Secrets for Seducing a Royal Bodyguard Read Online Free Page A

embrace they shared on Ranger’s back. Though Aden had been surprised by her reluctance to mount up, her emotions were obviously seesawing from one extreme to the other. If only he could ascertain how badly she’d been hurt and the price her foul captors had extracted from her lovely body.
    Not as much as he’d originally thought, he hoped and suspected. She had panicked a few times, which was perfectly understandable. But she’d also reacted to the challenges thrown at her with a wit and vigor inconceivable in a woman who’d just been raped. In fact, she’d almost made him laugh when she snapped at him after stubbing her toe. But only a few minutes later she was back to acting like a skittish foal, reinforcing his concern that something truly ugly had happened to her in those caves.
    But how did one go about asking a gently bred lady such a question? Though Aden hadn’t a clue how to broach the topic, knowing how badly she’d been treated would help him gauge how much more she could take. So far, they’d been lucky, but he couldn’t depend on that luck continuing. They still had to get clear of these woods and make it safely to the hamlet where he’d stowed his coach and left his men waiting for them.
    Ranger stepped carefully along the trail, as quiet and precise as always. Aden had taken the horse on a swift reconnoiter at dusk, looking for obstacles and imprinting the way through the woods in his mind. Ranger needed little guidance but Aden kept a firm hand on the reins even as he attempted to keep an equally firm grip on his growing awareness of the woman in his arms.
    It didn’t help one jot that the sweetly scented, intensely feminine Lady Vivien was so powerful a distraction. The bruised, vulnerable look in her blue eyes still haunted him, and he finally acknowledged it was partly for his own sake that he needed to know if she’d been raped. If she had, there wasn’t a force on earth that could stop him from hunting down whoever had instigated her abduction.
    He was still searching for the correct words to ask so appalling a question when he felt her body start to relax. Up until now, she’d held herself stiff as a hitching post, leaning as far forward as she could. All that did, of course, was push her sweetly rounded arse into his groin. Every motion of his horse’s limbs jostled that lovely piece of her anatomy against him, and his groin naturally approved. Aden had been grinding his teeth for the last twenty minutes, telling himself to ignore the alluring sensations. But Lady Vivien served as a heady inducement to sin. Even dirty and disheveled, sharp-tongued and skittish, she was a dainty beauty whose scent reminded him of long summer days and soft, warm nights and a life he’d forgotten long ago.
    Another few hundred yards and she slumped back into his chest, her soft, even breathing signalling she’d dropped into a doze. Her small change in position generated another set of challenges. Her upright stance had collapsed, bringing her breasts into contact with his forearm. When he pulled her up onto the horse he’d managed to get his arm inside her cloak as he wrapped it around her waist. Thank God he was wearing gloves because her silk gown and nearly nonexistent undergarments would have been no barrier against the touch of his hands. But with the change in her position her breasts now jiggled merrily on his sleeve, as if his arm was a nicely placed shelf for those tempting mounds to rest upon.
    Aden had gotten a taste of her lushness earlier when he’d captured her body under his to prevent her from exploding off that blasted pallet. He’d been vaguely aware at the time that her slim frame held some enticing curves, but had been too busy keeping her quiet to pay much attention. Now he had all the time in the world to feel her breasts keeping her hips company as they drove his temperature up several degrees.
    And wasn’t he the right bastard to be thinking that way? The last thing the poor