With This Ring (6 page)

He stared at her for a moment, then offered her a short, amused snort.
“That’s puttin’ it mildly, I’ll agree.”
He watched her, no longer fighting his bonds, clearly sensing that she’d begun to believe him.

Elektra stood and set down the pistol.
His gaze followed it to the floor.
She flapped her hand to release the tension of holding the heavy thing.
“Oh, don’t worry.
I won’t set it off.”

He shot her a wary glare.
“It ain’t even loaded, is it?”

Elektra blinked.
“Well, of course it’s loaded!
Goodness, only an idiot would play highwayman with an unloaded pistol!”
Shaking her head at the very notion, she bent to tug at her very good knots.

He was silent, so she glanced up at him.
Only a foot away, his eyes were locked on her in abject horror.
“Ye held a loaded pistol on me all these hours?
What if ye’d fallen asleep with that thing pointed my way?”

Elektra gave him her loveliest smile.
“I imagine you would have woken me up.”

His brows rose.
“Aye, with me dyin’ scream, ye mad thing!”

“Oh, be still.
You’ve pulled the knots so tight I cannot budge them!”

“Cut ’em, then!”

She frowned.
“That’s ten yards of very good rope!
Besides, it belongs to the Green Donkey.
I’d rather not ruin it, thank you.”
She put her hands on her hips.
“Besides, I forgot to bring a knife.”

“You—you—!”

It was difficult to tell but she rather thought his features were turning an alarming shade of red … or perhaps purple.

*   *   *

Aaron was furious.
He had been back in England for all of twenty-four hours and here he was, hip-deep in another scandal!

And in Shropshire, of all bloody places.
The quietest corner of the land, bucolic, boring Shropshire—and he’d managed to run smack into the only insane female within fifty miles!

Her single irresponsible action would undo all his years of hard work to convince his grandfather that he wasn’t
that
man any longer.
No, the last thing he needed was to have his plans thwarted by a headstrong beauty who was willing to shred his reputation along with her own!

For a moment, he contemplated telling her so.
He would see how she liked the fact that she’d locked herself into marriage to a destitute blackguard!

Then again, the notion of being a countess, even a destitute, publicly scorned countess, might still appeal to her.
She was mad, after all.
At last he felt the ropes around his hands part.

His fury boiled over.
Without planning to do anything but deliver a sound scolding, he reached up and grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled her face close to his and—

He kissed her.
Again.
Hard.

Let’s see how she likes being kissed against her will—

Well, it appeared she liked it quite a bit, for after a first stiffening protest, her lips parted under his and her arms came about his neck.
She relaxed into his lap as if it had been made for her, sinking her body into his.

The soft weight of her arse and the heat of her on his groin, not to mention the billowy press of her breasts against his chest, made Aaron lose his train of thought.
What had he been thinking?
Oh, that’s right.
He’d been thinking that he ought not kill this person, because she was female, and because she was weaker than him, and because killing women was frowned upon in England, and God, she felt good!

No.
He would not allow himself to be distracted.
Distraction was death.

If anything, this disruption in his schedule ought to make him realize just how important his mission was.
He had to get to his grandfather’s as soon as possible.
To lose his last chance to see himself redeemed in the old man’s eyes would be more than he could bear.

And no matter how soft or voluptuous or inviting or tantalizing his captor was, he would not allow himself to think about her as anything but a threat and a nuisance.

Until she kissed him back.

Her mouth was so soft, so warm.
As warm and soft as his life had been hard for a decade.
He’d allowed himself no softness, no release, no temptations for so long that he was afraid he’d forgotten what it was a man did with a woman pressed to his body.
Then his cock surged against her.
Oh, yes, that’s right.
He remembered now.

She wrapped her slim arms more tightly around his neck and kissed him with hard, untutored pressure.
Something in his remaining consciousness twanged a warning at him.
Part of him would’ve liked to ignore it, especially the part of him that was now wedged against her rounded hip, growing harder by the minute.
And it wasn’t as if he could pull away … or move away at all.
His lower body was still bound.
He was trapped, wasn’t he?
A victim.
None of this was his fault.

So he kissed her back, just as hard as she was kissing him.

The kiss evolved, changed, growing into something pure and white-hot between them.
It became more than mouth meeting mouth, more than body pressed to body.
Something inside him rang out, a bell unsounded ever before.
He felt it resonate within him, within her, silvery and strong and mysterious, tangling them deep in their souls.

To hell with his mission.
To hell with his grandfather.
To hell with anyone or anything that was going to keep him from her, keep him from drinking from this well, from driving himself hard into the sweet liquid softness of this softly panting, willing …

… Virgin.

He could tell by the way she kissed him.
Saucy and strong-willed and convincing as she might be as a kidnapper, this girl was as innocent as a day-old chick.

Damn it.

Obviously becoming aware that he was no longer kissing her, she pressed herself tighter to his body and opened her lips against his, just as he had done a moment ago.
She tasted of honey and woman and hot glowing moments of mind-blowing ecstasy that he would remember for the rest of his life … except that they had never happened, and never would.

Damn it!

Mustering willpower such as he’d never needed before, he twisted his neck to pull his lips away from hers.
Gasping, he pressed his cheek to the back of the chair and closed his eyes.
He would not take the girl.
He would not take …

He felt her soft lips on his ear warm against his chill flesh.
Her warm breath gusted in sensitive places.
Dear God, she was without mercy!

“Stop!”
He’d intended an authoritative bark.
Instead, he practically whimpered it.
“Please … Stop!”
And now he was begging.
His day just got better and better.

He felt her weight shift, and the heat of her upper body left his cold and alone.
Once he was convinced she had truly pulled back, he dared open his eyes and turn his head to face her once more.
She sat sidesaddle on his lap, seeming to find him quite comfortable.
Her arms were crossed in front of her delicious bosom, and her perfect brow held a wrinkle of perplexity.

“Well, you started it.”

The expression of mild irritation on her face left him breathless with disbelief.
She looked as though she’d snagged a nail, while he felt as though he’d been struck by a runaway ale cart.

She showed no sign of revelatory epiphanies.
No remnant of silvery perfect completion shone in her eyes.

I must have imagined it. Of course, I imagined it.

He shouldn’t have felt so disappointed.
This young woman was his worst nightmare on wheels, certain death to his hopes and ambitions.
His soul wanted nothing to do with hers.

Too bloody right, it doesn’t!

Wildly, he cast about for some change of topic—and some way to get her sweet bottom off his pinned but very eager lap.
With a groan he pulled his aching arms between their bodies and rubbed at his raw wrists.
“Damn!”

“Let me see.”
Cool fingers removed his numb ones from the abraded skin.
“Oh, look what you’ve done, you foolish man!”

He gaped up at her.
“What I’ve done?”

She left him—thank you, God!—to stride across the room to a small bucket of water that he recognized as coming from his carriage.
After moistening her handkerchief, which had been hidden in her bodice, she came back to bend over him while dabbing the cool cloth to his skin.

He hissed at the sting, and at the returning sensation in his fingers.

“Oh, don’t be such an infant.
You wouldn’t have hurt yourself if you hadn’t struggled so!
I didn’t bind you tightly enough to do you damage.”

“Know that for a fact, do ye?
You tie men up often, then?”

“Weekly,” she assured him absently as she tended him with practiced care.
“I have five brothers, which is about four too many on most days.”
She stood and returned to the bucket, rinsing her handkerchief and wringing it out again over the open windowsill.
He wondered why she didn’t just spill the water on the ruined floor.

She returned to him and deftly rolled up his sleeves to examine the burns across his biceps he’d given himself in his struggles.

“Brothers.”
Now that some of his blood supply was returning to his brain, he recalled a dark fellow lunging into the carriage.
The struggle had been fierce but brief, for Aaron had been distracted by the sight of the back of his not-quite-hired coward of a driver disappearing from the circle of light cast by the carriage lanterns, fleeing into the dusky blue evening.
“Was that one of them, what knocked me out on t’road?
Feels like I got meself kicked in the ’ead by an ’orse!”

She drew back to gaze at him warily.
“You mustn’t blame him for that.
I ought not to have involved him at all.
He isn’t—he isn’t completely well, since the war.
It was very selfish of me to put him in that situation.
I ought to have realized—” She pressed her lips together.
“All blame falls on my head, you understand?
Swear to me that you’ll not pursue charges against him, or—or I won’t finish untying you until you do!”

Since Aaron had no intention of ever telling a single soul that he’d been assaulted, kidnapped, and held at pistol point by a girl—even if she’d been assisted by a madman!—well, it wasn’t a problem for him to keep quiet about it.
He would take this mortifying incident to his grave, although it would probably take him the rest of his life to forget the humiliation.
However, something she’d said distracted his attention for the moment.
He tilted his head as he watched her.
“What ’bout you, then?”

“What about me?”

“Don’t ye mean to make me promise not to call the magistrate on ye?”

“I certainly wouldn’t blame you if you did,” she said absently.
“But I’d really rather you didn’t.
My family needs me far more than I need punishment.
After all, I’m hardly likely to repeat this particular offense.”
She sighed.
“I do believe I am an utter failure as a kidnapper.”

She’d begun cleaning the graze on his forehead, leaning close to see better in the dimness.
He could feel the heat from her skin on his face and neck, but it was the sweet, wild scent of oil of jasmine, grown in the tropics, shipped across the seas, and warmed by living girl that made his throat close tight.
She must have stroked it over her wrists and behind her ears after her last bath.

He closed his eyes and pictured the moment, allowing himself to imagine the damp, steamy chamber and hear the slosh of soapy water as she stepped out of the copper tub, her perfect ivory skin gone pink and glowing from the heat of it.
The candlelight would shimmer over the swell of her wet hips, highlighting the roundness of her dripping breasts, catching the glint of water droplets as they hung, quivering, from her pink, erect n—

“Ow!”

Chapter Five

Aaron flinched from her ministrations.
“What’re you cleanin’ that with, sand?”
He scowled, but he was grateful for the twinge.
Concentrate on the pain. Focus on the fury. Remember what she has done, not what she smells like!

“Goodness!
Men are such babies!”

Aaron felt his annoyance rise higher at her exasperation.
Good.
“If ye don’t mind, miss, I’d like to get me legs back under me as well.”
Hastings had a way of depicting haughty disdain for the gentry that came in handy indeed.
“Since ye don’t want me takin’ your brother before the magistrate?”

She bit her lip again.
“Yes.
Of course.
It’s just a simple matter of…”

There was nothing simple about it.
In her efforts to conserve rope, she had wound and knotted, wound and knotted, until he was trussed like a pig on a spit.

For the next quarter of an hour, Aaron had nothing better to do than to watch a beautiful girl bend, stretch, tug and wiggle, all while kneeling at his feet.
God, she was a beauty.
Mad, possibly.
Evil, definitely.
Yet all the resentment in the world did nothing to deny the fact that she was absolutely delicious.

Ordinarily, he would have been ashamed at his own prurience, but he’d been waylaid, knocked out, and tied up for hours.
Any scrap of gentlemanly decency he had left was more than this insane creature deserved.

He particularly enjoyed the bit where she had to lie down with her head beneath his chair and stretch her arms to reach the knots.
Her beleaguered shirt-and-weskit combination almost failed to restrain the creamy swell of her breasts as they bounced about in response to her frustrated tugging.
Aaron thought he might spy a bit of nipple at any given moment.
He never did, more’s the pity, but he did greatly enjoy the anticipation.

All in all, it was a very tolerable way to pass the time.

It was when she knelt at his feet and bent over his lap, trying to get at the knots behind his knees, that he had to stop her.
Seeing her tousled blond head bent over his groin, bobbing there as she tugged at the ropes, was making him think thoughts a good man shouldn’t think—even if those thoughts were about a crazed, kidnapping wench with more beauty than morals!

The fact that he’d hesitated as long as he did, while inhaling the warm scent of jasmine and feeling the weight of her fallen hair draping over his thighs and the warmth of her breath penetrating the fabric of his trousers just over his awakening cock—