The Danger of Desire Read Online Free Page B

splinters the last time he had felt such unbridled, unholy glee. Yet, his gaze had already swept over her body, cataloging all the likely spots. On a frame so spare, there were really only two choices.
    Her bosom, with its cleverly burst pin, and rounded little breasts pushed high and visible by her stays, was his first choice. Her display of affronted modesty notwithstanding, the current rapidity of her breath, either in fear or anticipation, was serving to offer her breasts up for breakfast. In his mind’s eye, he was already delving his fingers down into the warm vee between the improbably soft-looking mounds, sliding the back of his hand against the slight pillow of her skin, slowly pulling the gold watch chain, still warm from the heat of her body, out of the crevasse.
    The unwarranted base lust coursing into his veins must have communicated itself to her plainly. She thrust out a hand to forestall him.
    “No!” Her voice held a real edge of panic. “I’m not a whore,” she cried again.
    “Maybe not, but you’re not above using your body for your means. But I don’t need to search you—though we both know I can, and will, if I want to. I don’t need to search you for actual evidence of your light-fingered guilt. My word alone—that I saw you relieve the Honorable Mr. Penton-Thornbraith, Member of Parliament for Lower Sudbury”—he made up the name out of thin air for effect—“of his watch and purse would be enough to get you hung by your scrawny neck. Or if you were very lucky, and either the judge or the jailor decided to avail himself of your very visible offerings, you just might be kept alive in the hulks for transportation. But my experience is most convicts die on the voyage to Botany Bay.”
    He let that sink into her pale face. “Or, you could work for me.”
    “I’m not a whore,” she repeated stubbornly.
    “So you’ve said. Repeatedly. Which I begin to find tiresome. I think the lady protests too much.” He took a deep breath to stave off his annoyance. He was trying to convince her of the benefits of employment, wasn’t he? Showing her the hot end of his temper wasn’t going to help negotiations. Not that she really had a choice, but it would all go so much easier if she thought she did.
    “I need a thief, and you, to all appearances, fit the bill quite nicely. Now, who do you work for?”
    “You got this all wrong, mister. I don’t work for no one, like that. I take in sewing.”
    “Talented lass like you? Hardly likely. Some kidman must have trained you up for it. I’ll buy you off him.” Lease her was nearer to the truth, but she’d work that out, clever girl that she was. “And I’ll pay you as well. One hundred pounds.” It was a bloody fortune to someone like her, provided she didn’t drink it away, but her face didn’t bear any of the telltale signs of over-fondness for the gin.
    But not even the mention of so much money changed her tune. “You got this all wrong,” she insisted with a frustrated little stamp of her foot. Her eyes began to brim with tears. “I’m a seamstress. Look.” And again she proffered her basket of sewing, thrusting it forward for his inspection.
    And damn his eyes, he looked.
    He looked down only for a moment, long enough for an embroidered “T” on one of the pieces of fabric to catch his eye and make him pause at the improbability of such a personal, intimate touch to her disguise. Maybe he really did have this all wrong.
    And in that instant, she upended the whole bloody basket onto his lowered head.
    He threw up his arms to cast the damned thing off and scatter the clinging, obscuring bits of cloth that fell over his head. When he did, she darted to his right. But when he turned to grab her, she bounded off the wall with her left foot, and with her right, came down with infuriatingly accurate force upon the weak spot on his thigh.
    Pain exploded up his leg, hot and cutting. He crumpled to his knees from the force of her blow, even