Read Online The Capture of Highland Desire (The Mac Coinnach Brothers) by Kella McKinnon - Free Book Online

harder than he could ever remember, the promise of heaven only inches away.  Her pupils dilated, her breath hitched, and his own body responded ten-fold again.  He was on fire, from just one touch.  He couldn’t understand it, but he really didn’t want to.  It felt so very good, so very right … And then, as if suddenly breaking free of a spell, she inhaled sharply and twisted away from him.  He reached for her reflexively, but she had already started walking away, leaving him standing there on the hill, alone.
                  “Wait till I get to the bottom!” she called without looking back.
     
                  Grudgingly, Allia trudged back into the castle, her body on fire from nearly being kissed by a man who was far too sexy and dangerous for her own good.  Even his damned touch was magic!  She had read stories where a man’s touch set a woman on fire with passion, but she never thought it was literal, or that she’d actually experience it herself.  Oh, she wanted to… she was passionate by nature and more than ready to express her every desire with the right man… at the right time. Which was not when her entire life had just been upended. But Eian was not the right man, and this was definitely a most inconvenient time to find mind-blowing sexual chemistry with someone, when she couldn’t even enjoy it. 
    I t had taken far too much of her will power to keep walking and not turn around and let him kiss her after all.  Never, never, had any man ever made her feel like that, and she had a sinking feeling that she would never find another one who could.  She had wanted nothing more than to give in to her body’s desires and melt into his arms and give him anything he wanted, however he wanted it.  Only the fact that she knew how much she was bound to regret it later made her turn away before it was too late. 
    Too soon, she had reached the big oaken doors to the keep, which stood open to catch the late morning breeze and air out the rooms beyond.  As soon as Allia entered the hall, her uncle turned from where he had been talking to a group of men, all garbed in the finest of clothes and each trying to look more self-important than the last.  Posers, she thought uncharitably.  They all turned to stare at her too, and a few she thought she recognized as the members of the laird’s Close Council she had been introduced to the night before.  She had been right; she couldn’t remember even one of their names.  They were all looking at her with varying degrees of disapproval and doubt, and several with what she suspected was either speculative interest or just plain lust.  Ick.
                  “Allia!”  Her uncle’s angry voice rang out through the hall, echoing off the thick stone walls.  “Where on God’s earth have ye been?  I was about to send out the whole of the guard to find ye.  Ye canna just wander off whenever ye have an urge to do so, lass!  If I must, I will confine ye to yer chambers for yer own safe keeping.  And I am no’ above a good sound beating if it comes to that, so be fairly warned!”
                  She felt her shoulders try to slump and made a concerted effort to push them back.  She still had her pride, after all.  And here lay the biggest problem in coming back to here, to now , she thought.  She had gone from having complete control of her own will to apparently having almost no independence at all.  She had just tested the boundaries, and they lay far too close for comfort.  She was no longer the same girl who had left Lochain all of those years ago, nor did she want to be that girl anymore.  An increasingly familiar feeling of panic rose in her chest as the reality of her situation pushed again at the corners of her mind.  She was here now, and there was no going back.  Maybe she had made an awful mistake when she had responded to that letter and returned to her uncle.  She had done so because she