If You Dare(36)
“Aye,” both he and Liam answered at once.
“I know you said doona muck this up,” Gavin said. “But she’s a sly one.”
Liam was nodding. “A clever lass. She looks up to you with those big green eyes…”
They aren’t green, Court thought. They’re gold.
“…and then promises no’ to fight or bite again.”
“She bit you?”
A few men chuckled.
“She bit, she clawed, and she kicked.”
“Aye, and she’s got some really strong legs for a lass. Must be from the mountains.”
Shuddering, Liam said, “Those little white teeth of hers sank deep.”
He could hardly fathom it. Prim and proper Annalía bit Gavin and Liam? So the wine bottle incident wasn’t just a fluke. She really was a fighter, as fiery as they came.
And Pascal would’ve been bedding her, slowly killing that spirit, if they hadn’t stolen her. Maybe even starting tonight, the way he’d dressed her…. The thought made him gnash his teeth, clenching his jaw. His filthy hands on her body—
“Court, are you all right?” Niall asked. He was staring at Court’s whitened fists.
They were interrupted by a knock on the door from inside the room.
Court swung his head around, eyes narrowed as he rose. He strode through glass to snatch the door open and found her defiant, chin jutted in the air.
“I want to leave the room. I don’t like being shut in like this.”
Not a request—a statement of want. He was tired of her treating him like a lackey, tired of her looking down her little nose at him. “I’ll let you out. But only to clean the mess you made.”
She made a scoffing noise and began to shut the door. On him. Again laughter.
He wrapped his fingers around the edge, stopping her. “You’re going to clean it regardless.”
“Absolutely not, MacCarrick. I refuse,” she said with a sniff. “You deserved it—they deserved it—for kidnapping me.”
“You want out, you clean.”
Her face took on an even haughtier look, and she parted her lips to speak what he knew would be a cutting retort. Instead, her head tilted and she bit her lip. “Very well,” she mumbled.
This he never expected. “Why the sudden reversal?”
“I hate being locked up. And I’m hungry.”
He knew she was up to something, but he couldn’t find a reason not to let her clean up the things she’d used as weapons. “Good, then. I’ll have Liam help you sweep.”
She nodded, then sauntered, swishing her skirts, to the worst pile of debris. When she eased down, he tried not to stare at her ineffectual bodice.
Someone breathed, “Christ almighty.” Fergus? He was awake just for this?
Court noticed the others weren’t any more successful in prying their gazes from her breasts as her chest rose and fell with her short breaths.
With clenched fists and a glower at all of them, he stood directly in front of her to block their view. She looked at his boots, then slowly up his body, raising her head until her eyes caught his.
Damn that dress. And it was the dress. Not the way she regarded him with her head tilted so her hair flowed to the side. Not because he’d touched his tongue to that golden skin and knew her addictive taste.
She returned her attention to cleaning and picked up several silver accessories, a wooden jewelry box that somehow had managed not to break, and then a silver hairbrush and hand mirror—a broken mirror.
“You’ll have bad luck for that,” Liam said warily.
She addressed Court when she answered, “As opposed to before the breaking?”
He ground his teeth. “Liam will finish. When you’ve stowed those things, come eat.”
She hesitated a moment, then, though she was on her knees before him, she nodded to him like a queen deigning a favor. When she returned, her hair was up and her chest was red, no doubt from where she had been tugging at the dress. She might have accomplished a quarter inch.
He sat her beside him and tossed bread, cheese, and an apple in front of her. She’d said she was hungry, but she ate nothing. And still that fire-red dress attracted every eye until he was uncomfortable. Under his breath, he said, “Do you no’ have something less…garish?”
“No, I do not,” she answered with stress on the t he rarely could manage with the word. “Your young henchman—Liam, I believe is his name—packed low-cut ball gowns.”
Court removed his jacket. “Take this.” When she stared at it as though it would bite, he said more forcefully, “Take it.”
She stood to slip it on. The jacket fell past her knees and a foot below her hands.