Dangerous to Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

your future would have been like, and I think you know it too. Virtuous girls of your class eventually find themselves married to dancing masters or shopkeepers. It’s a hand-to-mouth existence. It would do for some women, but it would not do for you, else you would not be here with me now. This day would have come for you sooner or later.
    “It has its compensations. As my mistress, you will live in the lap of luxury. Sweetheart, I intend to pay very handsomely for the privilege of having taken your maidenhead. Besides, you have a natural aptitude for the position I am offering.” He cocked one brow suggestively. “Now come back to bed, and let me teach you about the pleasures to be had between a man and his mistress.”
    She had a temper. It was a shortcoming she had tried to master by sheer force of will, and when that failed, byapplying to her religion. Appearances to the contrary, Serena was devoutly religious.
    When she could unlock her jaw, she inhaled several long calming breaths. To give her more time to subdue her temper, she turned her back on him, and began to wrench at the strings of her bodice, trying to fit the thing to cover her bosom in spite of the rent that bared her back. When the strings of her bodice snapped, and he chuckled, she spun on him like an avenging fury.
    “You great oaf!” she lashed out, circling the bed with her long strides. “I am no doxy! Did I not tell you last night that I was a highborn lady?”
    “That is what I like in you,” he said. “You have the manners of a lady and the morals of .  .  . well, shall we just say that in bed, you are no lady, and that is how it should be?”
    “The morals of a whore!” she shrilled. “That’s what you were going to say!”
    “Sweeting, don’t
get
your hackles up. I mean that as a compliment. For my purposes, you will suit admirably.”
    “How can I have the morals of a whore when I was a virgin? It’s impossible!”
    “An attitude of mind, is what I meant. Believe me, I’m not finding fault. We are two of a kind.”
    She wanted to see him suffer as she had been made to suffer. She wanted to see him shaking in his boots, and he would shake in his boots if he knew that she had two brothers to avenge her honor. Most of all, she wanted to see him grovel. Her every instinct cried out to see this man humbled. The frustration of knowing that there was nothing she could do was unbearable.
    She would go insane if she did not express her anger. “Julian Raynor,” she scoffed, “a gamester and a libertine! I would no more think of taking up with your kind than Iwould with thieves and murderers. If you knew my name, you would be shaking in your boots. I am not some poor, unprotected doxy. I am a baronet’s daughter. Live in the lap of luxury with you?” She laughed derisively, convincingly. “My father and brothers would see me dead first.”
    Her angry outburst acted on him as she hoped it would. His smile faded; his face paled; the arms that were pillowing his neck fell to his sides.
    “A baronet’s daughter?” he said.
    The pleasure of wiping the smile from his face was not so great as the growing conviction that her temper had led her into committing a horrible blunder. Refusing to think of possible consequences, pressing her lips together, she looked around for her feathered cape. When he surged from the bed, she was so taken by surprise that she stumbled and fell against the dresser. It occurred to her then that he had a temper to match her own, but where hers was flash-fire hot, his was ice-cold, more controlled and much more lethal.
    Catching her by the shoulders, he dragged her to the window. His eyes studied her face. “Who are you?” he demanded.
    When she stared at him with her head flung back, blue defiance shimmering in her eyes, his fingers tightened and he shook her with enough violence to rattle her teeth. “I’ll have your name,” he said, “or I swear I shall make you my prisoner until I get to the