Danger's Kiss (24 page)

She advanced slowly, taking the garment carefully from him, then rubbing the soft fabric against her cheek.  It had been so long since she’d had a new kirtle.  She couldn’t believe Nicholas had been so thoughtful.

Then she froze.  A sudden, horrible thought crossed her mind, morbid enough to make her blanch.

“What is it?” he asked.  “You don’t like it?”

She held the garment away from her now.  “Where did you get this?”

“In Chartham.  I told you.”

She bit her lip.  She couldn’t think of any polite way to ask.  “Did you get this off the woman in the stocks?”

N
icholas’s eyelids flattened.  Of course, Desirée had every right to expect he’d taken the kirtle from a helpless woman.  He was a fool to think otherwise.  Just as he’d been a fool to kiss her.  For a moment, he’d forgotten who he was.

“I don’t steal from my victims,” he said tightly.  “Nor do I accept bribes.”

“Oh.”  She blushed.  “I’m sorry.  Of course you don’t.  ‘Tis only
—
“

“I know.  I’m a shire-reeve.  They’re a corrupt lot.  Naturally, you’d assume
—
“

“Nay!  Nay.  I should have known better.”  She gave him a sheepish smile.  “You’re not an ordinary shire-reeve.”

“I assure you,” he told her solemnly, “I purchased this with my own coin.  If, however, it offends you to wear garments bought with a lawman’s wage...”  He reached out to take the kirtle back.

She gasped, pulling it out of his reach and holding it defensively against her breast.  “I...didn’t say that.  Not at all.  Indeed...I think I’ll put it on now.”  She hurried toward the bedchamber, afraid that if she hesitated, he might take the kirtle away.

While she undressed in the next room, Nicholas sat and stared into the flames of the hearth, trying not to think about her undressing in the next room.

“’Tis a beautiful color,” she called to him.

“It matches your eyes.”  He winced.  He shouldn’t have said that.  Did he really want her to know he’d memorized every feature of her face?

“I haven’t had a new kirtle in two years.”

Maybe he’d done something right after all.  “This one should last as long, if you don’t make a habit of dousing it in custard.”

“Oh, shite!”

“What?”

“I just snagged my underskirt on one of your cursed...torture...things.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but he couldn’t get the vision of her in her underskirt out of his mind.  He wondered if the sheer linen clung to her curves, pulling taut across her breasts, draping seductively between her thighs.

“
That’s
how you interrogate women, isn’t it?” she called.  “You threaten to shred their favorite garments with these...these hooks and knives...and they sing like sparrows.”

He chuckled.  She wasn’t that far from the truth.  “Usually I threaten to cut their hair.  Women hate that.”

“I can see why, once they glimpse what you’ve done to your own.”

He frowned.

“Speaking of which,” she said, “you promised you’d let me trim your hair after supper.”

“That I did.”  He stared over at the cat, who took a moment from his fat-bellied dozing to lift his head.  “What do you think, Azrael?  Am I putting my life at risk?”

Desirée emerged from the bedchamber with a brilliant, dimpled smile, holding aloft two pairs of shears, snicking them like a crab as she twirled in her new kirtle.

Lord, she was adorable.  The gown fit her perfectly.  The soft fabric settled low upon her creamy shoulders, hugging her breasts and narrowing at her waist, then flaring over her hips in graceful folds that brushed the floor.

“What do you think?” she asked.

What he thought was that he’d like to strip the kirtle back off of her.  “You look like a queen.”

“Queen of the Shears,” she announced, dancing playfully toward the table.

It was a curiously disturbing sight, the lovely lass spinning about in sparkle-eyed innocence while she wielded scissors designed to lop off ears and noses.  Not that he’d tell her that, of course.

“Come close to the fire,” she beckoned, pulling the stool to the hearth.

“You’re sure you know what you’re doing?” he said, eyeing the oversized shears.

She grinned.  “I’ve got stanch-weed nearby so you won’t bleed to death.”

He shook his head at her grim humor.  “You’re a wicked lass.”  He rose to take a seat by the fire anyway, never imagining how truly hazardous a position he was putting himself in.

From the moment Desirée ruffled her fingers through his lush hair, she knew the task would be nothing like cutting Hubert’s sparse wisps.  Despite Nicholas’s savage appearance, his thick locks were deceptively soft and silky, and the loose curls wound seductively around her fingers.

“Most women would kill for hair like this,” she murmured.

He frowned dubiously up at her.  “Not a thing to say when you’ve shears in your hand, lass.”

“You
are
at my mercy now, aren’t you?”  She taunted him with teasing snips of the scissors.

He sighed, admitting, “For partridge that tasty, you can clip me bald as a pilgrim.”

She chuckled.  She’d do no such thing.  His mane, though unruly, was luxurious.  In fact, it was tempting to save up all the snipped locks and make a pillow out of them.

She started behind him, judiciously trimming away only the longest strands that straggled down his back, so his hair still curled sinuously at the nape of his neck.  Humming softly, she worked her way up, each snip of the scissors adding buoyancy as she cut the weight off his hair.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“What’s what?”

“That song.”

“Oh.”  She’d hardly realized she was singing.  She thought for a moment.  “
Tempus es iocundum
.”

“Indeed?”  His voice cracked over the word.

Suddenly she realized she’d chosen a bawdy song proclaiming that she was burning with lust.  “’Tis a song about...ducks, I believe,” she lied.  “I heard it from a...duck herder.”

“A duck herder.”

She could tell by his voice and the twitching of a grin at his lip that he recognized the song.  And he knew it wasn’t about ducks.  “Or so I was told,” she hedged.

She continued trimming, this time in silence, cutting carefully over the tops of his ears, leaving a short piece in front of each to accentuate the hollows of his cheeks.  As she worked on the sides, she glanced occasionally at his face.  There was a slight furrow between his brows, and when she slid the hair through her fingers, his eyelids dipped and his nostrils flared.

She was in a powerful position, she realized, for Nicholas was a man unaccustomed to touch.  No one embraced a lawman or held his hand, caressed his cheek or cut his hair.  That made him exceptionally vulnerable.  With the right touches, she thought, she could easily make him melt like butter in the palm of her hand.

It was a wicked game, one Desirée had played a thousand times in order to soften up targets for Hubert’s fleecing.

But with Nicholas, she quickly discovered it was an entirely different matter.  The emotional distance she always maintained between herself and the targets was absent.  As she slipped her fingers through his tresses, the mere sight of Nicholas’s lusty expression ignited her own sensual fires.  She licked her lips, recalling his kiss.  Her breath quickened, and her breasts began to tingle with longing.

That desire only worsened when she moved before him to cut the front of his hair.  He averted his eyes, lest he stare directly at her breasts, but she could tell, by the rapid rise and fall of his chest, it was a strain for him.

The knowledge that she could make a man want her had always given her a certain heady pleasure.  But the knowledge that Nicholas wanted her left her perilously giddy.

She should have recognized the danger.  It was foolish to lose control.  She’d already come close.  Yet even her own swiftly rising desires couldn’t stop her from playing with her newfound power over the formidable Nicholas Grimshaw.

Dipping her eyes in sultry invitation, she murmured, “Spread your legs.”

“What?” he croaked.

She gave him a coy smile.  “I can’t get close enough to reach your brow.”

Clenching his jaw, he reluctantly did as she bade him, and she slipped between his knees.

Heat seemed to roll off of him as she stood in that intimate position, and she felt an intoxicating sheen of sweat rise upon her own skin.

His eyes were squeezed shut now, and when she raked her fingers back through his hair, she saw his brow was set in a deep scowl.

She took her time trimming the front, weaving her fingers through his locks, gently blowing away snippets of hair when they fell upon his face, bending close to make sure her cuts were even.  When she glanced down, she saw the white knuckles of his fists resting on his spread thighs, as if he fought some silent internal battle.

The sight made the breath catch in her breast.  She suddenly felt like a tasty mouse, recklessly teasing the cat between whose paws she played.

Yet she couldn’t stop herself.  She craved the thrill of danger, the risky possibility that something untoward might happen, that Nicholas might impulsively kiss her again.

His eyes were still tightly closed, so she could inspect him at her leisure.  With the weight gone from his hair, sensual waves framed his face, accentuating its lean planes.  His nostrils flared again, as if to catch her scent, while his lips compressed with increasing unease.

Deliberately taunting him, she stepped forward another inch, brushing the insides of his thighs with her own, placing a finger under his chin to tip his head back, ostensibly to gain better access to his hair.

His frown intensified as he clenched his fists even tighter, and she felt as if she grew drunk on his sweet torment, drinking deep an intoxicating brew of command and lust.  It was cruel, she knew, to tempt him so, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

She let her gaze drift down over his massive shoulders, his heaving chest, his muscular thighs, and then she saw a slight movement below his hips.  She caught her lip beneath her teeth.  He might be able to hide his desires with a clenched jaw and fisted hands.  But there was no denying the lusty beast roaring between his legs.

She wickedly wondered what would happen if she nudged forward just a few more inches, let her knee come into contact with...

Suddenly his knees clamped together, trapping her.  She gasped, glancing up into his narrowed eyes.

“Don’t even think of it, wench,” he whispered.

She opened her mouth to issue an indignant denial, but none would come out.

“Are you finished?” he asked.

She reluctantly nodded.

He rose, picking her up by the waist and setting her away from him, then shaking his head vigorously to dislodge the loose cuttings.

“And they call
me
a master of torture,” he muttered.

N
icholas had gotten very little sleep.  Between the physical torment of his unquenched desire and the mental anguish of knowing his time with the tempting lass was limited, he’d thrashed between lust and loss all night.

Yet already Azrael nagged at him to rise, meowing relentlessly beside the pallet.

“Hush, cat.”

Surely it wasn’t morning yet.  It was too early.

Azrael disagreed.  He resumed his persistent meows until Nicholas opened one eye to scowl at him.

Then he opened the other eye.  “What in the
—
?”

Azrael had brought him a gift.

Once every few months, the cat, an expert mouser, having eaten his fill of rodents, left a tribute for Nicholas.

Nicholas grimaced.  At least the thing was fully dead this time.

“Aye, thank you,” he told the cat, “but I think I’ll save it for later.”

Sitting up, he rubbed his eyes, wondering how morning had arrived so quickly.  He raked a hand back through his hair and for a moment was startled by its abbreviated length.  Then he remembered the wench who’d cut it short, the same wicked wench who’d lengthened another part of him, he was certain, quite deliberately.