Bones for Bread (The Scarlet Plumiere) Read Free

tension in herself, truth be told. And the more she struggled, the closer he held her.
    She stilled, the realization much more disturbing than being held against her will. She was pressed against his chest, her head turned with her ear against his heart. Heaven help her but he was a tall drink. And wide as well. She was squeezed up against the center of him but there was room to both sides. He could likely hold two of her just as easily.
    A rather stirring scent tickled her nose and not at all unpleasant. She refused to take a deep breath of him, however. Not only would she give away the fact that he had some effect on her, but she suspected she might enjoy his scent so much she’d never be able to scrub it from her memory. And scrub it she would. The horrors of war and the search for Martin were memories she soon planned to load onto a ship with her brother and send away.
    Blair huffed, as much to expel the stranger from her nose as to let him know she was finished with being held down.
    “Parlez Anglais?” he asked.
    “Oui.” She let him know two things with her strained answer, that she did speak French, and that he was holding her too tightly.
    He loosened his hold, but only just.
    “Forgive me, Mademoiselle. For all I knew you would run me through with your impressive blade before I had a chance to speak.”
    Impressive? When had the man ever seen Wolfkiller?
    It was a question she would not voice. Instead, she asked, “The lobby would not do well enough for a conversation?”
    He laughed, his low voice rumbling deep in his chest and into her own.
    “I’m going to move you away from the door, now. I’ll not have you escaping before I have the chance to light a candle. And I must remove your weapon. Surely you can understand why.”
    She took up struggling again, but it impeded him not at all.
    Slowly, but easily, he moved her hand away from her pocket, then grasped her wrist with his other hand, completely controlling her with one arm alone. Slowly, without a bit of conscience, he slid his free hand down along her side.
    She gasped. “Ye wouldna dare!”
    His hand froze, but she suspected it wasn’t her words that gave him pause, but her accent. He’d thought her French and she’d just let her brogue slip what with the shock of having a man dare to put his hands on her. He took a slow breath, then another, his chest inflating against her each time he did so.
    “I beg your pardon,” he said, but his hand resumed its path down her side. When his fingers searched the folds of her skirt for her pocket, she fought with everything she had left, finding to her surprise that his presence inspired more strength than the bit she’d walked through the door with. But she couldn’t simply stand there and allow him to find the hole in her pocket.
    She could no longer afford to fight like a lady.
    “Get yer hands from me ye great bloody bastard!”
    If he was shocked by her language, it failed to slow his search. He spun her around and pressed her against the wall with his body, still holding tight to her hand, which pinned her arm between her body and the wall. She screamed, for all the good it would do her. Any who heard her voice would likely assume she’d seen a wee mousie, or a rat.
    The lack of comment from his friends told her they were not in the room.
    She was alone, in the dark, with the man they called Ash. The fascinating one. The man who slayed the dragons of her nightmares and stomped out the evil faeries who’d taken her brother and had come for her.
    The man whose hand was roaming up and down her leg!
    He finally found the pocket, then reached beyond it, and she realized the man must have been watching her closely indeed to know where her best weapon lay.
    Then she remembered his first words to her. “ So, you are a woman .”
    He hadn’t been surprised she was a woman. He’d known!
    She clamped her mouth tight and bucked against him, then froze when she realized such a move would be the most