Page 21 of The Scot Beds His Wife
“She has us well in hand.” Calybrid’s smile revealed several missing teeth as he tapped the wee ball of fluff atop his cap. “Woke us up well and early with fish, potatoes, and leeks torn from the ground over there, and told us she’d give us each a ha’penny for every head of her cattle we help her to scavenge.”
“Did she now?” Gavin lifted a brow that he was pretty certain conveyed that he was impressed rather than surprised. At least, he hoped he did.
She regarded him stonily, allowing the prancing of her horse to convey her tumultuous opinion of him.
The mist had gathered in her lashes, and they clung together in dark spikes. The chill painted her cheeks with color beneath the dim frosting of freckles. Her mouth, tightened into a furious line, quivered slightly, though from chill or temper, it was impossible to tell.
With tendrils of her dark hair escaping the braid and wildly floating about her fierce expression, she could have been the Celtic Queen Bouddica facing General Suetonius.
Gavin had never tried harder in his life not to be impressed.
The sight of her limbs, all but exposed, created a strange, tingling burn behind his eyes that spread to his skull, his neck, trickled down his spine, and landed in his cock.
A drop of sweat beaded from her hairline and trickled down her jaw and neck, running into the open collar of the button-down shirt she’d tucked into those incomprehensively tight trousers.
Gavin swallowed as moisture flooded his mouth.
Adjusting himself in the saddle, he decided her pistol was the safest point of focus, and the smartest, come to think of it.
Finally, she opened that distracting mouth to, no doubt, deliver a scathing censure. But Gavin knew it was prudent to not only have the last word, but to gain the first whenever possible.
“I’d take it as a kindness, Miss Ross, if ye didna shoot at my dog.” He forced all the possible teasing levity he could into his smile, so as to crowd out the ire.
He’d had to learn how to smile, so many years ago. He’d never quite been able to manage it until he realized he could use it as a weapon.
As currency.
Then smiles had come easy, followed by charm, and finally the powers of temptation.
Her blueberry eyes narrowed. “I’d take it as a kindness if you and your mutt would get the fuck off my land.”
The profanity should have shocked him. The disrespect should have angered him. But all he could think was that this had to be the first time he’d ever heardthatword from a woman he was not, himself, about to mount. Also, the word seemed to have the same effect on his cock out here on the wintry moors as it did in the bedchamber.
He covered his heart, as though she’d wounded him gravely. “And to think I’d come here with peace offerings to keep ye fed and warm. I suppose I should just count myself lucky that yer shot missed. Are ye hungry, bonny?”
“I neither want nor need a damn thing from you.” Her cool expression turned decidedly arctic, her eyes like chips of ice. “I rarely miss. I didn’t shoot at your dog, I shotoverher. While we’re on the subject, you should be glad this isn’t America… I could shootyoufor trespassing.”
“Ye can do that here, too,” Calybrid supplied helpfully, the wrinkles branching from his eyes crinkling further with mischief.
She grinned and nodded to him. “Good to know, Cal.”
Cal?Gavin made a face.
Alison pulled back the hammer of her pistol, and aimed it dead center of Gavin’s chest. “I’ve always wondered, do you lordlings bleed as blue as you think?”
Fighting equal measures of arousal and antipathy, he summoned his most charming smirk. “I yield, lass, I yield.” He chuckled. “Since we’re to be neighbors, I come bearing a white flag of… surrender.” He let that insinuation sink in, and noted that her eyes flickered over him for the briefest of moments. She’d caught the seductive double entendre.
And was not immune to it.
Excellent.
“Maybe I can be recruited to help ye gather yer herd.”My herd,he added silently. “And after we’ll share a drink and repast by a fire.”
“What do you know about herding cattle?” she scoffed.
Now that he thought about it… not much. But if she could do it, how hard could it be?
“It would behoove us to get to know each other better, bonny.”
