He gave a bark of laughter. “You are a true innkeeper, I see. Profits above al else.”
“Would you rather I had unimpeachable morals?” she asked. “And had already sent a stable boy off to inform on you to King George’s men?”
“On what grounds?”
She took another sip of wine. “Being a highwayman, if I had to take a guess at it.”
The scowl on his handsome face looked as set as if it were carved out of stone. “Are you always this brave? Or has the wine loosened your tongue?”
A mere frown could not frighten her. She was made of sterner stuff than that. “As you pointed out, I am an innkeeper. What do I care who you are or what you are hiding, so long as you do not rob me?” She had a vested interest in not bringing King George’s men around her inn.
Rapacious scoundrels that they were, whatever they saw and liked they would confiscate on the pretext that her father had cheated on his taxes.
Not that the King would ever see a penny of whatever they took. It would al have gone to line their own pockets.
They were nothing more than thieves licensed to prey on honest men. “You can rob as many of King George’s men as you please, with my blessing.”
A sudden fear crossed her mind and she put her wine down on the table with a nervous gasp. “You are not one of his men, are you?” Damn her foolish tongue and damn the wine for loosening it. A king’s man could have her ruined or worse for her careless words.
He laughed. “I have found out your weak point, I see.
You bear no more love for the King’s men than I do. Come, drink up. You have gone as pale as skimmed milk.”
She eyed him warily. “You are not a King’s man, then?”
“Not I.”
The constriction around her chest eased and she could breathe again., She would lay money on it that he was a soldier of fortune, a highwayman. “Better an honest thief than a soldier.” Her words came out on a rush of breath.
“Now that is something I would like to hear more often, Miss Innkeeper.”
Her relief made her more expansive than usual. “My name is Elizabeth Burroughs. Bess to my friends.”
He raised her hand to his lips and brushed a kiss across it. “I trust I count among that number. Jack Hal , at your service.”
“I trust you do too, Mr. Jack Hal . Else I would not have wasted a good bowl of rabbit stew on you. It would’ve been last week’s eel pie for you, and a stomachache to fol ow.”
Her words made him chuckle. “To an honest innkeeper.” He toasted her with his bottle. “Even rarer than an honest thief.”
She wrinkled her nose at him as she toasted him in her turn. “If there were fewer thieves around who did not pay their reckoning when it was due, maybe there would be more honest innkeepers,” she replied tartly. “As it is, honesty is a luxury us poor folks cannot often afford.”
He grinned at her over a mouthful of stew and did not speak again until he had finished.
She sat quietly, sipping at the rich red wine, watching him eat. His hands were fine and white, not like the rough red paws of most of the inn’s customers, and he ate daintily enough for al his hunger.
Final y, he pushed the empty bowl away with a sigh of satisfaction. “That was a damn fine stew.”
She shrugged. “My mother is a good cook.”
“And she has a pretty daughter too. What more could an innkeeper ask for?” He paused and looked her straight in the eye. “You are a beautiful woman, Bess.”
She did not know whether it was his words or the wine she had been drinking that sent a shiver of pleasure down her spine. Plenty of her father’s customers had cal ed her pretty before, but always as a prelude to pinching her bottom or pul ing her onto their knees to steal a kiss. The highwayman did not look as if he were about to do either.
He was simply leaning back in his chair and looking at her, a gleam of pure appreciation in his eyes. She frowned.
“What do you want from me?”
“Why must I want anything from you?”
“In my world, a compliment like that is always the prelude to something else.” Her nose wrinkled in distaste.
“Usual y something unpleasant, like a kiss.”
“I would not like to disappoint you, then.” He crooked one lazy finger at her. “Come over here.”
“No.”
“Then I wil have to come to you.” In one fluid movement, he rose from his chair, crossed to her side and seated himself on the bed next to her. “You have the most beautiful hair,” he said, as he threw one arm casual y about her shoulders. “As dark as the night and as glossy as my horse’s coat. I have been thinking about running my hands through it from the moment you appeared at your casement window.”
The cheek of the man. “I am not your horse. Let me go.”
His grip on her shoulders was too tight for her to wriggle away from him, though she tried. His only response was to hold her closer to him and wind her hair around his hands until it was hopelessly tangled in his fingers.
There was no getting away from him now. Not if she wanted to keep the hair on her head.
“I wil have that kiss you mentioned now.” His breath was warm and sweet on her cheek.
“I knew al your fine words would end up as something unpleasant,” she muttered, doing her best to ignore the excitement building up in the pit of her stomach. God help her, but she wanted to be kissed by the highwayman.
“You think kissing is unpleasant?” He shook his head in mock dismay. “I can see I wil have to teach you better.”
He leaned over her and touched his lips to hers, gently and reverently. A mere brush of feeling and he was gone again. “Now then, was that so unpleasant?” he asked, straightening up again.
“A fine kiss indeed—if I were your grandmother,” she muttered, disappointed. He was a highwayman, an outlaw.
She had expected to have to fight off his advances with a stick, not to sit primly next to him on the bed and wonder why he was not kissing her with more enthusiasm.
“You want more of a kiss than that?” His voice held a world of laughter.
He knew that she had expected more from him and he was laughing at her. The tips of her ears began to burn. “I never said that.”
“You said I kissed you like I would kiss my mother.”
“Grandmother,” she corrected.
“Have you any idea how insulting that is to a man?” He shook his head. “I don’t imagine you do, or you would never have dared such a thing. I shal have to redeem my reputation forthwith.”
This time, his mouth covered hers, hungry and demanding. It was the sort of kiss that she had expected from the beginning, a kiss that robbed her of breath, a kiss that rode roughshod over any misgivings that she might have over the wisdom of al owing a highwayman to kiss her in his room in the dark of the night. It was a kiss that stole away any remaining sense that she had left and demanded that she reciprocate, that she kiss him back with al the fervor he was showing her.
She whimpered in the back of her throat, wanting to get closer to him, to touch him.
At the noise, he broke off the kiss and looked searchingly into her eyes. “Did I hurt you? Do you want me to stop?”
She shook her head and pul ed him back down to her.
“Kiss me again.” She was nowhere near finished exploring the depths of his mouth, the scraping of his stubble against her cheek, the tight grip of his hands on her shoulders steadying her for his pleasure.
Though he let her pul him close, he made no move to touch her. “If I kiss you like that again, I wil not want to stop,”
he warned her. “I wil lay you down on the bed and make love to you, if you wil let me.”
His words broke through the haze of desire that kept her good sense a prisoner. “I am not a lightskirt.” She worried at her bottom lip with her teeth, knowing she should move away but stil reluctant to leave his embrace. No man had so much as tempted her to behave loosely before. This was al new to her. New, and just a little frightening.
“I never thought you were for a moment. But you are a desirable woman, and I am only a man.” He took hold of her hand and laid it against his thigh. His erection, thick and hard, pulsed beneath her fingers, under the soft leather of his breeches. “See what you do to me? I want you, Bess. I cannot hide the desire I feel for you.” With the back of his other hand, he brushed lightly across her breasts. “Nor can you hide the desire you feel for me. Your nipples are hard with the excitement of kissing me. And if I were to put my hand beneath your skirts, I have no doubt but that your pussy would be as sweet and as wet as the wine you poured for me.”
Though she knew she ought to take her hand away from him, it was as if it were glued in place. Instead of moving it away, she clutched at him, wrapping her fingers tightly around his cock and squeezing it gently. For al that she had been brought up in a tavern and knew the facts of life, she had never touched a man’s cock before. Sure, she had seen plenty. Tipsy customers pissing against the wal , mostly, and the odd drunkard who had downed his trousers in the vain hope of impressing her with his limp and miserable appendage. But never before had she put her hands on a man’s privates, even through his trousers, and felt for herself the power kept in check, waiting to be unleashed.
“Christ, Bess.” His voice was strangled. “Are you real y that innocent you do not know what you are doing to me, or are you asking me to make love to you?”
“I am an innocent.” She heaved a gusty sigh, her desire crystal izing in her mind, and pushing away the fear of the unknown “I had thought to save myself for my husband, but decent men are rare hereabouts. Here I am, nineteen already, and not even so much as a glimmer of a husband on the horizon. So I shal do what I please with my innocence.”
“Do I please you?”
She uncurled her fingers and then tightened them again. Real y, he was so hard and felt so good that she could not resist caressing him. “You would please me better if you kissed me again.”
Jack could not refuse such an invitation. Damn it, he was a man, not a monk. Not that even a monk would stand a chance against Bess Burroughs if she was determined to seduce him. Gathering her into his arms, he began to kiss her, properly this time, as a man should kiss a lovely woman.
Her mouth opened under his, her tongue meeting his own, welcoming his invasion. Instinctively, her fingers tightened around his cock, squeezing him until he was as hard and swol en as he ever had been. She pressed her chest against his so tightly that he could feel her heartbeat as if it were his own. Her breasts were plastered against his shirt, her nipples peaked against his chest.
Through the lust that was pulsing in his veins, he heard his good sense sound a note of caution. There was a price on his head. Enough of a price that he should deal careful y with any woman who sought to detain him. God’s blood, but he had nearly lost his freedom once that way already, when his previous woman had tired of him and thought to take King George’s gold for turning him over to the law, leaving her free to take one of the king’s soldiers as her new lover.
He’d only discovered the plot when he had turned up unexpected one evening and found her entertaining her new lover in his place.
His lip curled into a sneer even as he carried on the kiss. Lil ian had been fool’s gold, not the real thing, and poor sod that he was, he’d been taken in by her shining promises. Not to mention by the ful bosom that spil ed out of her low-cut bodice, and the glimpse of ankle and calf that she displayed under her shortened skirts.
No woman would make such a fool of him a second time. Pretty Bess Burroughs would find that out soon enough. But in the meantime, she was warm and wil ing, and King George’s men were far away, chasing a false report that he had been seen robbing a carriage on the road to Scotland.
He’d planted that report himself and watched the soldiers ride off with some satisfaction, confident that he had bought himself a week or more of ease and safety where none would think to look for him. At least not until he had relieved another set of wealthy aristocrats of their il -
gotten riches. And relieved pretty Bess of her maidenhead, to boot.
Her busy fingers were unbuttoning his breeches and worming their way inside his linen underdrawers to touch his bare skin. His breath caught in his throat as she caressed him. For an innocent, she certainly had a seductive way about her.
His flirtation with her had started off as an innocent exchange of pleasantries, a way of ensuring that she liked him just a little, but not enough to have her fal in love with him or to make him out as some kind of romantic hero. The last thing he needed was a disappointed or jealous lover to turn him in to the law. Stil , fine words seldom went astray.
Women, he had discovered, were far less likely to rat you out if you paid them a few compliments and made them feel attractive and appreciated. Combined with ready and wil ing payment for his food and lodging, his polite words had seldom failed to get him what he needed.