The Leopard Unleashed Read Free Page B

she tossed back her hair and narrowed her eyes. ‘You’re clever, aren’t you?’
    ‘If I was clever,’ Renard grimaced, ‘I would not be about to place half a mark on this table.’
    ‘You can afford it.’ The contemptuous expression returned to her face as she perused his rich silk tunic and gilded belt.
    ‘I am not sure that I can,’ he contradicted with a pained smile. ‘I’d certainly never buy a horse this way.’
    ‘You wouldn’t take a horse to your bed.’
    His lips twitched. ‘I wouldn’t take a knife-wielding virago either … not unless she promised to behave.’
    She stared at him with suspicious eyes. They were a deep, ocean sapphire and he could have drowned in them.
    ‘To behave,’ he added softly, ‘as befits the circumstances,
Olwen fy anghariad
.’ And he watched her through his lashes to determine the effect that using Welsh would have on her. She reminded him of a lioness, was quite likely to maul him, and his blood was surging with a rough heat he had not experienced since the early days of discovering the pleasures of bed-sport.
    ‘Don’t call me that!’ she snapped. ‘I am not your beloved!’
    ‘Not even for one night of pretence?’ Fishing out the coins he arranged them before her on the table, saw with a rueful glance Madam FitzUrse advancing on them, and wondered at his own folly.
    ‘Changed your mind then?’ the landlady smirked.
    ‘Lost it more likely,’ he retorted as she scooped up her share of the money and secreted it in her ample bosom.
    A fight broke out across the room. Renard instinctively turned towards it. Shouts and flying fists, an overturned bench and splattered wine. A woman screaming. Madam FitzUrse hitched her breasts, gestured to two brawny serving men, employed for just such occasions, and waded in to separate and evict the culprits.
    Renard grinned and looked back at the girl only to discover that both she and the money had disappeared. With an oath, he shot to his feet and, having cast a rapid eye around the room, shouldered a path through the other drinkers to the back entrance and out into the courtyard where chance had first shown her to him. It was silent anddark, apart from an unsteady drunk attempting to urinate in the gutter and splashing his boots instead. Cursing, he swung round to search elsewhere … and dis covered that she was blocking his way.
    ‘I went to fetch my robe and other things.’ She held up a small tied bundle. Tilting her head, she considered him. ‘Did you think I had run with your money?’
    Renard breathed out hard. ‘It had crossed my mind.’
    ‘It crossed mine too,’ she half smiled. ‘I suppose you are familiar with the way to the rooms?’ Husky scorn edged the question.
    Renard held out his hand. ‘Your knife,’ he said.
    Her eyes flashed with anger. Faster than a pouncing cat, Renard caught her wrists and with his free hand sought out the weapon from its neatly stitched sheath inside her robe. Gasping with effort, she writhed in his grasp. He dropped the knife, stood on the flat of the blade to keep it safe and dragged her against him, body to body, their faces bare inches apart.
    ‘A knife is not part of the bargain,’ he said, his mouth hovering over hers. ‘And neither for half a mark is a room in this place. I have a house; it isn’t far.’
    ‘Not without my dagger,’ she mouthed back at him, and raised herself on tiptoe to stroke herself against him in a slow, enticing friction.
    ‘No.’
    The space closed between them and they duelled in a long, silent kiss. She leaned in towards him, moving with her dancer’s grace, a small whimper rising in her throat as he palmed the tip of her breast. She clutched him, parting her thighs as the caress moved downwards, rubbing herself upon his fingers; then suddenly, like a viper strikinga lulled prey, she snatched his own dagger from his belt and thrust herself out of his arms.
    ‘Yes!’ she panted triumphantly.
    Breathing hard, assailed by anger,