Read Online Hard Day's Knight by Katie MacAlister - Free Book Online Page A

few feet away from me, the setting sun turning his hair a glossy ebony, he was magnificent. He was a few inches taller than me, and had shoulders big enough for a monster like Moth to settle onto comfortably, and a long, angular, English sort of face with extremely expressive eyes. He wasn’t handsome the same way Farrell was, but his face was interesting. I liked watching his eyes, and the way his lips moved when he talked. I also liked his softly blunted squared chin, the sharp angle of his jawline, the faint shadowing of whiskers darkening already tanned skin. I had the worst urge to just taste that lovely spot where his jaw connected behind his ear. . . .
    “Why are you staring at me?” he asked, the low voice rubbing against me like the softest silk. It took me a minute to stop fantasizing about nibbling on his neck to realize what he had said.
    “Oh . . . uh . . . am I?”
    His brows pulled together in a frown. “Yes, you are. I’d like to know why.”
    I gave him my best smile. “I like looking at you.”
    His eyes got huge at that, and I would have said more, I would have told him about how I liked the shape of his jaw and chin, but CJ was trying to get my attention.
    “Pepper, this is my lamb. Isn’t he the most gorgeous thing you’ve ever seen?” CJ, petite little five-foot-two CJ, hung off the arm of a huge man. He had to be at least six-foot-six, and if I was built like a brick oven, he was an entire bakery. His face was pitted from a severe case of acne in his youth, and somewhere along the line he’d had his nose broken and never set quite right. He held out a huge hand for me to shake. It wasn’t until I looked into his soft brown eyes that I saw the gentle man inside him that had attracted my cousin.
    “Pleasure to meet you,” he said in a low bass rumble that was just as deep as Walker’s, but had none of the latter’s goose-bump factor. “Ceej has told me a lot about you. Glad you could join us this year.”
    “Thanks, I’m looking forward to watching the competition. I’ve never seen jousting before, but it looks like a blast. Is it hard to learn?”
    “Not hard, but it takes practice,” Butcher said with a smile that turned his face from gruesome to delightful. “A lot of practice, if you’d be noticing all the falls we took today.”
    “I just assumed that was because you were riding horses you weren’t used to.”
    “Yes, that’s it exactly; that’s what we keep telling Granddad here, but will he listen to us? No,” Vandal said as he emerged from a tent, giving the Moth-clad Walker a wide berth as he took my hand in his, indulging in a little palm tickling before he kissed my knuckles.
    “That’s because it’s not true,” Walker said, one hand absently scratching Moth’s chest. The big cat’s eyes were closed in sheer delight, his purr throbbing in the soft air of the summer evening. “The horses are fine; it’s you lot who need the practice.”
    “Granddad?” I asked Vandal.
    “Vandal,” Walker said with an obvious warning in his voice.
    Vandal nodded to Walker. “Our fearless leader. We call him that because he’s so—”
    “Vandal!”
    “—cautious,” he finished with an insolent grin. “But enough of that knavish one. How charming you look with the fire of the sun dancing in your . . . erm . . . fiery locks.”
    “You’re really good,” I told him. “Do you have to practice at that roguish smile, or does it come naturally?”
    Everyone around us laughed. Vandal waggled his eyebrows at me and made a pretty bow to everyone else.
    “I think you’ve met just about everyone,” CJ said, looking around. “That’s Bosworth Bale over there by the stable, and the guy with the water bucket is his partner, Geoff. Fenice you know, and talking to her are Gary and Ben. They’re from Whadda Knight, a jousting and steel combat troupe out of Oregon.”
    The two men sitting in close conversation with the pink-haired Fenice were in chain mail, each clutching a