Highland Hunger by Hannah Howell Read Free Book Online Page B

but he had no control around Una, his body demanding that he claim her every time he looked at her.
    Raibeart shook his head as he shed his clothes and entered the pool. He was going to have to try harder. His wooing appeared to be working but, after all Una had suffered, he doubted she was ready for a man half blind with hunger for her.
    By the time he was bathed and dressed in clean clothing, he was again in control of his desires. Then he stepped up to the small fire she sat near and she smiled at him. His body clenched tightly with the wanting he had just thought he had conquered. Gritting his teeth, he sat down beside her on the blanket she had spread out. Despite all his attempts to keep his gaze fixed on the flames, he was soon staring at her long, slim legs and clenching his fists to stop himself from touching them.
    Una picked up Raibeart’s wineskin, turned to offer it to him, and grew very still. Raibeart was staring at her legs much as a starving man stared at any scrap of food. She wondered if there was something alarming about the MacNachtons he had not told her, and then told herself not to be so slack-witted.
    She recognized that look on his face. The tightening of the lines of his face, the hint of color riding his high cheekbones. It was desire. She had seen it on a man’s face before. It was a look that had always preceded a flare of violence and then her running for her life. It was a look she had learned to read as a warning of danger. Now, seeing that look on Raibeart’s handsome face, everything within her read it as an invitation. Una was just not certain how she could answer it in a way that was not too brazen.
    Still holding the wineskin, she shifted until she was kneeling, facing him. Her breath caught in her throat when his gaze met hers. His dark eyes had gone feral, lightening until they were more a dark amber than a brown so dark it was almost black. It did not frighten her, however. Instead, it stirred to life a hunger that rose rapidly to equal the one she could read in those beautiful predator’s eyes.
    “Do ye wish a drink?” she asked, a little surprised at how low and husky her voice was.
    “Aye.” Raibeart took the wineskin from her hand and set it on the floor, never once taking his gaze from her face. “I do. A deep one.”
    He kissed her, and Una shivered, heat flooding through her body the moment his lips touched hers. She wrapped her arms around his neck, threaded her fingers through his hair, and held him close. The hunger she had seen in his eyes was revealed in his kiss. This was no gentle wooing. This was a man telling her that he wanted her, a man demanding that she give him what he needed.
    It should have frightened her. Men had demanded before, had expected to be able to take what they wanted from her. It was why she had never settled anywhere since being driven from her family’s home. Each time she had tried, some man had thought she was free for the taking and tried to do just that despite her refusals. Una did not fear Raibeart. His demand did not make her want to fight him and run; it made her want to give, to share. She returned his kiss with a demand of her own.
    Raibeart was close to shaking with the force of his need by the time he pushed Una down onto the blanket. He was not surprised to see the fine tremor in his hand as he began to unlace the shirt she wore, kissing each newly exposed patch of skin, inhaling the scent of her, and becoming drunk on the taste of her. The voice of reason in his mind tried to warn him to go slow, to be certain that Una was ready to make love, but it took several minutes before he grasped enough control to heed it.
    “Una,” he said as he gently tugged the shirt aside to expose her softly rounded shoulder, “ye have but a heartbeat or two to tell me nay, to stop me.”
    “If I was going to say nay, I would have done so ere ye got me on my back,” she whispered and nipped his chin.
    He laughed but it was rough sound, more