The Stolen Bride by Brenda Joyce Page B

hot. It was crude and base, but clear. And now she understood his tremors—they were the tremors of desire. She didn’t think, but reacted, reaching for him slowly, taking his hand, raising it to his face, his mouth. “I don’t carethat soldiers died because of you. I don’t care that you were in prison and that you escaped and are a fugitive now. I will never be afraid of you, Sean.”
    “Then you’re a fool,” he said harshly. He pulled her hand away from his mouth but held it tightly between them and her knuckles brushed his chest. “When will you understand? Sean is gone. But I’m here. You can call yourself Elle…or Eleanor, I don’t care. I’ve been locked up for two years. Tempting me now…is not a good idea. You need to be afraid of me. You need to be afraid of me now .”
    It was a moment before she actually understood his meaning. And because his eyes were blazing, and she saw the wild lust there, she shrank. “Oh my God! Are you trying to tell me that you have no feelings for me—that you simply need to use a woman, any woman, right now?”
    He stared and then, his mouth firming, his eyes hardening, he nodded. “Yes.”
    His cruelty cut her like a knife. “I don’t believe you,” she gasped. He could not have changed so much. “You would never use me . You would die before using me.”
    His grasp on her hand tightened painfully and for one moment, she was in shock. Had he turned into a complete and frightening stranger after all? But allhe did was slide his gaze over her dark brown riding habit as if stripping it away from her body. “ Sean would die first,” he said softly, his meaning clear.
    “No.” She didn’t try to pull free from him because every instinct she had told her that she would not succeed. “You may be a traitor but you are not a monster. I don’t know why you want me to think otherwise, but I refuse.”
    He released her and gave her a hard, angry look.
    She turned and walked away from him, more shaken than he could know. She couldn’t breathe—but she would never believe that Sean would hurt her. He had been her protector, her savior, her friend. But he had changed, after all. The question was, how much, and how irrevocable was it? She leaned against a tree, panting. For a moment, if she dared to be honest with herself, she hadn’t been certain what he would do. She wanted Sean O’Neill to desire her, to make love to her; she always would. And she was determined to get rid of that felon who had taken Sean over.
    He was suddenly standing behind her.
    Eleanor tensed but did not move.
    An interminable moment passed before he spoke to her back. His breath feathered her nape, her ear. “I meant it. You need to be afraid…and you need to go.”
    She fought for air. She fought for him, for them.“I am not afraid of you, Sean. And if you want me that way, it is because I am both Elle and Eleanor, not because you are a felon in dire need of a woman.”
    He made a harsh sound. “You need…to give up.”
    She turned and found them face-to-face, his chest inches from hers. “I am not giving up on you.”
    His eyes flickered.
    But it still took courage to lift her hand. She caressed the scar on his cheek to prove to him that he had not succeeded in chasing her away. “You don’t bite, after all. I know you better than you know yourself.”
    He jerked his face away from her hand. “You’re crying…again.”
    She hadn’t realized. She let her hand fall to her side. “You’re hurting—and I hurt, too, when I look at you.”
    “I don’t want your pity!” he exclaimed.
    “I don’t pity you. I ache for you and all you have been through. And when you will let me, I will comfort you.”
    “I won’t be here,” he said darkly.
    Very carefully, she met his gaze. How could she reach him? Not the man he was insisting that he had become, but the man he really was? “Do you remember the first time I fell off that Welsh pony, the old sorrel?”
    Watching his face, she saw