The Snow Queen's Captive Read Online Free PDF Page B

for her again.
    She didn’t move fast enough; he grabbed her ankle even as he leapt and both of them slammed to the ground. Charlotte’s chin smacked into the floor, and the breath escaped her with a whoosh. A searing pain shot up her leg, and she cried out, kicking at his grip. He refused to release her, though, his teeth gritted even as her skin smoked as if she were being burned.
    “Let me go!”
    “You were not saying that yesterday,” he told her in a hard, sneering voice.
    “Things…change!” She kicked at his face, her bare foot connecting with his jaw. Both of them yelped at the skin contact, and to her relief, he released her throbbing ankle. She scrambled away, crawling across the floors on all fours.
    She heard him scrambling behind her, and knew he was going to grab her again if she didn’t think fast. So she did – she flattened her palm and smacked it, hard, against the icy floor.
    The entire room jumped as the ice responded to her, and spikes shot up into the air around her, growing into massive protective icicles in the space of mere seconds. They surrounded her like a small fortress, glittering and dangerous.
    Kai snarled his rage and punched at the icicles from the other side, but she immediately repaired them as soon as he did. He wouldn’t be able to get to her.
    Charlotte exhaled in relief, her heart racing. What the hell had just happened? The queen had clearly been keeping Kai enchanted and pliable – and he had hated every moment of it. He’d just tried to kill her. She swallowed hard and sat up in her little icy fortress, glaring at him from behind the safety of her spiky icicles. “That wasn’t very nice.”
    “I have no time for nice,” he sneered.
    She curled her legs close and hissed at the bright red welt encircling her ankle. It hurt like a burn where he’d touched her. How could the snow queen be sexually interested in a man when it scalded her to touch him? Sick. No wonder Kai hated her.
    She glanced up at him…and noticed he was no longer glaring down at her. Instead, he was racing to the steps, determined to escape. Crap! She laid both of her hands on the ice floor and visualized it wrapping around Kai’s feet and sucking him down. Sure enough, she felt the flooring ripple and a scarce moment later, before Kai could touch the bottom step, the floor wrapped around his feet and halted him in his tracks.
    No wonder the snow queen lived in an ice palace – everything and anything was a weapon.
    Kai yanked furiously at his legs. “Let me go!”
    “I can’t.”
    He gave her an angry glare, still jerking at his legs. “Set me free and I vow to you that I and my kin will never set foot in your lands again.”
    Charlotte sighed. “I really wish I could, but I can’t. You have to stay here with me.” She wiggled her fingertips against the ice, and watched it ripple and surf like a wave, gently dragging him back to his bed in the corner, even as he was helpless to move. She had him trapped. Poor guy. “It’s for the best if you stay here, and since you’re going to try and escape, I have no choice but to leave you locked up.”
    She dumped him in the straw. A moment later, she reformed the icicle fortress around him instead of around herself, trapping him there.
    “You cannot keep me here,” he roared furiously.
    “I don’t have a choice, and neither do you,’ she told him in a pert voice. “So just get used to it.”

Chapter Three
     
    Curse the evil woman.
    Kai shivered in his cell, furious at the queen. And furious at himself, really. It was his fault that he’d been captured again. He didn’t know what had possessed her, but when she took the mirror-shards out of his eyes that kept him enchanted and complacent, he should have killed her. Planted his hands on the sides of that delicate jaw and twisted until he heard her neck snap.
    But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d hesitated while she stared up at him so pretty and soft.
    And that hesitation had cost him.
    It