Summer Games Read Free Page B

than fighting it. Even so, the breath was knocked out of her.
    By the time she could breathe again, she was flat on her face in the leaves and dust, pinned to the ground by a heavy weight. Her binoculars, camera, and rucksack had been stripped away.
    She tried to get up, only to be knocked flat again.
    “Don’t move.” The male voice was cold, flat.
    Instinctively she obeyed.
    Then Raine felt hands moving over her body with a familiarity that no man had dared in years. Even as she stiffened, she realized that for all its intimacy, the man’s touch was impersonal. He might have been feeling her, but he wasn’t groping her.
    Her world spun crazily when the man flipped her over and laid her flat again. She felt the hard muscular weight of his leg pinning her own legs to the ground, the iron power of his forearm against her throat. As long as she was utterly still, she could breathe.
    If she moved at all she would choke.
    Lying on her back, fighting panic, she stared up into the unyielding planes of her attacker’s face. Swiftly his free hand moved over her shoulders, under her arms, over her breasts and her stomach, between her thighs. She made a guttural, involuntary sound, fear and anger and protest squeezed into one hoarse syllable.
    A winter-blue glance raked over her face while the man’s hand continued down her body to her right ankle and yanked off her shoe. He repeated the process on her left leg. Then he tossed both shoes beyond her reach. They landed on top of the knapsack, binoculars, and camera, which he had also thrown aside.
    “Name.”
    It took her a moment to connect the man’s curt command with the information he wanted from her. “Raine.”
    “Last name.”
    “Smith.” She swallowed, trying to ease the dryness of her mouth.
    “What are you doing here.”
    She closed her eyes and fought to control the chemical storm in her blood. She was used to dealing with adrenaline. The first thing any competitor learned was how to control the body’s response to stress.
    The second thing competitors learned was how to think under intense pressure. She began thinking very quickly, and just as quickly decided if the man was going to hurt her, he would be doing so, not asking her questions.
    Fury replaced fear. Her eyes opened clear and very hard. “Who the hell are you?”
    The man’s powerful forearm moved slightly, cutting off her air. The pressure ended almost as soon as it began. Pale eyes watched her to see if she had taken the hint.
    She had. The next time she spoke, it was to answer his question.
    “I’m looking at the country,” she said through clenched teeth.
    “Why.”
    No inflection, just the same flat demand that had characterized the man’s every word.
    “I’m an Olympic rider.”
    Something flickered in the man’s eyes. “Prove it.”
    His voice was still flat, yet even as he spoke, his body changed subtly, becoming somehow less . . . predatory.
    “I left Dev at Santa Anita,” Raine said curtly. Her voice was thinned by anger and the aftermath of fear.
    “Dev?” For the first time, inflection and curiosity humanized the man’s voice.
    “Devlin’s Waterloo. My horse.”
    “Describe it.”
    “Seventeen and a half hands high, stallion, blood-bay with no white, three-quarters thorough-bred and the rest either Irish or—”
    “Good enough, Raine Smith,” the man broke in, giving an odd emphasis to her last name.
    His body changed as he looked down at her, becoming less hard and more forgiving, less impersonal and more male. He moved his arm, releasing her neck from restraint.
    But he didn’t remove the weight of his leg across hers. Nor did his wariness vanish. It was as much a part of him as the darkness at the center of his ice-blue eyes.
    “As for who the hell I am,” he said, smiling slightly, “you can call me Cord Elliot.”
    He could have added that she barely resembled her Olympic ID photo. The photographer should have been shot. Or hanged. The photo had completely