Slightly Wicked Read Online Free PDF Page A

considerably disheveled. Her green cloak was dark with damp at the shoulders, slightly muddied at the hem. His intention had been to tumble her into bed as soon as they arrived so that they might slake the first rush of their appetite. But the time did not feel right. He was a lusty man but not one of unbridled passions. Sex, after all, was an art as well as a necessary physical function. The art of sex needed atmosphere.
    All evening and all night stretched before them. There was no hurry.
    “You will wish to freshen up,” he said. “I will have a pint of ale in the taproom and come back up when dinner is ready. I’ll have a pot of tea sent up to you.”
    She turned to him. “That would be kind of you,” she said.
    He almost changed his mind. The color was high in her cheeks again, and her eyelids were slightly drooped in invitation. Her hair was rumpled, as though she had just risen from bed. He wanted to put her back there, himself on top of her and between her thighs and deep inside her.
    Instead he made her a mocking bow and raised one eyebrow.
    “Kind?” he said. “Now kindness is something I am not often accused of, ma’am.”
    He spent all of an hour in the taproom, drinking his ale while a group of townsmen included him hospitably in their circle and asked his opinion of the weather and his observations on the state of the roads while puffing on their pipes and drinking deep from their tankards and agreeing sagely with one another that now they were going to pay for all the hot summer weather they had been enjoying for the past several weeks.
    He went up to the private dining parlor when the landlady informed him that the food was about to be carried up. Claire was there, standing in the doorway between the two rooms, watching a maid set the table and then bring in the food and set it down.
    “It is steak-and-kidney pie,” the girl said with a smile and a curtsy before she left the room and closed the door behind her. “The best for ten miles around, I do declare. Enjoy it. Ring when you want me to remove the dishes.”
    “We will. Thank you,” Claire said.
    Rannulf had been almost afraid to look at her until they were alone together. He had had only glimpses of the muslin dress beneath her cloak. Now he could see that it was a simply styled garment, unexpectedly modest for a woman of her profession. But she had been traveling by stage. She had probably needed to wear something that would not attract too much attention. The dress did nothing to hide the glories of the body beneath it, though. She was not slender even though her long limbs gave that initial impression. She was lusciously curved, her waist small, her hips flaring invitingly. Her breasts, full and firm, were every man’s dream come true.
    She had not dressed her hair up. She had brushed it back from her face, and it fell in shining ripples over her shoulders and halfway down her back. It was a glorious, almost shocking shade of red with gold highlights that glinted in the late daylight. Her long, oval face had lost its flush of color and was as pale and delicate as porcelain. Her eyes looked startlingly green. And—yes, by Jove—there was something unexpected about the face, something that drew her down into the realm of mortality. He closed the distance between them and ran a finger lightly over her nose, from one cheek to the other.
    “Freckles,” he said. The merest dusting of them.
    Some of the color returned to her cheeks. “They were the bane of my childhood,” she said. “And alas, they have never completely disappeared.”
    “They are charming,” he said. He had always admired goddesses. He had never bedded one. He liked his women made of flesh and blood. He had almost feared when he first came into the room that Claire Campbell was a goddess.
    “I have to cover them with a great deal of paint when I am onstage,” she told him.
    “Almost,” he said, his gaze lowering to her mouth, “you have robbed me of my appetite