WANTED (A Transported Through Time book) Read Online Free Page B

who was going to drive her home. Or at least as far as town.
    After w hat felt like forever to her bare feet, they came to a tiny clearing where a tall, black horse bent its neck grazing. Samantha halted in her tracks, scanning the dense foliage for his car. Truck? SUV?
    No. But then, the terrain here wasn’t clear enough for a vehicle, SUV or not. So they were going to ride to the truck. To get away from the evil, violating men he kept company with. She could handle that.
    She hoped.
     

~~~
     
     
    Chapter Three
     
    Torn didn’t encompass what Jesse felt when he found her again. She was standing up, and the moonlight outlining every slim curve. Her long hair trembled in the breeze, and lengths of skin were exposed. The seductive—surreal—image of her struck him, and his body responded with a force he couldn’t reckon with.
    His heart beat faster, his palms sweated, and his gut tightened just looking at her. Jesse hoped he could withstand the ride down. One voice said, “Leave her be.” Another negotiated that with that much skin bared, she had to be a painted lady. If so, it said, “Seduce her, take her.” He’d denied both. His partners slumbering nearby were more than enough motivation to stay focused. His focus didn’t stop the struggle, though.
    Though Jesse knew the horse had scented them approaching, Jesse whispered reassuringly to Diamond, stroking the stallion ’s neck.
    If she were a soiled dove, he had no interest in taking up with her. Certainly, a woman on her own had tough choices to make, and he was in no position to judge. But in his experience, ladies with such a past carried a long list of heartaches with them.
    “A horse?” she asked, her teeth a-chattering.
    Not knowing what she was really asking, he gave Diamond a good pat instead. He should have brought her a blanket. But he’d found nothing of use that wouldn’t raise brows or make a ruckus.
    The part of him that wanted all that beckoning creamy skin to be bared for innocent reason, though, didn’t help matters with its logic. A woman abandoned as she was in the middle of nowhere, whimpering under the cold, might come with a different set of troubles. Whoever helped get her out here wasn’t the kind he’d like to tangle with.
    Say both parts of him were wrong. Then what?
    Jesse stole a glance her way and retrieved Diamond’s reins from the saddle horn.
    He was not a man in any position to woo a woman proper-like. Even though she cussed like a miner and exposed her calves for all to see, she had the bearings of a lady, gently reared and born. The proud, almost sophisticated way she carried herself, even as she trembled in the cold and showed her anger, warned him not to assume the worst.
    He gave her his full attention. “To make good time, you’ll have to ride astride.”
    She shivered, but nodded. “That’s fine. Front or back?”
    His sleeved shirt wasn’t helping her much, no matter how good she looked in it. Damn it, he should have grabbed his blanket, but if Mick or Joe woke and found it gone, they’d know he was, too, and come after him. Thereby her.
    Front meant her derriere in his lap wriggling at a trot. Back meant her breasts.
    He wanted to kick something. They didn’t have time for indecision. “Front will do.”
    Leastwise, he could keep her warmer from behind, arms wrapped around those slim shoulders—. He halted his thoughts then and there. He needed his senses focused on signs of danger. A mountain lion or snake, or worse, Mick or Joe.
    Hopefully, his cohorts would see his empty blanket, figure he was taking a leak, and roll back over. Leastwise ’til sunup. He didn’t have a lot of time to get her back to wherever she’d come from, and he was surer with every passing moment he didn’t want to know how.
    Sympathy would only feed the fire sparking his libido.
    Jesse laced and cupped his hands to help her into the saddle. She hiked up her skirt and threw a long leg, pale in the shadows, over the saddle