Betrayed by Claire Robyns Read Free Book Online Page B

still staring at his sculpted jaw when he shifted her slightly and looked into her eyes.
    “If ye weren’t hurt, ye would have run.” His voice wasn’t kind, but then neither was it angry or cold.
    He was walking again, long strides that took them to the black stallion that was as dark and brimming with potency as its owner. He set her down and turned his back on her to mount the horse, arrogantly aware that she wasn’t going anywhere.
    When he lifted her sideways onto his lap, she was unsettled by his gentle touch. Where was the outrage at her attempted escape?
    The thigh muscles beneath her tensed as he spurred the horse around and set a slow pace. She was trapped between his arms, cradled against a chest that was becoming all too familiar, feeling the heat that surrounded her from all sides, and once again intimately aware of her state of undress. What was it about this man that she was doomed to be half-naked in his arms?
    Suddenly she laughed, a weary laugh, and looked up at him. His hair flowed to his shoulders like a river of black silk. The raw power encased in his lithe frame exuded the endurance, strength and timeless arrogance of the Lammimiur craggy mountain heights. His mouth was just there, stoking a fire inside her. A sigh that came suspiciously close to longing trembled from lips that felt swollen with some imagined kiss.
    His gaze dropped to capture her sensuous stare. “Don’t.”
    She came abruptly to herself and stiffened, jerking her eyes away to look into the safety of the night. “Don’t what?”
    Strong fingers grasped her chin firmly and forced her eyes back to his. “I’m just a man, Amber, and yer games are designed ta turn a man’s blood ta sin.”
    She tried to avert her head, but he held fast.
    At least she’d come to her senses.
    “Aye,” she said, “and you’re a man designed to turn a woman’s blood to ice.”
    He grinned. Dark and sinister, and damn him to hell, for she found that dangerous grin strangely seductive. “Be that a challenge?”
    She shrugged a casual shoulder that took more effort than it should have. “A statement. I already have ample proof.”
    His hand left her chin and moved down to her breast, cupping, fondling. A roughened thumb stroked her nipple, teasing it to a hardness that was made painfully obvious through the damp cotton.
    “Unhand me.” Something inside her cracked, coaxing a foreign heat low in her belly.
    “Why?” The grey in his eyes caught the moonlight to sparkle with amusement. “Ye have yer proof, and now I’ll have mine.”
    “Beast.”
    “Is that all ye can come up with?” His fingers abandoned their task to trace a fiery trail up her throat, tipping her chin to him once more. “This morning I was a bastard. Or was that a whoreson? Ye have an inventive tongue, I’ll give ye that.” He paused, and the moon must have dipped from sight for his eyes lost the light to a dark, almost pewter depth. “I wonder what else it is capable of?”
    “Poison,” she vowed.
    This time, when she jerked her chin free, he let her be. His roaming hand went back to the reins and she told herself she was grateful he’d lost interest.
    But her pulse was racing and nerves tingled awareness up and down her spine. And deep inside was a curious emptiness she did not fully understand.
    The silence held until they’d entered the bailey and dismounted. Once he’d handed his horse over to a young lad, she found herself hauled into Krayne’s arms. Amber made a token protest, in truth relieved to bury her face in the linen folds of his shirt when he carried her through the throng gathered on the front steps.
    “Duncan, send word that the search is off,” Krayne called out.
    “Where was the wench?”
    “How did ye catch her?”
    Krayne’s stride slowed. “Would ye believe, the lass fell straight inta my arms.”
    “Och, ne’er.”
    “’Tis the truth,” he assured them with mock indignation.
    Amber’s cheeks burned. Then the hairs on her neck