Chapter Fifteen
Truth be told, Anna was fairly certain she would have warmed much faster beneath the heat of Bram’s gaze than she ever would in the icy water.
Wow. Had she imagined that?
No, she didn’t believe she had.
The way he looked at her was unmistakable.
The careful, rigid self-control she’d come to expect had been stripped away with the grime, leaving something else exposed.
It wasn’t a crude gawk, but a slow, unhurried attention that seemed to unravel her.
His gaze didn’t linger long enough to be a provocation, but it was far too long to be an accident.
Her skin prickled, but beneath the chill, a startling warmth bloomed.
He wanted her. The realization was a heady shock, making her breath catch.
Seven centuries and a world of impossibility stood between them, but in this moment, she didn’t care.
He liked what he saw. A smile tugged at her mouth.
And God help her, she liked that he liked it.
But then, without his attention resting so intently upon her, she became abruptly aware once again of the temperature of the water—it really was freezing.
A violent shiver ran through her as she rubbed briskly at her arms before ducking beneath the surface. She pulled her fingers through the tangles of her hair, dislodging something brittle—what she hoped was only a leaf.
A moment later Bram began wading toward the shore, and unable to help herself, her eyes followed him.
Water streamed from his broad shoulders and down the powerful planes of his back as he emerged from the loch.
His pants lay folded upon the rocks, leaving him clothed only in a close-fitting linen undergarment that clung unabashedly to his narrow hips and long, muscular legs.
Buried up to her chin in the water, Anna stared without shame until he began to turn around, and she hurriedly dragged her gaze back to the water.
Good grief, she thought, her eyes widening, I’m in trouble.
Still, a small smile remained, and for the life of her, she couldn’t make it go away.
She turned around again when Bram spoke.
“I’ll walk off a bit,” he said, inclining his head toward the trees. “Call when ye are dressed.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
He disappeared between the pines without another word, his footsteps soon lost beneath the gentle murmur of the lochan.
Only then did Anna wade toward the shallows. The evening air, though pleasantly warm, felt almost chilly after the cold water. She climbed onto the smooth rocks, wringing as much water as she could from her hair before glancing down at herself.
Her underwear had been rinsed, at least. She unclasped her bra, holding the dripping garment in both hands.
They would remain damp until morning, and she wished for a moment she’d been brave enough to go into the loch naked.
But the thought was fleeting, lost to the more pressing awareness of being alone, exposed, and waiting for Bram to return.
Now completely naked, she quickly used the outside of her jacket to dry her arms and legs before throwing her dry T-shirt over her head and pulling on her skirt.
She frowned at the long tear running through her skirt, remembering when she’d first discovered it sometime after they’d crossed the bridge.
Riding behind Bram, she’d carefully lifted the hem to investigate the persistent sting along her thigh and found both the slice in the fabric and the narrow line of blood beneath it.
Only then had she realized one of the English swords must have caught her in the frantic dash across the bridge.
The blade had done little more than nick her, leaving a long but shallow cut that smarted more than it truly hurt, and compared to the wounds Bram carried without complaint, she’d thought it hardly worth mentioning.
She wasn’t truly any warmer now for having dressed, and only slightly cleaner, she thought, wondering if her plunge had actually been worth it.
As it was, she would have to go commando for a while—no bra or panties until they dried.
She tucked both into her bag, and sat to put on her sandals, calling out to Bram that she was dressed.
Perhaps he’d gone fairly far outside that rock and tree opening, since he didn’t return within seconds but more than a minute later, just as Anna rose to her feet and reached for her oversized purse.
He moved toward the horse, saying, “We can gain further ground tonight with a few more hours of riding.”
She’d been hoping he might decide to call it a day here. She was exhausted and her body ached—her butt and thighs particularly—so unused to riding at all let alone for hours on end. But she smiled agreeably and nodded.
And then watched Bram’s eyes narrow and his lips compress as he stared at her.
“What?” She asked automatically, a bit defensively.
He approached her, his gaze fixed on her lower body. “What is that?” He asked.
Anna lifted her hands in question and glanced down, seeing the neat but long slit in her skirt.
“Oh, that.” She waved her hand dismissively. “It’s nothing.”
“Happened at the bridge crossing?” he demanded, his eyes fixed on her as he closed the distance between them.
Anna nodded.
“Show me.”
Wanting to show him it really was nothing, she pulled up the right side of her skirt, exposing most of her leg and all of the long mark. “See? Just a scratch.”
Bram arrived and bent to inspect it, still wearing a heavy scowl.
“I didn’t want to bother you with it,” she told him.
He straightened to his full height, towering above her, and his countenance darkened yet more.
“It’s not half as bad as the slice in your shoulder,” she defended her decision not to mention it, “or any of the injuries you’ve suffered.”
Incredulous, he said, quite loudly, “Ye’re nae to measure yer wounds against mine.”
“But it’s not like it needs stitches or anything. It’s just a scratch.”
Bram’s face remained dark with exasperation, but as he looked at her, his expression changed so abruptly as his gaze arrested on her chest that Anna instinctively glanced down to discover what had captured his attention.
Her eyes widened dramatically as she saw what he saw.
In her haste to dress, she’d not dried herself well, and while her jacket hung open, she appeared to have come straight from a wet t-shirt contest, her breasts and nipples outlined perfectly against the white fabric of her tee.
She gasped and hastily closed the jacket over her chest. Heat flooded her face.
When she lifted her face to his again, he was no longer staring at her shirt and what she’d inadvertently shown him but met her gaze head on.
Something changed in his expression—the anger was still there, the concern too, yet beneath both lay something she’d seen only moments before across the water, something that made her heart begin to pound.
She became acutely aware of how close they stood—and what the ferocious look in his gaze signified. Her pulse beat insistently at the base of her throat, and she realized with startling clarity that she wanted him to kiss her.
With lightening speed, her brain calculated that she’d known him barely a week, and that he lived seven hundred years before she’d been born, and yet neither of those things stopped her from wanting him to kiss her.
“Bram...” she whispered, and knew she’d not said his name with caution or any intent to dissuade him from what she believed she saw in his eyes.
His eyes had darkened, the pale irises reduced to a narrow ring around suddenly wide pupils, and what she saw there was not soft or tentative—it was the look of a man who had already decided something, who was only waiting.
The anger hadn’t left his face, but beneath it his expression had shed every layer of restraint, leaving only a directness so plain and unguarded it was almost difficult to hold.
Without a word, he reached for her. His hands settled gently upon her arms.
She wasn’t sure which of them moved first after that, only that the space between them vanished all at once.
Their foreheads nearly touched, and she saw up close the uneven gold flecks in his deep blue eyes, the fine white scar splitting one eyebrow, the beads of water still caught in his beard.
Bram’s gaze darted to her lips, then up again to meet her eyes, and for a moment, Anna thought he might stop, might pull away and leave her breathless with anticipation.
But then, in a motion both swift and oddly reverent, he leaned down and kissed her.
His mouth was warm, warmer than she’d expected, and the contrast with the cool damp of his beard sent a shiver skittering down her spine.
The kiss began softly, almost hesitantly—his lips brushing hers with a gentleness that belied the hunger she was certain she’d seen in his eyes.
For a heartbeat, it was just that: a hungry question.
Then his hands tightened at her waist, fingers pressing into the fabric of her jacket, and the kiss deepened.
For the first few heartbeats, it hardly felt real.
Her mind struggled to catch up with her senses: the solid warmth of him, the weight of his arms, the faint rasp of his beard against her skin.
This man from the fourteenth century, burdened with war and grief she could never comprehend—was kissing her.
The reality of it crashed through her, not as a thought, but as a wave of pure sensation.