herself, she shouldered her way into the wind and along the front of the cottage. It took only a moment to close the shutter and fasten the hook that had somehow come undone.
She turned to scurry inside—
A strong arm went around her waist and swung her back against the side of the cottage. She screamed, but the sound was lost beneath the noise of the raging storm. A forearm pushed against her upper chest, pinning her against the wall.
Another scream ripped from her throat. She kicked and punched with all her might at the man who’d grabbed her, who now held her a helpless prisoner as he leaned into her, his muscular legs forcing hers to still. With one large hand, he grabbed both her arms and pinned them over her head, while the other pressed the barrel of a pistol beneath her chin.
“Who else is inside?” he demanded.
She couldn’t see his face as the rain pelted down upon both of them, so fiercely that she couldn’t blink the water away fast enough. The black night covered his features, but nothing could hide the strength of him as he held her against the wall.
He pressed the pistol harder against her. “A husband, brother—who?”
“My husband!” she lied, so frightened that she nearly crumpled to the muddy ground. “He’s certain to have heard me scream, so you’d better leave!”
He laughed, a terrible sound that scratched and screeched nearly as much as the wind howling over the bluffs. “No husband, then. Anyone else?”
She was terrified and freezing, but she refused to submit to this man. Not to any man ever again. She’d rather die than surrender. “Go to hell!”
His eyes gleamed in the darkness. “I’m already there.”
Keeping the pistol pressed against her throat, he grabbed her arm and tugged her toward the door, which had blown open in the hurricane gale. He pulled her inside and kicked the door closed. Twisting from his grasp, she yanked her arm away. He let her go, only to reach behind him and throw the bolt to lock them inside.
Grace ran toward the fireplace, snatched up the iron poker, and brandished it like a weapon. All of her shook so violently from cold and fear that she didn’t know how she managed to hold onto it. But he’d have to rip it from her hands before she released it. And if he took a single step toward her—
But he didn’t. Instead he watched her silently from the shadows near the door, not making a move to force himself on her.
“You need to leave. Now.” She prayed her voice didn’t sound as terrified to his ears as it did to hers. “I will use this if you come any closer.”
“If I come any closer, I certainly hope you’d try,” he drawled dryly, amused at the idea. “But I have a gun. I don’t need to come closer.”
Oh God. Fresh fear shuddered through her.
“But I don’t plan to use it. Nor do I plan on hurting you.”
A bitter laugh tore from her. “You shoved me against the cottage!” She kept the poker raised, holding it in front of her like a sword. “Then forced me inside, to—to—” The horrible words choked her…To rape me.
“To be out of the storm,” he finished pointedly, as if reading her thoughts. “You never would have opened the door if I’d knocked.”
“You unlatched the shutter.” The realization soaked into her as coldly as the rain. “It was you.”
“Yes.”
She whispered, too frightened to find her voice, “What do you want?”
“A place to spend the night. That’s all.”
“There’s an inn in the village.” She waved the poker in the general direction of the harbor. “You can spend the night there.”
He tilted his head, as if listening to the storm. The silence that stretched between them only accentuated the howl of the hurricane gale that swept in from the Atlantic like a banshee from hell. Then he shook his head.
“As soon as the weather breaks, I’ll leave.”
Her hands gripped harder around the poker, so tightly that her knuckles turned white. “You need to leave now.”
His deep voice matched the intensity of the rain lashing against the cottage. “I have no intention of going back into that storm.”
He stepped away from the dark shadows by the door and came slowly forward toward the firelight, as if no more troubled by a woman brandishing an iron poker than he would have been by a gnat. He set his pistol down on the wooden settle yet kept it within easy