The Patriot Bride Read Online Free

nipple into even further prominence even though they were still separated by layers of cloth.
    She could feel the unwelcome heat of him, and her fear only heightened the arousal she was experiencing for the first time in her life. Hannah had lived her life much as a nun might – well guarded by her mother, then her father for a short time, until he’d descended into his cups, virtually unnoticed by the majority of gentlemen her age and just as happy to be left to her own devices. She could never quite bring herself to tone down her intelligence or her tongue enough to attract a man, not that she ever worried much about it. That was her mother’s territory.
    She was, much to Mamma’s intense concern, happiest alone with her nose buried in her books. Papa was just as happy that she was out of his hair.
    Nothing in her short, cloistered existence had prepared her for what she was feeling – she wanted badly to flee the dark, brooding man who had the audacity to say that he was her husband and held her hostage within her own house, on her own bed, and tears of frustration were rising behind her eyes, although she vowed she wasn’t going to shed them in front of this uncultured brute. If he was who he said he was, and she had her doubts, then why was he acting in such an ungentlemanly manner? Hanna was not going to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. Anyway, if he was anything like her father, her tears would only serve to enrage him further, or make him smirk down at her evilly.
    But despite her very real fear of him, there was still a small but growing part of her that wanted to stay right where she was and finally know what the mystery was, what he would do. That part of her was also responsible for the sensitive peak he was carefully mouthing.
    Wolf was amazed that she hadn’t screamed yet, and really hadn’t fought him much considering that he was taking incredible liberties with her person. And that tight little bud was still there, daring him to suckle.
    Perhaps one of the reasons she fled the country rather than marry him was that she didn’t want to have to explain her lack of virtue to her groom. For some reason he couldn’t put his finger on, the idea that she might have lain with someone else had him ready to take whoever it was apart, limb from limb.
    He didn’t rightly know why his little runaway wife intrigued him so, but he’d asked for a transfer from Fort William Henry at Lake George as soon as he’d gotten a letter from his mother, informing him that his marriage by proxy had taken place, but that the proxies had had to be on both sides. Wolf had only given his consent to his mother’s hare-brained idea because Hannah’s bride price would add to the family’s straining coffers, and, eventually, when he decided to settle down, she’d be there, at Preston Hall, waiting for him like a good wife. And it would keep his mother’s harangues down to a slow simmer.
    Wolf had been incensed when he’d read in one of his mother’s depressingly frequent letters that she’d disappeared rather than become his bride. Why, there were women lined up right and left – women of unquestioned Quality – who would have given their right arms to become his wife, and yet this little chit of a girl decided to up and sail to America to avoid such a horrid fate as becoming his wife.
    Shifting a little more of his weight onto her to hold her in place, he quickly – and with disgusting ease – transferred control of her wrists to one massive hand, while using the other to boldly reach into the front of her gown and cup the impudent breast he’d lately been teasing with his mouth.
    Hannah thought she was going to faint dead away right there – more than that, she thought she should faint dead away. Any woman of good virtue would do just that, she was quite sure, and she was purer than most. Why was she still conscious – and much, much worse than that, why was it that her body seemed to be thoroughly