The Reckless One by Connie Brockway Page A

purchased from jail to provide sport for you.”
    “Not for me!” she denied. “For Madame Noir.”
    “Who you pretended to be,” he reasoned, his voice low and seductive. He angled his head and inhaled, his mouth inches above her flesh. She shrank down; there was nowhere left to retreat. The wall behind her bare shoulders was cool. Every inch of her skin seemed suddenly heated.
    “You shouldn’t have dyed your hair,” he mused. He picked up a lock, his knuckles brushing her collarbone. Sensation danced over her skin in response. He rubbed the tress lightly between thumb and forefinger, testing the texture. “It was prettier before. Plundered gold. Now it’s funereal, like a dead raven’s eye.”
    “Flatterer,” she whispered.
    His gaze shot up to meet hers. His dimple deepened in surprised humor, then dissolved. The wide mouth relaxed, became pensive. His brows dipped, as if in puzzlement.
    “Who would have ever thought you … of all the women in the world …
you,”
he whispered in a voice so low she barely heard him.
    Watching him studying her body made her feel ripe and lush, liquid and uncomfortable. She couldn’t have looked away if she’d tried.
    “Please.”
    “Please what? Please myself? What would that take, do you imagine?” he asked. “I had a kiss from you once and I still remember your taste. Isn’t that odd?” He lay the artificially darkened tress on her shoulder, arranging the curl with patient care. “Isn’t it?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’d been in jail for four years, you know,” he said. “Four years is a long time to remember those carnal pleasures I was just learning to appreciate when I was captured. After I escaped—with your aid—it took me a few days to realize I was safe. But then … then I sought out those pleasures—when it didn’t mean risking my life.”
    His face hardened. “And do you know what? Do you want to know something very odd?” His face was very close, his mouth looked very soft, the only soft thing in that hard visage. “Do you?”
    She nodded, mesmerized by his low hypnotic voice, the heat of his hand playing just above her collarbone.
    “Even in the blistering heat of the most powerful climax, I still tasted
you.”
    She tried to hold back her gasp. Failed. Earned another one-sided smile.
    “What’s this? A blush, little peregrine? Too raw? By God, I believe I’ve embarrassed the wench.” He gave a humorless laugh. “And to think I mistook you for Madame Noir. I really had lost the knack of reading a woman.”
    “She was my relative,” she said.
    “Allow a modicum of respect for my intelligence. I doubt you’ve ever even met the lady— No!” He lay a callused fingertip against her lower lip. “Your mouth begins to form a lie before it’s even half thought. Spare us both yet another of your fictions.” Hesitantly, as though compelled, he grazed his fingertip back and forth along her lower lip.
    “I can’t help what you believe or disbelieve,” she answered, a sense of panic unlike any she’d ever experienced rising in tandem with the electric feeling suffusing her mouth, her cheeks and throat, her breasts and thighs.
    “Damn me, lady hawk, is there any truth in you at all?”
    Her voice wouldn’t work. She stared in mute appeal.
    “Christ’s blood,” he murmured with that wicked, Satan-inspired darkness flooding his voice, “I can’t decide if God is punishing me or you. Let’s find out, shall we?”
    He closed the short distance between their mouths. His lips touched hers with deliberate delicacy, clung. Her eyelids drifted shut.
    Warm breath. Velvet mouth, firm and testing. Just a kiss, just the softest brush of his lips and yet her knees weakened and her head spun. He moved closer. She sensed it, felt his breadth surround her, above her … Threatening? Protecting? By the Virgin, she couldn’t tell.
    Her head fell back against the wall. His fingertips branded one side of her throat with gossamer fire, skated down and