Dark Lover by Brenda Joyce Read Free Book Online Page A

almost silver before he lowered his lashes and dropped the tatters of silk. “Ye need to take care of the cuts.”
    â€œThis isn’t the Middle Ages. No one dies from a few scrapes here,” she snapped, but she was trembling and rigid with tension. Damn his sex appeal.
    His mouth curled, this time unpleasantly. “An’ I know it very well, Samantha. I live here, remember? Not in that barbaric time.”
    She bristled. “It’s Sam. And don’t worry, no one would ever peg you as a medieval barbarian, Maclean. Just a selfish jerk.” Had he been defensive? She thought so, and she couldn’t imagine why.
    The white ambulance from Five careened around the intersection, marked as Cornell Presbyterian. Sam dismissed her speculation about Maclean, watching as the agency paramedics leapt out. Then she glanced at Maclean again. He seemed to be noticing that his conquests for the evening were gone.
    â€œYou don’t need them,” Sam said. She stepped into the street, aware now that one of her spike heels was gone. Cursing, she flagged down a cab. She seized the door handle and looked at Ian as she opened it. “Get in, Maclean.”
    His eyes widened.
    She kept her mind blank. “I want to see your digs.”
    A slow, hot smile began. He slid into the cab and Sam slid in with him. She shut the door. As he leaned forward to tell the driver where they were going, she reached into her bag. “1101 Park Avenue,” he said.
    Sam snapped the handcuff on his wrist. He started, his gaze slamming to hers as she snapped its mate on her own wrist. She smiled at him. “This should be fun.”
    Â 
    S HE HAD JUST handcuffed herself to him.
    He started to laugh, amused. Did she think to dismay him? He’d been lusting for her since he’d first seen her. He would never get over her face. Those striking features, those amazing eyes and that cropped platinum-blond hair. He looked forward to the day she rubbed her face over every inch of his body…
    He raised his wrist and said, “All ye had to do was tell me, Sam. I’d have brought the handcuffs myself.”
    â€œWe stay together tonight,” she said coolly.
    But he didn’t hear. As he tugged gently on the handcuffs, his gut churned, the sensation sickening. They were speeding up Central Park West, but the old, stately apartment buildings started to swim in his vision. They became dark ominous shadows…
    He could not have a flashback now .
    But he recognized the shadows—the small, tight walls of a cellar. The iron on his wrist was attached to one wall. They’d left him in there, like that, for months. His only company had been the rats. He’d been nine years old.
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Maclean?”
    â€œWhat’s wrong, Ian? Are you afraid of the dark? The rats? Me?”
    He stared up at the demon who had captured him. The demon who had killed him, and then brought him back to life so he could be tortured. Used .
    Soft evil laughter sounded .
    And although he hadn’t used his voice in months, not since the beginning when he’d screamed and screamed for help, he begged. “Please let me out. Please. I’ll do whatever ye wish.”
    â€œGood, because I have so many uses for a pretty boy like you,” his grandfather said .
    â€œMaclean?”
    He’d lived with horror and pain—and abject fear—for sixty-six years. But he heard Sam Rose, and somehow, he looked at her.
    He was sweating.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with you?” Her vivid blue gaze moved over him. “Hot flash?”
    Her mockery brought him firmly back to the present and the taxicab they shared. He looked back at her and shook his wrist, so the handcuff wriggled between them. “Of course I’m hot. We’re shackled together.”
    For one more moment she stared. He was fairly certain she did not believe the excuse he’d just made. He didn’t care what she