Read Online Claiming Her (Renegades & Outlaws) by Kris Kennedy - Free Book Online

was far too close.      
    “Then you are a man different from any I have ever known,” she said quietly.
    “That I am.” His eyes never left hers. “As for most men, Katarina, they are fools. I rarely do the things they do. I proceed where they stop, I sail when they waver, and I take the castles they negotiate over.”
    A thread of chills scalded across her breasts, hardening her nipples. Why? Why when he spoke of such mercenary, acquisitive arrogance, why did she feel as if he’d touched her with a feather on fire?
    “I think you are the same,” he said.
    She curled her fingers around the edge of the dressing table. “I see.”
    “Do you?”
    She shook her head. “No.”
    Yes.
    He pushed out the chair opposite him with the tip of his boot and extended a palm toward it. “Sit with me.”  
    “Why?”  
    “To negotiate.”
    She could not help it; she laughed. “Negotiate? Over what? I have nothing.”
    He just nodded toward the chair.  
    “Aodh Mac Con, you have my castle, my men, the coffers, the coin. You tell us what to do, and we shall do it. What more could you possibly want?”
    “You.”
    Her heartbeat slowed. “Pardon?”
    “I have a proposition.”
    “What sort of proposition?”
    “The sort where you marry me.”
    The long hot trail of chills started in her belly this time, and spread across her skin like a tide washing in.  
    How in God’s name had it come to this?
    She’d been facing a small query from one of the queen’s interrogators about a faint rumor regarding a minor crack in the loyalty of Rardove—almost entirely unfounded—and now she was being offered full-on rebellion in its stead.
    She wanted to sit down, shut her eyes, catch her breath, compose herself somehow.  
    But that time had passed. There was no composure, no consideration, only falling, as if she’d been pushed off a cliff and was tumbling into an unknown future all alone. Even the small, stern counseling voice inside her was silent—doubtless rendered incoherent by recent events—and everything, absolutely everything, was now in her hands.
    She lifted her chin a miniature inch, an infant inch, the smallest lift one could give a chin in a tight situation, swept her skirts out to the side, and sat down.  
    “What do you offer in consideration of your suit?”

Chapter Nine
    AODH BURST OUT laughing.  
    “Lass, you’ve got bollocks,” he said as she lowered herself into the chair.
    “I have been told that,” she replied with the same liquid grace she’d evidenced in everything thus far: greeting him in a cold bailey; handing over the keys to her castle; holding a blade to his throat.        
    He wanted to push her back on the bed and make her stop being graceful, become just heat. Roaring flames.
    He pushed the heels of his boots harder into the ground and maintained his seat. Ravishing her would not encourage her to bend of her own free will.
    Accursed free will.      
    To give his body something to do besides ravishing her, he grabbed the wine jug and tipped the spout her direction in silent query. The fire reflected in her dark eyes as she looked at him for a long, silent moment. Then she reached out and took the wine.  
    A small surrender, but Aodh was on a path. Small accessions, small agreements, accumulating like snow.  
    He waited until she finished pouring, then said without preamble, “I can think of half a dozen persuasive reasons to join me.”
    “By persuasive, do you mean ‘mad’?”
    He shrugged. “Some might call it that.”
    “ Sane folk might call it that.”
    He sipped his drink. “On the other hand, folk who down an entire bowl of wine in a single swallow might see merit in the notion.”
    She settled back in her seat. “I see. You do think me mad.”  
    “I think you reckless and bold.   To the arguments, Katarina: firstly, we are already here.”  
    She inclined her head in a regal nod. “I had noticed.”
    “To some, that alone would be sufficient