She paused and looked up at him with large eyes. “Why are you scowling at me now?”
“You are terminally pleasant. How can you sit there and be so happy over nothing at all?”
“It certainly beats being sad over nothing at all. Don’t you agree?”
He stiffened at her implication. “I happen to like being sad over nothing at all. I find it suits me.”
“A smile would suit you better. My mother always says that a smile is dressing for the face.”
“And I always say the face, much like the body, is best left naked.”
Her cheeks pinkened at his words. “Do you always speak so freely?”
“I thought you said I don’t speak at all.”
Her face fair glowed with impish delight. She was enjoying their verbal sparring and though he hated to admit it, there was a part of him that liked it too.
“You’re certainly an interesting dichotomy,” she admitted. “I will give you that. A paragon of contradictions.”
“How so?”
“Well, you live in a cave which suggests a rugged demeanor and at the same time you made sure that you brought the comforts from home. You act beastly to people and you treat beasts with care. What say you to that?”
“I say that you have spent entirely too much time contemplating me.”
Just as he had spent entirely too much time contemplating her and the way the breeze played through her blond hair that peeped out from under her gauzy veil. The way the curve of her lips looked so moist and inviting.
Lips that would probably be as soft as a rose’s petals.
Perfect lips that would taste like heaven...
He shook himself from that mental direction. The last time he had thought such foolishness, he had paid well for it.
And so had Kieran.
“Do you like living alone?” she asked suddenly. “I’m not sure if I would like it or not.” Before he could respond, she added. “Of course, I talk so much you’re probably thinking that I could carry on a conversation with myself for so long that like as not I’d never miss anyone else.”
He smiled in spite of himself.
Nora gasped. “Was that a smile?”
He cleared his throat. “Was what a smile?”
“That strange curvature of your lips. You know, the one where the corners are actually going up instead of down.”
It was all he could do not to smile again. “I know not what you mean.”
It didn’t work.
Nora sat back with a satisfied look on her beautiful face. “You have a most pleasant smile, my lord. Perhaps ‘tis best to keep them hidden. The rarity of them will make them all the more valuable. So I shall cherish that one until I gain another from you.”
She was the strangest woman he had ever met. Quite daft, point of fact.
And she continued to chatter while he found himself listening to her. Listening to the cadence of her voice, the soft lulling quality of it.
There was something soothing about the sound and the fact that she didn’t really expect to converse with him, but was content just to prattle off on her own.
But what disturbed him most was the craving she awoke inside him.
