Page 18 of Pride: The Rogue
Those same large, punishing, fingers she’d believed he’d intended to stop her latest punch, slid lower, in perfect anticipation of her latest strike.
He closed a punishing hand around her knee.
Livian gasped.
“Who’s in control now, you bloodthirsty wench?” he muttered, his voice graveled and ragged, and worse,amused.
“Bloodthirsty wench?” she raged. “How dare you, you cur.”
“Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.” His grin and tone were equally cold. “Here I’d thought a lady who fights like a street tough, would have the mouth of one, too.”
Then, he tightened about her knee, the same hand that held her; one that bore the size, scars, and stealth of any warrior.
“You bloodylobcock,” she panted.
“There.” His broad chest and even broader shoulders shook with laughter. “That is more in line with what’d I’d been—”
Rearing her head back, Livian surged forward and spit in his smug, grimly, chiseled features.
Her nameless foe went ominously silent;still.
Livian’s spittle dripped from his high, broad brow. Dread sapped the moisture from her mouth.
Like the drops striking her windowpane, her spittle, wound between his cruel-looking topaz eyes, and continued to the slight bump at the end of his blade-like nose; a nose with enough breaks to tell the story of a lethal past.
Oh, God.
Paralyzed with fear, Livian’s entire body went hot and then cold.
With a chilling deliberateness to his movements, her assailant withdrew a kerchief from his pocket. He gave that fabric a single, sharp, snap.
Livian recoiled.
Not breaking eye contact with Livian, he wiped the moisture from his face.
I went too far.
“Oh, I’d say somewhere around your second knee to my ballocks was the actual point of too far.”
Her throat lurched. “Did I speak that aloud?”
“About having gone too far?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Either that, or…” He leaned down so their brows touched. “I read your mind, sweetheart.”
The peculiar conversational quality of their exchange, only further muddled Livian. Hearing that endearment Malcom bestowed upon her sister hardly helped.
“Which one scares you more, love?” her captor mocked.
His breath mingled with hers; his brandy or whiskey.
Drunk. He’s a drunkard.
Malcom’s guidance whispered forward once more.“…The drunks are the easiest to disarm, little Livvie…”
Livian, using his haughty arrogance against him, brought her hand flying up with such force she cried out from the burn of pain upon her palm—he, on the other hand, didn’t even flinch.
