The Arrow: A Highland Guard Novel (The Highland Guard) by Monica McCarty Page B

breeches. He threw open the door and was about to bang on his brother’s door, when it suddenly opened. A ghostly figure in white came flying out of the darkness toward him.
    Instinctively—so as not to be barreled over—he caught the apparition to him. His body shocked at the contact. A rush of awareness poured through him like molten lava, hot and heavy through his veins. His nerve endings flared, his senses sharpened, and the heat … the heat engulfed him.
    It wasn’t a ghost. The very real body pressed against his—nay, molded into his—was achingly female. Unusually firm and surprisingly solid for a lass, perhaps, but still un-mistakingly soft and sweet.
    Cate
.
    Her gasp of surprise tangled with his groan of something far more primal. Lust. Raw, physical, primitive lust that took hold of him and wouldn’t let go.
    She looked up, and their eyes met in the semi-darkness. He saw her confusion, her innocence, and her desire. Her very
womanly
desire.
    For a moment that was all he saw. The connection was so strong, so visceral, it seemed everything else faded away. The horrible screeching. The time. The place. The voice of reason. His thoughts became a dark tunnel of need that led only to the woman in his arms.
    He wanted to drown in her. To push her up against the wall, cover her mouth with his, and give in to the desire roaring through his body. He didn’t know what the hell was happening to him. The control he always felt had deserted him. He was wild.
    The arm wrapped around her waist instinctively tightened, drawing her even closer. Her eyes widened, as she no doubt felt what he did. Bodies plastered together, her breasts crushed against his chest, her stomach nestled against the substantial bulge of his manhood, their legs entwined. Like a lock that had slipped into place, each part had been fitted together precisely.
    Perfectly
.
    Christ, it felt incredible.
She
felt incredible. The heatstarted move to lower, to swell in his groin, to fill his cock and tighten his bollocks.
    Every muscle in his body went rigid to battle the urges racing through him. The lust came on him so quickly and powerfully, it seemed impossible to hold back—especially for a man who’d never had to hold it back before. It had always been so easy for him—maybe too easy. When he wanted a woman, he never had to ask.
    But this was different. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d ever wanted a woman this intensely. It must be some damned perverse bone in his body making him want her precisely because he couldn’t have her.
    You can’t have her
. The voice penetrated the haze that had engulfed him.
    But he didn’t want to let her go. How could something that felt so damned right be so damned wrong?
    Cate had wanted
him
to be struck by the lightning bolt, but instead she was the one who felt as if her entire world had shifted.
    Her knowledge of love and romance was the bards’ tales of a young girl. Sweet and tender, the gentle flutter of heartstrings at the thought of his lips touching hers for the first time in a chaste, reverent kiss. The kind of kiss a knight might give his lady after championing her on the tournament lists. That was what she’d pictured it would be like between them. That was all she knew.
    But when Gregor caught her in his arms and held her against him, the picture changed forever. What she felt wasn’t sweet or romantic or chaste at all. The cravings of her body weren’t gentle flutters but a torrential thunderstorm of need, hot and powerful and a little—maybe a lot—wicked.
    The images flashing through her head weren’t of gallant knights bowing over their fair maidens’ hands proclaimingtheir undying love, but of dark, sultry chambers and naked limbs entwined in bedsheets.
    Sweet heaven, he was naked! Or rather, half of him was naked. And with her wearing only a thin linen shift, the feel of his powerful chest against hers was unlike anything she’d ever imagined. It made her hot and flushed and