Page 39 of A Treacherous Trade
His fingers closed over mine. “You should never have to apologize for being honest.”
I sniffed, more aware of his warm proximity than I should have been in such a moment. “You obviously don't understand what it is to be British.” I chuckled nervously. “Or Irish.”
“No.” He shook his head, still regarding me in that strange, soft way. “I can't begin to understand… but I do often find myself curious.”
“About what?”
“Many things.” His gaze snagged at the door, and he squinted as if it might give him the power to see through to the other side. “I have decided to help you, but I want something in return.”
“What is it?” I pulled my hands away from his, suddenly wary. There were only so many deals with the Devil one should make.
“I want to do something I never have before.” He took a step closer, and without thinking, I retreated, his advance a waltz to which I did not know the steps.
“I—I couldn’t imagine what that would be,” I confessed on a shaking exhale. We stood in a room in which every conceivable thing was done for a price, and a few I was sure I couldn’t begin to comprehend. “I told you, I’m not going to lie with you.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Then what could you possibly—”
He placed his fingers on my lips, pressing them gently as if testing their texture. “A kiss.”
ChapterNine
For the second time that evening, Aramis Night Horse had sent my heart galloping away from my chest in pure, unmitigated astonishment.
A kiss?Surely I’d misunderstood.
I jerked my head back, withdrawing another step to gape up at him with incomprehension.
His eyes remained on my lips, and my tongue tested them, unbidden, only to encounter the foreign flavor of salt and skin.
I swallowed, trying not to admit to myself that I didn’t find the taste wholly repellent.
“Surely you’re joking,” I breathed in disbelief. “You’ve been visiting this place—this room—for who knows how long. And you’re asking me to believe you’ve never—”
“What you believe does not change the truth,” he replied with his commensurate indifference. “I require neither your belief nor your involvement or enjoyment. I’m only soliciting the experience.”
He reached for his jacket and extracted a purse full of coin as I fought to overcome my crippling incredulity.
“Soliciting… the… experience?” I croaked, before clearing the disbelief lodged in my throat. “Surely you’re aware that my—er—thewoman’sinvolvement and—dare I mention—enjoymentis rather the bloody point of the wholeexperience?”
“Is it?” He cocked his head to the side in a rather houndlike expression of perplexity. “So kissing is for the sake of the woman?”
“No!” I said, then paused. “Well, partly. It’s for both.”
“Then show me. And you can enjoy it as well” He offered me the purse of coin, the heft of which would likely cover a week of my regular sort of work.
I held up a finger against it. “No.No, this is not something to be paid for. Kissing is intimate. It is something people do when they—when they care for one another. When they want to show affection and veneration.”
“I have had a wife, and I will not care again.” His words hit like gunshots in the silence.
Suddenly so much about him made more sense. He’d told me he was hunting miles away when his tribe was slaughtered… He’d never said a wife was among the victims. I’d never asked.
“Don’t say that,” I said, mostly out of the manners instilled within me to say something encouraging after such a heartbreaking revelation. “You cannot know that you willneverfeel—”
“I know,” he cut me off, his features a mask of stone and ice. “I have taken an oath.”
“Oh.” I wasn’t at all sure what else to say.
