Her Every Pleasure Read Online Free PDF Page A

amused by her brash readiness to try to gut him.
    “I’m warning you—let me go!”
    “Why, so you can try to stab me again?” he taunted in a softer tone, trying to ignore the sweetness of her luscious curves squirming beneath him.
    She paused in her fight, staring up at him with big, brown eyes full of fire, and as her soft, lush chest heaved against his, it took all his steely will to remember his new ascetic creed.
             
    Sophia swallowed hard, panting with some wild reaction more full-blooded than simple fright as she gazed up into his eyes. Deep blue eyes of piercing cobalt intensity.
    The only time she had seen that brilliant shade of blue before was in the waters around her homeland. The half-forgotten memory gave her a pang. Meanwhile, the events of the previous night all came flooding back. For a moment there, she hadn’t been sure where she was or why.
    But now, of course, she recognized her captor as the stranger she had seen last night lighting candles in the ruined church. At least she hadn’t been found by the masked men who had attacked her carriage. Under the circumstances, she supposed it could have been worse.
    “Care to tell me what you’re doing in my barn?” he asked in a low, cultured murmur.
    “Sleeping—obviously,” she retorted.
    “Trespassing.”
    “No! I haven’t done anything wrong!”
    “Attempted murder?”
    Well, he had a point there.
    “You startled me,” she conceded with regal hauteur, chagrined by her powerless position.
    “Obviously,” he drawled back at her.
    “Humph,” she answered, quite unused to being treated this way, but on the other hand, “startled” was an understatement.
    He had terrified her, waking her from a deep sleep that way, and she had reacted accordingly. At least now, finally waking up, she had a clearer sense of her situation. “Would you mind getting off of me, please?” she asked through gritted teeth.
    His lifted his eyebrows politely. “Are you ready to put down your knife?”
    Sophia wasn’t sure, but she knew when she was being mocked. “There is no need to be rude.”
    “Sorry, I haven’t had my coffee yet, and it’s been awhile since anyone’s tried to kill me.”
    “If I had
wanted
you dead, you would
be
dead!” she informed him fiercely.
    He let out a low, charming laugh, as though she had said something clever.
    Sophia narrowed her eyes at him, then looked away in simmering mutiny, refusing to acknowledge the fact that up close, her captor was sinfully handsome. Especially when he laughed.
    “Now, young lady, hear me well. You had better drop your weapon,” he advised her, taking a no-nonsense tone. “There is no need to resort to violence, all right? I am not going to hurt you. But if you try to stab me again, I may dangle you off the hayloft by your feet till you behave.”
    Her gaze flew to his again as she gasped. “You wouldn’t dare!”
    “Meow.”
The tiny orange kitten chose that moment to intervene, mewling at the man and rubbing its sides back and forth affectionately against his big shoulder.
    He glanced wryly at the baby cat, as though he realized with some chagrin that its adoration of him did not make him look exactly scary. But maybe he did not want her to be scared of him, after all, for he began having a conversation with the kitten. “No, I brought you your milk,” he chided, as if he could understand its pitiful cries. “What else do you want? It’s your own fault you missed breakfast. You were hiding here with her. Not that I blame you, understand.”
    Sophia pressed her lips together, determined not to smile, but when the man turned from the kitten and looked at her again, he knew perfectly well that he had charmed her. That cobalt sparkle in his eyes beguiled her; she turned her face away to hide the twitching of her lips.
    “These cats,” he murmured softly. She could feel his gaze traveling down the curve of her neck. “They bully me so.”
    She swallowed hard, striving to