Page 2 of Meet A Rogue At Midnight
“Best I can do for a woman who pointed a pistol at me.”
Grumbling came from the drape. Jonas’s blood pumped with satisfaction. His lush, midnight visitor was at his mercy. This homecoming wasn’t so bad, not when the housebreaker’s hip brushed his ballocks. He grinned, liking her pliant against him. The skirmish was over.
“Well?” she said, her body lax. “Are you going to get this off me?”
Copper-hued hair shined through a tear in the cloth. The woman in his bed was a gift trussed in blue wool, excitement in his otherwise dull Christmas Eve. It was time he unwrapped his present. He stuck a finger in the hole and yanked. Threads snapped, showing bold brown eyes staring at him through tangled hair. Ready to see the rest of her, he ripped thick cloth with both hands down to the soles of her scrubby boots.
A lovely mouth opened wide and sucked fresh air. “Thank you.”
His comely housebreaker lay dressed in homespun breeches and a plain shirt open at the neck. A gentleman’s faded bottle green coat flopped wide as she brushed hair off her face. Exquisite breasts free of a corset, shift, and waistcoat ruined the mannish disguise. Cambric stretched across dainty nipples at the center of curves flattened as nature would have it when a woman was on her back. The siren’s chest rose and fell with alluring rhythm, the sight striking him speechless.
“Did you get your fill?” She snapped her coat shut and laughed. “Welcome home, JonasBaconBraithwaite.”
*
Sin-black hair withangelic blue eyes shouldn’t be an earthly possibility, yet Jonas wore the combination as though his appeal didn’t matter. Plumtree’s rebel son was never one to charm the ladies; his brother Jacob owned that talent. In his youth, Jonas had muddled through conversation when the fair sex flirted with him. From farmer’s daughters to highborn ladies, women were drawn to the quiet lad like flies to honey, but this man with a gold piece twinkling from his ear dripped with confidence.
Olivia sat bolt upright. “What’s this?” She tapped the gold hoop. “Were you a gentleman of fortune? Possibly apirate?”
His head jerked back at her familiar touch.
She smiled and braced a hand on his bed. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
The notion pricked her pride. Her chin tipped higher and she waited. She’d been a girlish fourteen when Jonas last saw her, and he a strapping young man of twenty.
Eyes scrunching, he searched her face and form, a warm tingle following wherever his gaze touched.
“Livvy? Livvy Halsey?”
“In the flesh.” She nodded at his well-formed chest. “And you might want to cover some of yours.”
Massive arms crossed his chest, the muscled hills and trenches of those limbs earned from years of sea going adventures if the tales she’d heard were true.
“You’ve seen my chest before.”
Oh, but not this fascinating version of Jonas. The flesh she’d seen had been when village lads held a wrestling match in her family’s meadow. Battling barefoot in shirtsleeves and breeches, Jonas took all comers. Two of them attacked him at once. A boy grabbed his shirt and the fabric ripped in two.
“Explain yourself,” he said. “What are you doing in my bedchamber at midnight?”
Skin on her neck flushed, the heat dancing feather-soft to her cheeks. She wasn’t a child to be reprimanded. Or was it Jonas in a state of dishabille? His placket was half-fastened, and the fire’s dim light touched shoulders wider and stronger than she remembered. Black curls framed brown male nipples, the discs as intriguing as the coarse black hair encircling them. Her body wanted to stay put, but her brain cried for distance.
“I, I came to get something.” She slid off the mattress, her bottom brushing his bed sheets, the intimate sound seductive. The Jonas of her childhood was the heart of mild infatuation, but this man made her body sluggish and her pulse heavy. She gripped the ends of her coat, needing something to hold. Their tumble warmed her to the core, so did the view of him bathing.
She’d not timed this well at all.
“Don’t play coy,” he said. “Last I saw you, your braids were flying as you galloped away.”
“And last I saw you, your lips were stuck to my sister.”
Chuckling, he leaned back on the bed post. “How is Elspeth?”
Her fingernails dug into her coat. “She’s well. Married and widowed since you’ve been gone.”
Black brows knit together as Jonas absorbed the news. Head shaking, his blue gaze pinned her. “Sorry to hear about her loss, but you need to explain yourself.”
“I think not. Years ago, I might’ve done your bidding like a tame puppy, but I’m not a child anymore.”
His smile pinched at the corners. “I noticed.”
