SurrendersMischief Read Online Free Page A

had a few rules of her own. And number one on that short
list was to forge ahead. To stop was to admit defeat and she’d be twice damned
if some barbarian on a backwater planet was going to defeat her.
    She stumbled as he yanked on her arm, silently demanding she
keep up with his much longer stride. Heat scorched her cheeks as, shackled like
a recalcitrant child, he pulled her past two grinning warriors. Barbarians,
every damn one of them. Those grins would soon slide off their faces if she had
that nifty little gizmo from planet Bereani. Not that she’d use it to kill
them. Well, maybe… No, she decided, feeling righteous, she’d just use it to put
them on their asses for a couple of hours.
    He hauled her down another long corridor, past several doors
that looked as if they’d been closed for years. A chill that was more than the
cold coming off the thick stone walls went through her. The cold, the sense of
dankness, the stretch of hallway lined with a multitude of doors with tiny
grates for windows, the large, old-fashioned locks on the doors—especially the
locks—reminded her eerily of a dungeon.
    Nonsense, she told herself bracingly. Dungeons were on the
lower levels of a monstrosity such as this keep, not one level below the
ruler’s quarters. It was just the atmosphere of obviously long unuse giving her
the creeps. And her imagination. Imagination in a trader was not always a good
thing.
    He stopped before one door offset from the others. Without
loosening his grip on her, he wrapped his other hand around the huge iron ring that
served as a handle. With a reluctant groan, the thick door opened.
    Riana stepped cautiously into the shadowed room without
being told. The once-luxurious moonsilks and cushions couldn’t hide the fact
the space was small and cramped. Not a dungeon, then. Curious, she took another
step inside, barely noticing Darias had released her wrist. Her breath caught
in her throat as a miasma of pain, humiliation and hopelessness beat at her.
Instinctively she stepped back, only to come up against Darias’ hard body.
    “What is this place?” The words scraped out of a throat raw
with the power of the old emotions.
    “The women’s cells.”
    Cold, unemotional, almost detached. Riana put her arms
around her waist and hugged. “They’ve been deserted for a long time.” She
rubbed her hands up and down her upper arms, trying to instill some warmth. She
wanted to turn, to see if his face matched his tone, but couldn’t quite bring
herself to do so.
    “A little over ten years.”
    Something buried deep in the words made her turn. Just as she
feared, his expression was as cold and remote as his voice. But there was an
undercurrent, a tension, that produced a funny little ache right in the center
of her chest and made her wish she could forget her anger at him. She shook it
off. So what if this place brought back bad memories for him, it wasn’t doing
much for her state of mind right now, either.
    “Why’d you bring me here? So you could ‘punish’ me in
private?”
    The full force of his attention centered on her. “Keep
pushing and I won’t bother to make it private.”
    She believed him, but she still couldn’t stop the rash words
from pouring out of her mouth. “So how many women have you punished here?”
    “One.”
    It was a solid blow to the chest. For a second, she couldn’t
breathe, couldn’t even think. And then fury rushed in, a fury that was
inexplicably mingled with hurt. “You bastard. You kept a woman here, and now
you think to keep me here? Did you enslave her as you enslaved me?”
    “Unlike you, Cireena knew her place. I brought you here to
show you I am not an unreasonable man. That life could be pleasant if you would
conform. My mistake. Maybe, instead, I should show you your place.” He reached
for her.
    The moment he touched her, she knew this encounter was
different from last night. There had been a distance then in every slow brush
of his fingers against