“Still dressed?” he murmured as he moved toward her.
“Did ye expect me to be naked and laid out on the bed for ye?” she snapped.
His lips twitched as he suppressed a grin. “Nay, Mistress Ailis. ‘Twould be more your way to meet me fully armed and hot for my blood.”
She frowned when he sat down near her and calmly removed his boots. It was a very poor time to so clearly notice his good looks and virility. Coldness was what she needed to maintain, coldness or at least disinterest. When he stripped down to his hose, she abruptly stood up. She definitely needed to fortify that disinterest with another drink. One look at his smoothly muscular chest had stolen every bit of coldness she had mustered.
Alexander guessed her intent and, moving quickly, clasped the decanter at the same time she did, preventing her from getting another drink. “Ye have had enough, wench. I dinna care to lie with an insensible female.” He pried her hand from the bottle and grasped her by the shoulders, surveying her gentle curves with undisguised hunger. “Undress,” he ordered.
That curt demand made Ailis ache to hit the man, but with great effort she refrained and replied with an equal curtness. “Nay.” She gave a startled yelp when Alexander deftly tore both her undertunic and her chemise down the front.
As Ailis made an instinctive move to flee, Alexander grasped her by the shoulders again and pressed her against the wall. It was an effort for him to tear his gaze from the soft golden beauty he had uncovered. Finally he looked at her face, meeting her wide, angry, but fearless brown eyes.
“If ye intend to screech so, then I am glad we put your burly guard in the dungeons for the night.”
“Jaime is in a cell?” she whispered, and her concern for her friend ended her embarrassment over being naked before a man as well as her anger over his rough manner. She was all too aware of Jaime’s terror of such places.
“Aye,” Alexander murmured as he discarded her torn clothing. “ ‘Tis more for his good than for mine.”
A desperate need to free her friend from the mental horror she knew he was suffering prompted Ailis’s next move. She reached out to the table to their side and grasped the wine decanter. She knew Alexander saw her move even as she swung, but it was too late for him to stop her. He fell beneath her blow, the shards of the broken bottle and its contents surrounding him.
