Torn Between Two Highlanders by Laurel Adams Read Free Book Online

against another! Fortunately, she was too weary to care.

Chapter Five

    It wasn’t until after sunrise that Arabella awakened. And even then, only slowly, because she was dreaming again. This time, she luxuriated in a delicious dream of Davy’s arms around her. His lips on the back of her neck. His nose buried in her hair…
    Except it wasn’t Davy who was pressed full length against her backside, enveloping her in long, steely arms. It was Malcolm.
    And the realization of it startled Arabella awake upon her pillow.
    “Malcolm?” she whispered, not wanting to disturb him. He’d slept fitfully beside her, shivering most of the night. And while she had curled close against him to keep him warm, she’d kept a blanket between their bodies. But that was gone now and while he gave a light snore with each breath, she could feel the skin of his thighs against the back of her legs—a feeling that only heightened the arousal Davy had put inside her the night before.
    But when the wounded warrior’s hand slipped down over her hip, she called more shrilly. “Malcolm!”
    He snorted awake behind her, jostling and shifting his weight as if to try to make sense of his surroundings. And when he groaned in pain, she turned and put a hand on his injured leg to still him.
    He narrowed his dark eyes and blinked. “What the devil are you doing?”
    “You were hurt,” she said. “I don’t know if you remember…”
    “I remember,” Malcolm barked. “But what the devil are you doing in my bed?”
    Rebelliously, she could not keep the tartness from her tongue. “I was dead on my feet after tending to you all day whilst you called me a witch. And I thought you might better survive the night if someone were nearby to keep you warm. Silly me.”
    He didn’t seem shamed. “After what those Donalds did, you must be unhinged to just crawl into bed with a man who can overpower you!”
    She was so startled by his tone that her temper flared. “Much as it may hurt your pride to know, Malcolm of Clan Macrae, you couldn’t overpower a flea in your present condition. And just how did this become your bed?”
    “I’m lying in it, aren’t I?”
    Of all the obstinate, infuriating…though she supposed it wasn’t unusual for a man to be so agitated after taking a grievous injury, she thought he might just be cranky, generally speaking. And though there was still something heartbreakingly beautiful about him—scar and all—she said, “I liked you better when you weren’t conscious.”
    “Well, I’m awake now.”
    “And likely to live, I think.”
    “Too bad,” he said, scowling.
    “Have you a death wish?”
    His eyes lowered, and he gave a slight shake of his head. “I would, if I thought it would bring me back to my wife. But if she did what I think she did…”
    Then she’d be damned , Arabella thought. So Malcolm would rather be alive and haunted by her, than dead and separated from Lorna forever. And in spite of his crabby nature, she felt a pang of sympathy in her heart for him once again.
    “I shouldn’t have snapped at you,” he finally said by way of apology. “When I awakened. I was ill-tempered.”
    That was one word for it. “Some people don’t like mornings.”
    “T’was waking up to find you in my arms that put me in such a temper.”
    Oh. Well. That was just what a girl liked to hear…
    At a loss for what else she might possibly say, Arabella murmured, “Sorry.”
    He lowered his eyes. “I haven’t held a woman like that since my wife.”
    Arabella swallowed, though she could scarcely believe it, since she vaguely remembered that somewhere in Davy’s story about being trapped in the snows there was a mention of a harlot. “Not even in a bawdy house?”
    Malcolm squinted. “A man doesn’t go to a bawdy house to hold a woman.”
    He didn’t explain himself further, but he didn’t have to. Arabella understood, in the rueful silence, what he meant by it. In holding Arabella in his sleep for