Teresa Medeiros Read Online Free PDF Page B

you’ve done, Trini. You’ve frightened the poor girl. I dare say she’s never seen a savage before.”
    Emily wiped her streaming eyes. Now two faces were peering at her. One was still green, but the other was round and decidedly English. It was clicking its tongue and shaking its side-whiskers like a great overgrown hamster.
    The fierce green face loomed nearer. “How do you do, miss? The sheer luminosity of your countenance beguiles me. I take extreme delight in welcoming you, our most charming breast.”
    The round face pinkened. Emily gaped. The savage’s words had come rolling out in deep, resonant tones as if he’d just strolled from the hallowed corridors of Cambridge, his feathered cloak swinging around his shoulders. Emily realized his teeth were bared not in a snarl, but in a beaming smile. Nor was he entirely green. Deep furrows of jade had been tattooed in his honey-colored skin in elaborate curls and soaring wings.
    A soft groan came out of the shadows. “Not breast, Trini.
Guest
.”
    She squinted into the corner, but the sunlight had blinded her. She could make out only a vague shape.
    The tattooed man stretched out a hand. She recoiled and smacked it away. “I’ll keep my breast to myself, thank you. I’m not a simpering ninny for some native Lothario to ravish.”
    The savage threw back his head. His musical laughter rocked the small hut.
    “Did I say something amusing?” she asked the hamster.Her head was starting to pound and she was wishing even more desperately for that coffee.
    “Oh, dear, I’m afraid so. You see—the Maori don’t ravish their victims.” He leaned forward and whispered, “They eat them.”
    Emily felt herself go the same color as the snorting native. She pressed herself to the wall. “Stay away from me. I’m warning the both of you. I wasn’t kicked out of every girls’ school in England for nothing.” Emily disliked lying. She much preferred to embellish the truth.
    She attacked the air with her makeshift weapon. The native danced backward. Narrowing her eyes in what she hoped was a menacing fashion, she said, “That’s right. I know how to use this thing.”
    “What a comfort,” came a dry voice from the corner. “If Penfeld ever decides to stop serving tea long enough to dust, you’ll be of great service.”
    Emily glanced down to discover she was threatening a cannibal with a feather duster. Her cheeks burned.
    A man unfolded himself from the shadows with lanky grace. He stepped into a beam of sunlight, tilting back a battered panama hat with one finger.
    Their eyes met and Emily remembered everything. She remembered swimming until her arms and legs had turned leaden and her head bobbed under the water with each stroke. She remembered crawling onto the beach and collapsing in the warm sand. Then her memories hazed—a man’s mouth melted tenderly into hers, his dark-lashed eyes the color of sunlight on honey.
    Emily gazed up into those eyes. Their depths were a little sad, a trifle mocking. She couldn’t tell if they mocked her or himself. She forced her gaze down from his, then wished she hadn’t.
    Her throat constricted. His physical presence was as daunting as a blow. She had never seen quite so much man. The sheer volume of his sun-bronzed skin both shocked and fascinated her. In London the men swathedthemselves in layers of clothing from the points of their high starched collars to the tips of their polished shoes. Shaggy whiskers shielded any patch of skin that risked exposure.
    But this man wore nothing but sheared-off dungarees that clung low on his narrow hips. The chiseled muscles of his chest and calves drank in the sunlight. To Emily’s shocked eyes, he might as well have been naked.
    Another unwelcome memory returned—damp sand clinging to her own bare skin. The pulse in her throat throbbed to mortified life. She glanced down to find herself wrapped in the voluminous folds of a man’s frock coat. The sleeves hung far below her hands,