Bound to Be a Bride Read Online Free PDF

man pulled her so easily into a standing position, she had a feeling of near weightlessness. It threw her off balance and she stumbled on the uneven ground.
    Her wrists and ankles were not numb, but they felt awkward and out of use. She lost her footing and, not having her arms to break her fall, she brought her bound wrists up quickly to at least protect her face. At first, Isabella mistook the hard wall of flesh for the rough terrain at her feet.
    But he did not let go.
    “I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot,” he whispered, hot and close to her face.
    She knew she was supposed to push away from him, but she had spent a cold, hard night down there on the ground and he felt firm and warm and strong.
    “Please allow me to introduce myself properly in the absence of a mutual acquaintance to do me the honor.”
    He was speaking in the highest courtly language. She was like a marionette in her oft-practiced response, her chin dipping slightly to let him know she had heard, her gaze, though slightly downcast, straining to see him through her thick, long lashes. “I would be very pleased to make your acquaintance, sir.”
    She did not want to let go of him. So she did.
    “My name is Javier Lerrea.” He had been using his mother’s family name for quite some time, to distance his sisters and parents from his secret revolutionary life.
    She had stepped a pace away from him, but he kept her wrists in his hands, his thumb trailing along the even lines of the ropes there.
    “It is a pleasure to meet you, Señor Lerrea. My name is…Sol.” She hesitated ever so slightly, but she was sure he caught her out. “Sol… that’s my name,” she added in a hesitant tone that sounded too much like she was introducing herself to herself for the first time.
    He raised one eyebrow and was not able to repress the hint of a smile. And what that smile did to his face was beyond anything Isabella could have imagined. He became something beautiful. Her stomach went into a desperate tumble of gripping and rolling. She pulled her tied wrists closer to her chest, as if she could protect herself from the wave of emotion that was rising through her core. The motion only managed to increase her fluttering anxiety, since his strong hands were still gently holding hers.
    “Sol, is it?”
    She nodded and set her mouth in a firm line to avoid any telltale licking of her lips or biting of her tongue that might alert him to her lie.
    “Yes. Soledad… but everyone has always called me Sol.”
    “Just Sol. No last name?”
    Then she forgot all about strong hands and roiling stomachs and the hard walls of masculine flesh still warm from sleep and she got irritated. She shook his hands off her and stepped another pace back. “Sir, I am certainly not going to reveal my true identity to”—she tossed her chin—“the likes of you.”
    His beautiful smile vanished. She was sad to see it go, but someone needed to give this man a lesson or two. Perhaps he suffered from a lack of proper education. She was momentarily distracted thinking she might exercise a bit of pity on the poor man who had to make his way in life traipsing through the forests between Spain and Portugal. Maybe he was a smuggler? Again, Anna would have reveled in those fanciful thoughts far more than Isabella ever would.
    He was asking her a question about which direction she was traveling and she had to ask him to repeat it. He moved in closer and said the words a bit slower. Again, like his hands, the movement of his lips was very, very distracting. Why did he insist on standing so close to her and speaking in such a vexing manner?
    She answered him with a clipped formality. Of course she was heading to Aveiro, she informed him, sharing her suspicion that he was headed in the same direction.
    “Aha!” he cried, his booming voice startling a covey of small birds, as well as his two sleeping friends.
    “What have you discovered, sir?” Isabella asked with feigned