Lois Greiman Read Online Free PDF Page B

might actually venture a second objection, but apparently he wasn’t completely daft, because he finally left, his back painfully straight and his expression disapproving.
    The room was nearly empty in a moment. Only Burr’s huge form marred the landscape.
    “Stabbed you,” he said and, chuckling, shambled toward the door. “Good for her.”
    They were alone in a moment. Cairn turned slowly toward the girl. The numbing shock had worn off and his chest was beginning to throb rhythmically, but one glance at the diminutive thief drove all thoughts of pain from his mind. In truth, it drove thoughts of any kind from his mind, sending all his blood pumping down to lower regions.
    She stood as perfectly still as the Grecian statuette, her golden body unmoving, and draped down the midsection, like a sultan’s gossamer curtain, was the silken scarf. He hadn’t realized what an erotic picture she would make, and wondered suddenly if the sight of her might not have had something to do with Peters’s laggardly exodus. Perhaps he should not place so much stock in the man’s loyalty to himself as to the girl’s…well…He stared at her and felt his blood pressure rise with his cock. If he didn’t detest the very thought of anything that belonged to Wheaton, he might well be tempted to bed her. Then again, since when did affection have to foreshadow sex?
    Perhaps his thoughts showed in his eyes, because she bunched the cloth more tightly between her breasts and backed up a step. But if she hoped for modesty, she would have been sorely disappointed, for though the scarf managed to shield her midline from view, the sheer fabric seemed to do little more than magnify her bounteous charms.
    Beneath his kilt, he hardened and grew. Sometimes Hoary, as Cairn called his favorite nether part, forgot the greater good, preferring to embark on his own endeavors. Cairn stared at her in silence, taking in the wide verdant eyes, the rigid shoulders, the firm bulges beside her arms, which were pressed in an inverted v against her chest.
    Hoary stirred restlessly. Cairn’s gaze flickered downward,then up. His cock waited in taut anticipation for her reaction, but if he’d hoped for unbridled desire, he, too, would be sadly disappointed, because she did nothing but raise her chin and tighten her grip on the scarf.
    “So you truly are Lord MacTavish,” she said. Her voice was low and quiet, perhaps from spending too much time in smoky taverns, waiting for her victims to drop in alcohol-induced unconsciousness.
    “Aye,” he agreed amicably. ’Twas so simple to be amicable when one had the upper hand. When cornered and tortured, he tended to be more cantankerous. Luckily, she’d only had a cartographer’s tool close to hand, he thought, and smiled a little, wondering what would have happened if his interests ran toward weaponry instead of maps.
    Her eyes had the slightest slant to them, but her nose was as straight as a whaler’s harpoon. Had she not been a thief and a liar, she would have made a fine lady—aristocratic, superior, cold. Aye, she might be many things, but at least she was not nobility. She stole honestly. He took a step toward her and thought it unfortunate that he hadn’t given her a handkerchief instead of a scarf, for while the silk teased and suggested, it also hid some of her more intriguing features, falling just to the middle of her thighs.
    “I am MacTavish,” he said and bowed slightly. Sir Albert—Bert, as Burr called him in an ever successful attempt to peeve the narrow baron, had taught Cairn some of the accoutrements of nobility. Bowing was one of Cairn’s more successful endeavors. Language was not. “And who are you?”
    She licked her lips. Hoary took note of the quick dart of her tongue, and despite that appendage’s distraction, Cairn managed to notice that she hesitated yet again. But finally she spoke.
    “My name is Mrs. Mulgrave.”
    He felt his brows rise. He hadn’t expected her to tell the