Road To Fire (Broken Crown Trilogy #1) - Maria Luis Page 0,18

combat boots. The sort soldiers wear. The kind that I imagine hurt like the very devil when they connect with human flesh. And those boots, they’re moving.

I’m moving.

Alarm slithers into my veins as my gaze involuntarily tracks north: black trousers, a gray pullover that looks like it’s seen better days. It’s drenched, same as my own clothes, and clings to a set of impossibly broad shoulders that . . . that . . .

The pressure to my stomach.

The weightless sensation.

I’ve been hauled over some man’s shoulders like a sack of potatoes. A stranger’s shoulders, my brain supplies, not just any man’s.

I’m going to die.

There’s no other explanation, save for the obvious: someone discovered that I murdered the king, and now I’ll pay the consequences.

No!

The word rips through my entire being like fire incinerating my skin. I grab the fabric of the man’s jumper, fisting the material tightly between his shoulder blades, and use my grip as leverage. Taking advantage of the man’s loose hold on the back of my thighs—completely unsuspecting—I drop my weight toward the ground in the same moment that I swing my right leg over his head.

My abdominal muscles protest.

My arms, holding the majority of my weight, cramp under the pressure of keeping myself aloft.

And still I squeeze the man’s neck between my thighs, praying with every bit of my soul that he’ll be startled enough to let me go, to let me fall, to let me escape.

He doesn’t.

There’s nothing but the sound of an involuntarily masculine grunt. Deep, guttural. A shiver screams down my spine, chasing away my confidence, and I have no time at all to reorient my pounding head before I’m hoisted up in the air and then coming down just as abruptly.

My cheek meets damp grass a second before the rest of my body follows suit.

I gasp, biting out a curse as pain twinges in my elbows, the base of my spine. Don’t give up. Don’t. Give. Up. Think of Peter. Think of Josie.

Lightheaded from the fall, I fumble hastily with my coat, angling my fingers for the knife I stowed inside. Grazing the smooth hilt, I tug it free—No!

A big hand grabs my wrist, tearing the knife away, and, as my gaze follows in fear, he stabs the sharp blade into the earth, out of reach. A knee presses heavily into my lower spine, immobilizing me, and then that same hand that stripped me of any chance for self-defense anchors down beside my head.

I feel his bulky weight shifting, feel the heat of his breath on my bare neck, and then there’s nothing but the sound of his raspy voice in my ear.

A voice I well recognize.

A voice that belongs to a man with a scarred face and soulless eyes and a heart which I swear does not beat.

“Going somewhere, Miss Quinn?”

8

Isla

Saxon Priest.

I’m not sure that the reality of him is better—or worse—than being kidnapped by a stranger with a personal vendetta. At least with the latter, I know what I’m up against. With Saxon, all bets are off.

He turned me away today. Hell, he didn’t just turn me away; he practically laughed in the face of my desperation.

Arsehole.

When I lift a sore wrist in a last, feeble attempt to snatch the knife, Saxon’s hand flattens mine to the grass, his hold uncompromising. I swallow, hard, then turn my head just far enough so I can see his profile.

The distorted upper lip. The harsh slant of his dark brows. The crooked nose and sharp, angular jawline.

I’ve been pinned down by the devil himself.

“Try it,” I mutter, my voice still hoarse from shouting Peter’s name. “Whatever it is you plan to do with me, do your worst.” I pause, gathering steel fortitude like a mental blade poised to strike. “I bite.”

“Something tells me that you’d enjoy it.” The weight on my hand doesn’t let up. Not even a little. If anything, Saxon only hovers there, his bulk covering my frame, his face so very close to mine. “I should warn you—I bite back.”

Before I can summon a response, he’s flipped me over. My clothes, already soaked through, meld with the damp grass. Any attempt to wrestle my way out of this mess is thwarted when he pins my hands above my head and straddles my thighs.

Though the position is intimate, the look on Saxon’s face is anything but.

The cast of light from one of the park’s lampposts reveals his expression to be nothing less than merciless. Mouth firm, jaw locked, he stares down