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“That is ridiculous,” she retorted. “I am not afraid. Have we not formed an alliance?”
“Oh, aye. A bandit’s alliance.”
“Precisely. And have you not assured me my safety is your utmost concern?”
“That I have. And did you not just say you lied about your ankle?”
She opened her mouth, then shut it.
“How do I, your vigilant captor, know if it is truly turned, or naught but a ruse to help you plot another escape?”
They stared at each other, then she said, “I do not plot,” with great dignity, and slowly lifted the hem of her skirts.
Máel’s breathing slowed, arrested by the sight.
Why? Why in God’s name should his breathing slow at the sight of one bedraggled slipper, laced up with silk ribbons, and the hesitant appearance of a woman’s ankle?
He’d seen far more sultry maneuvers than this clumsy reveal, danced by women in taverns and war camps and in the cold, misty distant reaches of the world. He’d known exceptionally willing women and exceptionally crea
tive ones.
But the sight of this slim, damp ankle being revealed to him from under pink and purple silk made his blood flow hot and heavy.
Dammit.
She was upending all his plans.
How did one wreak destruction upon an ankle?
She began unlacing her slipper, then lifted her bare foot and placed it on the log before her.
Máel stared at it grimly, for he knew a fated moment when he faced one.
Moments where the past and the future were swallowed up by the certainty of this one single moment. When you were submerged in the awareness that you stood at the edge of a precipice. That whatever happened next mattered.
If he touched her, he was doomed.
He reached out as if in a dream.
Chapter 19
Cassia waited for him to continue his mischief, to reach out and examine her ankle and test her mischief. To prove her false. But for the longest time, he didn’t move.
He simply stared at her ankle, as if it were some foreign object that baffled him. And in that pause, with her skirt hem lifted a bare inch, her cheeks grew hot and her heart began to hammer.
He reached out with his calloused hand, more shaped for a weapon than a woman, and ran a single finger, gloved to the knuckle, down her ankle.
It was bone—just skin and bone—but she felt scorched. The breath burst from her lungs, as if she were…
Aroused.
His hand dropped immediately. His gaze raked up her leg, her torso, lingering for half a second on her chest, to settle on her eyes. It was a weighted thing, this look. Heavy. Loaded. She felt buried under the desire she saw there.
“It requires bandaging.” His voice sounded thick.
“Indeed.” She was shocked to hear hers was just as thick.
Good heavens.
