Free The Savage Miss Saxon by Kasey Michaels Page B

hung there, her arms hanging bonelessly at her sides, while Nicholas’s hand held her unresistingly against his chest. She was incapable of pulling away, incapable of protest, incapable of anything, in fact, but feeling—feeling the warm firmness of his lips as they moved against hers.
    It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been kissed before; after all, she wasn’t that young. But this kiss was whole universes away from the quick, clumsy kisses her swains had pressed on her occasionally at some party or other. This kiss was a revelation. No one had told her how the mere meeting of two pairs of lips could make her feel as if her entire body had just been plunged into warm, scented rose water—her limbs going all soft and mushy while a white-hot heat burned in the pit of her stomach..
    She moaned, she couldn’t help herself, and Nicholas took advantage of her parted lips to deepen the kiss, a move that succeeded in setting her entire body aflame. Her hands crept up to grasp his shoulders, as she was suddenly desperately in need of something solid to hold on to, and nothing could have been more solid than Nicholas’s broad shoulders.
    Yet they weren’t solid, although they had been until he felt the touch of her hands, at which time they shuddered involuntarily, and his heart, which had been pounding heavily in his chest, skipped a beat or two before setting off again at a pace that would have far outdistanced his fastest horse. He indulged himself in these unaccustomed glorious feelings for a moment longer—as he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb—before firmly putting Alexandra from him.
    “You will,” he paused to take a deep, steadying breath, “you will permit me to say that any further disclaimers of my compromising you into marriage shall be unnecessary.”
    Alexandra had been looking at him from behind a rosy haze of utter contentment, all animosity quite forgotten, but at his words she blinked hard, dispelling the fog and suddenly seeing everything with, his lordship was to think later, rather a bit too much clarity.
    “ Kiluwa mamalachgook! ” Alexandra gritted, her eyes narrowed into angry slits. And then she hit him.
    Now, Nicholas would have been the first to say that perhaps he deserved a slap on the cheek. Indeed, he had already begun mentally preparing for the feel of Alexandra’s open palm on the side of his face. It was only to be expected after what he had said—what he had done. What he was not prepared for was the solid thump of Alexandra’s balled fist landing smack in his midsection, and he doubled over, all his wind knocked out of him.
    When he could at last raise his head, it was to see his attacker once more facing front on the seat, every hair in place, her gown and pelisse returned to their former order, and the girl herself looking remarkably unlike the scintillating creature he had so lately felt come alive in his arms. In fact, if anything, she looked prim, almost plain.
    “Who—who taught you that?” he was forced to ask, still tenderly massaging his sore ribs.
    “Harold,” she returned calmly, smoothing down a crease in the skirt of her gown. “He always said the best way to defeat the enemy is to do the unexpected, catch him off his guard. You expected a slap, don’t deny it. Next time, if I should ever be so unfortunate as to cross paths with you again, you will expect a punch in the stomach. You will, alas, be disappointed. That too Harold taught me—never try the same trick twice on the same person.”
    “Bully for Harold,” Mannering grumbled into his cravat as he turned the horses toward Saxon Hall. “I suppose you were also cursing at me in his heathen tongue?”
    Lifting her chin and looking off to the side of the road away from the Earl, she sniffed disdainfully, “Indians don’t curse, at least not in the vulgar way you Yengees —English—do. When you’ve been cursed by a Lenape, you’ll know it, for I shall be happy to translate. I merely called you