Free Prince's Courtesan by Mina Carter

above her head. His lips compressed into a hard line as he grabbed the other one and forced it to join the first.
    “What the fuck do you think you were doing?” He glared down at her, but she wouldn’t look at him. Her eyes remained closed tight and her face turned away. He was too angry at first to notice the way her body felt under his, the way her curves fitted to his hard planes, but that didn’t last long.
    His cock hardened in a heartbeat, a fact that just fuelled his anger. Warin was right; there were other women who would welcome his love, yet he wanted the one who’d run. Wanted the one who’d planned to kill him…and he still wanted her.
    What kind of sick bastard was he?

Chapter Six
    “Look at me!” The hard grip on her wrists brought tears to her eyes. “You were going to condemn me to cold, hard space so the least you can do is look at me.”
    Jaida felt the flames of Seth’s anger licking at her skin as he hauled her to her feet. Even if she had gotten into his shuttle, she hadn’t a clue what she’d been going to do. She’d run out of desperation, but she hadn’t meant to kill him. Not even to save her own life, not even if it meant she could escape him forever. She’d never have done that.
    “No. No…I wasn’t. I swear!”
    For once she didn’t fight him, just lifted her eyes to his, a pleading expression in them. She needed him to believe that. For some reason deep inside, she couldn’t bear that he thought she could do something like that.
    “Can it.”
    His voice was as hard as his hands as he pulled her upright and spun her around. Air exploded from her lungs in a cry as he twisted her arm up her back. A firm grip held her wrist painfully high between her shoulder blades and the sound of him searching in his pockets came from behind her. An agonizing ache throbbed through her captured arm. All she could do was stand there and concentrate on breathing. Even the tiniest move sent fresh waves of agony through her body.
    “Please,” she whimpered, hating herself for the pathetic note in her voice, but begging anyway. “You’re hurting me.”
    Coldness clamped around her wrists, first the one up her back, then when he released it, around the other. Jaida couldn’t focus for a moment; a bone-cracking jolt of pain surged through her body as he released the pressure on her wrist.
    She staggered forward, catching herself on the single cot at the side of the compartment and hugging her abused arm close to her body. Long seconds later the pain subsided and she could breathe again.
    “What the hell was that?” Instinctively she rubbed her hands down her arms and paused as she encountered something new. Around her wrists were two narrow metal cuffs. “What the—”
    “That was a Terranian pressure point hold.”
    He yanked her to her feet and pushed her toward the hole in the ceiling.
    “And those are neural restraint cuffs,” he said, bundling her through the boarding hatch as though she weighed nothing. She squeaked as she flew through the air, his hands getting very familiar with her butt. Too familiar.
    Then she hit the hard deck plating of the shuttle above. She still had enough wits about her to try and scramble away and put as much distance between herself and Seth’s anger as she could.
    “Oh no you don’t. Cuffs, mag-hold.”
    Seth’s order was sharp as he hauled himself up after her. The bracelets on her wrists yanked her arms down until she was forced to her hands and knees. The metal of the cuffs clicked against the deck plating and stuck.
    Grunting with effort Jaida yanked on them but they refused to budge.
    Sticking her ass in the air, she put one foot against the floor next to her wrists and heaved.
    “Son of a bitch!” she cursed as she managed to take three layers of skin off the inside of her wrists. “Seth. You let me out of here, right now!”
    His laughter rolled around the cabin as he walked past her and her upturned