Miss Spencer Rides Astride (Heroines on Horseback) by Sydney Alexander Read Free Book Online Page A

hair back into its net. He wanted her. Not just any girl. Her. Grainne.  
    But he didn’t come inside soon enough, and Grainne had been awake half the night before, dreaming of her wild, runaway life with him, and the straw mattress wasn’t that terrible, not once you had sort of settled down into it and gotten used to the prickling sensation. She gazed at the dark ceiling a few feet above her head, listening to the mumble of conversation outside, and she never realized that she fell asleep until her eyes were suddenly snapping open, staring wildly at Len’s laughing face above her.
    She gasped.
    His smile vanished, to be replaced with that smoldering hunger she knew so well, and his mouth dipped down and captured hers in a long, deep kiss. She could feel him just above her, supported on his elbows and knees, and some naughty instinct sent her arching up against him, pressing her pelvis against his.
    It was Len’s turn to gasp. He pushed her back down and ground his hardness against her, rubbing that heat, so terrifying in its size and mystery, against her body. She felt his hands hard on her throat, sliding around to the nape of her neck, to pull her head up into his demanding kiss, and she trembled all over, half aroused and half terror-stricken.
    He growled deep in his throat and moved his other hand to her breasts, slipping inside the loosely tied top of the boy’s blouse she wore instead of some tight bodice, rubbing his calloused thumb over her nipple, so that she felt a surging of something that must have been panic   —
    And then he was getting up, and then he was climbing down from the bunk, and then he was outside, and she clambered up frantically, pulling the blouse back over her abandoned breast, to see that evening had fallen, blue dusky light visible through the open caravan door, and as she scrambled down from the loft she heard Len grunt oddly, and slap his hand against the caravan wall. She felt a different kind of panic then. He mustn’t tire of her so easily!  
    She came outside and saw him doing up the laces of his breeches. She started to back away, uncertain what she had walked into. But he shook his head. “Yer alright, lass,” he said reassuringly. “But ye had better take yerself home before dark.”
    Grainne could scarcely draw breath and here Len was dismissing her, waving his hand at her horse, who had loosened her rope after all this time and was grazing contentedly, bit rattling in her mouth.  
    “You left me so suddenly,” she managed to bite out.
    “Had to.” Len came up and took her hands, and she felt her heart leap at his touch. She bit her lip to stop from trembling. “Yer not mine…” Her heart sank again. “…Yet.”
    She looked up with glistening eyes.
    “When we sail away from here…”
    “Yes…”
    “Ye will be my little gypsy bride…”
    “Oh… yes!”
    “And then I won’t leave ye wantin’ more.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

    William turned Bald Nick away from the path back to the yard for what seemed like the hundredth time. The horse was not happy with him, swishing his tail and grinding his teeth against the bit to show his frustration. But William knew he couldn’t go home without Grainne.
    He’d watched her all that morning, her eyes dark-shadowed with lack of sleep, her temper short with God knew what on her mind, going through the motions of riding horses without any real idea of what she was doing. She’d put a young mare to a five-barred gate with only three strides’ warning, and nearly crashed the poor thing. She’d done up Hercules in Martinet’s bridle, and had the outraged Hercules with a bit two inches too high in his mouth, stretching his lips into a fierce grimace, before Tommy Boxton pointed out the mistake. And then she’d snapped at the luckless Tommy.  
    And then, when most of the grooms were disappearing, floating towards the pub for their noon pint, she’d put a saddle on Gretna and headed out into the meadows alone.  
    William