Free My Dangerous Duke by Gaelen Foley Page A

thirty-four years flashed through his mind like a deck of cards being expertly shuffled in the hands of a cardsharp … all the things that had nearly stripped him of his humanity.
    Time bowed, taut with the echo of the various targets he had been sent to kill for the Order. He could still hear them begging in vain for their lives.
    Somehow, all of it paled in comparison to the sight of Kate dangling off the cliff’s edge—and the prospect of losing his grip on her rain-slicked arm.
    His heart slammed as the seconds dripped like the rain off the tip of his nose.
    A hundred feet below, the fiercely churning sea yawned, waiting to swallow her. The white waves broke with violent sprays of foam over the jagged boulders.
    Gritting his teeth, he clasped her left arm with his right hand, taking a stronger hold.
    “Hold on to my arm,” he ground out.
    She obeyed, her right hand clawing onto his forearm; he braced himself on the ledge with his left hand as Kate looked up into his eyes with a pleading, panicked stare that begged him not to let her go.
    “Help me,” she choked out.
    With a heave of furious strength, Rohan pulled her up, dragging her higher until he was on his knees. She gained the ledge. He fell back, hugging her to him.
    She collapsed on his heaving chest, shaking, soaked, and panting. Her slim body felt frozen to the bone atop him; she choked on a sob.
    He rolled her onto the wet, frigid, hopefully solid earth beside him, and took approximately three seconds to catch his breath. But years of survival training had begun to drive him now. He stood up, scooping Kate into his arms.
    She let out a small cry as he slung her over his shoulder and strode at a swift pace past Eldred and his men, who were standing by to help.
    Rohan ignored them. The men parted to let him pass as he carried her into the nearby gatehouse. Some of them followed anxiously, asking if they could help, but he did not answer, marching up the narrow steps to the heated guardroom in the gate tower’s upper story.
    “Stay out,” he ordered them, shutting the door in their faces.
    A fire crackled in the hearth. He carried her across the wood-plank floor to the chair in front of the fire. The simple guardroom had a timber-beam ceiling and plain stone walls.
    Depositing Kate unceremoniously in the chair, he scanned the room like an eagle-eyed sentry and retrieved a blanket the men kept on a shelf for those long night watches. He shook it open and wrapped it around her shaking body without a word, then noted the kettle hanging over the fire. He took a mug off the rugged wood mantel and poured her a cup of what proved to be mulled cider.
    His hands were steady as he poured it, and his mind was crystal clear, but some deep, savage part of him wanted to roar at having just pulled this woman out of the mouth of the monster, death. His old friend! Why, it seemed he had saved a life for once instead of taking it.
    How novel, he thought acidly.
    Moving with angry, automaton-like precision, he turned and held the steaming mug toward her, but she was staring at nothing, apparently in shock.
    He put the cup in her shaking hands. “Drink this,” he ordered in a most uncompromising fashion.
     
    Still dazed by her narrow brush with catastrophe, Kate slowly lifted her stunned gaze to his face.
    Warrington looked furious.
    She took in his taut-lipped expression; the jagged star-shaped scar carved in his skin at the outer corner of his left eyebrow. A small streak of mud slashed across his cheek like war paint.
    Iron authority was stamped across his closed, hard face. His pale eyes glittered as he held her gaze.
    She had nothing left to fight him with, so she simply bent her head and took an obedient sip of the mulled apple cider, as commanded. It left a warming trail all the way to her belly, but it could not fill her emptiness at the moment. Her heart felt as hollow as a drum.
    The Beast turned away, apparently not quite ready to deal with her yet. Kate did not