3
" Swallowing hard, she looked at him.
He raised his eyes from the frothy concoction on his spoon at the precise moment she looked up, and their gazes
locked over the length of the polished wood table. Where would you drip whipped cream on him, Lisa? The answer
came with frightening swiftness and conviction: Everywhere. She wanted to explore his body, the hard ripples, the smooth skin. The candlelight bathed his olive skin with a golden hue, and his dark good looks were set off perfectly by his linen shirt and the splash of black and crimson draped across his chest. He was mesmerizing.
"Are you hungry, lass?" He licked his spoon languidly. She couldn't tear her gaze away. "No. I've eaten quite
enough," she managed.
"You seem to be watching my dessert most intently. Are you certain there isn't something else you wish to sate your appetite?"
Besides you to remove your clothing, lie on the table, and let me finger paint you with whipped cream, you mean?
"Nope," she said casually. "Not a thing." She watched him for a moment; he still had a great deal of dessert left. How was she going to get through this? "
― Karen Marie Moning , The Highlander's Touch (Highlander, #3)
4
" Circenn moved swiftly, intending to catch the tear upon his finger, kiss it away, then kiss away all her pain and fear, and assure her that he would permit no harm to touch her and would spend his life making things up to her; but she dropped the flask onto the table and turned swiftly.
"Please, leave me alone," she said and turned away from him. "Let me comfort you, Lisa," he entreated.
"Leave me alone."
For the first time in his life, Circenn
felt utterly helpless. Let her grieve, his heart instructed. She would need to grieve, for discovering that the flask didn't work was tantamount to lowering her mother into a solitary grave. She would grieve her mother as if she'd in truth died that very day. May God
forgive me, he prayed. I did not know what I was doing when I cursed that flask. "
― Karen Marie Moning , The Highlander's Touch (Highlander, #3)
5
" Her eyes narrowed, and her lips parted around a knowing laugh. "Oh. It's you."
"Pardon?" He was taken aback. "Do we know each other, lass?" He was quite certain they didn't; he could never have
forgotten this woman. The enticing manner in which her lips were currently pursed would have been seared into his
memory.
"The answer is no. I don't know you. But every other woman in this room does. Duncan Douglas, isn't it?" she said dryly.
Duncan studied her face. Although she was young-perhaps no more than twenty-she had a regal bearing beyond her years. "I do have some reputation with the lasses," he conceded, downplaying his prowess, confident of her impending maidenly swoon.
The look she gave him was far from admiring. He did a double take when he realized her gaze was downright disparaging.
"Not something I care for in a man," she said coolly. "Thank you for your offer, but I'd sooner dance with last week's rushes. They would be less used. Who wants what everyone else has already had?" The words were delivered
in a cool, modulated tone, shaped by an odd accent he couldn't place. Quite finished with him, she presented her
back and resumed talking to her companion.
Duncan was immobilized by shock. "
― Karen Marie Moning , The Highlander's Touch (Highlander, #3)
10
" His eyes lit appreciatively as her gaze snagged there. “I could pick you up and wrap those lovely long legs of yours around my waist. Slip deep inside you, rock you against me and love you till you lay in my arms and slept like a babe. I will spend each night stretched beside you, teaching you what you want me to teach you. I can feel that you want it from me. Yet it will be at your pace, when you choose. I will wait as long as I must.
“But know this, Lisa—when you are across the dinner table from me on the morrow, in my mind I am pushing you back on a bed. In my fantasy”—he laughed, as if at his own brashness—“you are discovering yourself with my willing body. Who knows, perhaps even laying siege to the heart that beats within this chest.” He thumped his chest with a fist and silently admitted she’d already begun to do that, otherwise he wouldn’t have offered himself. But she didn’t need to know that. He knotted the tartan slowly, never taking his eyes from hers.
“Good night, Lisa. Sleep with the angels.”
Her eyes stung from quick tears. It had been her mother’s nightly benediction: Sleep with the angels. But then he added words her mother never had:
“Then come back to earth and sleep with your devil, who would burn in hell for one night in your arms. "
― Karen Marie Moning , The Highlander's Touch (Highlander, #3)
16
" I’ve drunk too much wine, Circenn. I’m afraid I must find one of those dratted chamber pots.” She sighed morosely. “There are some things I really miss about my century.”
“A chamber pot? Why not use the garderobe?”
“The what?”
“The garderobe.”
“You have garderobes here?” she said stiffly.
He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Not that I wish to pry, but where have you been going?”
“Chamber pots,” she muttered.
“And what have you been doing . . . er . . . ?”
“Dumping them out the window,” she said, prickly as a porcupine. So much for demure privacy. If there was a garderobe, why on earth had Eirren told her to use the chamber pot? Then she realized how mischievous the lad could be. It was just like Eirren to be prankish. “Was there a garderobe at Dunnottar, too?”
“It is you who has been dumping them out the windows? I have been blaming it on my men, making them wash down the stones. Aye, there was one at Dunnottar. I had garderobes put in every keep I own or visit.”
“You never told me.”
“You never asked. How was I to know? When you first arrived here, I wasn’t about to address such private issues. I assumed you had found our garderobe on your own.”
Lisa snorted. Eirren had truly bamboozled her, and her pride had kept her tidily trapped in his jest. “I can’t believe all this time I’ve . . . Oh! Where is the blasted garderobe?”
He told her, biting his lip to keep from smiling. He watched her hips sway gently in her emerald gown as she climbed the stairs. She’d said she loved him. That was promising.
Perhaps it was nearly time to talk to her about loving him forever. "
― Karen Marie Moning , The Highlander's Touch (Highlander, #3)
18
" I’m listening,” she hissed. “Like a fool, I’m waiting for you to give me one decent explanation for all of this. Go ahead—tell me more lies.”
He ran a hand over his face and shook his head. “Lass, I have never lied to you. I adore you and there have never been any other women from the future here. And these—he flung a tampon in the air—“cleaning swabs, I cannot fathom why they upset you so greatly, but I assure you I have never let the maids use them.”
Lisa’s brows furrowed. No man could be so stupid. “Cleaning swabs?”
He snatched up a gun and jerked the barrel in her direction, and an unwrapped tampon shot out. It was coated with black from the slow corrosion of the steel. She eyed it for a moment, bent, and plucked it from the floor. “You clear your guns with these?”
He lowered the gun. “Is that not the purpose for which they were designed? I vow I could not conceive of another.”
“Didn’t you read the box?”
“There were too many words I didn’t understand! "
― Karen Marie Moning , The Highlander's Touch (Highlander, #3)
