Run Wild (Escape with a Scoundrel) - By Shelly Thacker Page 0,31

shoulder, the clatter of the shackles as they trudged through the woods, the unwelcome feeling of weakness that made him want to drop to the ground and sleep...

Or the fact that he had let her keep the knife.

He couldn’t puzzle out why he had allowed her to keep it. He had no reason to indulge her. It didn’t make sense. Bad enough that she was impulsive and headstrong and nervous around him as a cat on a storm-tossed brig. Now she was armed as well.

Grimacing, he tried to tell himself there was no harm in it. Let her think she had outwitted him. Let her have some sense of security, however false. It might make her less argumentative, less troublesome, and he was all in favor of that.

He shifted his gaze away from her stiff back and squared shoulders, away from that tangle of flaxen hair that tickled generous, swaying hips.

One thing was clear, even to his muddled senses: this clever, high-born, fiercely independent lady thief was having a strange effect on him. One that no woman had ever had before. One he didn’t like.

It must be some form of physical desire, he decided, intensified by the enforced nearness and the fact that he had been so long without a woman. The mere touch of her hand on his bare skin had been enough to make his blood run hot. And when she had hovered over him, her breath warm against his shoulder, her lacy sleeve tickling his back, the desire that shot through him had tormented him as much as the bullet.

Even now, he couldn’t seem to keep his gaze from straying back to her... his mind from imagining what it would be like to pull her body against his, to feel handfuls of that tawny hair flowing through his fingers like molten gold, to kiss her lush, full lips and...

He blinked to clear the image from his vision, stunned as if one of the towering trees had fallen on him. Where the devil were these thoughts coming from? He couldn’t fathom it.

Even the name she had given earlier kept whispering through his mind in an undeniably alluring way. Miss Delafield. It suited her. Simple, elegant, graceful. And probably false.

So why did he feel glad that she had said Miss? Miss instead of Lady Delafield. Or Duchess Delafield. Or ordinary Mrs. Delafield. She could be lying about her unwedded status, but somehow he didn’t think so. What man would put up with her stubborn ways and sharp tongue long enough to marry her?

He forced his gaze to the ground and his attention back to the problem at hand. Escape. Move forward. One foot in front of the other. Whoever— whatever —she really was, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Not her name, not her tempting golden curves, not the unsettling effect she seemed to have on him.

Because she had seen the brand on his chest. From the look on her face, she had clearly recognized what the mark meant. Even if she couldn’t identify the specific ship, he couldn’t risk that she might mention it to someone. To anyone.

And that meant he might have to kill her.

His gut twisted in a sickening knot even as he contemplated the idea. Never in all his thirty-eight years, even at his worst, had he ever harmed a woman. Even aboard ship, he had forbidden his men to misuse women captured at sea—a thoroughly unpiratical rule that had earned him his nickname, “Sir Nicholas.” Ruthless enemy of the Royal Navy, plunderer of merchant vessels, chivalrous toward ladies of any rank who fell into his hands.

But this particular lady was different. He couldn’t afford to feel chivalrous or anything else toward her. Not if he wanted to keep his neck out of a noose.

Only a handful of prisoners had survived the riot aboard the Molloch, the Royal Navy prison hulk that had been his home for eight years. And Nicholas Brogan was the most infamous. He was bloody well certain the authorities would know the ship’s name, if ever Miss Delafield had the chance to describe the brand to them.

And he could just picture her doing so. Especially if it would save her own pretty neck. It was a pitchfork, your honorable lordships, burned right over his heart, with three prongs, pointing downward. I’m willing to testify, if you could find it in your mercy to drop the charges against me...

Aye, she would do it. In the wink of one of her lovely