Caged Read Free Page A

her.
    As fuzzy headed as he was, Cage still thought had never seen a more beautiful woman in his life, and he’d seen quite a few of them.  Her skin was like fine bone china, so fair it was almost translucent, like a baby’s.  Her hair was yellow gold and scraped back into a bun that had—by dint of what she’d had to do for him—begun to loosen and he could see by the straggly hanks that it wasn’t curly but definitely wavy. He wanted to wrap it around his hand as he took her, hard.  Her eyes were a bright, intelligent blue.  She was a tiny woman, something that had always appealed to him, usually bringing out his protective instincts, but in this situation he forced himself to set those highly ingrained feelings aside.
    He preferred to live rather than to worry about offending or even—he was ashamed to admit—hurting her, so he allowed himself to imitate his bastard of a grandfather, which had ended up being much easier than he would have liked.
    She was afraid of him and that was what he had to want.  Her hands were desperately trying to hide her nakedness from him, but he pried first one then the other away from her body, resolutely using one of the hemp lengths to bind her wrists together while she wept pitifully, and then, as she tried to fight him for all she was worth, he brought them above her head and secured them there to the wooden bed frame.
    Afterwards she lay trembling next to him, practically shaking the bed in fear, weeping softly, and all he wanted to do was to comfort her.  In the condition he was in, that was about all he could do—although he wasn’t about to tell her that. 
    Unable to prevent himself from doing so, he reached down and pulled the coverlet out from under her, covering those perfect, mauve tipped mounds and the light, golden fleece that covered her womanliness, calling himself all kinds of fool for having done so even as he did it.
     
     
     
     
     
     

Chapter Two
     
    He remained turned towards her and did his best to try to stay awake, but he just couldn’t.  At least he didn’t have to worry about her killing him in his sleep, or leaving to get help or any other such nonsense as she was likely to get up to without his watchful eye on her.
    Rachel couldn’t sleep.  She couldn’t seem to do anything but cry now that the floodgates had opened.  Things had turned out almost as badly as she’d expected they would.  He hadn’t tried to do anything horrible to her now that he had her in such a vulnerable position, but she knew it was just a matter of time.
    He fell asleep next to her and she knew she should relax so that she could think, but she simply couldn’t turn her mind to a solution.  Instead, she spent all of her time reliving the nightmare of what had happened to her prior to ending up where she was, and it seemed that, in desperately trying to avoid a fate worse than death, she had jumped from the frying pan into the fire.  Whether it was by a member of the social elite to whom her father had given her or a dirty, dangerous gunman, it didn’t seem to her that it made much difference in the end.
    Defiled was defiled as far as she—and the rest of society—was concerned.
    Mr. Hemmingway hadn’t quite gotten to that point with her. He’d been dragging it out, torturing her for his own amusement and thoroughly enjoying her terror at his actions.  Rachel couldn’t imagine that the man lying next to her would treat her any better; it was much more likely to be a thousand times worse.
    Why hadn’t she just seized his gun and used it to put herself out of her own misery?  Her cowardice had only just bought her a much-shortened lifetime of horrendous pain and mortification, she was quite sure.
    The increasing agony in his side woke Cage with a start some time later; he had no idea how long he’d been asleep, but he sensed all of a sudden that something was off.
    The girl was sitting up—which she shouldn’t have been able to do— and leaning