Christina Phillips

Read An Excerpt

From Chapter One

Carys held her breath as her secret lover entered the sparkling waterfall, buried deep within the leafy shadows of the forest.

She pressed her fingers against the rough bark of the tree, and inched a little farther along the branch where she lay hidden from his sight.

From this angle she had a perfect view of his magnificent naked body. Even from this distance she could see the numerous battle scars that marred his tawny skin, but they marked him as a warrior. A hero who faced death without reservation and emerged triumphant.

He was the enemy of her people. And yet she couldn’t tear her fascinated gaze from him.

They had never met. They would never meet. Such a catastrophe didn’t bear thinking about. Yet she thought of this tough, brutal warrior constantly. Ever since she had first stumbled across his irregular bathing ritual three moons ago.

He turned within the shimmering rainbows of the waterfall, fingers raking through his short black hair. Carys released her breath in a shaky gasp and her body moved restlessly against her perilous ledge. The men of Cymru had long, flowing hair. How would it feel to touch such severely cropped hair? Sharp, like the points of reeds? Or—not? She couldn’t imagine. And yet she imagined endlessly.

His hands massaged his broad shoulders, and Carys’s fingers dug into woody crevices as she fantasized rubbing her own fingers over his knotted muscles. It had been fifteen days since he had last been to the waterfall. She knew because she had waited here, each morning.

But the wait had been worth it, and her imagination hadn’t enhanced his powerful muscles, his commanding height or his dark, exotic beauty. Her breath shortened as her heart rate accelerated, and her thighs tightened around the branch in reaction.

Slowly his hands slid over wet skin, fingers trailing through the sprinkling of dark hair that dusted his impressive chest. Lightning flickered in the pit of her stomach, and instinctively she rubbed her pussy against the abrasive bark.

Her only lover, whose possessive grip she had finally escaped three years ago, possessed no body hair aside from on his head. How would it feel to press against a masculine form so unlike any she had previously seen?

The tip of her tongue slid over her lips as her secret lover sluiced water over his rigid stomach. And then his fingers curled around his semi-aroused cock.

Carys stretched to the very edge of her branch, risking safety and the threat of discovery, but temptation was too great. She had seen naked men without number in her life, knew how insanely proud males were of their treasures, but she had never been impressed by that part of the human body before.

Not even her ex-lover’s. Especially not her ex-lover’s. And yet this man’s cock, this man who would murder her without compunction if he knew who she was, held fascination beyond reason.