she stared at Ewan’s bare form, she had to admit that attacking trees had certainly done fine things for his body. It had given him powerful shoulders that bulged with strength. Thick, muscular thighs that were dusted with dark, curly hairs and a chest that rippled with masculine beauty.
Suddenly, he turned around and caught sight of her.
Nora froze, unable to move.
Unable to breathe.
Time seemed to have stopped as they stared at each other. But what struck her most was just how gorgeous his face was when clean-shaven. The graceful lines of it...
If not for his size and manly presence, he might have even been called pretty.
But there was nothing pretty or feminine about the man before her.
He was raw masculinity incarnate.
“Did you need something, lass?” he asked.
The deep tenor of his voice shivered through her. Nora swallowed and tried to speak only to find herself strangely mute.
“Is something amiss?” he asked, taking a step toward her.
Nora squeaked at the thought of him coming out of the water. If she were this affected by nothing more than his bare chest and back, she shuddered at what the sight of him awake and completely unadorned would do to her.
When he’d been naked in his bed yesterday, he hadn’t seemed this...
Large!
“I’m fine,” she said, spinning around and running back toward the cottage.
Ewan smiled as he watched her haste.
