Page 22 of Captured By the Werewolf Highwaymen

With gray light coming in through the window, she could see him much clearer. Hugh wasn’t precisely handsome, but he possessed weathered, craggy features that were ruggedly appealing. Thick eyebrows arched over moss-green eyes. Even with him lying down she noted his broad, muscular body, and the open neckline of his shirt revealed a goodly amount of black and silver hair covering his pectorals.

“You’ll be on your feet soon again,” she said.

“Aye, I’ve been running since I was a wee bairn.”

“An active boy, were you?”

His smile dimmed. “Had to stay nimble to avoid my older brother’s swinging fists. He raised me, after my ma died and my dad ran off. But Ian didn’t much care for being a parent, not when he’d rather be chasing lassies at the pub, so I became a fine sprinter when he’d come home drunk and angry.”

“I’m…I’m sorry.” She squeezed his hand.

“I got so good at running, I ran all the way to England. It’s safer as a highwayman than as Ian MacLeod’s younger brother.” He mustered a smile. “I canna find fault with my fate. It brought me here. To you.”

“You needn’t administer your flirtation with so generous a hand,” she chided gently. “I’ll tend to you, whether you charm me or not.”

“Whatever you think of me, jo, I’m not the sort of man who trifles with lasses to amuse myself. If I say I have a fondness for someone, I mean it. I haven’t met many people like you in my rough life. You captivate me.”

Their gazes locked, and a shiver of awareness traveled through her. There was something in his eyes, a curiosity, an interest that made her skin sensitive and her breath shallow.

She forced herself to return her attention to his injury. Hugh was a patient. He was also a criminal.

And a person didn’t find themselves attracted to several different people at the same time.

Desmond’s nearby presence thrilled along her nerves, and his focus on her was a palpable thing in the Blue Bedchamber. He hadn’t stopped watching her. Even through the door to her bedroom, she’d sensed him, a potent energy that danced through her like currents of lightning, awakening her from the deepest slumber.

She still reverberated in the aftermath of spending time with Gideon, too. She’d never met a man who could be both achingly gentle and potently masculine at the same time.

Three men had turned her head in half a day, when she’d gone six years as restrained as a nun. Of course, in those six years, her needs hadn’t diminished. If anything, they’d grown sharper as the time had passed.

Perhaps this was the result of those abstemious years, with her scandalous secret books stoking her smoldering fire.

Those books promised such outrageous things, incredible things. And she craved them. So much so that she seemed to have forgotten what was fiction, and what was truly possible in the real world.

Yet her mind and her body both seemed to be in a riot, careening from one alluring man to the other.

But it wasn’t right. It wasn’t decent or proper. She’d been told so. Many times.

Arthur would have blamed her books, the ones she now kept hidden. But the books only revealed what was already inside her, aching to be free.

Carefully, Clara extricated her hand from Hugh’s. Something flashed across his face. It might have even been disappointment. But then his eyes glinted with humor and he offered another of his impish smiles.

“A fine feast of venison pie would set me to rights,” he said with a grin.

“Venison pie is not on the menu for anyone recovering from a gunshot wound,” she countered. “I’ll bring you broth shortly.”

“Broth!” Hugh made a noise of disgust. “No Scotsman ever broke his fast in so miserly a fashion.”

“I won’t tell Robert the Bruce if you don’t.” She pressed her palm to Hugh’s forehead, and he leaned into her touch. “You’ve a slight fever, so I’m afraid it’s broth and tea for the foreseeable future.”

“Keep your wee cool hands on me, lass,” Hugh purred, “and I’ll comply with any orders.”

“Will mine suffice?” Gideon asked, coming into the room carrying a book. He waggled the fingers of his free hand, and Clara was struck their beauty, long and graceful.

“Use those mitts to frig yourself,” Hugh answered affably.

Gideon only smiled, and Clara couldn’t look away from him.

Dear Lord, how in the name of Adonis could she possibly maintain any equilibrium when she was surrounded by so many attractive men? This had to be some variety of test or a judgment passed on her by a vengeful god, giving her exactly what she wanted, when she desperately did not want it.