Page 12 of Some Like It Wild
Connor leaned back and blew across the mouth of the gun, ruffling the plume of feathers. His gray eyes sparkled with devilish amusement.
Pamela glared up at him, her heart still on the verge of pounding its way out of her chest. “How long have you known?”
“I began to suspect it was nothin’ more than a toy when you were so squeamish about pointin’ my own pistol at me.”
“And if you had been wrong?”
He shrugged. “We wouldn’t be havin’ this conversation, now, would we?” As if unable to resist the temptation, he tickled her beneath her chin with the plume of feathers like a doting uncle trying to coax a smile from a surly baby.
Infuriated by his cavalier attitude, she smacked the gun out of his hand. It went skittering across the floor and struck the stone wall, its last tinkling note dying on an off-key whine.
“If you knew the gun was only a prop, then why did you allow yourself to be taken captive?”
He grinned. “I was still holdin’ out hope you and your sister might ravish me.”
The reappearance of his dimple only made her feel more peevish. “Why? Did your favorite sheep run away?”
The dimple vanished. He folded his brawny arms over his chest, deliberately deepening his burr. “Oh, we only dally with the livestock when we canna find a willin’ woman.”
“Or an unwilling one?” she snapped, regretting the words the instant they left her lips.
Their gazes collided and held until the smoldering heap of logs on the fire collapsed in a cascade of fiery sparks. Pamela was the first to look away.
When she finally spoke, her voice was low but steady. “Set my sister free. She doesn’t deserve to be punished for my folly. See her to safety and I won’t fight you. I’ll…I’ll…”—she swallowed and closed her eyes—”I’ll do whatever pleases you.”
Connor gazed down at Pamela’s averted face, his wayward imagination providing lurid images of all the things she could do that might please him. A faint blush graced her cheek. She was an English rose, never meant to bloom in the stony soil of this wild and brutal land. And here he stood with the power to crush her tender petals—and her prickly pride—in his fist. The realization should have made him feel strong, invincible. Instead, he felt dirty and dangerous. Like a man who would tear a flower from the dirt just so he could watch it wither in his hand.
“That’s a noble offer indeed, lass. And a very temptin’ one as well. But I’ve no intention of throwin’ your wee lamb of a sister—or you—to that pack of wolves in the next room.”
He had to admire her nerve as she mustered up the courage to look him in the eye. “What about the wolf in this room?”
The wolf in this room had spent too many years paying for his pleasures with stolen coins and was starved for a morsel of something tender.
Afraid she would catch a glimpse of that hunger in his eyes, Connor dropped to one knee at her feet and began to unlace one of her kid half boots.
“What are you doing?” Pamela demanded of her captor, half afraid he would answer.
But he held his tongue and all she could do was watch helplessly as he tugged off her boot and set it aside. He rested the sole of her foot against his muscled thigh, the firelight picking out the streaks of honey in the warm maple sugar hue of his hair.
Her stockings were in even more shameful condition than her drawers had been. Her little toe was peeping out of the shattered silk, rosy with mortification.
As he tugged off her other boot, then encircled one of her slender ankles with his hand, she could feel her cheeks growing equally pink. Men weren’t even supposed to see ankles, much less touch them. That’s why so many of them delighted in coming to the theater, where they could gawk at the scantily clad opera dancers to their heart’s content.
Pamela hadn’t realized how cold and numb her feet were until Connor began to briskly massage the feeling back into them. Heat seemed to radiate from his touch, penetrating the threadbare silk of her stockings. As he pressed the broad pad of his thumb into the sole of her foot, she had to bite her bottom lip to keep from betraying herself with a moan.
He stole a glance at her face, a knowing smile playing around his lips. “You English never take the dangers of the Highlands to heart,” he said as he began to subject her other foot to the same irresistible torture. “You may think your feet are just a wee bit chilled, but add the damp to the cold and before you know it, you’ve lost a toe or two.”
Pamela sank deeper into the chair, her eyes drifting out of focus as the tension oozed out of her body and into his capable hands. If he kept stroking his thumb down the center of her foot in that provocative manner, she was going to be in danger of losing more than just a toe.
Her eyes snapped into focus. She sat up with a jerk, going as stiff as a marionette. It had happened again. She had succumbed to the lure of the sensual just as her mother would have done.
Yanking her feet out of his grasp, she tucked them beneath the hem of her skirts. “I’d rather lose a toe or two to the cold than have them nibbled off by a wolf.”
Amused by Pamela’s wary scowl, Connor rose and began to circle her chair. “And I’d rather be branded a wolf than a wolf in sheep’s clothin’. Especially one wearin’ fake furs, fake jewels and carryin’ fake pistols. Is there anythin’ real about you, Miss Pamela Darby?” He reached down to rub a shiny coil of her hair between his fingers, wishing he could forget how warm and real her mouth had felt beneath his when she had opened it to welcome his kiss. “Or is that even your name?”
“Of course it’s my name! Our mother was the great stage actress Marianne Darby. Perhaps you’ve heard of her?”
She looked so hopeful that Connor bit back his sarcastic retort and instead said gently, “I’m afraid I haven’t had many chances to attend the theater of late. You mentioned earlier that your mother had passed on, but where isMr.Darby? Why hasn’t your father locked you and your sister away in an attic or a convent…or perhaps an asylum?”
