The Windflower Read Online Free PDF Page B

evil, only as if he did not care. If she had seen him on the street, she would have known he was not like other men. She wondered if this magnetism had been there and had forced him into a life of piracy, or if it had come to him as a mantle of the reputation he had gained.
    Morgan moved through the gaping crowd like visiting royalty, companioned by two men. The younger of the two was near to seventeen, an age that normally might have led him to be described as a "youth," and yet there was nothing of youth in his coldly Scandinavian face, with hard, milk-blue eyes and lips that looked as though they had never known a smile. His hair was dead straight, almost white from the burn of salt and sun, and so long that it touched his hips; it was pulled across his right shoulder to lie in an ivory fall over one side of his chest. His exposed ear was pierced and held a loop of black thread. As he moved into the room Merry saw pale stripes on the chestnut-tanned skin of his naked back that she shudderingly realized had been inflicted with a whip.
    The exotic boy ranged tigerlike between the tables, oblivious to the tension around him—the indrawn breaths, the nearly exploding lungs. Finally he stopped; everyone breathed again except the unlucky patrons whose table he chose, who scurried away like lizards from fire. He gazed disgustedly at the mass of bottles, empty and full, at the table, and the unplayed hands of piquet and scattered coins which were strewn by each chair. Reaching out, he tipped the table, sending its contents clattering to the floor, followed by a single card, the jack of hearts, which flipped in the air twice and landed gently like a leaf on the floor.
    The violent little scenario caused the third man to laugh and murmur some remark which caused the spirit of a smile to pass over Morgan's lips, so faint as to be only felt rather than seen; and the pirate's features held fleetingly the telltale softening of affection.
    Bound by the pounding urge of fascination to see the man that Rand Morgan could care for, Merry's gaze left the long-haired boy and the pirate captain to center on their companion.
    He was half-turned from her, his face toward Morgan, so her first impression was of a man of perhaps a little more than medium height, each inch of him hard, flowing muscles knit arousingly into a well-carried, sensuously slender frame.
    A dark jacket of supple leather hung from his wide, relaxed shoulders; below were snug, faded denims and wine-colored boots cut high to the knee, which looked expensive, despite their scarred toes. It was hardly Merry's habit to study the male anatomy, and certainly not to admire it, and yet there was something in the shapely play of line and curve and sweetly made muscle that captured the eye, however modest.
    With a graceful movement he bent to upend a chair, and his hair, as bright and glowing as a harvest moon, swung in a lively arc. He dropped into the chair facing Merry; all at once she could see his face.
    The stranger had one of those rare, wonderful faces that truly deserve to be called arresting. It was so much more than handsome; this man was beautiful, in a way uniquely masculine, as arrogant and tender as a Renaissance archangel sitting in liquid, unattainable splendor, the half deity made mortal, with eyes that held light like faceted gemstones. It was an urbane face, stamped with humor and humanity, in marked contrast with the delicately erotic mouth, and as she stared at him Merry felt the hot embers of that same confusing blend of yearning and fear that had brushed into her soul when she had dreamed of the unicorn.
    But this man was a pirate, a member of one of the most vicious and carnal orders of men that had ever plundered the earth's good few. Lucifer, it seemed, was too smart to appear always with his horns and tail.
     
     
     
    CHAPTER THREE
    Devon Charles Crandall sat back in his chair, raising the heel of his boot to rest it lightly against the trestle table before