Moving back to the door, she knocked on it.
No one answered.
“Hello?” she called, knocking louder. “Is anyone there?”
Still no answer.
Undaunted, she tried the door. The latch clicked and it opened easily enough.
Inside she found an even more interesting abode. The floor was covered with plush rugs and rushes. The stone walls even held a few tapestries to blot the dampness. There was a strangely designed fireplace that had a bent flume and chimney to go out the side of the mountain instead of up through the top. A table and two chairs were set before it.
But the most interesting thing of all was the bed at the rear. Large and lush, it looked as if it belonged in some fine noble’s castle. Not stuck out in the midst of the woods, on top of a mountain.
Ewan MacAllister was a strange man indeed.
And it was then she heard the snarling sound of the beast himself. It was a brief, eerie kind of snort, terrifying and deep.
Her heart stopped, then pounded as she realized it came from the bed. All she could see from her position by the door was a dark lump she assumed was a man.
He was asleep?
It was high afternoon, too early to be abed for the night and too late to be abed from the morning.
A nap perhaps?
Or was he ill?
Please, not sickness. She needed him to be hale and hearty for this venture. A sick barbarian wouldn’t do at all.
“Excuse me?” she asked, stepping nearer the lump. “Lord Ewan, might I have a word with you?”
Only the snore answered her.
Well bother this. Here she’d come all this way expecting to face an ogre and all she got was a sleeping cub. Where was the giant of legend who terrified everyone who spoke his name?
She needed that fearsome beast.
Aye, she needed him.
Stiffening her spine, she approached the bed, then faltered again as she saw him clearly for the first time in the dim light of the cave.
He lay on his side, spread out across the mattress as naked as the day he’d entered the world.
Not once in her life had Nora ever beheld a naked man, but she was quite certain no other man looked so fine and handsome as this one. Especially not while he slept.
And snored.
His long, muscled limbs seemed to go on forever. He was so large in stature and muscle that the bed barely accommodated him and if he were stretched out to his full height, she was certain his arms and legs would be left dangling over the edges.
His black hair was shaggy and ill trimmed, and draped over a face so manly and handsome that it stole her breath to look at him. He held at least a week’s growth of beard on his cheeks.
The rugged, untamed look only made him seem more desirable. Fierce.
His tanned flesh was stretched tight over muscles that were rock hard and well defined.
Aye, this man made her heart race and her body warm.
Before she could stop herself, she realized her gaze was traveling down to the center of his body where...
