The Tempted by Donna Grant Read Free Book Online Page A

both times, only with a simple touch.”
    “Pull you back from what?” she asked softly.
    “You saw me. You saw the monster I become when my fury gets ahold of me.”
    “How often does that happen?”
    “Any time I get angry.”
    She could feel the heat coming off him. He was intense, forceful, and dangerous. He set her on edge, and he made her ache for something she couldn’t name. It was a growing feeling inside her, one that began the day before.
    “What makes you angry?” she asked.
    One side of his mouth lifted in a smile, but there was only desolation in his eyes when he said, “Everything.”
    He turned and continued on their path. Morvan fell in step behind him, wondering what turned a man like Stefan so furious all the time.
    “I’ll make sure you’re safe,” he said over his shoulder. “Then I must leave.”
    Morvan knew she should leave well enough alone, and yet she found herself asking, “To return to your clan?”
    “Nay. I’m hunting the gypsy who ruined my life.”
    Morvan decided it was best to keep from asking more questions. She kept up with his fast pace, even as her ribs ached. The tea she’d drank that morning, and again at noon before the MacKays arrived at the cottage, was helping control the pain. But only just.  
    Not once did she ask Stefan to slow. She hoped she would be able to shake the gloomy feeling once they crossed onto Sinclair land, but it only grew with every step she took.
    When dusk came, Morvan looked up to discover that Stefan had brought them back to the cliff where she’d first seen him. Thankfully, he didn’t make the climb up.  
    “We’ll stop here for the night,” he said.
    When he started to walk off, she stood in his path and gave him a shove back. “Sit so I can look at your wounds.”
    It looked like he might argue for a moment, but then he sat on a boulder and lifted a brow.
    Morvan first looked at the damage he had done to his previous wounds before she examined the fresh ones. “The new ones don’t look that bad, but I need more herbs for your leg and the wounds on your chest from this morning. Stay here until I get what I need.”
    To her surprise, she didn’t have to go far to gather the herbs. As she made her way back to the cliff, she happened to see Stefan stand up. His shirt was gone and water dripped down his bare chest from the small pool of water where he had been washing.
    She let her gaze wander over his finely sculpted muscles from his shoulders and arms, to his chest that narrowed to a V at his waist. She was too intent on his wounds before to notice the many scars that crisscrossed his entire torso. Despite the scars – or perhaps because of them – his body was amazing. He was a warrior in the truest sense of the word. She didn’t know of another who could fight a group of men twice in one day and come out the victor both times.
    She let her eyes slowly travel back up his chest, her hands wishing they could feel his warm skin, to know the shape of his muscles. When she looked into his face, Stefan was staring at her.
    Morvan wasn’t a maid. She’d once given her heart – and her maidenhead – to a man she’d thought loved her. Even if she were a maid, she would’ve recognized the desire in Stefan’s eyes.
    It had been so long since she’d felt such yearning stir that she feared it as much as she craved it.  
    Stefan tossed aside something that Morvan only belatedly realized was his ruined shirt. She walked to him, their gazes never breaking. When she reached him, she pushed him back to sit on a rock and knelt between his legs. She saw a droplet of water fall from the end of his hair to his collarbone. Without thinking, she covered the drop with her finger and spread it over his chest.
    His skin was warm, his chest hair crinkling beneath her palm. Morvan’s blood pounded through her as desire coiled tightly.
    She went from wound to wound washing them and packing them with herbs before taking more of her shift to use as