Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)

“Then there are your shoulders.” His thumb spread along her collarbone. “I have never seen them bowed by fear or drawn together in weariness. You carry your shoulders high, and no matter the weight that is set upon them, you do not falter.” His voice dropped.

As he spoke, his hand traveled down her spine. She could feel the heat of him through the layers of muslin and whalebone as that hand traversed the curve of her back. When he reached her waist, he slid his hand around her front to grasp her own. His fingers entwined with hers, briefly; then he turned her hand palm up, in his.

“I’ve heard,” he said dryly, “that fortune-tellers can see your future in the palm of your hand. What do you suppose I see in yours?”

Her hand was dwarfed by his, her fingers seeming wan next to his. The color of his hands made her think of long days aboard ship, of adventurous treks with strange beasts cavorting nearby and strong men with sharp cutlasses. She could feel the heat of him, as if all the sun absorbed in that golden brown skin were emanating from him now.

Next to him…

“I look small,” she said. And fragile. The kind of woman to be set to side, for fear that she would shatter. That was all anyone had even seen in her.

“I think you look delicate,” he corrected. “Delicate and indomitable, all at once. I see no tremor in your hands, Kate, no fear, no smallness of character.”

“But I—”

“And when I look into your eyes,” he said, “I think you are as implacable as an archangel.”

He closed his hand around hers; her fingers curled into a loose fist, cradled in his. “Your feelings,” he said, “are your own. And if you hold them tight to your chest, nobody need ever see beneath the surface.”

As he spoke, he leaned into her. His words brushed her skin in little puffs of breath.

“Nobody need see a thing. But I want to,” he breathed.

She turned her head to look up into his eyes. And that, assuredly, was a mistake, because if her stomach had been in knots before, the knot clenched into a tangle of Gordian proportions when she looked in his face. She could not have unraveled herself from his gaze, and when she tried—when she glanced away—her eyes alighted upon his lips. Strong and smooth, powerful and gentle.

It left her with the most curious fluttering feeling in her belly. Not that he was going to kiss her—but that he had already done so. Her lips already burned with the impression that his words had left on her. Her skin flamed with the possibility of his nearness. And no matter how practical she told herself to be, rational thought fled before his words.

When Kate parted her lips and stood on her tiptoes, turning in his embrace, it seemed she was merely bringing the words he had spoken to their physical conclusion.

She kissed him, not because she wanted to bring him to his knees, but because he had lifted her off hers. She tasted him, and he tasted of salt and man and the power that the right woman could wield in the right place. And he kissed her back, giving no quarter.

He pulled away. “No, Kate,” he said quietly. “I don’t want to intimidate you. I don’t want you to fear me. I want to look at you and finally see what I’ve been missing these long years. You’re a damned Valkyrie.”

He turned her back to the mirror. Kate felt almost on the edge of tears.

She didn’t want this—didn’t want her secret dreams to come true, didn’t want to hope again. But it was too late. She was already yearning for this. She was already yearning for him.

“It’s not quite true. I am afraid,” she stated baldly. “If I were a Valkyrie, I would not be. I wouldn’t feel a thing.”

“In the stories,” he said, his voice a dark rasp against her skin, “the heroine always slays the dragon and lops off his head. The villagers rejoice and build a bonfire, and darkness never again falls on the land.”

She could feel his hands at her side, warm and powerful. “But those,” Ned continued, “are only fairy stories. In reality…”

He smiled at her in the mirror, a lopsided smile. There was something faintly wicked about that expression, as if he were about to impart to her a great secret, one that had been closely guarded by a centuries-old society. She swayed unwittingly against him.

“In reality,” he whispered, “the dragons never die, and the big sword-wielding buffoons in unwieldy armor cannot slay them. Real heroes tame their dragons. Your fear, my—” He cut himself off, and that sad half smile burst into an incandescent grin. If she had not been awake to the flitting expressions that passed his face, she wouldn’t have noticed the suddenness of the change.

“Your what?” she prompted.

“I went to China to slay dragons. Instead, I tamed them.”

“I thought you went to China to examine the Blakely holdings in the East India Company, to see if the rumors you had heard were true.”