Darkling I Listen Read Online Free PDF

frantically digging at the base of the tree. He looked up. His eyes widened.
    The limb snapped.
    Carlyle ducked and rolled—too late. Her weight drove him to the ground, where he scrambled to knock aside the branch and grab a handful of her hair before she could recover from the impact. Suddenly he was over her, one knee digging into her stomach and pinning her to the ground, his teeth showing, eyes flashing, fist drawn back and prepared to smash her face to smithereens. She couldn't move or speak or breathe. She could only stare up into the man's furious expression and wonder desperately just how much plastic surgery was going to cost after he obliterated every bone in her face.
    He didn't hit her, thank God, because he was a whole lot bigger and heavier and stronger than he'd looked from her precarious perch. And a whole lot better-looking, if that was possible.
    "It's a goddamn woman," he snarled as the officer suddenly appeared over his shoulder, pointing a big gun at her and ordering Carlyle to back off and let him take over.
    "Will somebody shut that dog up? It's giving me a headache!" the officer shouted.
    The woman in white shoes and a flowered blouse whistled for the dog as Carlyle backed off, slowly, his eyes still locked on hers. She rubbed her head.
    "Get the hell up," the officer ordered, wagging the gun at her. "Up. Up." He stepped back, lips pinched with nervousness.
    Slowly, unsteadily, Alyson rolled to her hands and knees, managing to take a deep breath before climbing to her feet. Her camera. Oh, Christ. She glanced down at the Nikon, which lay partially ground into the dirt, and suddenly felt desperately sick. The lens had cost her four hundred and change.
    Carlyle muttered something under his breath and reached for the camera. Flashes of him smashing equipment in the past rolled in her mind. "Don't hurt it," she managed in a dry voice.
    He removed the film cartridge and flung the camera back at her. She caught it and gripped it to her chest like a baby as she looked back and forth between Carlyle and the officer, who continued to point his cannon at her.
    "You want me to take her in?" the officer asked, sliding a glance toward Brandon .
    He looked her up and down, wondering to himself how he could have mistaken her, in that first flash of anger, for a man. The hair, he supposed. Cut so short. Shorter than his. And perhaps her height, five-nine, or maybe ten. But the body sure as hell didn't belong to anything except a female. Tall, willowy, poured into a pair of tight blue denims, her breasts nicely filling out a T-shirt emblazoned "Texas Aggies." Despite the fall the shirt was tucked neatly into the jeans; her very small waist was accentuated by a sparkling multicolored belt with a sterling silver buckle. She sure as hell hadn't bought it at Wal-Mart.
    "Right," he finally replied, still looking into her hazel eyes fringed by thick, black lashes. There was a scratch across her right cheekbone that was beading, and a smear of golden pine sap across her chin. "Take her in."
    Those gray-green eyes widened, and color rushed over her face. "You're not serious." She gave a short, disbelieving laugh. "Look, I apologize. You took the film. I was going to talk with you the first chance I got, anyway. But you're too damn hard to get to—"
    "Obviously not hard enough." He gave her a derisive grin and turned away.
    "I have a proposition—"
    "So does every other woman in the universe, Baby. Not interested."
    "Not that kind of proposition!"
    Pausing, he looked back. Long legs braced apart and her arms clutching her camera, she glared at him through her tousled fringe of dark bangs, her face red with indignation, her eyes wide with worry. This is where she would beg, no doubt. Turn on the tears. But she didn't beg, didn't cry. Raising her chin a notch, she told him with equal derision, "Not interested, Carlyle."
    He stared at her.
    She stared back, the scratch on her face starting to puff and a solitary thread of blood