Free The Pirate Prince by Gaelen Foley Page B

iron-bolted wooden door that sealed the tower. She seemed tiny in front of it, a detail that clenched his heart somehow. He pulled her immediately back into his half embrace before she had time to contemplate escaping, but she merely winced at placing her full weight on her ankle. Instantly they heard men’s voices on the other side. She announced herself in a quavering voice.
    “How could you do this to me?” she whispered. “I never did anything to you. I would never hurt anyone.”
    He believed it. His heart twisted like a horse with a bullet in its gut.
    When she closed her eyes again, apparently straining for calm, he examined her extraordinary gold-tipped lashes. “If it’s any consolation, I would sell my soul to make love to you,” he murmured.
    “I wouldn’t have you! Not in a thousand, million years!”
    “I think you would,” he said.
    “Oh, God, I hate you so.”
    “Good evening, gentlemen,” he addressed the soldiers in a taut, amiable voice. “Miss Monteverdi and I would like all of you to step outside. Come out quietly, with your hands in the air.”
    In minutes, he had emptied the small garrison, bolted himself and Allegra inside the tower alone, and further secured the door by wedging the coarse table against it, scattering the colorful playing cards the soldiers had abandoned mere moments ago.
    “You are mad!” the girl screeched at him, throwing up her hands. “Do you realize you are going to hang? The minute you walk out the door, you’re a dead man!”
    He tossed her a grin. “How sweet of you to care.” He holstered his pistol, then grabbed her hand, pulling her up the circling flight of stone steps, two at a time.
    The air in the tower was close and old, the walls damp. They reached the garret slightly winded. He looked around at the little room perched high atop the tower, overlooking the sea. It was bare but for a crude wooden table with benches pushed back carelessly and a few lanterns, still lit, that hung from iron hooks.
    He blew out all of the lanterns but one, preferring to work mostly by moonlight so as to deny the soldiers an easy target if they started shooting.
    In the center of the room was the big crank for the east gate. The wheel was the culmination of an elaborate system of chains and pulleys that operated the gate. He released Allegra’s hand, stalked to the center of the room, and put his shoulder to the crankshaft. It would take two or three men to turn it with any dexterity, but he was just going to have to do it himself.
    Allegra stared at him, white-faced and strangely still. At the first great groaning of the gate, she jumped.
    “Who are you?” she demanded as he threw his weight against the shaft—and promptly burst open the cut on his arm.
    He muttered a foul oath and stepped back to find blood spilling from the cut afresh.
    “Rip off a strip from your dress,” he ordered her. “I have to wrap this damned cut, or I’ll never get the gate open.”
    “Why are you opening the gate?”
    “Just do it,” he said with acerbic sweetness. He took out his flask of rum and poured a generous draft onto the wound, cursing under his breath at the sting.
    Allegra suddenly turned and bolted out of the garret.
    “Get back here!” he bellowed. “Damn you, woman,” he panted. His arm streaming with blood mixed with rum, he dashed after her.
    In a few moments, he had her slung over his right shoulder and was carrying her, kicking and punching, back up the stairs. He threw her down onto the table, snapped the kid strap off his flask, and hobbled her with it, binding her ankles with a sailor’s knot she would never figure out. She was cursing him in a convent-school girl’s version of black oaths all the while.
    “Brute! Liar! Murderer! Get away from me! You are bleeding on me,” she growled, staring up at him mutinously.
    “Give me this,” he muttered, tugging at the satin sash around her waist. “Should do the trick.”
    “No!” she gasped, grabbing it