Free Run Wild by Shelly Thacker Page B

now that he might intend to... to...
    They were utterly alone together. The chain made escape impossible. And the way he had her pinned, she couldn’t even defend herself with a knee or a kick as she had against Swinton last night.
    “Don’t touch me!” she snapped. “Take your hands off of me! If y-you so much as l-lay one hand on me, I’ll
kill
you. I swear it!”
    He stared down at her, surprise mixing with the anger in his hard features.
    Then, slowly, understanding glimmered in his eyes, and he levered his weight off of her a bit. “Don’t worry,
angel
.” A mocking grin curved his mouth. “That’s not what I had in mind. You forget, I saw what happened to the last man who tried to get
friendly
with you.”
    She blinked up at him, confused. Was he making light of her threat? Or making a joke?
    She kept fighting against his hold.
    “I’ll let you go,” he continued, some of the storminess returning to his expression, “just as soon as you calm down and listen to reason.”
    Despite his wounded shoulder, he subdued her and held her still, easily. Too easily. She hadn’t realized until now how strong he actually was. How much power lay in that lean, muscled frame. And she could tell he was only using a fraction of that strength at the moment. If he chose to take her...
    Her heart hammering, she froze, paralyzed by the knowledge that she couldn’t hope to fend him off.
    But oddly enough, as soon as she stopped fighting, he relaxed his hold. In fact, though he had rendered her immobile, though he was obviously furious, he hadn’t hurt her.
    At least, not yet.
    Taking shallow gulps of air, she did her best to quell her terror. She had seen lust glowing in a man’s eyes enough times to recognize it... and she didn’t see it now, in his.
    “That’s better,” he said in a low rumble when she let her muscles go limp.
    She tried to ignore the fact that she could feel as well as hear his deep voice.
    “Now, your ladyship, I want you to listen and listen well, because I’m not going to say this again—”
    “I-I don’t care what you have to say.”
    “Well, that’s too damned bad. Because you and I are stuck with one another.” He grimaced. “You don’t like it and I don’t like it, but we’re stuck. So until I find some way to break this blasted chain, you’re going to go where I say and do what I say and you’re going to—”
    “I don’t follow anyone’s orders but my own.” Her indignant retort surprised her as much as it apparently did him. But she couldn’t help herself. Despite the fact that her voice trembled as badly as her body was trembling, she meant every word.
    “You do now. Because if you try any more tricks like the one you just pulled, one of us is going to end up with a broken leg or a broken neck—”
    “I go where I want and I do what I want and I’m not going to let
you
order me around.” She immediately felt foolish for blurting that out. She sounded childish. They were chained together. How could she exert her independence when they couldn’t even get far enough apart to
argue
at a respectable distance? Her anger bubbled over. “I didn’t ask to be dragged along on your mad escape! I had a perfectly good plan of my own.”
    “Seducing that freckle-faced, craven-hearted boy? You call that a plan?”
    She gasped. “I had no intention of... is
that
what you thought?”
    “Any man with eyes could see that you were offering your favors in exchange for whatever he might care to do for you.”
    She gaped at him in shock. “That’s not true! I was merely going to... to encourage him to take pity on me and help me.”
    “Oh, aye, now
there’s
a plan.” He laughed. “You’d make him feel such sympathy that he would set you free? And the other guards would do what? Sit idly by and let you walk away? Brilliant.” He couldn’t stop chuckling. “If it weren’t for me, lady, you’d have been swinging from a rope in London by week’s end.”
    His biting laughter