Shepherd Read Online Free PDF Page A

quick shake, one more real than the nightmares, cut through Esme’s fog.
    “Damn it, you’re going to hurt yourself.”
    She winced at the blindfold’s disappearance and following flood of light, then gulped in the air that had evaded her for the last several minutes. Not able to form words, she shook her head and glared at the man holding her on his lap. His metallic eye patch reflected the white of the overhead lights, the glare blending with the streaks of white, gold, and light brown in his hair.
    Not a Regent guard. She wasn’t being tortured again, but it was still the same routine. He had said he would kill her. What difference did more time make? She sagged in his arms, too tired to fight again.
    A faint click preceded a swoosh as he released his sidearm, shoved it across the floor, and pulled her against his chest.
    When his hand moved for the discarded blindfold, she lost control. “No. Please don’t put that on. Please. I can’t…I’m not…I won’t…please.” The last word strangled into a whisper as she bit the inside of her cheek and looked away to keep from crying. She had refused to cry for the guards and wouldn’t start now, no matter what it cost her.
    He tilted her chin until she couldn’t avoid eye contact with him, the frown between his brows deepening. Then he held up the blindfold, arched his brow, and shoved the cloth in his pocket. “Was only picking it up, Sugar.”
    She blinked at his term of endearment. A slip, not an indication he cared. Yet no one had ever called her anything but child, wife, or soldier, utilitarian names not meant to imply a bond. Ty’s brief use of her name didn’t count. After all, his betrayal had led her here. Despite her surprise at this man’s form of address, she didn’t mistake the lighthearted nickname from the underworld pirate as his attempt to bond with her. His words to her before the laser shot had promised retribution. However, the concern now in his one blue eye didn’t exactly fit with cold-blooded murder.
    “I’m going set you down and get you something to drink. Are you hungry?”
    She shook her head, then ducked to hide the heat in her cheeks while he moved her off his lap and settled her against the wall. Acting like a baby was a shameful waste of energy, but her body retained the phantom of fear too well. She’d been out of her mind enough that he’d picked her up to calm her without her awareness.
    The soft tread of his boots registered his movement toward the door. A warning she cataloged too late as the lock clicked and the overhead lights vanished. The darkness spiraled her back to madness in an instant, with a scream she couldn’t have stopped if she tried.
    The door rebounded off the wall, the lights flooded back, and his arms scooped her up again before Esme had time to regain control.
    “Sugar, you’re making me crazy here.”
    “The light. Please don’t leave me in the dark.” The worst things had come in the dark. Days spent at the bottom of a cold, wet tank infested with bugs, rodents, and heaven only knew what else. Days spent half-crazed from drugs, interrogated in murky gray by round after round of cold-blooded, callous guards.
    Sanity returned in small measures with gulps of air, and her focus on his large hand stroking her back. There was no way to retract her scream. However, the inflamed, raw abrasions on her wrist from tugging and the blossoming bruises over her hips and shoulder from her violent inch-worming across the floor—those she should probably have controlled.
    “Look. I’ll program the light to stay on, but you have to give a little here. Playing on my sympathy is only going to get you so far. Stop trying to wheedle your way free, whoever you are.”
    He deliberately moved her to arm’s length and gave her a stern look—or tried. The clench of his jaw and the tight lines around his mouth didn’t reach his eye as it assessed her. She was still hysterical enough she considered laughing at him.