Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,14

incredulous at the lady’s audacity.

She nodded emphatically. “Precisely, the investment being you.”

Tynan stared back at his nighttime visitor and then whistled softly. “You don’t have any fear, do you?”

“No,” she said instantly, knocking him back on his heels. This was decidedly a first where he was concerned. Having grown up on the streets, and later being the overseer of who lived and who died in the bowels of Newgate, he was accustomed to all who crossed his path doing so with a deserved terror. At the very least, unease. But never had he seen this absolute unflappability demonstrated by this five-feet-two-inch wisp of a girl in big black skirts.

He flashed a cool smile. “You don’t know the peril that awaits, kitten.”

“Kitten because I’m a fragile girl?” She didn’t allow him a chance to answer. “Do you know kittens are fully weaned by just two months of age? And within just one month”—she stuck a single finger up—“they have superior senses, making it all too easy to identify friend or prey.”

Knocked off-balance once more, Tynan struggled and at last found his bearing. “And which am I?” he whispered. Despite himself, he was endlessly… intrigued by his unlikely rescuer.

She gave him a once-over. “You’re like an injured animal with a nasty snarl, but not a bite to you.” She paused. “Well, not the bite you’d like the world to believe you possess.”

Tynan froze, and then tossing his head back, he howled with an amusement that would have left the hardest London street thief in Newgate trembling with fear. Not this woman. He immediately cut off that rush of humor. Narrowing his eyes into thin slits, he resumed his approach. “You know so very much, and yet also so little”—Tynan lowered his gaze to the gaping front of her cloak that put the bodice of her dress on display—“of all manner of dangerous ways in which a lady might find herself.” He stroked a fingertip along the exposed creamy white flesh.

That flesh lifted and fell hard under that slight touch.

Fear.

Good. It’s what he wanted. Craved. It’s what had given him his power these past years. Let the lady with her innocence and naïveté where he was concerned learn precisely what—

“Dangerous because I’m a woman, and you might direct your passion my way?” she rejoined.

Direct his passion her way?

“Well, that wouldn’t necessarily be altogether bad,” she said with a husked quality that lent a natural purr to her voice that transformed her into the very kitten he’d accused her of being. “In addition to the many curiosities I have, I’ve also wondered about carnal acts.”

His blood heated as the casualness with which she spoke of her natural curiosity added several degrees to this irrational desire for her.

“But no, that is really not what I’m concerned with,” she said, once more remarkably composed.

It was also the first real hint that this woman before him was a force to be reckoned with.

Chapter 5

He’d lied.

This, of course, didn’t bode well or offer a promising start to her dealings with Mr. Wylie.

But then, given everything she’d recently learned about the ruthlessness men and women were capable of, she had been naïve for having expected anything different.

That should be Faye’s current focus. There should be ire and frustration, and yet—

She swallowed hard. He’d answered the door bare-chested.

Also with a dagger, which certainly merited a good deal more concern and focus, but…

That chest. A tuft of tightly coiled black curls lightly matted a broad expanse of muscled flesh all the way down to his flat stomach, where a fascinating dark thin line of hair led to a point below his breeches, and—

The door closed behind Faye with a hard click, and she jumped, jolted from her appreciation of his form and back to her purpose for being here.

And her outrage. That was far safer to focus on.

In a bid to assert herself, and also to keep Mr. Wylie from seeing the way her fingers trembled, a quivering that had not enough to do with fear and almost entirely too much to do with the virile sight of him, Faye rested her hands on her hips. “You, Mr. Wylie, are a liar,” she charged, leveling that insult with glee.

“Yes,” he said with a slight lift of his head, as if she’d commented on the unexpectedly cold winter they’d been experiencing and not called into question his honor.

That brought her up short. Her accusation would have been the manner of one that brought men to duel and families to feud. And he’d