Free The Isis Knot by Hanna Martine

herself away from her husband, yanking the skirt from his fingers. She scrambled over the side and tumbled to the ground.
    “Get back in here!”
    His growls did not scare her. Neither did his anger. Only the ring mattered.
    She crawled under the wagon, her sore hands patting the clumps of grass, searching. Thomas jumped off and landed heavily behind her. He grabbed her ankles just as her fingers grasped her prize. Relief burst inside her, pulling a welcome curtain of oblivion across her consciousness.
    He jerked her out from under the wagon, shoved an arm under her hips, and pulled her to her knees. All she saw was the ring.
    She heard him fumble with his trousers. All she felt was the ring’s strength.
    Eucalyptus air touched her thighs as he threw up her skirts. He spit on himself and shoved inside her. She was dry and a maid and it hurt more than any horrible story she’d ever heard about what the first time was like. Each thrust was a knife’s blade of pain and shame. Vaguely she heard her long, low moans of protest, but they were overshadowed by her husband’s violent, exuberant grunts.
    She clenched the circle of gold so tightly it gouged into her palm. The ring numbs the pain. The ring numbs the pain. The ring numbs the pain.
    He shuddered and howled like a wild dog. The sound sailed over the open land, shivering the trees. When he sagged against her, she reached behind and pushed him off, out of her. He left behind a stickiness between her legs, a burning ache, and a terrible emptiness.
    For a moment he looked apologetic and remorseful. Until he reached out and snatched the ring from her hand. “I’ll hold that, if you don’t mind.”
    She started to cry. Moore would’ve scolded her for showing tears if he were here, but she couldn’t stop the emotion. He seemed so very far away. “No. Thomas, please…”
    “Nothing will happen to it, ’long as you do what I say.”
    He might as well have clutched her body in his hand instead of the ring. He knew her weakness now, what she valued. The power was his.

CHAPTER 6

    Of the five convicts living on Brown’s farm, William worked the hardest and with the most intense focus, but not because he was scared of the colonist’s lash, or because he cared about behaving well enough to earn a temporary ticket of leave. The harder he threw an axe at felled trees or the longer he dug rocks from a new planting field, the easier it was to block out the woman’s face. The moment he paused, however, she returned in beautiful fury.
    Nights were the worst, filled with restlessness and anxiety. And there had been five since he’d seen her.
    Brown, ever vigilant when it came to his “property,” had kept a careful eye on William ever since he’d tried to jump from the wagon. William would never get a ticket of leave. And freedom was seven years away.
    Which left him with the sole option of bolting. He considered it every day, weighing routes and excuses and ramifications. No, he obsessed over it.
    The colony was a dangerous, empty place filled with dangerous people. There was no escape, water at every possible exit. If he were caught as a bolter before he even found her, he’d be hanged.
    The risk was worth it. After eighteen years of being goaded by the visions—being moved from one stepping stone to another, all eventually leading here—he needed the fox chase to end. The Spectre’s wordless urging had changed since he’d stepped foot on New South Wales. The feel of it had shifted drastically, and when William had actually seen the woman in the wagon, he’d known. This was the end. He would soon be free.
    And the woman…well, the vision of her he’d been given on board the John Barry paled in comparison to her reality. Now that he’d seen her, he didn’t just muse over what she was supposed to mean to him, or why this had happened to him of all people. At night, tossing and turning, he started to imagine how she’d feel underneath him, around him. What her