Danger's Kiss Read Online Free PDF

wrist.  “As soon as you let me go, you overgrown minion of Lucifer!”
    He sighed and came to his feet.  The wench was obviously not going to listen to reason anytime soon.  She was scared, like a wolf caught in a trap, willing to bite off her paw to gain her freedom.
    He couldn’t give her that freedom yet.  If he let her go and something happened to her — if she was attacked by miscreants, or she froze to death, or grief caught up with her and she tried to kill herself — it would be on his head.  Whether she liked it or not, her grandfather had made Nicholas responsible for her.
    The damsel probably had no place to stay for the night, anyway.  He’d be doing her a favor by letting her take shelter in his home.
    “If you don’t let me go,” she bit out, “I swear I’ll break off this bedpost and shove it so far up your — “
    “Cease!”
    He had no intention of using a scold’s bridle on her — the horrible spiked thing had hung unused on his wall for as long as he could remember — but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t take other measures to ensure himself a peaceful night’s sleep.
    He delved into the chest at the foot of his bed and drew out a scrap of linen for a gag.  It would serve two purposes.  Her cries would be muffled, and he could rest assured she wouldn’t be chewing off her paw in the middle of the night.

    The moment Desirée saw the gag, she prepared to fight.  The secret to overcoming formidable foes, she’d learned from Hubert, was unrelenting aggression.
    It worked for cats.  She’d once seen a kitten fend off a pack of dogs with nothing more than fierce hisses and threatening swipes of its paws.
    And it had always worked for Desirée.  Men who mistook her for a frail flower, theirs for the plucking, were treated to a spate of flying fists and loud curses that would curdle cream.  They couldn’t flee fast enough.
    But this damned shire-reeve, unmoved and undaunted, came for her as if she were but a kitten, a troublesome creature to be subdued.
    Even with one hand shackled, she might have been able to fight him off.  But the brute sat on her.  While she was gasping from the indignity and sheer weight of his bulk atop her writhing legs, he managed to shove the wad of linen into her mouth.  Not even pounding his back with her free hand could prevent him from tying the gag around her head.  Then he grabbed that wrist, too, completely immobilizing her.
    Incensed, she tried to scream, but the cloth muffled the sound to a pathetic whimper.  He nodded in satisfaction, infuriating her more.
    She might not be able to curse him, but there was more than one way to get her message across.  Summoning up all the pain and rage and frustration she felt, she skewered him with a smoldering glare full of hatred.
    It had little effect, but then, she supposed a lawman was accustomed to glares of hatred.
    Her legs began to tingle from lack of blood, but he only continued to sit there, staring at her as if she were some curious sort of beetle he’d never seen before.
    Every instinct told her to look away.  But she’d survived on the streets by temerity, not timidity.  If there was any hope of enduring this ordeal, it would be by fearlessness.  So she met him, stare for stare, and tried to think of something, anything other than the rack of gruesome instruments on the wall.
    Green.  The knave’s eyes were green.  She tried to convince herself they were the color of pond slime and frog warts and snake scales.  But in fact, the hue reminded her of fresh summer meadows.
    His mouth she expected to be cruel, but there was a surprising softness to it that ill befit a man accustomed to violence. His brows were dark and expressive, and his nose was unbroken, a miracle considering the scars of past injuries to his face.  His unruly black hair looked as if he seldom bothered to cut or tend to it.  Why, she didn’t know.  He certainly owned enough sharp blades to do the task.
    She gulped