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She hesitated, then said, “One of my favorite games,” and took her seat.
Chapter Seventeen
AODH SAT BACK as she picked up her cards. Carefully now.
The thought was a caution, a reminder of how quickly she could be gone, in heart and body. And as he’d spent the entire day in a state of constant erection, making even the simple task of bending over a painful chore, he had every intention of slaking the lust that hammered through him, tonight. In Katy.
She did feel something for him, something powerful, notwithstanding her rejection of him. It was simply buried very deep inside. Coals banked beneath ash. Aodh knew well the suffocating power of ash; it should be a fifth element, as powerful as fire or air, if only to extinguish.
So, carefully now, he counseled himself again, or she will be gone. Into the ash.
“Shall we wager?” he asked.
Her gaze drifted up from her downturned face. “Is that a taunt? I have nothing.”
“Aye, you do. Open the chest.” He nodded toward the chest beside her.
She cast a doubtful glance at the wooden box banded in thick iron, then flipped open its lid and drew in a sharp breath.
“Oh, Aodh.” It was a whisper, a breathy, feminine exhalation.
He shook his head in resignation as his cock swelled hard. Again.
She dipped her fingertips into the chest, sweeping through the piles of coin that lay inside. They glittered dully and clinked. He held his cards up, watching her warily over their tops. Sooth, he’d been unsure how she would respond to a chest of coins. S
he might be pleased or she might be…furious. It could happen. Women existed in a state of mystery.
Her head came up, her fingertips still dipped beneath the top layer of coin. “You mean to buy me?”
Ah, there it was. She was angry. This coin, purchased with much toil and pain and one dead man—Rudolph, the idiot—had been reduced to a simple insult. It wasn’t unexpected. To his surprise, though, he felt the bite of anger.
“I’m not buying you, lass. They are gifts. Or, do you prefer, negotiations. Rardove needs coin, aye?” He nodded toward the chest. “There is coin.”
She slid the gold between her fingers with a little clinking, then sat back, wrist still over the lip of the chest, watching him. Like a Roman queen. Like an army commander in her tent. “Very well, Aodh Mac Con. What shall we wager?”
He smiled slowly. “I can think of several things.”
“Say, an angel, to start?”
“Fine.”
She lifted out a handful of coins and laid them in a pile before him, then, very deliberately, took a single gold coin out of the chest and laid it on the table between them. He did the same from the pile she’d given him. They nodded at each other and sat back.
For a moment, they were silent, looking over their cards and preparing their respective attacks. Outside, another low rumble of thunder sounded. He cast a surreptitious glance across the table. Katarina’s head was bent. A few strands of hair lifted away from the confining braid she’d twisted her hair into, which hung down her back in a thick russet plait, under a pale green veil.
“How goes the rebellion?” she asked as she set down a card.
“Apace,” he replied absently, looking at it. “We’re building alliances.”
“With whom?”
“The MacMahon have sent someone, as did the O’Reilly tribe.” He set down a card. “Dalton rode in this morning. He is one of ours now.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “He was always one of yours. He has no love of Elizabeth.”
They each tossed in another coin. “I will be visiting the town soon.”
This earned a dark look from under her brows. “My town?”
