Did he wish her to go? Was he angry to see her? It was so hard to read his expression at the best of times, and the mask only made matters worse. Bess fretted for an excruciatingly awkward moment before she noticed his hands.
Those big, raw-knuckled, broad-palmed hands hung loose by his sides but as her gaze dropped to them, they flexed minutely as though they wanted to reach for her.
That one tiny movement gave her the courage to smile tremulously up at him and say, “I’m here for you.”
He took another step closer. It looked involuntary. Bess tipped her head back to keep her gaze on his face, which twisted a bit as he rasped, “You can’t simply say things like that.”
“Why not? It’s true. I wanted to see you again.”
She watched him swallow. “To see me fight.”
Bess shook her head. “No. In fact, we can dispense with the fight altogether, as far as I am concerned. I hated it last time. And I would be your prize for nothing.”
You don’t have to win me, she wanted to say. You already deserve me.
But did he? Bess bit her lip and tried to hold back the softest part of her heart from squishing out all over the place like jam from a roly-poly.
At any rate, it didn’t seem to matter because he was already backing away. “I have to fight. But. After…”
Bess nodded, excitement and happiness and nerves fizzing up in her chest, bubblier than home-brewed apple cider. “After.”
He stopped, his handsome lips forming a silent curse before he strode back to her and grasped her face in his hands to kiss her.
Bess opened for him at once, eager and ardent. His tongue stroked into her mouth, and she threw her arms around his neck. He growled in his chest, deepening the kiss until Bess’s head was swimming.
He broke the kiss with a gasp, a lock of brown hair falling rakishly over his masked forehead. Bess came back to herself with the crowd all around them going wild, cheering and slapping Nathaniel on the back and good-naturedly urging him to get on with the fight so they could finish what they’d started.
She had to let him go, though it was the last thing she wanted to do. As if he felt the reluctance in her grip, Nathaniel tilted his forehead to hers and whispered, “After.”
A promise.
Bess let go. He stepped back and gave her a smile. Just a small, private smile that was only for her—as though the tavern and his opponent and Rufus and Madame Leda and all the rest didn’t exist.
And as he prowled back to the center of the ring and fell into a fighting stance as easily as breathing, Bess racked her memory for another moment when she might have seen Nathaniel smile like that. But she couldn’t.
He didn’t smile, she realized, her heart squeezing.
Only tonight, he did. At her.
It was a thought that kept her warm and distracted as The Berserker and the giant who fought under the unlikely moniker of “Gentleman Percy” squared off.
She needed the distraction; when Madame Leda left the ring and the fight began in earnest, Percy came out swinging fists the size of picnic hams, and it was all Bess could do not to cry out a warning.
Which would’ve been idiotic and unnecessary, since Nathaniel was already well aware of the danger, so Bess pressed her lips together. And while Nathaniel blocked and ducked, pivoted and slid past Percy to deliver a staggering blow to his side ribs, Bess fought her own battle: to keep her instinctive and visceral flinching off her face.
Because the few times Percy managed to land a blow on his light-footed opponent and Bess, in an unguarded moment, visibly winced—the spectators around her hooted and howled, stamping their feet.
It only served to distract Nathaniel, and Bess wouldn’t have that.
Not when all she wished was for this fight to be over, so they could commence their much more intimate—and pleasurable—battle upstairs.
Nathaniel seemed to be of the same mind, if the almost clinical precision of his hits was any indication. Everyone around Bess agreed that The Berserker was in rare form tonight, demonstrating a master class in tiring out a larger opponent and weakening him systematically with body shots to the ribs and belly.
Or so the two gentlemen who kept jostling Bess’s right elbow with their gesticulating arms seemed to think.
All she knew was that even though Percy must have outweighed Nathaniel by at least four stone, their fight ended after ten minutes without Nathaniel ever taking a serious hit.
Relief rushed over Bess like a cool breeze at the easy way Nathaniel moved as he helped his opponent up off the ground and shook his meaty paw. Relief…and anticipation.
