Reaching for the deadly blade, she withdrew the dagger a few telling inches from its fine leather sheath. The brightly gleaming steel shone wickedly narrow, its razor-sharp edge clearly honed to kill.
Ronan narrowed his eyes on the weapon, glad for something besides her naked, still-jigging breasts to focus on.
“My mother — a master at knife-throwing — gave me this dirk.” She kept her chin raised, her eyes glinting as bright as the sun on the lochan.
“She learned the craft from her brothers,” she hurried on, caressing the richly tooled sheath as she spoke.
“And you learned well.” Ronan was sure of it.
She nodded, clearly proud. “Mothertaughtme well. She also ne’er let me forget that her skill once saved her life.”
She paused then, her fingers stilling on the dirk’s sheath.
Ronan felt a sharp pulling in his loins, wondered if she knew how much the play of her fingers on that long leather sheath was rousing him.
As was every other part of her!
He bit back a groan, his blood heating. Ne’er had he seen a more tempting creature.
Her breasts gleamed in the day’s soft light.
Her nipples puckered in the chill air. Hued the exact shade of dusky-rose he’d imagined; he could scarce bear looking upon them.
Nor, saints preserve him, could he resist.
Heedless, she flicked a clinging twig from her skirts and tossed back her tangled, flame-bright hair. “Like Mother, I, too, would ne’er hesitate to use my talents to safeguard myself or those I hold dear!”
Ronan grunted.
He believed every word she said, but the wind was freshening. Light gusts tugged at her up-hitched skirts, lifting the edges and giving him brief, tantalizing glimpses of her red-curled femininity.
And the sight — so unwittingly revealed — was nigh unmanning him.
Quickly, before he did something they’d both regret, he reached and yanked down her skirts. Not wanting to risk helping her adjust her bodice and thus, inevitably, touch her flesh, he shrugged off his great travel cloak and swirled it around her shoulders.
“You will catch a chill if you dinna cover yourself.” The excuse sounded ridiculous even to him.
She lifted a brow.
Her lips quirked then curved into another of her dazzling smiles.
“My health is as stout as yon Highland garrons.” She glanced at the two horses, quietly grazing side by side near Buckie’s onion creel. “I ne’er take a chill.”
As if to prove it, she lifted her hands and removed his cloak, slipping out of it quickly before his warmth and his scent bewitched her so thoroughly she couldn’t ever bear to be parted from it.
Already, her heart was skittering and it was all she could do not to clutch the thing against her breasts, branding his heat and the clean, manly essence of him into her skin.
Instead, she folded the cloak carefully and placed it on the trestle table’s cushioned bench.
Then she drew a breath, opting for honesty. “I know you covered me so you wouldn’t have to see my breasts.”
To his credit, he didn’t deny it.
He did, however, look more miserable than she’d yet seen him.
“Lass —”
“Dinna say it.” She looked down, tied her bodice laces as best she could with fingers she pretended weren’t trembling. “I have eyes, see you?”
