“Katrina?” Reed’s deep voice was suddenly next to her ear.

She blinked against the fuzziness inside her brain, realizing that he’d leaned down on the hay bales beside her. Her eyelids felt heavy, and her mouth couldn’t seem to form any words.

“Do I have to kiss the princess to wake her up?” he joked.

“Am I sleeping?”

“I hope so. You were snoring.”

“I was not.” She brought him into focus and saw that he was grinning. She couldn’t believe she’d fallen asleep during a foot massage. “Do you have magic hands?”

“I do,” he intoned.

The barn was quiet, the light dim all around them. They were alone and his eyes were pewter-dark, molten, watchful. His face was hard-wrought, all planes and angles, beard-shadowed, with that little bump on his nose that seemed to telegraph danger.

She had a sudden urge to smooth away that imperfection, to run her fingertips across his whisker-roughened chin and feel the heat of his skin. He’d said something about kissing her. Was he thinking about it now? Would he do it?

Her gaze shifted to his full lips, imagining their softness against her own.

“Katrina.” His voice was strained.

She wanted him to kiss her, desperately wanted to feel those hot lips come down on hers, his hard body press her back into the hay, his magic hands wrap around her waist, along her back, over her buttocks, down her thighs. She just knew he would take her to paradise.

“The herbal wrap,” he said.

She blinked. “Huh?”

He eased away from her. “I should put it on your ankle now, while your muscles are warmed up.”

“But…” No. That wasn’t how this was supposed to end.

“It’ll help,” he assured her.

“Reed?”

He straightened, no longer looking at her, his voice growing more distant. “I know you’re not a horse. But trust me. The principle really is the same.”

She didn’t doubt it was. But that wasn’t her problem. Her problem was that she was powerfully, ridiculously, sexually attracted to Reed Terrell, and it didn’t look like it was going away anytime soon.



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