take my shoes!” If she managed to escape she needed her shoes, but more importantly, she didn’t want him to know about the knife.
He ignored her protests and clamped an arm around her legs, effectively turning her into a twitching worm with no limbs. The extra weight pained her wrists, so she stopped fighting and hung her head, accepting the momentary defeat. The left ankle boot was the first to be tossed across the room, followed soon by the right. He stood and his boots came into her line of vision as he moved around to her front. Though they were dusty, the hint of a sheen that lurked beneath implied they were impeccably cared for. Outlaws were scruffy creatures who could barely get their hands on two coins to rub together, because they drank away everything they stole. Who were these men?
Taking her chin in a chillingly gentle hold, he forced her to meet his gaze. He wasn’t smiling as he held the knife he’d found in its leather sheath before her face.
“Ever use this before?” His warm breath fanned her cheek.
“A few times.” She jerked her chin from his grasp. “I’m used to dealing with unsavory men.”
But none so handsome as him, an inner voice chided. With him standing so close to her, it was difficult not to notice his beauty. The planes of his face, his cheekbones, the bow of his lips, the strong jaw and chin, he could have been sculpted in granite by a master craftsman. The coarse sprinkling of a few days’ worth of beard only made his classic beauty more rugged and masculine. Oh, dear Lord, Em, of all the men Ship has brought home to you, you pick this one to become a fool over? A pretty face did not equal pretty intentions, and this one had some fairly dubious intentions toward her. The fact that he was beautiful was an atrocity against nature, not something to become weak in the knees over.
Without warning, he unsheathed the blade and threw it across the small room so that it embedded itself in the wall, the wooden handle vibrating.
“Do you have anything else in that dress that I should know about?” His smooth, deep voice caressed her ears in a way that was entirely too unseemly for their current situation.
Her locket! Her eyes widened before she could stop them and her heart gave a jolt in her chest. She’d been so concerned with physically fighting him that she had forgotten all about her locket and the sleeping powder it contained. Of course! It should have been her plan all along. When she turned twelve her mother had presented her with a pouch of white powder, left over from her days at the brothel. With shrewd eyes and in a conspiratorial whisper, she had shared with Emmaline its secret. A little bit put into a man’s drink would leave no taste and would leave him well rested and certain that he’d had the best tumble of his life, albeit too embarrassed to admit that he didn’t remember the actual act itself. Too much and he’d be left groggy, disoriented, and suspicious the next morning.
Emmaline had used it before and knew that it worked well. While her mother had lived, the men Ship rode with had kept their distance and usually slept in the barn if he brought them home. After her death, they found their way inside more often than not. Generally they kept their distance from her, regarding her as the child of their boss and off-limits, but occasionally—especially if Ship was drunk or preoccupied—one would make an advance. Sometimes she was able to verbally put them in their place, sometimes a flash of her knife had done the trick, but when that hadn’t worked she’d smiled and sweetly offered them a drink. Thinking they had won her over, they had eagerly accepted and grinned lecherously as they anticipated the night to come. Emmaline had always slept well on those nights.
She’d been stupid to forget the powders and now she was terrified of losing her only advantage. “No, nothing.” She shook her head as vigorously as she was able given her awkward position. When his gaze narrowed, she held a breath and forced a calm she didn’t feel, lest she give herself away. “The knife was all I had.”
He didn’t seem convinced and she tried not to gasp when his big hands tore at the lacing on the front of her corset, before pushing up underneath. “What the hell are you doing?”
He didn’t answer but reached behind her to the ties in the back. Panic gripped her as the strings gave way. “Please, don’t!” His arms were around her almost like an embrace, and her struggles only seemed to emphasize that as with every movement she somehow twisted closer to him. Suddenly he became every nightmare she’d ever had about the men in Ship’s gang. She was trussed, more helpless than she had ever been, and this man was so much stronger than her. Making sure to get both sets of toes on the ground, she pushed upward with her last bit of strength and bent her knees, hoping to catch him in his groin or middle, anywhere soft where a kneecap could hurt.
His hands dropped immediately to catch her, gripping her at the top of her thighs and pressing downward, holding them steady so that her one jolt of momentum had been lost and she flailed helplessly until she could get traction on the floor with her toes again. Except that when she did, her front was almost entirely pressed to his, so there was no space to attack him. “Whoa...easy... I won’t hurt you like that, Em.” His voice was low and deep.
She was so shocked when he spoke her name that she gasped aloud. His lips tipped upward in an attractive smile. It was knowing and teasing, hinting at an awareness between them that she had no intention of acknowledging aloud. Damn him, it made her aware of the hard, strong length and breadth of his body pressed against hers and the way his big hands held her thighs tight against his own, and the fact that those things weren’t entirely unpleasant. Nothing about the moment should have reassured her about his intentions, but it did. He didn’t mean to force himself on her.
“You know my name.”
“The man at the saloon called you Em.” He explained. “What’s it short for? Emily? Emma?”
The fact that her eyes had slipped down to watch his mouth form those words only made her angry. “That’s none of your business.”
His brow rose and with that same lazy amusement, his hands slipped from her thighs and he moved to stand behind her to deftly finish unlacing the corset until it fell to the floor at her feet. She closed her eyes and bit down on her lip when his hands roamed her torso, making sure that there were no pockets hidden in the dress where she had stashed a weapon. He was back to being a ruthless outlaw when he stood before her again. She tried not to notice how the dress gaped open now that the corset wasn’t there to hold it in place. She wasn’t as buxom as her mother had been, but the corset had held the extra fabric in place nicely. Without it, well, there wasn’t much to keep the bodice from exposing her. He had no qualms about noticing and allowed his gaze to roam at will. When he reached toward her bodice, she sucked in a quick breath, but he only fished the locket out from between her breasts and turned it over in his fingers.
She held that breath, willing him to put it back. Finally, he looked up from his study of the tin trinket with its faux onyx locket. The stone would open on a hinge to reveal the real treasure of the powders inside and his thumb absently stroked that very hinge, taunting her as she imagined just how easily it would pop open to reveal her secret. “Please, don’t take it. It was a gift from my father.”
“Stolen no doubt,” he remarked as he examined the locket in his palm.
“Not Ship,” she corrected. “My real father. That’s all I have of him. Please don’t take it.”
“Not Ship, huh?” His knowing glance filled her with dread. “You mean not Ship Campbell, the man you claim to know nothing about?”
Dammit! She wasn’t any good at this. She’d walked right into that. This was the worst night of her life and she was being a complete idiot. First the powders and now this. She was always the one in the family with a level head.
