The Pirate Prince by Gaelen Foley Read Free Book Online Page A

cried out, running to the pair as the stranger began to beat Domenic so brutally she thought he would kill him.
    “Stop, stop,” she pleaded, not daring to get too near the powerful recoil of that right arm.
    After four or five blows, Domenic’s face was half covered in blood.
    “That’s enough!” she shouted.
    Still fighting him, Domenic made a wild grab for the pistol in the stranger’s holster. The stranger knocked his hand away. Domenic’s stray grasp instead clutched the trailing end of the man’s skullcap, and it came off, revealing a head startlingly shorn to a coarse black stubble like that which roughened his face.
    The barbarian snarled at him and grabbed Domenic’s hand. With one deft, awful blow, he slammed Domenic’s hand against the brick trim of the flower bed, breaking his wrist. She actually heard it snap.
    She gasped in horror, covering her mouth with both hands as Domenic let out a short, piercing scream, then stifled it back in pride.
    “Oh, you’re a tough one, are you?” the stranger muttered, then knocked him out cold with one final, massive punch across the face.
    Wide-eyed, Allegra stood there in shock, both hands still clapped over her mouth.
    As if ashamed of his shorn hair, the stranger quickly fixed the skullcap back upon his head with one hand, an absurdly vulnerable gesture in contrast to the fierce, chiseled menace of his face. Meanwhile, blood was running in rivulets down his arm.
    Slowly Allegra lowered her hands from her mouth. “Is—is he dead?” she whispered.
    “No, he is not dead,” he growled as he began searching Domenic’s pockets. It appeared the stranger was going to rob him right before her eyes, but instead he merely took out the keys to the garden gate.
    When the stranger swept to his feet beside her, she found he towered over her by at least a foot. The man was as big as a gladiator. She had to tilt her head back to look up at him. All of a sudden, with Domenic unconscious, no one else in sight, and the walls of the garden hemming her in with this hard, bloodied man, she could not comprehend why she had trusted him for one second.
    He stared down at her, his black eyes sparkling like a wintry, star-filled sky. Slowly he walked toward her, every rippling muscle limned by blue moonlight. It was pure instinct that made her back away, though his voice was soft seduction.
    “And where might you be going, my pet?”
    She whirled to run. He grabbed her by the waist and hauled her back against his granite-hewn body with a low, mean little laugh.
    “No, no, chérie , I’ve earned you now.” He held her with a grip that was far abler and more powerful than Domenic’s. “You should have listened to your fiancé.”
    “Who are you?” she demanded, her voice shaking with terror.
    He lowered his head over her shoulder. “Prince Charming,” he whispered. “Ain’t it obvious?”
    She fought, kicked, punched, but it was useless. Without a word, he marched across the garden, all but dragging her by the wrist. Terrified, she pulled and pulled, fighting to free herself, but his grip was like an iron manacle.
    “Let me go! Here—take my jewels,” she tried desperately. “They’re diamonds and emeralds. You can have them. I won’t tell anyone about you. Just go—”
    He laughed at her. “Ah, Miss Monteverdi, some men can be bought. I’m not one of them.”
    As they crossed the grass, he swooped down with lethal grace to retrieve his knife, then slipped it into his belt with such nonchalance, she marveled that he did not open his own side. He stopped to unlock the gate and threw it open with a bang, making no effort to be silent. She clung with both hands to the lattice of the iron gate, but he pried her free.
    “What do you want with me?” she cried.
    “Just be calm and do as I say.”
    He seized her by the waist and tossed her up onto a big stamping, snorting black horse that might have come galloping straight out of Hell in answer to his whistle, except