Page 22
Shaking off his bitter reflections, Broden extended his elbow to Kendra. “May I escort ye to break yer fast?”
A slightly startled look flashed across her face, but with only the slightest hesitation, she placed her fingers into the crook of his arm.
Other than when she’d wrapped her arms around him to keep him atop Sheik, this was the only time he could recall her touching him voluntarily.
They’d never danced together at assemblies or balls. And Broden couldn’t help but relish the feel of her hand upon him, her touch once more scorching him, leaving a brand singed upon him. Not to mention sending all sorts of erotic, very unbrotherly, thoughts clambering through his mind.
In truth, once she’d bloomed into the striking woman beside him, his thoughts had long since transformed from anything remotely platonic or fraternal.
Wouldn’t she spit nails to know his thoughts?
She’d probably clock him with the first thing she could put her hands upon.
Since that first night when he’d awoken to find her standing beside his bed, attired only in her nightclothes, her lovely, sable hair a thick, plaited rope across her shoulder, and suspecting she was most likely nude beneath the virginal trappings, he been unable to dislodge imaginations of her gloriously naked in bed beside him.
It had proved damned awkward with his cock rising to attention and tenting the bedding, as his mother puttered around his chamber. Only by focusing on the reason he found himself an invalid in the first place could he wrangle his ardor under control.
Now, as he guided Kendra down the passageway, her honeyed heat, mere inches away, beckoned him. As did her perfume, light and tempting with a promise of spring. Fully aware he flirted with danger and perhaps risked a slap, as well, he bent his neck and inhaled deeply.
Her womanly scent tunneled through him, an intoxicating elixir of femininity and Kendra.
She glanced up, curiosity rather than censure in her amused gaze. A winsome smile played around the edges of her soft, plump lips. “Are ye sniffin’ me, Broden?”
He chuckled as they turned the corner leading to the top of the stairs. No sense in denying the obvious. “Aye, I am. Ye always smell amazin’.”
His superior height gave him a delicious view of the tantalizing hills and valleys her bodice revealed. He was a lecher for taking advantage of it but, damn his eyes, if he could haul his attention away from the lush display.
Desperate for a distraction, he said, “Yer fragrance contains lemon?”
Those winged eyebrows of hers that so often pulled together in annoyance and scorn when in his presence, shied skyward, as a smile just this side of teasing, curved her mouth.
“Are we truly havin’ a discussion about my perfume?” A giggle escaped her, and she clapped a palm over her mouth.
He adored her laugh but was rarely gifted the chance to hear it.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m no’ laughin’ at ye. It just seems so ludicrous when a week ago, I wouldna have believed ye even aware I wore perfume.”
Oh, he was aware.
Too damned aware of everything about Kendra MacKay. That was the root of the problem. He couldn’t rid his consciousness of her. Even when he wasn’t with her.
“Never mind. It isna important.” Broden felt a sheer fool. He, who had his choice of any number of women, couldn’t hold an intelligent conversation with the only woman that mattered.
Her fingers tightened on his arm minutely, and she said, “If ye must ken, there is lemon in it. And camellia, along with the merest bit of juniper. That gives the fragrance a wee hint of mystery.”
“A bit of adventure and sweetness and mystery. And zest,” Broden murmured low, finding the conversation oddly arousing.
Did she dab the scent behind those delicate ears? Between her superbly ripe breasts? Inside her shapely elbows? Elsewhere?
Lord, help him.
He grew hard at once and closed his eyes for a blink against the tantalizing images springing to mind, as well as the groan bubbling up his throat. “So verra like ye,” he managed after what seemed a lust-ridden eternity.
At that ridiculous declaration, her winged, cinder-colored eyebrows rose, and her gaze fairly danced with hilarity. “Are ye positive about the sweetness part?”
They’d reached the stair landing, and he turned her to him, drawing her minutely nearer. “Och, I’m verra, verra sure about the sweetness part.”
Then he tipped her chin upward, and uncaring that someone could come upon them at any moment, he brushed her lips with his. God, such an exquisite, scrumptious mouth. And, heaven help him, she tasted as she smelled: sweet and zesty and lemony with a hint of unexplored mystery there, as well.
