Some Like It Wild by Teresa Medeiros Read Free Book Online Page A

you?” Sophie asked, shooting Connor a worried look.
    Pamela held her breath, waiting for him to proclaim that she too was a lady and would be treated with all the tender regard due to such a delicate and refined creature.
    As his stony silence stretched, she was forced to fill it with a burst of high-pitched laughter. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about me. This will give me and Mr….” She slanted him a questioning look.
    “Kincaid,” he volunteered.
    “…me and Mr. Kincaid a chance to discuss our business in private.”
    One of the men nudged the fellow next to him, his stage whisper clearly audible throughout the room. “The lass’ll be walkin’ bow-legged for a fortnight after discussin’ her business with our Connor.”
    His friend nodded in agreement. “Aye, there’s some that say the hangman had to let the lad go after he realized he couldna hang him no better than he was already hung.”
    As several of the men snickered, Pamela bowed her head, wishing desperately that she could sink through the stone floor.
    At Connor’s curt signal, Brodie stepped forward and offered Sophie his burly arm. One would have thought he was about to escort her into supper at a private ball in Mayfair.
    “So are ye married, lass?” he inquired of Sophie as she gingerly tucked her hand in the crook of his arm. When she shook her head, still eyeing him warily, he beamed down at her, his gold tooth winking in the firelight. “Would ye like to be?”
    Pamela sighed. She had rescued her sister from the viscount’s lascivious offer just so Sophie could receive her first legitimate proposal from a randy bandit with a silver hoop in his ear and a tattoo of a wriggling serpent on his upper arm.
    Connor sent the other men fleeing from the room with little more than a look. Although they muttered beneath their breaths and scuffed the stone floor with their booted toes as they filed out, they didn’t seem any more inclined to defy him than the coachman had been. Apparently he didn’t even require a loaded pistol to impose his will on others.
    Which didn’t bode well for her own future, Pamela thought grimly.
    A future that grew even darker when Connor bent to scoop up the length of rope she had used to bind him. When he came for her, she stood her ground, knowing it would only embarrass them both if she tried to flee. She held herself stiff as a plank as he wrapped one powerful hand around her upper arm and backed her toward the wooden chair nearest the hearth with a grip that warned it would brook no disobedience.
    One minute she was standing on her own two feet; the next she was landing in the chair with an undignified plop . He looked even larger looming over her in the firelight. She had to tilt back her head just to shoot him a defiant glare.
    As he studied her through narrowed eyes, his capable hands toyed with the rope, wrapping one end around his right fist, then taking up the slack with his left. Pamela swallowed back an icy lump offear, waiting for him to whip the rope around her wrists—or more likely her throat. She was helpless to hide her start of surprise when he tossed it to the hearth.
    “I don’t really think we’ll have need of that, do you?” he asked, his voice as gentle as if he was speaking to a child.
    Pamela let out a shuddering breath, knowing he was right. Given his superior strength and size, she could fight him to her dying breath and still be utterly at his mercy.
    “Especially not when I have this,” he added, drawing her delicate pearl-plated pistol from the waist of his breeches.
    As he held the weapon up to the firelight, turning it this way and that, Pamela couldn’t quite take her eyes off of it. Or him.
    He admired the pistol’s gleaming beauty from all angles. “’Tis hard to believe such a bonny wee thing could be an instrument of death, is it not?”
    She held her tongue, afraid to let out so much as a squeak. If he had bound her to the chair hand and foot, she would