Page 36 of The Scot Beds His Wife
“Nay.” The droll syllable should have dried up the relentless rain. “Seamus McGrath said he spotted a rabid deerhound in these woods not three days ago.” He gesturedto the high canopy of ancient elms and beyond. “I think it got to one of yer beasties.”
She returned her pistol, which she’d been aiming from close to her hip, to its holster before venturing ahead of him. “What makes you think that?”
Gavin tried not to notice how the fine cut of her serviceable dress exhibited the dramatic indent of her waist. How her nose and ears and the skin beneath her freckles was tinged pink with the same cold that painted her quivering lips a vibrant red.
Before he knew it, his own lip was caught between his teeth in a gesture of unwelcome deprivation.
She was his rival. His prey. He shouldn’t be wondering where her cloak was in weather that could turn to ice and illness in her lungs. This was no time to follow the beads of moisture clinging to the damp curls not protected by her sopping hat, its once-proud feather now weighted and listless against butter-yellow felt. Her dark hair tumbled loose down her back, and bounced with her avid movements. Those curls, they beckoned to a man’s hand. He wanted to stroke them. To test them. To wind his fingers in them until he could anchor her head back and lay siege to her impenitent mouth until she was—
“I don’t see evidence of a bite or an attack,” she reasoned. “Though with a coat this long, it’s hard to tell.”
“Look here.” He pointed. “There’s a bit of foam about her mouth, and she’ll flail intermittently as though in immense pain. Also, see how bloated she is about the middle?”
“Hmmm.” Ripping off her hat and discarding it to the moss, her delicate features pursed with scrutiny, she made to approach the animal. “I don’t at all think it’s rabies. It looks to me like she’s just about to—”
Unaware of what he was doing, Gavin seized her arm, pulling her up short. “What do ye think ye’re doing?” hedemanded. “Did ye not mark the place where I told ye that large beast with sharp hooves and horns known to gouge a man clean through was prone toflailing?”
“You’ve obviously never wrangled Texas longhorns.”
“Nay, but ye’re daft if ye think I’m going to let ye go over there.” The vehemence of his statement seemed to startle them both. He’d never thought himself as much of a hero, but a protective instinct welled in him from a place so deep, he’d thought it dormant.
She stared at him in wide-eyed wonderment for a rare, silent moment before her features hardened with stubborn defiance. “Let me go,” she commanded, wrenching at her arm. “Don’t you have someone else to cheat or hassle?”
“Ye seem to be the only woman alive to find my company a hassle,” he countered.
“I doubt that very much.”
He’d been right, Gavin noted, his hand did span the entirety of her arm so that his fingers touched when he encircled it. She was delicate, but not exactly frail. Sinew flexed with strength beneath the wool of her pelisse. Though her bones would disintegrate like spun sugar should he desire it.
The flash of fear in her eyes advertised the instant she read his thoughts.
In that moment, he recognized his prey. With her, he needed to be the lion. Maybe if she feared him, she would run. Leave Erradale to him. “It’s a mystery to me how such a reckless woman born with an obvious lack of sense has lasted so long in this world without someone to protect her,” he drawled.
“Protect me from who, you?” she retorted with false bravado. “Thanks, but better men than you have tried to break me.” She reached for her pistol again, but he abandoned his rifle and caught her other arm. In no time, hehad her pinned against the closest oak, her wrists caught between them.
Her words caught somewhere in the vicinity of his chest, and he had take in a breath of frigid air to remain cold. Calculating.
“Nay, bonny, not from me. From yerself.”
Her nostrils flared and her eyes flashed like the sea goddess Li Ban, summoning her stormy wrath.
“Why worry about me?” she demanded, attempting to wrench her arm out of his grasp. “I get kicked in the head, or gored by old Bessie here, and your problems are solved. No one stands in the way of you getting everything you desire.”
“What do ye know of my desires?” His blood ran through him like liquid heat, a startling sensation against the freezing rain. Every vein dilated, allowing the molten awareness of her to spill through him with confounding potency.
Uncertainty splashed across her features and, for once, her eyes darted away from his, only to snag on his lips, and then lower, to the white shirt the rain had painted onto his body. “I know you desire Erradale, and that’s all I need to—”
Following a foreign and reckless impulse, Gavin stole her words with his mouth. Even as he made the conscious decision to kiss the soft lips that only uttered hard or foul words, he acknowledged the foolishness of the act.
She was right about Erradale. He desired it above all else, and he was beginning to realize that he desired to possesseverythingthat went with it.
Including its current owner.
Even as he claimed her mouth, the urge to do so confounded him. She was nothing like the coy, buxom mistresses he usually coveted, or the unspoiled maidens heallowed to chase him. She was slight, crude, and prickly with all the erotic enticements of a willow switch.
But when he pressed his mouth to hers, more to shut her up than anything, he was distressed to find that years of intently practiced seduction abandoned him instantly.
Arousal lanced him with stomach-clenching swiftness, threatening to steal both his breath and his wits.
