Seduce Me Read Online Free PDF

“They’ve been gone a while now.”
    “If you two are finished with the history lesson, we have work to do,” Thatcher growled. He set his lantern down and scanned
     the open room. His deep chuckle shot doom through Esme. “Put her there.” He motioned to the far right wall.
    Waters followed his gaze but made no movement. “In the manacles? Thatcher, a mite rough, don’t you—”
    But before he could finish his question, Thatcher silenced him with a steely glare. “Yes, you dolt, lock her up. She’s a prisoner,
     not your betrothed.”
    Waters dragged her over to the far side of the room. The dungeon’s air was damp and stale. The ground was so moist that mud
     clung to her slippers with each step. The dirt beneath her feet lent an earthy smell to the air that made her feel as if they
     were outside. Only she knew they weren’t, and the likelihood of her escaping to the outside was slim. Even if she did, where
     would she go?
    Panic rose in her throat, bitter and acidic as bile.
    If only this were a scene from one of the adventure novels she read. In the books a handsome hero always came and saved the
     poor distressed woman. Esme knew that she had no such hero, handsome or otherwise, so it was likely she would rot hanging
     from those manacles. Or worse.
    This time she didn’t bother to suppress her shudder. If lurid fiction were to be believed, ruffians such as these were likely
     to use her poorly. Regardless of how they might feel about her large bum.
    Waters untied her arms, then slid her right wrist into the manacle. As he closed the cold metal around her, she watched him
     slide the pin into place, locking it on her arm. She tried to kick him, but her feet caused no great damage, even when they
     collided with his shins.
    He had more difficulty with her left arm, both because of her attempt to dissuade him from chaining her to a wall and because
     the pin on the left manacle was severely rusted. But he managed to force it into place. It certainly didn’t look as if it
     would give way anytime soon.
    Something scurried beneath her feet and she kicked out, sending the unsuspecting creature flying toward the men.
Rat.
She smiled at the irony.
    Each man held a lantern that provided enough light for her to see them from her vantage point against the wall. Above her,
     there was a fair-sized hole in the partially collapsed ceiling, through which she caught a glimpse of cloud-strewn sky. She
     herself was shrouded in darkness except for the faintest shaft of moonlight.
    “Start against that wall,” Thatcher told Waters while pointing to his left. “You count forty paces. I’ll start over here.”
    The men were several feet from their respective walls before Esme interrupted their counting. “At some point you’ll realize
     you have the wrong woman. I have no key, nor any notion of what we’re doing here.”
    Waters went back to his wall and started again.
    “Whomever you were looking for, I’m not her,” she said. “In fact, I’m certain you are unaware of this, but I am a very important
     person, and once my household discovers that I have disappeared, the whole of London will be looking for me. They’ve probably
     already notified the metropolitan police.”
    That sounded good, in theory. But none of it was true. Her aunt would certainly miss her, as would Mr. and Mrs. Craddock,
     their two servants, but no one would believe Esme to actually be missing. She had always had the bad habit of going off on
     her own whenever the desire hit, such as when she traveled to Oxford to buy the journal of the man who’d researched Pandora’s
     box. She’d been gone three days and her aunt had barely noticed. So her household, as it were, was used to her disappearing
     every once in a while. Then again, they would know something was amiss by the state of her study. They would certainly know
     she would never treat her books in such a fashion. But they would not have noticed until long after the abductors