Passion's Joy Read Online Free PDF Page B

this belief. "I assure you, sir, I'd be just as pleased to shoot you as to look at you!" She misread plain malice as fear, and ridiculously, before she thought better of her natural inclination, she said, "Oh, don't worry, I truly won't shoot if you just do as I say."
    "Ah! I suppose this means I can stop my quivering!"
    A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, and while his wit disarmed her again, she wisely concluded his charm best ignored. His hand still held a dagger, and she saw this as her first exercise in authority.' "You can drop your dagger first off."
    "My thought exactly." He lifted the dagger as though to drop it, but with a casual flick of his wrist, it sliced through the air in a flash, expertly hitting its mark right between her open legs. Joy gasped, tried to catch her balance, but fell backward, landing with an ugly thud to the ground.
    Although the wind was knocked out of her, she quickly scrambled to her feet with a speed that impressed her audience of one. He let her run a few paces to satisfy a desire to see her backside before he tackled her to the ground in three easy strides. Strong arms braced her, and she cried out as, curiously, those same arms cushioned her fall, allowing an impact no more jarring than a tumble to hay.
    Then his weight came upon her.
    Joy had the good sense to be frightened at a distance, but now she knew terror as his hard form pressed intimately upon her, stifling any thought of a struggle. He pinned her arms to the blanket of moss, and her terror grew as his gaze raked over her in unsurpassed scrutiny.
    "God, girl," his gaze finally returned to her face. "There’s enough femininity in this package to arouse a blind man. I don't know how you thought to disguise it."
    Until that moment, she hadn't known he had guessed her sex. A maiden's fear sprang quickly in her enchanting eyes, real, tremendous, and forever alien to him. Why this bothered him, he couldn't say; she at least deserved the fear.
    "Your explanation had better be good, brat. That a young girl mustered the audacity to behave so is only slightly less infuriating than the thought of the man who put you up to it."
    He saw she could barely comprehend, let alone venture a reply, the enormity of it was so great. Her breath came in huge gulps, and she looked as though she fully expected a blow to her face. "Rest easy, brat," he said slowly. "I’ve never had the inclination to molest young girls by the roadside."
    She remained perfectly still, the words penetrating slowly, but bringing little reassurance. This brought some small amusement. "Even if I had though, you'd have naught to worry.
    You're pretty enough, I suppose," he ventured, lifting partially from her to again review her assets. "Provided one had the imaginative facilities necessary to see through this garb. But this skinny slip of a figure hardly offers a temptation."
    Comprehension sank through her fear, and then only partially, the terror of being caught, held and helpless left her nearly deaf and certainly dumb. All she gathered from his speech was the subject of molestation. "Please don't hurt me..."
    This plea utterly disarmed him, doing more for her case than a hundred jurists, not just because it accurately revealed the extent of her desperation, so markedly incongruent with the boldness of her behavior, but because of the tone. Her voice sounded frightened, altogether feminine, and held an alluring blend of accents—an English hit mixed with soft Southern lyricism.
    "After I turn you over my knee for a well-deserved thrashing, I won't hurt you. Probably." She frantically searched the devilishly fine features to finally discern his amusement.
    He thought of her as nothing but a misbehaving child, she realized and relief swept over her form. Once released from the burden of that fear, she was suddenly, acutely conscious of the great inexplicable warmth of his body pressed on hers, the shocking intimacy and feel of his hard muscled strength. "What