Page 41 of A Treacherous Trade

His nostrils flared, and behind my palm, that full mouth wasn’t dormant. It twitched and tested at my skin, which did utterly strange things to my insides.

“You have to close your eyes, or I can’t,” I insisted weakly.

He pulled his head back to stare down at me in that bewildered way I was coming to find alarmingly endearing. “Why?”

I lowered my hand to rest on his shoulder as I searched for the answer, realizing my reasons made no sort of sense. Until…

“Have you ever marked how a blind person makes their way through the world?” I queried. “How they rely on their other senses?”

He nodded, regarding me strangely.

I got to the point quickly: “Kissing is much that way, I’ve found. It’s not an activity to watch. It’s something tofeel. To taste and breathe and hear.”

“Hear?” he parroted, his forehead crinkled.

I nodded, trying not to be enticed by the warm scent of him, so dissimilar to anything I’d ever experienced before. There was leather, yes, and musk, but also something almost… epicurean in the masculine aroma. Like buttered sweets baking, or a decadent roux being stirred over a cookstove.

Surely that was the only reason my mouth watered.

“Show me.” He closed his eyes and awaited my demonstration.

I took a moment to process my position, to take in the length and width of the arms bearing his weight against the wall. The depth and breadth of his chest. The paradox of patience and anticipation tightening the skin over his sharp jaw.

He was the only man I’d ever met who’d asked me to teach him something. Who could admit, without a shred of ego or artifice, that there was a physical act he didn’t understand, let alone excel at.

A deep appreciation for this very fact propelled me forward in that moment. A chance to kiss, rather than be kissed.

To take, rather than be taken.

The distinction was a first for me.

I watched everything his face did, every twitch of the eyelashes fanning across his dusky cheek and the flexes of his jaw that ran all the way up to his temple. My own eyes didn’t close until I’d tilted my head and positioned it just right.

I exhaled a long, slow breath and fused our mouths.

His reaction was an immediate tension and a dramatic intake of air.

For an immeasurable amount of time, we stood without moving. All that existed in the world was the wall at my back holding me aloft, and the man hunched over me like a predator about to devour his prey.

But he didn’t.

I was not even certain Night Horse breathed as the talk and tensions, the sins and sorrows that mortared the walls between us, fell to the ground, leaving only two people connected by very tender skin.

Without thought, my hands migrated across his shoulder toward his neck; I was surprised to find him corded with strain when his mouth was so deliciously pliant.

I delved into the strength there, walking curious fingers against knots and sinew, kneading and pressing as my lips began to do the same against his mouth.

Muscle melted beneath my touch, his breath hitching on a dark sound.

I lost myself then. In sensation, scent, and the seductive heat of his vigor. Here, trapped in the enclosure made by his arms, his unyielding body, and the wall behind me, I felt something I hadn’t been aware I’d been missing.

Safe.

Safe?Surely not here, where women were dying. Aramis Night Horse was many things, butsafewas not one of them. He was the epitome of danger. The embodiment of it.

But as a creature of instinct myself, I sensed a shift between us. Something as tender as it was tantalizing. Something primal and protective.

I didn’t know what I’d expected from him. An unbridled response, I supposed. Some sort of savage behavior more akin to the perceptions my people had of his.