Free Unleashed by Abby Gordon Page A

after she entered.
    Dressed in a dark green jacket over a green-brown tweed vest, Lord Wulfgar was again seated at his desk working on accounts. At the sound of the latch, he closed his account book and looked up at her. Even from across the room, she knew that expression. She could see the fire in his eyes. It was the same look on his face from her dream.
    Images of him coming to her room flashed in her mind. The first night when he’d held her. The second night when he’d suckled on her breasts and his fingers had stroked her to pleasures unimagined. Last night when he’d bitten her thighs and feasted on where his hand had been. And just that morning when she’d been awake and felt the pleasure again.
    With a low cry, she stumbled back against the door, a hand reaching behind her. He was there in an instant. He picked her up and carried her to his leather chair before the fireplace. She struggled weakly to free herself.
    “Please. Let me go,” she pleaded. “Leave me be.”
    “Shh, Beloved,” he murmured, cradling her head to his chest.
    “Don’t call me that.” She didn’t deserve to be called that, and to hear him say it pushed her to despair.
    “It’s your name,” he told her. “An ancient translation and what I will call you.”
    “No,” she insisted, dissolving into tears. “What are you doing to me?”
    “Fulfilling our destinies.”
    “No,” she shook her head in denial. Her brain refused to accept what he said.
    “It is the fate of the men in my family,” began Wulfgar, arms tight around her. “To know that the only woman for us is one we have a mental link to. It usually starts in dreams. As the pair becomes closer, both the man and woman can initiate the link to communicate with the other. The instant I saw you…I thought you were the gentlest beauty I’d ever seen. I didn’t dare hope that you would be the one for me.”
    “The blacksmith in town said you’d been married,” she whispered. Mental link? Was he putting the images in her mind? But why? How? “Didn’t you have the link with her? Or was that part of the family curse he mentioned?”
    “No,” he said shortly. “She was part of a coven of witches who used tricks and potions to make it seem as if she had formed a link with me. I don’t know what you heard in the town…”
    “I know you didn’t kill her. I don’t know what killed her, but I know it wasn’t you.”
    “Even knowing that I found out that she’d tricked me?” He seemed astonished at the conviction and certainty in her voice.
    “Whatever you might have to do in battle, you would see harming a woman, especially killing her, as a sign of great weakness.” Her head shifted and she met his gaze. “I knew that as soon as I saw you.”
    “Thank you,” he said simply. “The first night you were here,” he resumed the story. “I tried to tell myself that fate had forsaken me. That it certainly wouldn’t bring me the one woman meant for me in the middle of a blizzard. But I dreamt of holding you that night. My dreams knew better,” he decided.
    “And the second night?”
    He gave her a slightly embarrassed look.
    “I wanted to caress you, to dream of touching you to ecstasy. It truly never occurred to me that you were experiencing the dreams, until you came in to breakfast yesterday. The day before you had blushed when you first saw me, but I thought it was because you were shy around me. But yesterday morning,” he smiled at her, “I started to wonder. The idea that you might have felt some of the dream wouldn’t leave my mind. Even when Anders came to the door. I saw how you looked when I fastened my cloak. I decided to adjust yours to see what your reaction was.” Desire blazed in the blue eyes. “All I wanted to do was carry you to my bed.”
    He chuckled as she ducked her head. One large hand cupped her cheek and lifted her face.
    “I wanted to hold you. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was make you let go of me once we were back