Set to Flame (Flame Series) Read Online Free Page A

shimmer with each movement she made.  It was similar to the first gown of black he had seen her in with matching slippers peeking out from beneath the hem, but this one was white.  What in God’s name was she thinking? He couldn’t help but wonder why she would wear white into a hell hole like this.  Her cloak was tied tight at her throat, but he could still see the glimmer beneath, and he wanted to touch her.  Not to feel the lovely fabric but the irresistible woman beneath.  What am I thinking , he asked himself.  He couldn’t have a desire for this woman while chained in presumably her relative’s prison.  Her husband’s?
    He could smell her, the fresh scent of flowers hung in the air around her, sweet and tantalizing, mingling with the musky smell of sex.  Tonight she paused first at LeForte, gave him bread he raised to his mouth and ate carefully.  Marcus envied him, his control while Marcus’s mouth would have watered had it not been dry as the desert.  She gave Damien something else and he craned his head to see, could it be meat?
    Marcus knew he would be last in line for the bread and water. It would be his punishment for last night.  He saw her delicate hand pat the leg of their leader.  The man who never faltered, who was stronger than all of them combined accepted her comfort before she moved on to Cyrille.
    Damien’s brother, Cyrille, was two years his junior and Damien’s replica.  Marcus often had to concentrate on the faces of the brothers to be able to tell the two apart.  Where Damien was serious and cautious his brother was cocky and impulsive.  This was the key to telling the difference.
    Despite the situation they found themselves in, it was hard not to look at this woman as anything but the beauty she was.  He saw it in Cyrille’s gray-green eyes as they fell over her from head to toe, his lopsided grin Marcus had never seen on the other brother’s face broke through the hunger and fatigue.  Her back was to Marcus now in the poorly lit cell, her body shrouded in the folds of the cloak.  Only the back of her ebony head was visible.  Yet the sway of the cloak and movement of head all heralded the grace of this angel.
    Next to Cyrille was his squire Devlin, uncomplaining he sat shackled along with the grown men.  Marcus still did not know how the boy had managed to be captured.  It was the circumstance that filled Marcus with the most dread.  The angel true of heart gave the boy more of everything, and there was not a man in the chamber watching who begrudged him.    Get him out of here , Marcus’s mind screamed at her.  The kid had no place in a hell such as this.  Why wouldn’t this woman take him away?  He wanted to ask her but was afraid she would leave and never return.  She moved on.
    She studied Garrick who was oblivious to his surroundings.  He watched her swallow and hesitate before turning away from him.
    Then the woman was to Halvor next to Marcus, and he got his first close look at her this night.  She was stunning.  The white cloth only seemed to add to the tilt of her cat eyes and gave a stark contrast to her cloak and hair.  She squatted and bent forward.  The fabric of the cloak fell away from her long leg.  He could see the outline of her thigh, to her knee where the material was gathered and down her calf to disappear again in the fabric.  The brawny man wasted no time consuming his part and then she was before him, squatting in front of him, her scent assaulting him to the point it made the darkness of the dungeon disappear and all that mattered was that she was here.  When she bent forward with his bread, the cloak opened to reveal the neckline of the gown and how deep it was.  The gown was less a garment to slumber in and more of a garment to entice in.  How Marcus craved to touch her.  Just once, in order to see if she was real and made of flesh and blood.
    As she turned her head to hand him the water skin he saw the bruise on her