Free Pirate Wolf Trilogy by Marsha Canham Page A

as his weight all but crushed the breath and fight out of
her. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, her chest was rising and
falling as if she had just swum across half the ocean. Her arms,
her legs, were trembling, the latter so painfully close to being
broken off at the hips, she had no choice but to keep them still
and tense beneath him.
    “Now, then,” he
muttered roughly, “if I lift my hand away from your mouth, are you
going to make me regret it?”
    Her eyes sliced
up at his, burning with a thousand gilt-edged threats, all of which
vowed immeasurable regret.
    “Take as long
as you like to decide. I’m quite comfortable myself,” he added,
shifting his hips, forcing her legs to bend even wider to
accommodate him. “Although I cannot promise how comfortable you
will be in a minute or two when your breeches start to annoy
me.”
    Beau’s eyes
widened. There was no mistaking his meaning; she could feel the
heat of his flesh where it pressed into the juncture of her thighs
and it was nowhere near as deceptively soft as the threat in his
voice, nowhere near as indifferent as the lazy threat in his
eyes.
    She tried one
last time to squirm free, to dislodge him, but he only chastened
her with a slow smile and pressed closer, making her aware of the
swelling expansion of his flesh as it responded to her futile
efforts.
    Shocked that
there was any more of him to expand, her body went completely still
beneath him. Her breath came faster, the pounding in her blood
became distinct enough that he could feel her heart hammering in
her chest and see her panic throbbing through the small veins in
her temple.
    “Was it
something I said?” he asked with a wolfish grin. “Or something you
might like me to do?”
    His face was so
close, all she could see was the black slash of his eyebrows, the
splash of ebony hair flung forward over his brow and cheeks, and
the amused mockery in his eyes. She closed her own for a moment and
when she opened them again, they blazed with such fiery contempt,
he almost laughed out loud.
    “I gather we
understand each other?”
    She managed a
jerky nod and he cautiously eased the pressure from her mouth. He
did not remove his hand completely, choosing instead to rest it
across her throat in such a way as to lock her head flat and firm
on the desk, not allowing her the luxury to turn either way or
avoid the further confrontation in his eyes.
    “I say again,
mam’selle. Quite the ferocious little corsair. Ferocious, warm, and
surprisingly tempting,” he added, shifting his hips slightly for
emphasis. “I don’t suppose I could interest you in a small skirmish
of another nature?”
    She swallowed
and he could feel the movement of her throat muscles beneath his
hand.
    “Get off of
me,” she rasped.
    “ Ah.
Mam’selle declines,” he said softly. “Pour le moment.”
    “Get… off… of
me!”
    He
watched her mouth shape the words and savored the echo of them as
they vibrated down his spine. He had made the proposition in jest,
yet his flesh was betraying the fact she was soft and warm and extremely tempting. And that
there were other needs besides food and water he had gone too long
without.
    “If I do, I
want your word—your blood oath—that you will not try any more of
your foolish tricks.”
    “My word?” she
spat. “My blood oath? How do you know you can trust it?”
    “ Because
you are going to trust me when I give you my word, and my oath, mam’selle—”he lowered his head, lowered his mouth
until the heat of it renewed the flush of warmth in her cheeks—“if
you ever … ever draw
another weapon of any kind on
me, I will bind you hand and foot to the shrouds and flay your
backside into bloody strips. And that—”he molded his fingers more
poignantly around the arch of her throat—“only after I have sliced
out your tongue and fed it to the sharks.”
    She swallowed
again and her lips parted, trembling as much from the force he was
exerting on her throat as from the