Claiming Her
Page 43
He looked at the back of her head. Under the almost sheer veil, her dark hair tumbled, silken thick lushness he would soon be dragging his fingers though. The curve of her shoulder, where it met her neck, held great promise as well. Earlier, he’d all but brought her to culmination by kissing her neck. And then there was her throat…
“Have you sailed, Mac Con?”
He dragged his attention from her neck. “I have.”
“Much?”
“Much.”
She was still a moment, then turned her head. “Are you an Irish pirate?”
“I’d not call myself that.”
“Would others?”
He laughed. “It would depend on how much money I earned them.”
“Mm.” It was a skeptical murmur, but it stood his cock at attention. “Have you ever been? To the New World?”
He shook his head, staring over her shoulder at the map. “Not yet.”
“Yet?” she repeated, craning her head around.
He met her gaze. “I am not yet done, lass.”
Her eyes lit with some spark, surely the reflection from the high, tapered candles burning on either side of the map, but it seemed to come from within her. And then she smiled. The small, secret smile. At him.
Something fierce awakened in his chest.
“And the queen’s colony in the New World, Roanoke…what do you know of it?”
“There has been no word,” he said quietly.
“What do you suspect?”
He shrugged. “’Tis a hard world out there.”
“Sad.”
“Perils of an adventurer,” was his careless assessment. “If one wishes to go adventuring, one must be prepared.”
“Indeed,” she murmured, such dry meaning in the word that he grinned.
She laid a hand on the table beside the map, and the candlelight illuminated all its varied textures: small rounded knuckles; the pale blue line of veins; slim, curving fingers, nails unadorned, blunted from work. She leaned on her hand to turn and look up at him.
“But that will not stop adventurers, will it?”
“Would it stop you, Katy?”
Her eyes were bright as she shook her head. “I do not think it would.” She turned back to the map. “More will go.”
“There will always be more,” he agreed. “Explorers. Adventurers.”
She was quiet a moment, then announced, “I invested in an adventure company once.”
He stared at the back of her head. “Pardon?”
“Yes, indeed. Does not every reckless fool with any spare coin? And even those without. The Gilbert Humphrey Trading Co. was my particular pitfall.”