Frostbound by Sharon Ashwood Read Free Book Online Page B

glance the layout of Lore’s place was the exact image of Michelle’s. Corner suite, even the same color of paint—except these walls weren’t splattered with gore. Remembering what lay upstairs sent a hot, queasy wave through her. Lore took her arm again, pulling her to the left.
    “Hey! Take it easy. You’re leaving a bruise,” she snapped, summoning some attitude, but her words were faint.
    “Vampires heal.” But he let go, instead poking the gun in her ribs. “That way.”
    Lore propelled Talia into a dark room and flipped on the overhead light. Oh, Lord, it’s his bedroom.
    He wasn’t Mr. Tidy. The queen-sized bed was made, its navy comforter dark against a brass bed frame, but clothes, magazines, and other junk littered the floor in the basic single male decorating scheme. Her heel caught on a wadded-up sock.
    “Onto the bed,” he ordered.
    Onto the bed? Not bloody likely!
    Forgetting the gun, Talia twisted away to face him. A furious tingling crept up her limbs, the shock of just too much emotion. She was either going to throw up or slug him the moment her hands were free. “What kind of male fantasy bullshit is this?”
    “Fantasy?” His heavy-browed scowl fragmented, drifting into embarrassment.
    Something inside her snapped. All of a sudden, Talia’s nerve was back. So what if she was in handcuffs? She’d give him the fight of his life. “You sick bastard.”
    “Don’t flatter yourself.” He gave her a shove that made her sit with a bounce on the soft mattress. “I don’t do dead people.”
    Her arms pinned behind her, Talia struggled to stay upright. The mattress was one of those poofy pillow-top things. “Then what are we doing here?”
    “This is my private territory. No one comes here unless they’re invited.”
    Anger stabbed through her. “Your personal den of iniquity, huh?”
    “More like the one place I can get some peace and quiet. Or used to be. Now there’s a vampire in my bed.”
    “I’m not in it yet, bud.”
    His expression dripped irony. “I always forget the chocolates and flowers.” Lore holstered the gun and pulled a handcuff key from his jeans pocket.
    “That’s more like it.” Talia turned so he could reach her wrists.
    She felt his fingers working with deft efficiency. Her right wrist came free. She flexed her arm, making sure it still bent in all the right places. Then she felt him moving her left arm and heard a metallic snick.
    “Hey!” she yelled, squirming around to see what he’d done. He’d fastened the empty half of the cuffs to the heavy brass post framing the headboard. Now she was chained to his bed. Oh, gag me!
    He stepped back, his expression hard. “You may as well get comfortable.”
    Her stomach plunged. “This is my prison cell?”
    “As I said, the crypt was already booked.”
    Oh, shit! She gave the cuffs a jerk because, well, it was mandatory in the shackled prisoner handbook. Metal grated on metal, the silver of the cuffs biting into the skin of her left wrist. She took in a breath that rattled with fear, but she forced her voice to steadiness. “You don’t have the fur-lined model, huh? Those would be a bit more comfy.”
    His eyes narrowed. “Not my thing. Bondage is a bit too much like my day job.”
    The words felt oddly like a joke she wasn’t getting. Maybe it was something cultural. He had an odd, halting way of speaking—no accent, but she was willing to bet that English wasn’t his first language.
    Talia clenched her fist to hide the fact her fingers were shaking. “What exactly is your day job? Village executioner?”
    “I am the Alpha of the hellhounds.”
    Lore folded his arms. Even through the storm of emotion, Talia couldn’t avoid noticing how the gesture showed off his arms and chest. All he needed were buckskin and a rifle and he could have been a brawny version of Daniel Day-Lewis in The Last of the Mohicans .
    Then what he said soaked in. “Hellhound?”
    “We are half demons.”
    “Isn’t that like