Damn! Duncan thought with sudden alarm. If that was the case, she would no doubt awake to spear him with one of those cold looks she had given everything since arriving. Except his father, he thought. Angus Dunbar had not garnered one of her despising looks yet. It seemed she did not find him as despicable as she did Duncan, his home, and the rest of his people. He was almost jealous.

Well, he decided, he would not have it. If he had treated her roughly last night, he would correct that now, before she could wake up and give him one of those looks. On that thought, Duncan eased the bed linens down to her waist and gazed at what he had revealed. The women had dressed her in a gown of purest white, but the material was so thin and diaphanous it looked pink where her skin showed through.

For a moment, Duncan simply stared. His father had called her “bonnie but no beauty” when she had first arrived and mayhap he was right, but at that moment, she looked as good to him as a platter of haggis to a starving man.

Iliana was seated in a small clearing on the edge of a river. The sun was warm and soothing. Sighing as the breeze caressed her flesh, she closed her eyes and lay back on the soft grass, allowing the sun to warm her body. She had not lain there long when a hand began to smooth its way along her cheek.

Opening her eyes, she peered at the man-at-arms kneeling over her. He looked vaguely familiar and it seemed perfectly natural that he should be there. His hand ran along her neck, then slid between her breasts, and Iliana purred. Stretching where she lay, she reached her hands above her head, her body arching upward. A moan slipped from between her lips when the hand finally moved to cover one breast, kneading and plucking at her nipple through the material of her gown. When Iliana moaned again, his lips lowered to cover hers and somehow, in her dream, that seemed natural, too. Her mouth opened beneath his when his tongue sought entrance, her own lips and tongue mimicking his and setting about a love play that had her curving into the body that now moved to cover hers.

When his lips left hers and began nibbling a path down her throat, she took a deep breath and opened her mouth to protest at the loss, then froze as the rank smell of sweat mixed with ale began to tug her out of her sweet dream.

Frowning, Iliana waved a hand vaguely in front of her nose, trying to dispel the smell and return her attention to the sweet caresses moving along her throat, but it would not go away. Murmuring aloud, she brought herself fully to wakefulness and forced her eyes open.