AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Ye let me concern myself with that.” Bridgette promptly replied, then yawned hard. I’m off to bed.”
“As am I,” Marion added.
“Sleep well,” both women said before departing.
After undressing, Sorcha crawled into bed, certain she would fall immediately asleep from exhaustion. Instead, she lay there for a long time, staring into the moonlit darkness and recalling Cameron’s lips on hers, his hands in her hair and gliding over her body, his smell, his taste, and the way he groaned his need. With her own groan, she rolled onto her side and squeezed her eyes shut. After a very long while, she felt the tug of sleep pulling her under, and then the dreams began.
There was a large childlike man near a horse stable. Something was wrong with him, but he didn’t frighten her. Actually, she felt a strong need to protect him. The next thing she knew, she awoke with a startled jerk, and his name was on her lips.Brom.He needed her. The certainty she felt was chilling. She had to return home for him, because without her protection, his life was at stake. The fear haunted her into the night, and the realization that when she remembered her home it may well be too late dogged her until the wee hours, when sleep finally took her once more.
“Show me what ye ken,” Cameron commanded as he put away the daggers they had trained with and handed Sorcha a bow and arrows. His voice was purposely gruff, as it had been since they began. His body tingled with awareness of Sorcha, and while there was nothing he could do to control that, he would control his mind. He would control how he proceeded while alone with her.
She gave him a curt nod, moved out of the shadows of the large tree she had been standing under, and raised her arrow to nock it. Her extraordinary eyes met his, making his chest tighten, and as he looked into their depths, the excitement and eagerness that shimmered there filled him with the same excitement and eagerness. A smile pulled at his lips, taking him by surprise. He quickly forced the frown he intended to keep firmly in place while they were alone. He would be cold. He would be gruff.
“What do ye wish me to shoot?” she asked, interrupting his inner monologue.
He pointed to the tree roughly ten feet away, where he had put a target in the wee hours of the morning. He should have been sleeping like everyone else in the castle, except the watch, but sleep had evaded him while memories of the kiss he’d shared with Sorcha had haunted him.
“That target is an affront,” she murmured under her breath, angry color blossoming on her cheeks.
It was an affront for anyone who had a small amount of skill with archery. He’d purposely made her first target easy. Alex may think Sorcha was the best archer he’d ever seen next to Cameron, but Cameron wasn’t so sure that Alex had not been blinded by Sorcha’s beauty. He intended to judge for himself. He crossed his arms over his chest and returned her frustrated stare with a narrowed one. “Then swallow the affront and shoot.” His gruff words had their intended effect, though his gut hardened that it was working.
Anger sparked in her gaze, and a line of focus appeared between her eyes. She angled her body toward the target, aligned the arrow, and stared down the length of it. She inhaled a long, breath, and tilted her head slightly to the left. Her golden hair dangled at her waist, and the sun shone down on her, casting her face in a bright glow. She was a sight to behold, so delicate yet filled with steely determination. When she wet her lips, he wanted to groan, but he clenched his teeth instead.
She let loose her arrow, and it whistled through the air before neatly splitting the target fastened to the tree. The shot was perfect.Shewas perfect. She swung toward him, a brilliant smile on her face, eyes alight with a mixture of satisfaction and hopefulness, and the air in his lungs whooshed out of him. “Is that good enough for ye?” she asked innocently, but her knowing expression gave away that she was very aware her shot was perfect.
“Passable,” he commented, though the desire to praise her burned his tongue.
The raw hurt that replaced the eagerness in her eyes made him feel nauseated. He felt his resolve to be cold weaken, but he pushed back against the response. He pointed to the next target, some twenty feet away. “Let us see if ye can split that target, Sorcha.”
“Ye ken my real name?” she asked with surprise.
“Aye, Marion told me.” He wanted to tell her how much he liked it, but instead he said, “’Tis a good sign that ye recalled it. Soon ye should remember more that will hopefully lead us to those responsible for Katherine’s murder.”
“I hope so,” she replied, her words shaky.
“Are ye fearful?” he asked before he could stop himself. He’d intended to keep all talk between them today only about her skills with the bow and arrow, but the possibility that she was afraid rattled his will to be gruff and cold.
She nodded. “Aye, but nae of remembering. I fear remembering too late.”
“Too late?”
“I had a dream last night,” she said, barely above a whisper, so he closed the distance between them to better hear her.
“What was the dream?” he asked, breathing in her honeysuckle scent.
“I dreamed of a man.”
“Someone ye love?” he asked, his tone relatively calm despite the sudden tempest inside of him.
“Aye, I believe so,” she replied, her eyes assessing him.
The hand of jealousy squeezed his throat so that he had to choke out his words. “A husband, do ye believe?”
Her eyes widened. “Nay.”
“A lover.” He was keenly aware that his tone was no longer relatively calm. It vibrated with the anger clawing at him.
Some indefinable emotion sparked in her eyes. “Nay. I dunnae ken exactly who he is to me, but he is nae a man I love like that.”
