Dark Sexy Knight (A Modern Fairytale)(8)

He closed his eyes, and his voice drifted off as he leaned his head against the window. Watching him for a second, Verity felt a pang of guilt. She shouldn’t have snapped at him to hush up. He was right. Their new friend did cuss a lot.

And smiled . . . well, now that she thought about it, never.

But Verity was a good judge of character, and for all his gruff words and dark scowls, she had seen his kindness in action, and she couldn’t believe that someone as kind as Colton Lane could mean them any harm, cussing or not.

Straightening in her seat, she faced forward again, looking at their new friend askance, and checking out his profile while he drove in silence. As she had observed when they first met, his face wasn’t conventionally handsome. His features were too blunt to be beautiful. His nose had likely been broken a time or two—it wasn’t straight, and it was slightly thicker on the right side. Square and strong, his chin jutted out a little like it dared another man to take a swing at it, and there were several scars on his face: a diagonal slash across his chin and another one, more pronounced and crescent-shaped, on his forehead over his left eye. His hair was dirty blond and shoulder-length, and there was a scruff of blond growth on his jaw. As for his eyes, they were deeply set and hooded, which made them look suspicious, though she’d seen them soften once or twice, which had made her belly tighten with an unexplained yearning.

Her eyes slipped down to the thick muscle of his neck, then lower, to his chest, which was hidden behind a tight gray T-shirt that allowed the contours of his body to be imagined if not seen. He was rippled with muscle tone—with ridges that could be easily counted. Her eyes trailed over the tanned skin of his bare arms, lingering on the veins twisting around his forearm and down to his hands. They were as big as Ryan’s, but toned and rugged, the bones pronounced and angular under the skin. Her mother would have called them farmer’s hands, which they were, she supposed, since he worked with horses every day. She imagined those rough hands tangled in a leather strap, then she imagined them spanning her waist, his fingers like sandpaper against her naked skin.

She gulped, flicking her glance lower, to take in the hard lines of his hips and thighs in faded denim. Her cheeks flushed, leaving her grateful that the Atlanta heat had already colored them red. No doubt every muscle in his body was just as huge, hard, and toned as the rest of him, a thought that made her mouth grow dry as the long-ignored muscles in her own core— “Where exactly do you live?”

She jerked her eyes from his crotch, beyond thankful that he was still looking out the windshield and hoping that he’d missed the way she’d just been ogling his beautiful body.

“Oh, uh, we’re, uh, staying at a place on . . . Glenellen?” she squeaked, grimacing at her breathlessness. When he didn’t respond, she added, “Exit 44 off of I-285.”

“Got it.”

She took one last wistful glance at his face before shifting her body to face front. “So . . . I guess we’ll be working together.”

“Mm-hm.”

“Have you worked there long? At The Legend of Camelot?”

His eyes narrowed as he answered. “Few years.”

“So you like it,” she said brightly.

“Didn’t say that.”

“So you don’t?” she asked, cocking her head to the side.

He stopped at a red light and glanced over at her, his face expressionless but hard. “It’s a paycheck.”

She searched his eyes. She knew too much of their kindness to believe that they were truly as unfeeling as he wanted them to appear. “Is there anything you really like about it?”

He dropped her eyes and shrugged, his broad, thick shoulders holding for a moment before lowering.

Was that a no? A maybe? A f*ck off and leave me alone? She sighed softly, rubbing her arms and wondering if he was going to answer her verbally or if a shrug was all she’d get.

He turned onto I-20 headed east and reached for the air-conditioning knob, turning it down a little.

“My horse,” he said softly, like he wasn’t used to giving words away. He paused before adding, “And the gym, I guess.”

She felt relieved to hear his voice, to know that he wasn’t just ignoring her, and she slowed down the pace of her expectations to accommodate him. Colton Lane wasn’t a chatterbox, clearly, but that was okay. Could be okay if she slowed down too.

“You have your own horse?” she asked, anxious to keep him talking.

He nodded. “Thor. You know . . .”

“Because you’re the Viking Knight,” she said, grinning at him. And—oh my God!—was it just her imagination or did his jaw twitch with a touch of merriment?

“Yeah,” he said, his face setting quickly back to stone.

“And there’s a gym? At the theater?”

“Rule one,” he said, giving her a dry look before turning back to the highway. “It’s not a theater. It’s a castle.”

“Um—”

“I’m not an actor. I’m a Viking Knight,” he continued, salt in his tone. “And you don’t work in a gift shop. You’re a merchant.”

“A . . . merchant.”

He nodded. “They’ll cook up a whole backstory for you unless you come with one prepared tomorrow. I suggest the latter. I’ve experienced the former.”