Heart of Darkness Read Free Page B

she
attempted to find a way to escape the bastard, who was taking her
to only the Goddess knew where!
     
    Unfortunately, her only thought had been for
that--escape.
     
    Not the injuries that would occur when she
followed through with her mad plan, nor how she would manage to do
so without causing a ruckus and garnering all their attention. Nor
did she contemplate how she would manage to run from them when she
made her getaway.
     
    She had been willfully blind in not seeing
the many problems with her plan, as a desperation to break free
from this man's imprisoning hold had taken her by the throat and
caused her to act idiotically.
     
    In the end, she had been left with an
even sorer bottom, an aching spine and a severely jerked
neck and all for
naught.
     
    Isabeau had simply noticed a sudden decrease
in speed and had stupidly taken her chance. Releasing her arms from
his waist, she had pressed her hands against the saddle and used
that to give her momentum to jump off the back of it.
     
    She groaned to think of how painful a
maneuver that had actually been and all of it pointless. As soon as
her buttocks had connected with the hard, packed earth, Wolfe's
horse and the rest of his troop had come to a halt. They had
instantly known she was attempting to escape and the worst part of
the entire indignity, was the fact that had they not noticed, she
would have had to rest upon the loamy floor for an unknown period
of time, so painful had it been.
     
    The hellish man had laughed at her
predicament from his seat in the saddle, then had dropped his heavy
weight the six feet to the ground and tossed her back atop the
horse.
     
    The moment her posterior had clashed with the
hardened and worked leather was one she would never forget. If
sitting perched on the bouncing cantle was distressing, it was
nothing in comparison to the pain that bolted through her bones
after her failed escape plan. Agony had rippled through her as
almost every single part of her had jolted and shuddered with the
strain.
     
    When he had hoisted himself back on to the
horse, this time, he had settled behind her. And so they had been
seated for the last few hours.
     
    She was not entirely sure which position was
worse. The last had been difficult, simply because it had inspired
sensations in her breast that she had no right or desire to feel.
Those rebellious and treacherous emotions had pushed her into her
foolhardy plot.
     
    And even worse was the fact that she could
not deny that the clasp of her soft, inner thighs to the hardened
and muscled flesh of his outer thighs and hips, had stirred
something inside her. Something that she had never before
experienced and it had only worsened, as she leaned forwards for
more support and her breasts rubbed against the lean yet sinewy
breadth of his back. The peaks of her nipples had hardened and even
as she had schemed to escape him, her cheeks had been tinted with
the heavy rouge of embarrassment at the inappropriate emotions that
had coursed through her.
     
    The man could have been behind the murder of
her parents, for Goddess' sake.
     
    Although the thought had shocked her, rather
than diminishing the insidious sensations, she had merely pushed
herself to switch focus and her resolve to escape the man, who was
intent on holding her captive, had trebled in intensity.
     
    Now, she found herself surrounded by him on
three sides and Isabeau, despite repeated attempts to combat those
perfidious and creeping emotions, found that her body was reacting
to his proximity in ways that made her feel flushed and entirely
outside of the parameters of her personal comfort.
     
    Throughout the long and tedious ride, she had
had little choice but to take company with her own thoughts and the
more she pondered Wolfe's reaction to her accusation, the more she
believed that he wasn't behind her parents' murder.
     
    But then, that could simply be her
subconscious trying to smooth over the fact that she found
something about