Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1)(44)

Her expression changed, the anger vaporizing. As he lifted his hand away, she said, “You’ve got a deal.”

“Get some rest.” He lifted off her, and in the absence of her body in alignment with his, the air felt cold.

It wasn’t cold enough.

As she curled in the blanket, he left the room, pulling the door closed but not latching it. He grabbed his bag from the kitchen and stepped into the bathroom to take a biting cold shower. Only then did his erection finally subside.

Afterward, he grabbed a blanket from the linen closet and went to the sitting room. The settee wouldn’t be the worst place he had used for a bed.

Robin perched on the arm of a chair near the gas fire, his skinny, hairy arms wrapped around himself. When Nikolas entered the room, the puck glanced at him, then went back to staring at the fire.

Nonverbal, Sophie had said. Possibly trauma induced.

As Nikolas stretched out on the settee and plumped a pillow under his head, he said quietly, “Good night, Robin.”

Just before he closed his eyes, the monkey slipped off the chair and loped back to the bedroom.





Chapter Nine





When Nikolas left the bedroom, Sophie half expected she would lie awake and kick herself for indulging in that stupid kiss. Instead, she fell immediately into a dark pit and slept like the dead, without dreams, until she came alert with a jerk.

The feeling was reminiscent of the first time she had laid eyes on Nikolas, in that blasted vision back in LA. She could sense the day had advanced well past early morning. Ugh, at this rate, she was never going to get her days and nights sorted out. At least she had slept, really slept, and not tossed and turned from nightmares all night long.

A slow, rhythmic scraping sounded from somewhere else in the cottage. It sounded metallic and grated on her nerves. Pushing out of bed, she ran her hands through her hair in a lame effort to tame it somewhat, but it sprang from her fingers in a wild, untamed mess.

She felt dull and hungover, and oh my God, had she really kissed Nikolas last night? Where was her sanity?

I’m not just blaming it on jet lag, she thought. I’m blaming it on post-battle emotions.

She knew others who experienced post-battle highs. The guys she had worked with at the precinct were often edgy and boisterous after a conflict involving violence, and those who were unattached often indulged in one-night stands.

But she never had.

She glared at the bed as if it were responsible for her own lapse in judgment, while the memory of Nikolas’s mouth moving over hers sent a thrill of remembered heat through her body. He was off-the-charts sexy, damn it, and an asshole, two things that were, apparently, her kryptonite.

Sophie Ross, she told herself, you need therapy in the worst way.

Just don’t kiss assholes. That’s all you’ve got to do. You can eat anything you want, drink anything you want, you can do anything else that you want, and if you get into that house like you think you can, you’ll be able to sleep in every morning all you want.

You have one job. Just don’t kiss assholes.

The cottage was cool, and she shivered as she dug through her luggage for a pair of flannel pants and a long-sleeved knit shirt. Donning the clothes, she slipped her feet into flip-flop sandals and went to see what was making that irritating noise.

She found Nikolas in the kitchen. He appeared to have recently showered. He wore another pair of black pants, but he hadn’t put on a shirt yet, and his hair was wet and slicked back, outlining the strong, graceful bone structure of his head, neck, and shoulders.

He had positioned his chair so that he sat in a patch of sunlight streaming in through the window, and he was running a whetstone along the edge of his sword, sharpening it with slow, steady strokes.

She glared at him. His beauty was hard and uncompromising and completely, entirely masculine. Without a shirt, she could see scars on his torso, and for all his lean height, he had the bulky muscle of a swordsman across his shoulders and down his arms and back. The slanting sunlight sliced across his face, highlighting the sharp cheekbones, the bold, straight nose and lean jaw, and it lit the flat surface of his signet ring into a blaze of fiery gold.

So he was mouthwateringly handsome. Inhumanly handsome. So what. Enjoy the view while you’ve got it.

Just don’t kiss assholes. One job, Sophie. Only one.

“I don’t know how you can stand to sit there without your shirt on.” Her voice was too husky, and she was blaming that on having just gotten up. “I’m freezing.”

He glanced at her, a sharp, piercing look, then went back to sharpening his sword. “It’s not so bad in the sunlight. If you want to take the chill out of the kitchen, you can fire up the stove. There’s not much to eat for breakfast. You can have dry toast and black tea if you want.”

She gave the large, foreign stove a leery look. Paul, the solicitor, had called it an Aga, but it looked like a machine out of a 1950s sci-fi film. “Not much to eat? What happened to the box of stuff Maggie gave us last night?”

“A certain puck must have gotten into the supplies.” His voice was dry as he bent his head over his sword. “When I got up, I found all the eggs had been sucked out of their shells. He also ate the butter and cheese, and drank the milk. On the upside, the cottage is sparkling clean, which was a surprise since usually brownies are the ones that like to clean house.”