Lorelie Brown (32 page)

Though the distance was too great to see the pale blue of his eyes, he watched her. He even had the audacity to tip his chin in a nod. One side of his mouth bent into that half smile he’d used in his parlor three days earlier.

Sera became angry. No, more than that—she was incandescently furious. Her fingertips tingled with the need to do harm. Her stomach wound into a sickly bundle. Sweat sprang up at the back of her neck. She would not sit there and allow him to continue such scrutiny.

She launched to her feet suddenly and without grace. The short train of her gown caught a chair leg as she turned. “Please, pardon me for a moment. I need air.”

To see Lottie’s wide mouth flatten with concern was unusual but heartening. “What’s wrong?”

Sera forced herself to shake her head. If her friends went with her, she’d likely end up venting and the venting would soon lead to screaming. “I’m fine. I only need a trip to the withdrawing room.”

“Would you like us to go with you?”

“No, that’s quite all right.”

It took entirely too long to cross the tiny box. Victoria’s aunt, Lady Dalrymple, was half asleep in her chair next to the door. The ostrich feathers in her headdress bobbed along with each snuffling snore.

Theatergoers crowded the hallway. Breath and heat and musky smells pressed in on her from all sides. Away from the surge of people headed toward the refreshments, she exited toward the quiet, empty hallways leading to the exits.

Near a curtained alcove she stopped, not wanting to venture much farther and risk censure for roving without a chaperone. She flattened a hand against the wallpaper. The flocking snagged softly against her glove. She bent her neck and dragged in heavy breaths. Life had been so much simpler a few days ago. She’d known her place. The charity case. The probable by-blow. But she’d also known how to continue in a respectable mien.

Now she was lost.

An arm reached through the curtains and wrapped around her waist. With a yank, she was pulled into the dark. Panic flooded her veins. She opened her mouth to scream.

A hand covered her mouth. A heavy, large and undoubtedly male body pressed along her back. His chest burned into her shoulders and his arm lay warm across collarbones bared by her low-cut evening gown. Fear overwhelmed her, but only until she smelled a spicy wash of familiar soap.

The fingers across her mouth loosened but still didn’t release. He leaned over her, speaking quietly into her ear. “It’s me. If I release you, do you promise not to scream?”

Fletcher’s breath sent shivers down her neck. She only resented him more for it.

Regrettably, screaming for the pure unadulterated joy of it was not an option. Even if it were acceptable to release one’s anger in such a fishwife manner, she’d only get him in trouble and risk her own reputation.

Finally, she nodded.

His hand slid away. Each finger dragged across her skin. Tingles washed over her.

Sera turned and pressed her back to the wall, but the reflexive retreat didn’t gain her much room. The alcove was little more than a curtain concealing a doorway. He loomed too near, taking up the precious air with his vitality. His mouth was a hard slash of darkness amid more gray. The tiny streams of light that arrowed around the edges of the curtain only accentuated the shadows draping his body.

The first thing that popped into her mind then fell out of her mouth. “You were in the Earl of Linsley’s box.”

Somehow he managed to infuse arrogance in a single nod. “That I was. Are you surprised?”

She slid her hands behind her back, the better to hide their nervous twisting. The rear seam of her bodice abraded her knuckles. “In all honesty, yes. You said you’d taken over your father’s interests. I didn’t think Linsley was the type to…dabble.”

“He’s not. More woe to me for it.” He rubbed a hand across the top of his head. “It might be easier to crack his consortium if he were,” he muttered, so low that Sera barely heard him.

“Consortium?”

“Railroad.” He waved a hand. “No matter. I’ve come to find out if you’ll take the money.”

She narrowed her eyes but saw him no better for it. She’d pay the entirety of the sum to read his expression. “Did you intimidate Mrs. Waywroth in some manner?”

He flattened his hand against the wall next to her head and leaned near. “Define intimidate.”

“To frighten or scare in any manner.”

The air pressed close. If she breathed too deeply, she’d brush against him. “Do I seem like a man who could intimidate, Seraphina?”

She swiped her tongue across her lips as she tried to see past the shadows and memories. He was different now. Not the boy she’d once known. Despite that, she couldn’t help but wonder at his true motivations. Why pay for years of schooling for a girl he’d known for a matter of months? He’d taken her from the gutters and designed his own lady. But why?

For the price he’d paid, there was no telling what repayment he expected.

“If it served your purposes, I think intimidation is well within your purview.”

His head lowered farther, until her world narrowed to the wash of his breath across her jawbone. “And your precious Mrs. Waywroth? Do you think I said frightening things to her?”

“I don’t think you had to.” She refused to show her fear by running away, but her shoulders pressed more firmly against the wall. Anything to sublimate the urge she had to touch him. The wallpaper was cold against the nape of her neck, bared by the meticulously intricate hairstyle Victoria’s maid had created. “I imagine it was an endowment. For the library, perhaps?”

“I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your ability to look within people.” The darkness prevented her from seeing his hand move, but she certainly felt it. A whisper of motion along the outside of her arm. The shock of touch.

“And you? Am I supposed to be able to look within you?”

The barest hint of a chuckle colored his rich voice. “I certainly hope not.”

Shoot first. Ask her name later.

Wild Burn

© 2013 Edie Harris

Wild State, Book 1

Infamy weighs heavy on Delaney Crawford’s broad shoulders, first as a supposed Confederate turncoat, then as a relentless hunter of Cheyenne dog soldiers. Summoned to the small mining community of Red Creek, the exhausted, embittered Del is doing what he does best—ridding the town of its savage scourge—when one of his bullets misses the mark.

Ex-nun Moira Tully has been working with John White Horse for months to integrate a band of peaceful Cheyenne with the local townsfolk. Now he’s hurt, and she’s been caught in the crossfire. There’s only one man to blame for her simmering anger and the inexplicable attraction that tilts her heart on its axis. Del.

When Del is forced to acknowledge the truth that the Cheyenne are no threat, his task just gets more complicated: fighting a wild attraction that catches flame at the most inconvenient times, and figuring out the treacherous motives behind his hiring.

But the most heart-wrenching challenge could be overcoming sordid pasts that won’t stay in the past—pasts that threaten to bury all hope of happily ever after.

Warning:
Features a trigger-happy Southern gentleman, an ex-nun gone rogue and consistently thwarted desires that frustrate them both.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Wild Burn:

The door opened slowly to reveal her, limned in the warm light of the hearth flickering behind her. Glorious dark red hair fell in thick, loose waves past her shoulders to stop at the top of her rib cage.

His fingers twitched. Just…
glorious
.

“Mr. Crawford.” Her gaze flicked over his features, summer-blue eyes wary. “What can I do for you?”

“Mornin’, Miss Tully.” He swallowed. He was a stupid man. He knew better than to be here, talking to a lady—a
schoolteacher
—when he was in Red Creek on business. If he needed a woman, he could go to the Ruby Saloon. Not the second cabin from the end, with its garden and its gray stone chimney, its tidy golden glow streaked through with the homey scents of biscuits and coffee. “Just stopped by to see how your ear is doing.”

Her brows lowered in a sharp frown. She was always frowning at him, it seemed. “It’s fine, thank you.”

“I see you’re not wearing a bandage.”

She shook her head as she pulled a black woolen shawl tighter around her shoulders. He could see where her bodice met the simple skirt of her brown calico dress. There were no telltale bumps of a boned corset beneath the light fabric, no sign of a metal-caged crinoline or bustle at her hips. She was achingly dressed—achingly in that he hurt with the desire to dance his hands over her body and learn every inch of her slim shape. The gown was so worn it would prove no greater barrier than a thin bedsheet, and he could fall to his knees before her and curve his fingers around those slender thighs, part them with his thumbs as he fisted her skirts and—

“Is that all?”

No, no, that
wasn’t
all. He wanted her to knock his hat off his head while he stayed on his knees, grip his hair in her long fingers and steer his hands, his mouth, from the back of one knee and up her inner thigh. It would be so soft.
She
would be so soft, that pale skin…and probably freckled too. Oh, Christ, he—

“Mr. Crawford?”

Hell. “Sorry, ma’am. Guess I’m still tired.”

He wondered if she believed his excuse when she tugged the shawl even closer across her chest. “I see. Are you…? How long will you be in Red Creek?”

It was difficult to shrug with inconvenient arousal tightening every muscle in his body. “As long as it takes.”

Her gaze changed, narrowed. “As long as it takes to kill the Cheyenne, you mean.”

“I’m not going to hurt the tribe across the hill, Miss Tully.”

“Not unless you think they’re dangerous. I know what you do now.”

“Oh?”

She nodded. “Mr. Vangaard runs the general store and collects the post. He has a nice stack of old newspapers in his back room filled with the accountings of your grand deeds. Saving the West one dead Indian at a time.” Sarcasm gave her words a cruel twist.

“That’s not all I do.” It absolutely was all he did, not that he wanted her to know.

“Mm.” She let her eyes settle briefly on the gun at his hip, and her lips compressed before she spoke again. “I suppose you’re going over there now.”

“I am.”

“The chief, Walking Bear, is John White Horse’s uncle. I’ve not yet met him, but, knowing Mr. White Horse, I can only assume he is as peaceful as his nephew.”

“I’m sure the problem doesn’t lie with Walking Bear’s tribe, Miss Tully. But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t investigate, at least once.”

She shifted her weight to lean against the doorframe. “Don’t hurt any more innocents, Mr. Crawford, or you’ll undo every good thing Mr. White Horse has accomplished in the past three months.”

It was much more difficult than it should’ve been to draw in air as she gave him a beseeching look. The softest expression she’d yet gifted him, it did funny things to his insides, and it drew him to her. He climbed the steps until he stood on the one just below her. “I won’t.”

“M-Mr. Crawford?” Her eyes grew bigger, rounder.

Slowly, so as not to startle her, he lifted a hand between them. “May I?”

She looked confused and slightly alarmed, but nodded anyway.

Her silky hair stroked sensuously over the backs of his knuckles as he slid his hand between the mass of it and her pale throat. Lifting, he pushed the cool strands back over her shoulder and let his thumb tug gently upward on the errant locks covering her ear. Her left ear.

Her left ear, which was pink and angry, but clean and showing no signs of infection. A small half-moon of flesh was definitely missing, right at the top of that delicately curled shell. “I won’t ever hurt an innocent again,” he promised quietly as he studied the wound. He wondered if it would’ve healed faster had the doctor attempted to stitch her up, but it was too late now, and she appeared to be taking hygienic care of the site. “I won’t, Miss Tully.”

He heard her suck in a deep breath. “Thank you.” She made no move to pull away from him.

He couldn’t help it. He let his fingers slide further into her loose hair to cup the back of her skull. His thumb stroked over the sensitive skin of her hairline, just above her ear, carefully avoiding the tender wound. Her body heat, her scent, twined around his senses until tension he didn’t know he carried left his shoulders and he could taste her, with the coffee and biscuits, on his tongue.

He wanted to
actually
taste her on his tongue, but now…now was not the time.

It wasn’t ever going to be the time.

But he was still held in the grip of that rose-and-mint fragrance, and it wouldn’t let him go. Not without telling her, “You smell good.”

“You smell…better than yesterday.” Her lips twitched as he drank in her pretty features. How long would it take him to count all the freckles on her face?

At least an entire, uninterrupted night. From dusk to dawn. And then maybe to dusk again.