9. Chapter 9

He found Nemity in the study, curled up close to the fire on one of the matching sofas.

The same one where he'd plucked that twig from her heel.

A book with a tooled leather cover was on her lap, tilted toward the fire, like she was reading, but her fingers were nowhere near the pages and her gaze was set solidly on the flames.

In her night rail and a wrapper cinched tightly at her waist, she rested her chin on her knuckles, the glow of the fire highlighting the red in her loose hair that tumbled over her shoulders. Her cheeks flush, the heat of the flames made her look like she'd just tumbled naked and well-satisfied out of a man's bed.

He heaved a breath at the thought, then pushed it out of his mind.

Off-limits. One didn't touch a client.

Still, he stood just outside the door of the study, studying her for long minutes.

Maybe he was a creeper.

Or maybe he just wanted her to take her own safety as seriously as he did.

She didn't have the slightest sense that he was lurking about, that danger could be near. She should have at least heard his footsteps in the hallway. Should have at least turned her head toward the door to see if she needed to run.

True, his feet were bare—he'd just had on trousers and a lawn shirt when he'd gone to settle in for the night outside her door, then checked in on her room only to find her bed empty. But his weight alone made the floorboards in the hallways creak with every step.

Yet there she sat, almost in a trance. Possibly even asleep with her eyes open. It was deep into the morning hours and he hadn't seen her since he'd left her alone in the stairwell.

He'd made sure she was in the house, though. Checked with Mrs. Jorge to verify she was in her rooms earlier.

She'd taken dinner in her chambers as well. Left him to an empty table.

An empty table he didn't exactly relish.

He'd eaten as quickly as possible and then went to stand outside her door, not satisfied until he heard movement within.

With her securely in the manor, he'd made his way down to the stables to meet with the other two guardians, Rory and Seth, that were working on finding the two men that had abducted Nemity.

They didn't have much to report.

Two leads that didn't lead anywhere, and they were on the trail of another lead.

Not what he wanted to hear.

He wanted the bastards caught. And soon.

He'd been on edge since Nemity had yelled at him in the corridor by the east door.

He'd had no idea her mother had died in such a horrific way.

A pertinent fact that Thomas had left out when he'd asked Callum to shift focus and guard Nemity.

Her mother had died years ago, Thomas had mentioned. But how she died was a fact that should have been top on the list of things he'd told him about Nemity.

Thomas also should have told him that Nemity was a flitty little dragonfly that would drive him straight into madness.

And that she was headstrong to a fault, and would try to evade him at every turn.

And that she was entrancing, and rather hard not to stare at. Probably because of all those other traits. But also because of the way sunlight seemed to ooze from her pores, even on cloudy days—a smile almost always on her face, whether she was eating or working hard at sneaking off without his knowledge.

She did it all with an odd enthusiasm for life and a laugh at her lips.

All traits he was unaccustomed to.

People weren't like that.

People were dour and sad and angry and foolish.

They weren't sunshine.

He was used to fights and blades and blood and broken bones. All the worst humanity had to offer. Not grins and laughter and teasing he had no idea how to decipher.

Nemity didn't think like other women of society—at least not the ones he'd encountered. Fiercely independent. Embraced scandal. Happy to be a spinster.

He'd worked with plenty of female guardians, and while many of them were headstrong and uncompromising, they were strong. They knew how to fight. They knew how to survive.

Nemity didn't have the slightest instinct in any of those categories. Especially how to survive.

Other than her "luck" as she'd put it, which had kept her alive thus far. As though optimism and cheer would somehow deflect a blade aimed at her chest.

Callum still wasn't quite sure what to make of her. Other than he deeply, agonizingly, wanted to strip off her clothes and set his hands all over body.

Still, no matter how imbecilic her need to court another abduction, he'd been out of line earlier when scolding her. He'd assumed things about her when he'd chided her for doing the very same thing to him—assuming she knew him.

He stepped into the study and her head finally swiveled to the doorway, her eyebrows arching.

"Oh. It is you." She looked around the room as she closed the book and slid it to the side of her leg by the arm of the sofa. "You can see I haven't tried to sneak out from under your wary eye. Just here, like a good, docile little dove."

He chuckled, moving across the study. "I don't think you know the slightest thing about being a docile dove. But I do like that you didn't sneak out into the wilderness at this hour."

She looked over her shoulder at the window across the room. "I thought about it."

"I imagine you did." He sat down onto the sofa she had curled onto, leaving plenty of room between them. "I have figured that out about you—some people were not meant to be forced into houses."

"Or cages." The smile on her face told him she wasn't so much blaming him for wanting to cage her in, as much as she was teasing him. He was starting to recognize her smiles now. When she was teasing him. When she was attempting to play him. When she was genuinely gleeful at something.

He turned toward her, bending his left leg up onto the cushion as he set his left arm along the back of the sofa. "You couldn't sleep?"

"It was elusive."

He pointed to the book she'd wedged between her leg and the side cushion of the settee, mostly out of view except for a worn corner of the leather cover. "What were you reading?"

"Nothing of note." Her eyes looked haunted for one moment before she twisted away from him to grab a tumbler of deep amber liquid from the side table and took a sip. "Usually I sleep like a well-fed wee one when I'm not hungry. It was not the case tonight."

She offered the glass to him and he took it from her.

In his experience, a woman drinking alone in the middle of the night was never a good thing.

Better that he drink with her in this instance.

He took a sip. Cognac. Bold of her. Though everything about her shouted bold.

He let the liquid slide down into his belly, then cleared his throat. "I am sorry."

She settled back against the cushions, facing him as a frown pushed up her lower lip. "For what?"

"For assuming you were one thing instead of realizing that people have layers, you included."

Her tongue pushed out the side of her cheek. "You thought I was a silly, imbecilic girl?"

"Make no mistake, I think you aren't putting enough attention on your surroundings for someone that was recently abducted." His gaze dropped to his fingers twisted around the thick cut glass in his hand, shards of light from the fire catching the angles and sparkling. His look lifted to her. "But that doesn't mean you don't know pain. That was where I went wrong and I'm sorry."

Her blue eyes drifted to sadness as she nodded an acceptance of his apology.

"But please, hear me when I tell you this, Nemity. You need to be more wary of your surroundings, at least until we track down who abducted you."

Her look dropped to her hands, her fingernails picking at each other. "You think you will be able to find them?"

"I know it, actually. I have two of the best trackers I know on the job, combing every nook and cranny and hell hole in the area looking for the vermin."

Her gaze lifted, setting hard on him. "You sound confident."

"I am."

"Then I shouldn't really need to worry, or be more wary of my surroundings now, should I?"

His fingers flexed around the glass, ready to strangle her until he saw the slightest tilt of the right side of her mouth.

Mischievous hoyden.

He took a large swallow of the cognac because he damn well needed it when dealing with her and he handed her back the glass. The grin fully appearing on her face, she took another sip of the drink, then set the glass on the side table.

His finger flicked toward her. "Is your one aim in life to drive me stark mad?"

"My aim in life is to have fun." She shrugged, the grin not leaving her lips. "To enjoy each moment as it comes to me. Sometimes the opportunity to tease you is so big and bountiful it is hard to resist."

He shook his head. "We haven't found those men. It is not yet time to be lighthearted about the situation. You need to be more careful."

"Why?" She gave a dramatic sigh, her face tilting up to the ceiling. "Why live like that?"

His gaze sliced into her, his voice grave. It seemed impossible to instill fear into her, but he needed to do it. For her own safety. "It will keep you alive. That seems like a good reason."

Her look dropped to him. "I thought you were keeping me alive."

"I will if I know where you are. That is the key part that is currently missing. You need to let me know when you are leaving the main grounds. Just promise me you'll do so."

Her head angled to the right, the side of it pressing onto the high back of the sofa and almost touching his resting hand. In an uncontrollable instinct, his fingers flexed, brushing against a lock of her hair.

The smallest gesture and one he instantly wished he could take back. One he wished she didn't notice, but her look flickered toward him, the light blue of her eyes glowing from his rogue touch or heated from the fire, he wasn't sure.

She smiled. "I'm sure it will be much to your amazement, but I'm not fully ignorant of the situation."

"You aren't?"

"No. As much as you think I am a wild, ignorant hellion, I have taken precautions. Anytime I am in the gardens, which is where those men stole me from, one of the staff knows where I am—either Mrs. Jorge or Mr. Youngstrom."

"And when you're not in the gardens?"

Her mouth pulled to the side. "If I am unfindable by you, I doubt I am findable by a couple of imbecilic brutes trying to capture me."

"Why do you think they are imbeciles?"

She scoffed a laugh, pulling her head away from the rear of the sofa. "For the ridiculous way they tried to take me. They threw a bag over my head, tied my wrists together and threw me under a blanket in the back of a wagon, but didn't bother to truly hide me. And then Mr. Youngstrom merely had to sidle up his horse next to the wagon, lean in, and grab my arm to pull me from the wagon. Just as I tumbled out, his sleeve got caught on a board of the wagon and it unseated him from his horse. That's how he broke his arm. He didn't even have to fight them off."

His eyebrows lifted. "And you landed on the road? You must have been injured."

"Some bruises, nothing more. I don't feel that I was ever in mortal danger." Her hand flipped up from her lap. "I never would have even told Thomas it happened, but Mrs. Jorge wrote to him without my knowledge." Her head shook. "I swear, sometimes I think her loyalty is still to my mother instead of me."

He nodded, suddenly glad he hadn't found her sleeping in her bed earlier. She'd told him more tonight than she ever had. He doubted she would be this honest in the middle of the day, since that was her favorite time to sneak about evading him.

His gaze ran over her body, and she looked so damn tiny curled onto the couch in her wrapper. Lonely, even. "Is it so wrong, people worried for you?"

She shrugged. "I am not sure why they would, save for I pay their salaries."

"Why is it that you think your own worth is defined by your inheritance?"

Her eyebrows lifted. "I think that?"

"I've known you for a week, and yes, I can say with certainty that you do think that."

Her lips pulled back in a smile that wasn't a smile as she scoffed a laugh. "Maybe I do. Maybe I am. Aside from my few close friends in London, I have been defined by little else other than my inheritance since my mother died. It is why people want me."

"Is it so wrong, people wanting you?"

"When they want you for the wrong reasons, it is."

He nodded, his gaze set on her. Then words he had no control over tumbled from his mouth. "What if they want you for more basic reasons?"

She blinked.

Blinked again as his words sank in.

There was no taking the words back. Not that he wanted to, for the energy that exploded between them in that moment stilled his heart beating in his chest.

With a shuddered intake of breath, she leaned forward in the same instant he did.

Their lips meeting in some odd magnetism that both of them fought but were powerless against.

Heated and raw and primal.

His fingers went deep into her loose hair, digging into the waves, strands of silk teasing his nerves. He'd wanted to get lost in her hair for far too long. Feel her breath against his. Her body pressing into his. Kissing him with just as much carnal impulse.

He tilted her head for better angle as his tongue slid past her lips, tasting her. A slice of heaven on his tongue. A trace of the cognac mixed with something that made him hungry, deep in his gut, for more of her body, more of her lips, more of her breath.

The softest guttural mewl came from her throat as she kissed him back, her tongue tangling with his, and his cock pressed hard against his trousers. His body, his fingers wanted more.

Wanted all of her.

Stripped down and raw and exposed to him. The purple in her irises bleeding into the blue as she watched him above. As he slammed into her.

Fucking hell.

Too much.

One little taste of her and he wanted too much—all of her.

Something he knew he couldn't have.

He ripped himself away from her, his head shaking. "I—I cannot. My apologies for…" He growled, rubbing his hand across his face, looking up at the coffered ceiling. Searching for willpower he knew damn well he should possess but had suddenly deserted him.

His gaze dropped to her. "There are promises I swore to Lord Hedstrom. Lines I cannot cross. This is one of them."

Her dark red hair sat ruffled from his fingers in it, her cheeks flushed, and her lips had gone puffy, bruised. Had he done that? Made her look like he'd just made her body come alive? Made her look like she'd just been thoroughly ravished?

All with one kiss?

Great fucking Zeus. One kiss and that was the result. What would she look like if he actually bedded her?

Her hand slipped down from his shoulder to trail down his chest, pure seductress. "You take this job that seriously?"

For how much he wanted to grab the back of her neck, drag her to him, and show her exactly what his body actually wanted to do to hers, he couldn't do it. Oaths sworn. Promises made.

He could only set a stony fa?ade to his face, refusing to move an inch toward her. "I take playing with other people's emotions that seriously. I am here, but I won't always be."

Her shoulders lifted, her tongue swiping out to lick her lips.

Good hell, he wanted more of that. More of her.

She leaned closer to him, her voice low. "Are you playing with my emotions if I willingly go into it?"

He dragged a steadying breath into his lungs. "I'm playing with emotions because I will never be in one place for very long. There is always the next task that I will be called onto."

"A man with no home?"

"Exactly."

Her fingers tapped along his bare chest above the cut of his lawn shirt. "So you won't be around in what? Four weeks, four months, four years?"

He half smiled, shaking his head. "I'm not doing my job if it takes four years for us to discover who attacked you."

She pulled her hand away from him, nodding to herself, then her gaze lifted to him. "What if you never find out who did it—does that mean I'll be in perpetual danger? What then?"

He shook his head.

This he knew—he would find out who tried to abduct her. It was only a matter of time. "It's not going to happen. I will find them. Find out why they wanted you. And then I'll be gone."

She leaned onto the back of the sofa, folding her right arm against the sofa and tucking her head against it as she stared at him. "It doesn't bother me. The fact that you'll be gone soon enough. I am not an innocent, Callum. I am too many years and too many clandestine trysts in dark arbors beyond that. When one is put on the shelf, the whole world opens up to her. I do what I want."

Bloody hell. His cock was about to explode. He had to get out of there.

He shoved himself off from the couch, looking down at her. At her long lashes against her smooth skin, at the wild intensity fully on fire in her eyes.

For one weak, brutal second, he nearly broke—could almost feel her body under his as he pushed her back on the sofa and sank his cock deep into her.

He snapped his stare away from her.

"The problem, Nemity, is that you are an innocent to me. And I would rather keep you that way."

His legs heavy, a thousand stones of regret vibrating down his muscles direct from his swollen shaft, he turned and exited the study.

Better to leave her untouched.

Better for both of them.