Free Defiant by Kris Kennedy

wooden bedstead to haul herself up.
    He saved her the trouble. He fisted a handful of her hair and hauled her to her feet, then marched her backward to the wall and pushed her up against it, his forearm planted diagonally across her chest, her braid clenched in one gloved hand.
    “Are you finished?” he demanded.
    “Nay,” she spat, and flung her head to the side, her mouth open to bite his hand.
    He closed his other hand around her jaw and forced her cheek to the wall, pressing his body up against hers as a bulwark, a solid press of muscle from hips to chest.
    “Stop,” he murmured. “Or I will start breaking things. In your body.”
    She stilled. They stood, both of them breathing fast. Their chests pressed together each time they inhaled.
    “Where is he?” he asked.
    “Who?”
    Jamie glanced over his shoulder at Ry. “I’m going to need a rope.”
    Ry nodded slowly and left.
    “Jamie,” she said, not quite a gasp, not yet a whisper. “You cannot do this.”
    He looked down. In the sunlight, she was more spritelike than she had seemed last night, all contrasts of light and dark: pale face with its graceful bone structure, clever gray eyes and the thin, ink-dark eyebrows above, and all that flowing hair, now braided and gripped in his fist. “Cannot do what?”
    “This. Whatever you are intent on doing.”
    “Should there be any questions on what I can and cannot do, Eva, let me remove them now.” He gave her braid a little shake. “Where is the priest?”
    “I—I do not know.”
    He smiled faintly. “Surely you served up better lies than this when you spoke with the gate porters last night.”
    She stilled, her chest pushing against him as she breathed in swift, shallow pants. “Ah. The porters. I am pleased to hear it was effective.”
    “’Twas not effective.”
    “You were stopped.”
    “I am now pinning you against a wall, Eva. It was not effective. Where is he?”
    “Gone.”
    Her lying breath came rushing out, drifting past a day’s growth of beard on his jaw and neck. Her breasts, bound beneath her tunic, still pressed up in soft mounds, and he could feel her heart pounding against his chest. The narrowing of his attention made Jamie briefly, acutely, aware of her femininity.
    His hand sped beneath her cloak. He splayed his fingers and ran them down her leg. Even through the skirts of her tunic, he could feel the muscular curves of a body worked hard. He felt down farther, bending his knees, making her bend hers, her neck still arched back by his hold on her braid.
    He found what he expected, a dagger plunged into the top of her boot. She held perfectly rigid, jaw clenched, as he ran his hand up her inner thigh, then splayed his fingers, enclosing both the hilt of a little misericord strapped there and the bare, chilled skin of her leg.
    As if she were a metal filing, he felt an almost magnetic urge to slide his hand up farther. Instead, he plucked the blade free and tossed it onto the growing pile behind him.
    “You are like a little porcupine, Eva.” They were still crouched, facing each other. “Are there others yet?”
    She looked over his shoulder and said nothing.
    “I will stake you to the wall and undress you if needs must.”
    Her gaze skidded back. She believed him. Smart woman. “My waist.”
    He found it, a short dagger lodged in a sheath lashed around her belly, tangled amid the folds of her skirt. With a twist of his wrist, he plucked it free and straightened, forcing her back up to a standing position.
    “Father Peter,” he said shortly.
    “I tell you, he is gone.”
    He looked at her more closely and saw her face was scratched and her jawline had a mark that might become a bruise. She had not had such marks yesternight. His fingers tightened as he pushed her face to the side, examining. “It will heal. What happened?”
    “Men. They took Father Peter.” She smiled bitterly as he let her go. “There are a plethora of violent men out this day. You should be