The Highlander's Forbidden Mistress - Anna Campbell Page 0,37

sexual activity set long-disused muscles protesting at the sudden movement.

Brock paused in the act of pouring two glasses of wine from the decanter on the cabinet near the door. "Are you all right?"

As she recalled the day she’d just spent, heat tinged her cheeks. "I’m not used to such…vigorous exercise."

He gave an appreciative grunt and went back to filling the glasses. "I’ll get you into shape."

Into shape? Selina had a feeling she’d leave here as a completely new person.

She bent to collect her crumpled shift from the floor and tug it over her head. "I need to get back on the horse?"

Humor lit his expression as he turned to face her, carrying the two glasses. "Back on something, at any rate."

She gave a low chuckle as she accepted the wine and sank down onto a leather chair in front of the roaring fire. The room was so deliciously warm, it was hard to imagine it was snowing outside like the end of the world.

"So where did you grow up?" she asked, unwilling to let him wriggle away from her question. He’d admitted to a hunger to know all about her. At the very least, her interest in him rivaled his in her.

Brock wandered over to the window and pulled back the blue curtains to reveal a Stygian blackness. He sipped his wine and stared out with a pensive expression. "At Bruard. It’s quite as spectacular as it sounds. A man can breathe there."

"You love it."

An enigmatic smile hovered about his lips. "I do."

"When were you last there?"

He closed the heavy velvet curtains and turned from the window. "Five years ago."

Shocked, puzzled, she studied Brock. More was going on here than she understood. "That seems…a long time."

He shrugged and took another mouthful of wine.

Selina could take a hint, even if with some reluctance. He had a right to his secrets. As did she.

She sampled her wine, a fine claret, and stared into the fire. What a day this had been. Unlike any day she’d passed before. Sexual satisfaction was a lazy beat in her blood and for once, the constant fear that had been her companion for so many years receded. Life with all its problems lurked in wait, but something in this quiet, luxurious room made her feel safe. At least for the moment.

"For a woman who drives me out of my mind with lust, you can be a damned restful presence," Brock murmured from where he remained near the window.

Startled, she looked up. She was tired, pleasantly so, and she’d drifted off into a reverie crammed with memories of all the depraved things she and Brock had done. "You don’t sound very pleased about that."

"I’m not." He sighed and crossed the room to put his half-full glass on the mantelpiece. "It makes a man devilish prone to confidences."

If he hadn’t sounded so tolerant and so affectionate, she might have taken offense. She’d drunk even less of her wine than he had of his. She set it on the small table at her elbow. "I have no right to pry."

He ran his hand through his mass of black hair and released an impatient exhalation. "If you did, I’d tell you to go to Hades."

Another silence fell. When he began to speak, his voice was low and uncharacteristically hesitant. She did her best to hide her curiosity. In her experience, he wasn’t a man who was ever hesitant. "My father died when I was a boy, not much older than Gerald. My mother died five years ago."

"I’m sorry, Brock." Selina wanted to rise and take him in her arms, but something in his bristling tension kept her sitting just where she was.

"So am I." He paused, his features hardening. He went back to looking like the cynical, heartless rake she’d first thought him. "Not that she was ever much of a mother."

Selina didn’t speak, just watched him steadily.

Again, her silence lured him into explaining further. "She was very beautiful. And wild. And selfish. And destructive to anyone who fell under her spell. God knows, if I was to count the victims of her flightiness, the poor beggars would line the road from here to the Highlands. I take after her."

Selina had already realized that Brock was a complex man with a complex past that she couldn’t pretend to understand. Even so, she was surprised and distressed to hear such self-hatred tainting his voice.

She frowned, considering what he’d said. "Only the beauty." She paused. "And the wildness." She didn’t fool herself that