Free The Hunter by Monica Mccarty Page B

“Please,” she begged, looking up into his eyes.
    His gaze fell into hers. “You really are scared?”
    There was a strange note in his voice. A slight huskiness that penetrated through the haze of panic and sent a twinge of heated awareness racing through her.
    She nodded, her face tilted toward his only inches away.
    Inches away
. Her breath caught. Only then did sherealize what she had done. Her hands were clutching his arms and her body was pressed against his. Intimately. Chest to chest and hip to hip. She could feel every hard inch of his chest and legs. She could feel something else as well. Something that made her mouth go dry, her heart drop, and her stomach flip all at the same time.
    Oh, my
.
    The shock of it startled her. It was as if every nerve-ending in her body had been struck by a lightning bolt of awareness. She opened her mouth to gasp, but the sound strangled in her throat when their eyes met.
    Heaven help her! Despite the rain and the cold, her body filled with heat.
    If she hadn’t felt the proof of his desire, she could see it now in his eyes. He wanted her, and the force of it seemed to be radiating under her fingertips, making her tremble with unfamiliar sensations. Her heart seemed to be racing too fast, her breath to be short and uneven, and her limbs too heavy.
    She couldn’t seem to move. She was caught up in something she didn’t understand but couldn’t resist. Didn’t
want
to resist.
    When his gaze dropped to her mouth, she knew what he was going to do. And she would have let him had he not found enough sense for both of them.
    His jaw locked, and the tiny muscle below his chest began to tic. He looked away.
    She let her hands drop and took a sudden step back, as if she were a bairn who’d just been caught by the cook with her hand on a tart and was trying to distance herself from the scene of her crime.
    She didn’t know what had come over her. She’d never touched a man so freely before, let alone tried to persuade one in such a manner.
    His voice sounded more curt than normal. “There is aninn not too far away in Trows that should be safe to stop at for the night.”
    Janet couldn’t hide her relief. “Thank you.”
    Trows! She realized suddenly what that meant. Not only had she avoided the bridge, she’d also managed to find a way—unconsciously, as it happened—to get to Roxburgh. Trows was only a short distance away.
    He gave her a hard look, and not for the first time, she wondered if he knew what she was thinking. “We cannot go as we are. A nun and a warrior traveling alone will draw too much comment.”
    Since he was being agreeable for once, she refrained from pointing out that she’d told him that same thing when he insisted on accompanying her. “What do you suggest?”
    “I’ll remove some of my armor, and you’ll have to take off your veil and the white scapular.”
    Her eyes widened as she realized what he intended. “You mean to pretend we are married?”
    Why did the idea frighten her more than pretending to be a nun? If she were going to parse her sins, the latter was infinitely more damning.
    “Do you have any other suggestions?”
    “Aren’t there any other places we could take shelter? A cave? An abandoned shieling? A hut?”
    “Yes, on the other side of that river.” He pointed to the bridge just as another rush of water poured over it. “It’s up to you.”
    The choice was obvious. There wasn’t any reason she should have hesitated, but she did. Why did the idea of pretending to be his wife terrify her almost as much as the bridge did? “The inn.”
    He gave her a curt nod. “I will leave you a minute to tend to your needs and remove your habit.” He pointed to the wooden cross on her neck that she’d worn since the night she tried to free her sister. “Hide that as well.”
    She was grateful for the moment of privacy. She tendedto her most pressing need, and then quickly removed the veil and scapular, which wasn’t easy in the rain