No Choice but Surrender Read Online Free PDF Page B

palms from his view. "I will not be backed into a corner. If you seek to appease your curiosity, I shall leave now." She turned to go. She would not be tricked into telling this man about her father. She would not! She started to walk away, but his voice boomed out from behind her.
    "You shall not leave, Lady Brienne. As I said before, I insist you stay. You will get to know Osterley before this is through, for you are not leaving until we have a visit from your father."
    She blanched at this last statement. Why would he want the earl to come to
Osterley
Park
? Oliver Morrow must be furious about losing the estate. She would stake her life that a meeting between him and this man, Avenel Slane, would be bloody. She turned to face himbut could not decipher the veiled look he gave her. In a blind moment of panic spawned by confusion, she found her tongue.
    "I will not stay here. And you may not insist. You are forgetting that I'm the daughter of an earl, and you are not even a lowly squire. There is nothing that you can do to induce me to stay here." She could not let him know that she feared her father's arrival, so she spewed excuses at him. "I will not stay in the same household with one such as you."
    "And why is that, my lady?" he asked, baiting her with his smile.
    "You have no manners." She blurted out the first thing that came to mind. She saw the ridiculousness of her answer, but it was too late to take back the words.
    He started to laugh. "I have no manners?" He laughed again even harder this time. "Now, whatever makes you say that?"
    "You—you—" She fumbled for the most effective words. "You have failed to introduce yourself, and you have called me a liar!"
    He stopped laughing and looked at her brilliant eyes and at the disdain in her sweet rose-colored lips. "But you are a liar, my lady," he stated simply. "But for what reasons, I haven't the time or the desire to expose at the present."
    He moved forward, took her by the arm, and guided her to his seat. She pulled to be free of his grasp, but it was like an iron shackle. In the next instant she found herself sitting intimately upon his lap; his arm had taken her unrelentingly by the waist.
    "Let me go this instant!" she demanded; her anger overwhelmed her fear. She struggled, but that only made the arm hold her waist that much more tightly.
    "But I was remiss in our introduction, Lady Brienne." She felt his arm relax somewhat after she stopped twisting. She was amazed that it could hold her with such power and yet with such gentleness.
    "I am Avenel Slane," he said. His other hand moved along her smooth cheek and slowly made its way down along the fragile column of her neck. Its soothing warmth was unexpected, and she found herself unbelievably complaisant under its caress. Her senses overwhelmed, however, she attempted to regain control and again to move out of his grasp. But when she turned to confront him, his eyes caught hers with such intensity that she was suddenly still. Gazing into the frozen depths of his eyes, she tried to discern what was in them. What was it? Pain, desire, hatred? Almost unconsciously she felt both his hands, warm and strong, grasp her delicate face until she was completely in his power. His face was very close, and she could feel his breath on her cheek.
    "And you, my strange, beautiful one, are Brienne Morrow." With that his lips descended on hers. Their warmth was intoxicating, and for a moment they made her dignity and even taking her next breath seem unimportant.
    But as quickly as it began, it was over. He pulled his lips away and stared down at her with eyes as cold and uncaring as the North Atlantic. It took her a moment to get her bearings, but as soon as she realized what had happened, she resumed her struggle to be free, noting with endless embarrassment that he had dared to do what she had been determined never to let happen.
    That was the final insult. She took her free hand, and despite his quickness she cracked it hard