The Legend Mackinnon by Donna Kauffman Read Free Book Online

don’t seem so distant. At the moment.”
    “Aye. And I’m no’ feeling so pompous.” His lips twitched again, then smoothed, the look in his eyes deepeningto something serious and sincere. “While yer a lot like yer ancestors, Maggie, I’m beginning to see that in many ways, yer nothing like them at all.”
    “Because I swallowed my pride and apologized?”
    He tapped a finger on her chest above her breast, then let it rest there with a small caress. “Because ye have a heart. Somethin’ I’ve been accused of no’ being able tae claim.”
    “You have to have one, to recognize one.” Maggie tentatively raised her hand to cover his. He was warm. She felt a pulse thrum beneath her fingertips. Alive. She looked down to where they touched, then back up to him. “What are you Duncan MacKinnon, man or ghost?”

F IVE

    “R ight now, I’m a man, wi’ blood running through my veins.” He lifted his fingers so that they wove between hers. “And my blood is runnin’ hot and heavy wi’ the touch of you under my fingertips.” He pressed her own fingertips against her chest. “Aye and yer heart is beating strong and fine as well.” He dipped his chin and angled his head, holding her gaze as he moved his face closer to hers.
    Maggie couldn’t have so much as blinked in that moment. Her breath was stalled in her throat, her mind was drunk on the sensations rocketing through her, an intoxicating thrall created by his touch, his words, his heat, his overwhelming nearness. She waited for him to close the distance, to take her mouth in a devastating kiss like any good rogue Scots hero would. Her eyes drifted shut, her lips parted …
    “Open yer eyes.”
    She did and found him staring intently at her. “Ye want to be ravished, is that it?”
    Maggie felt embarrassment heat her skin clear down to her neck. She tried to pull away, but he locked his arm around her back and pulled her against him. The feel ofhim hard and strong against her threatened to buckle her knees. She had to get away before he let her fall into a heap at his feet while he had a good laugh over her silly female sensibilities. She should have heeded her own advice and steered well clear of her supernatural roommate and put her mind to more important things,
real
things, like determining how to escape the last man she’d gotten weak-kneed over.
    Although Judd had never once made her feel a sliver of the awareness pulsing through her at this moment.
    He hugged her tighter still, jerking her full attention to his face, which was now a mere breath away from hers. Duncan was disturbingly real.
    “Aye, I could ravage ye lass and we’d both be the happier for it I’m certain.”
    She tried to struggle from his grasp, then went totally still and held him in as cool a regard as she could muster. “I no longer wish to ravish or be ravished,” she lied, “and I’ll thank you to unhand me immediately.”
    With a deep, honest laugh that moved her when it shouldn’t have, he hugged her to his chest, then set her back a space, still holding her captive with both hands. “Och, but you have the Claren spirit in abundance.” His laughter subsided, but his smile did not.
    It transformed him so completely, she stood there, mouth open, basking in the amazing glow of it.
    He bent his head close and spoke in a whisper against her ear. “I’ll have that kiss, Maggie, but I’ll no’ be takin’ it from you. I’ve had my fill of taking without receiving. We’ll share it when it’s done. And it will be done. Many times if I’m to be the judge of it.”
    Shared, he’d said. Demanded. Macho, yes, egotistical, yes, but she wanted his kiss. Perhaps many of his kisses. And he was right about one other thing, damn him. She didn’t want to be taken.
    “Where is yer smart mouth when it would do ye the most good, bonnie Maggie?” Duncan asked softly.
    “I think my smart mouth was doing too well for its own good,” she said faintly.
    Aye, that it was, Duncan