The Devil of Nettlewood (The Anarchy Tales) Read Online Free PDF

desertion, would of course leave her disoriented.
    The slut deserved none of his sympathy. The recently departed souls here in this once-thriving settlement had already claimed all his pity and then some. She would get naught from him…save his justifiable fury.
    No longer enough to hold her arm in a viselike metal grip, he pointed his retrieved dagger at her heart. In transit, he brushed a studded finger across her distended nipple, a delicate shade of rose—in marked contrast to the crimson stripes inflaming her breasts. A guileless hue was that fair shade of rose—in direct contradiction to the black-hearted treachery of her guilt.
    “Where is he?” His voice quaked with deadly wrath.
    Making him no answer, her stony stare continued.
    His anger exploded, and he shook her, shook her hard, shook her so that her perfect teeth rattled. “I say, where is the mercenary leader who conducted this massacre?”
    And still she maintained her cool poise.
    “Unfeeling whore,” he raged, his gaze falling to her bared breasts and resting uneasily there, scrutinizing the areolas. The delicate rose rings had reddened as if she were in heat, an animal’s heat.
    His sights never leaving those reddening circles, he growled, “Are you armed?”
    No response.
    Her lack of reaction left him only one choice. As any wary warrior would, he patted her semiclothed person, down her legs, back up in between, over the rounded contours of her buttocks. He surveyed her concave belly, where the bottom half of her ripped garb hung lopsidedly on a finely boned hip.
    As far as he could tell, she carried no weaponry. But only the most chivalrous of knights would risk life and limb over decorum toward a female.
    He was no chivalrous knight.
    However, even the Devil must follow certain protocols. Stripping a woman naked because his erection clamored for it violated rules of military combat. But stripping the enemy naked in a weaponry search was prudent. As cohort to a traitor, she was an enemy of the Crown. One never knew where a traitor such as she would hide her treachery.
    “Remove your shoes,” he ordered.
    When she failed to act, he stooped down and yanked her feet free of the rundown leathers.
    He examined the discards. Good! She carried no weaponry stuffed in the insoles.
    Next his survey went to her high-arched bare feet, lovely bare feet, and lingered. Her bare feet would not stay lovely for long on this soot-laden ground. Heat rose from the courtyard in waves. The hot ground would blister the soles. Rubble would nick the toes. Walking without shoes would raise calluses.
    He tore his gaze away.
    Disgruntled at how melancholy all that made him, he kicked her discarded shoes into the bonfire and watched them burn.
    Go barefoot, slut, and see if I care.
    He turned back to her.
    “Raise your hem,” he ordered and pressed his dagger to her pale chest with those animalistic reddened nipples.
    No reply save silence.
    “Raise it or die,” he shouted. “Your choice.”
    “I would prefer the flames to the knife,” she said softly.
    Aha! The whore finally speaks.
    Evidently threats loosened her tongue.
    “Your preference matters naught to me, wench. Pull the garb to your waist and be quick about it. I would be gone from here. There may be villagers in need of assistance hiding in the woods…”
    “Nay, there are not.” She shook her head in agitation. “No one got out alive.”
    “How do you come by this information? Are you admitting your guilt?”
    “I am guilty of living whilst all here lay slain. No soul escaped the inferno, my lord. They all to a one perished in the flames. The leader saw to it. Looking in the forest will only waste your time.”
    “How do you know?” he seethed.
    “I know because five score people, the total amount of villagers living within the manor’s barricaded walls, died here this day, plus Lord Harold.”
    Five score and one. The exact number Spur had tallied in his count of corpses.
    The fiendish bitch