The Devil of Nettlewood (The Anarchy Tales) by Louisa Trent Read Free Book Online Page A

her, moving barefoot and naked toward who knew where.
    In a loose sense, this arrogant, noble warrior was responsible for saving her life. If not for his intervention, she would have let the flames have her. Indeed he had rescued her from certain death. And now she dared to hope.
    Mayhap, one day—if she stayed alive—she might see her sister again.
    That was the future. Here on out, she would neither look forward nor back, but dwell in the uncertain and immediate present. And in the uncertain and immediate now, she would need to become a new person, someone completely changed from her former timid self, a person unafraid to twist whatever the circumstances to suit herself.
    If she did not, the warrior hypocrite might not only renege on their agreement but take from her that which he had rescued.
    Her life.
    The commodity that she had once thought to discard had become surprisingly worthwhile again.

Chapter Four

    Talon bred hunting dogs. As it so happened, the day previously—before he happened upon Lord Harold’s razed settlement—Spur had visited his brother’s well-stocked kennel at Ironguard, thinking to take a hound back with him to his keep. Unfortunately the female animal he had chosen was too young to travel, and he would not uproot a nursing animal from its mother. And so he had left the dog behind. As luck would have it, the unused equipment was still fastened to his belt. The leather restraints now served him in an altogether different capacity, though still employed on a bitch.
    With no possibility of escape, his collared and leashed prisoner stumbled ahead of him, nude and cowed.
    Still, Spur pulled his broadsword.
    Mercenaries might lurk in these parts, and his charge was to protect this treacherous whore- bitch …but only until he learned the name of her lover, the mercenary leader. Though she had probably lain with every member of the troop, the names of the leader and the noble who paid him were all that interested Spur. After she informed on them, his protection ended. The wolves could have her for all he cared. Until then, however, he kept one eye on the woods that abutted the trail and the other on her.
    The latter was hardly a sacrifice.
    Say what he would for her lack of morality, he still thought her a beauty. In particular, he found her skin praiseworthy. Her face’s fair complexion continued all over, with nary a freckle to be seen anywhere. Countless men may have kissed her bare flesh, but ’twas obvious the sun had never enjoyed that same privilege.
    He would decidedly not kiss her pale flesh. Neither would he suckle at her rose-tipped breasts, nor slip his tongue between her toned thighs to lap at her loins, a cunt encircled with a neat patch of winsome sable curls. Nor would he sink his cock into her well-traveled slit, regardless of its wet seduction. Neither would he turn her over onto her belly and poke her in back, a deep crevice that called out to him even now. Instead he would terrorize her until she spilled information in favor of his not spilling her blood. A fair trade. Then, after she gave up all that she was privy to, he would surrender her over to the king, who would hopefully decorate the end of a pike with the traitor-whore’s scheming head. Also fair. Traitors deserved execution. A waste of a prime cunt, but there ’twas. Duty was duty. He did serve his king.
    His cock jutting uncomfortably within its metal armor, which placed him in the foulest of moods, Spur pulled on the leather strap encircling his prisoner’s throat. The yank brought her up short.
    The trees had thinned here, and she turned to him, blinking at the sudden shift in light from shadowed to bright.
    “Aye, my lord?” she said and swiftly cupped a hand to her eyes.
    Raising an arm so quickly as she had sent her small breasts to jiggling. One nipple of those jiggling breasts showed the swelling of his punitive handling.
    Her wincing told him she could not see him, but he had seen enough.
    “Face