Page 19 of Pride: The Rogue
The sound of her flesh striking his came followed by an ominous rumbling of thunder.
Her assailant sharpened a lethal gaze upon her.
Oh, God.
In one fluid motion, he tugged Livian’s calf and brought her to the floor and covered her body with his own. Livian’s breaths came harder and faster. Her captor’s enormous biceps and defined chest muscles unnecessarily highlighted his power over Livian.
Her panic intensified. “Let. Me. Go,” she rasped.
He snorted. “Why? So I can take another knee to the ballocks or one of your impressive right cuffs?”
“Not impressive enough to have gotten myself free,” she cried, her voice broke on a sob.
His dry amusement faded. “Hey, now,” he said in soothing tones he might use with a scared child. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Her chest rose and fell violently. “You alreadyare,” she spat.
“Am I?” His black eyebrows came together into a single line. “Because it seems like of the two of us, sweetheart, you are the only violent—oomph.”
Livian connected her knee with his groin.
“My exact point,” he said drolly, his equanimity almost as enraging as his refusal to set her free.
Livian put up her wildest, greatest resistance yet, bucking and thrashing and twisting.
“Very well.” The indomitable stranger sighed. “As you are, then.”
She squirmed frantically from side to side. Cool air slapped her skin, climbing higher and higher.
Pinpricks of fear dotted her vision.
Her nightshift!
Oh, bloody hell. She’d all but lifted her skirts for him.
As if he were, in fact, the mind reader he’d earlier professed to be, her captor’s callused fingers brushed the side of her thigh; the pads of those long digits were coarse and harsh against her.
Livian’s eyes rolled back in her head.
I’m going to be ill…
He cursed. “Would you stop moving?” he demanded, catching her hem, which’d climbed up around her waist. With another foul utterance, he reached between them, grabbed her skirts, and yanked them…
“D-Don’t!” Livian cried out.
Back into place?
Wait a moment? He’d righted her nightgown? Confused, she tucked her chin into her chest and peered between the slight space between their bodies.
“Would you rather I leave them up?” he drawled. “Given the monstrosity and quality of your nightshift, I took you more as one who’d want them down around your ankles but if you’d—”
“No!” she rasped.
He flashed another one of his sarcastic smiles.
Livian drew back. “Why, why, you’re enjoying this,” she breathed in horror.
“This? I assure you, sweetheart, I can name a million other things I’d rather be doing than spending time with you.”
