The Cherished One Read Online Free PDF Page A

fingers reaching further than that to encircle her wrist.  He fell into step beside her as if they were old lovers strolling down the street.  “I believe you had intended on leaving before you were so rudely interrupted.”  His voice flowed over her like melted chocolate.  “I’d be glad to escort you to wherever it is you were headed.”
    Fawna tried to disengage her arm from his increasingly intimate embrace but she found herself held against his side, almost obscenely close.
    “Stop struggling or I’ll throw you down on the sidewalk and spank you right here for getting yourself into this predicament in the first place.  I can see that Dag had his hands full with you,” he growled.  Max could sense the alarms his statement set off in her head and was glad of it.  The entire side of his body that she was on tingled just from their slight contact.  No wonder Dag had been so captivated by this little scrap of a woman.  He, unlike her former lover, hadn’t learned to shorten his strides, and they were eating up territory so quickly she felt like her feet weren’t even touching the ground.
    “Where are we going?”
    “ I’m going to see my family.  You are getting the fuck away from me.”  She was still trying to wedge her arm between him.  He had to give her points for persistence.  She was so scared she couldn’t even feel how scared she really was.  She couldn’t think. 
    Had he just threatened to spank her?  What had happened to kill?  In this neighborhood, no one would have looked twice, and that was certainly what she would have expected from him.  She knew from personal experience that he didn’t hesitate to do that kind of thing.  Spank her?  She must’ve heard him wrong.
    Max could feel her mental confusion, but consciously did nothing to diffuse it, smiling just slightly to himself.  Keeping her off guard was going to be a distinct advantage.
    “Your family, huh?  I guess that’s back to where we met?”  He felt her stiffen even more next to him, and realized that reminding her of how he’d treated her upon their first meeting probably wasn’t his smoothest move.
    They had made it several blocks already, she was guessing with his assistance because she knew she couldn’t have made it anywhere near this far under her own power.  He kept her hand tucked under his arm as he hailed a taxi, and tucked the two of them into the back seat.
    Fawna scooted as far away from him as she could, sitting in the opposite corner and glaring at him.  “Look, I don’t need an escort.”
    “You certainly needed assistance with those boys, didn’t you?”
    That got her back up.  “I didn’t need any help – I’d already extracted myself from that situation before you arrived, thank you,” she informed him, folding her hands primly over her purse.
    “You might have managed to momentarily distract them from their intent by your parlor trick with the dogs.” Fawna frowned. If he thought he was making points with her by insulting her, he was sorely mistaken.  “But they weren’t going to be nearly as easily deterred as you would have hoped.”
    Fawna refused to accept that opinion, and said nothing, preferring to stare out the window of the cab and watch the city go by.
    Max wasn’t used to women being quite so unaffected by his presence.  Most women – human women, vampire females – fell all over themselves to get to him.  She was going to be more of a challenge than he’d thought, and that sounded extremely appealing to him. 
    His eyebrow rose as his eyes settled on the enormity of her purse.  “That thing’s big enough to carry a body in.”
    “I wouldn’t know.”
    He chuckled.  There was nothing quite like a woman in full snit.  He’d forgotten that recalcitrant tone of voice, the fuck-you body language.  It, indeed, been an extraordinarily long time since he’d had to fight for a woman, in more ways than one, and he found himself looking forward to the