Page 21 of My Rogue, My Ruin
An audible sigh parted the quiet at the sight of a pair of white linen smalls. But as she started to wrench the trousers lower on his hips, she couldn’t help noticing just how thin the linen was. Dark hair showed through the near-transparent cloth, which was made more see-through in the play of the firelight. And there was no mistaking the explicit swell of his…his…very male body.
Either Brynn’s arms grew heavy, or the bandit’s trousers had become snagged, because she could no longer tug them lower. And she could not avert her eyes, either. Brynn had never seen anything so…soforeign. Or so fascinating.
The clinging linen accentuated the curved shape. It was long—and knowing the little she did about what occurred between a man and a woman in the marriage bed, larger than she expected. Cordelia had told her that her aunt had said that when a man took a woman, it hurt the first time, and that was it. Brynn supposed thetakinghad to do with what lay hidden beneath those flimsy smalls.
Curious, her eyes examined the indecently outlined length, and she felt a frightening rush of heat in her legs. Her pulse shook like the earth in a stampede. Her breasts, even bound as they were, tingled, and something warm and liquid spread through the shivering core of her body. She tore her eyes away and weakly attempted to compose herself. Good heavens, shewaslosing her mind.
The bandit moved and groaned, jerking Brynn out of her lewd distraction. She hurried on with her task, yanking his trousers the rest of the way down. His smalls were cropped a few inches above the knee, and that was where she saw the neat, dark gouge in the muscle of his outer thigh. Not truly a graze, but not a killing shot, either. The wound leaked blood, though a quick inspection told her the bullet had not lodged in his flesh. He would live, but first she would have to make sure it did not become infected.
Brynn pulled the hem of her shirt from the tightly buckled waist of her brother’s old trousers and tore off a good portion of it. Wrapping the ragged strip tightly around the man’s thigh, just above the shallow wound, she tried not to notice the way his lean corded muscles rippled underneath his skin. And when she reached for the jug of whiskey and poured it over the wound, she also tried not to notice how a splash that landed on his smalls had taken the nearly sheer linen to purely see-through.
She failed on both accounts.
“Oh good Lord,” she whispered as a surge of aching warmth pooled low, at the apex of her thighs.
The bandit didn’t hear her. He was much too busy hissing and grinding his teeth against the pain, his back arching. As his spine went flat against the cot again, he snagged Brynn’s wrist and tugged with surprising strength. She fell forward, the ceramic jug slipping from her hands and landing on the floor with a dull thud. It rolled onto its side, spilling whiskey, but that wasn’t her main concern at the moment.
The bandit had pulled her flat against his chest and stomach, bringing his masked face mere inches away from hers. His eyes were still wild and wandering so she could only hope he hadn’t yet focused on her face. Would he recognize her, even disguised as she was?
“Release me so I can bandage you,” she said, the husky tone of her voice not entirely put on. Goodness, he was virile, even woozy from a shot to his leg. He held her arm like a vise.
“Shot me,” he whispered, incredulous.
“Yes, well, what did you expect? You’re a highwayman,” Brynn replied, attempting to wrench her arm away and pull back to a safer distance.
“No bullets,” he breathed.
“Just one, and it barely grazed you,” she explained, still wiggling toward freedom.
He finally released her, and she tumbled back, right onto her rump.
The distant whinny of a horse and the steadyclomp clompingof horse hooves had her up and on her feet again. Someone was coming. One of the bandit’s cohorts? Another criminal? What was this place, a hideout? She hadn’t stopped to wonder before. There were a number of abandoned cottages and stone ruins scattered throughout the woods of her own estate, and she imagined the neighboring duke’s estate as well.
If the bandit and his allies had set up in one of them, she most certainly did not want to be discovered. The Masked Marauder had been shot, and he was weak and clumsy from blood loss, but this new arrival would not be.
Brynn hurried for the door, taking a last glance at the bandit as she whipped it open. He was lying on the cot, his chest rising steadily with each breath. The mask. She’d spent ages ogling the bulge of his masculinity underneath his smalls, and yet she hadn’t lifted the slip of black silk to reveal his identity. There was no time now, not that she had any inclination to match a face to the ample…body partshe’d gotten an eyeful of. If he turned out to be an aristocrat as she suspected, she’d never be at ease in polite society for fear of recognizing the man. She flushed and once again, her knees went inexplicably weak.Blast it twice on Sundays.
Brynn rushed outside and swung up onto Zeus’s back. It was as if he had been waiting for an opportunity to unleash his boundless energy. She didn’t even need to dig in her heels—they were already off, a dark blur through the trees.
…
Archer’s eyes rolled back in his head.A boy.There had been a boy in the cottage with him. He blinked, but as his vision started to settle, saw there was no one there now. His head throbbed with every pounding heartbeat, and confusing snatches of what had happened rushed back toward him. He groaned as he reached for the whiskey jug tipped on its side at the edge of the bed. He took a desperate gulp. The fiery spirits brought him a shot of clarity just as Brandt burst through the door, his eyes widening at the sight of Archer lying half clothed and bloody on his cot.
“Hawk? What the devil happened?” He threw off his coat, rushing forward. “I’ve been looking for you for hours. One of the footmen said you and the duke had another row. That you stormed out of his study like a man possessed.” Brandt crouched by Archer’s leg, his hands gently examining the wound. “I heard a shot and thought things had gone south.”
“They did.” Archer blinked, his gaze slanting down to the faintly oozing but clean bullet wound. Though not life-threatening, it burned like the pits of hell.
Brandt glanced up at him. “You’re supposed to tell me when you’re going out. Someone put up a fight, I see. I suppose it was bound to happen.”
Archer gritted his teeth against the pain and humiliation. But he’d always been honest with Brandt before. “Not the occupants of the carriage. A boy. The cretin showed up on his horse and shot me.”
Brandt’s eyebrows flew into his hairline. “A boy. Shot you. At this hour.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Losing blood addles the mind. Are you certain it wasn’t the coachman or a groom?”
Archer shook his head. Brandt said nothing as he stood to retrieve a strip of clean linen from a trunk. When he returned, he removed the tourniquet that had already been tied tightly around Archer’s thigh to staunch the flow of blood. He couldn’t quite remember how it got there, but he figured the ripped cloth had come from the boy.
